The same is true of religious liberty. Read the following article."The freedom of speech is a public absolute, and it can remain only so long as a sufficient segment of the public believes that it is and consents to uphold it. It is an absolute that can be destroyed by public opinion. This is where the danger lies." Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community (145).
"The reason we have made peace with the sexual revolution is because we are captive to the love of money. Southern Baptist men and women want to live with the same standard of living as the culture around them, and, as the Spirit warns, we will grind our churches and our families to pieces to get there (Jas 4:1–4). Why does the seemingly godly deacon in a conservative Southern Baptist church in north Georgia drive his pregnant teenage daughter to Atlanta under cover of darkness to obtain an abortion? Because, however he votes his “values,” when crisis hits, he wants his daughter to have a “normal” life. He is “pro-life” with, as one feminist leader put it three exceptions: rape, incest, and my situation.
Why do Southern Baptist parents, contra Paul’s admonition in 1 Corinthians 7, encourage their young adult children to delay marriage years past the time it takes to discern whether this union would be of the Lord? Why do we smilingly tell them to wait until they can “afford” it? It is because, to our shame, we deem fornication a less awful reality than financial ruin. Why do Southern Baptist pastors speak bluntly about homosexuality and X-rated movies, but never address the question of whether institutionalized day-care is good for children, or for parents? It is because pastors know that couples would say that they could never afford to live on the provision of the husband alone. And they are right, if living means living in the neighborhoods in which they now live, with the technologies they now have. Christian pastors know that no godly woman will ever say on her deathbed, “If only I had put the children in daycare so that I could have pursued my career.” But do Southern Baptist pastors ever ask whether it might be better to live in a one-bedroom apartment or a trailer park than to follow this American dream? Rarely, because it seems so inconceivable to us that it doesn’t even seem like an option. When confronted with the challenge of a counter-cultural, family-affirming—but economically less acquisitive—life, too often we see what our inerrant Bibles define as the joyful life, and then we walk away saddened like another rich young ruler before us who wanted eternal life but wanted his possessions more (Luke 18:18–30)."
--Russell Moore
"How can Southern Baptists and other evangelicals—whether on the right or the left of the political spectrum—speak to issues of social justice and the common good without addressing what is no doubt the leading cause of “widows and orphans” in our midst? Why would Southern Baptists think and speak in one way (“muted” and “ambiguous,” in Wilcox’s words) on the issue of divorce, and quite another (full volume and unambiguous) on an issue such as homosexuality? Wilcox suggests, and I think rightly, that Southern Baptists and other conservative Protestants have been “far from untouched by the dramatic increases in divorce since the 1960s.” Wilcox writes: “It may well be that leaders and pastors are more comfortable confronting homosexuality, which probably does not affect many people in the pews, than confronting divorce, which does.” To put it bluntly, we have many more “out of the closet” multiple divorcees than “out of the closet” homosexuals in our churches. At issue here is pastoral courage. John the Baptist would put his head on a platter to speak truth to power that not even a king can have another man’s wife. John the Southern Baptist is too often not willing to put his retirement benefits on the table to say the same thing to a congregational business meeting."
--Russell Moore, "Southern Baptist Sexual Revolutionaries,"
http://moodle.sbts.edu/file.php/14845/RDM_-_SWJT_-_Southern_Baptist_Sexual_Revolutionaries.pdf
"To be blunt, those Christians who (rightly) point out that we live in a post-Christian, post-Christendom era, cannot have their cake and eat it. Being regarded as a cult was the flip side of the apostolic church coin. Standing against the dominant culture by believing that Jesus is Lord and that God has raised him from the dead made the church a cult; and these claims will always be regarded as indicative of a cult mentality by the wider secular world. Do not, therefore, gleefully proclaim the death of Christendom and at the same time lament the fact that we are in danger of being perceived as a cult. History, biblical and otherwise, indicates that such a posture is incoherent."
--Carl Trueman, "Life on the Cultic Fringe," http://www.reformation21.org/articles/life-on-the-cultic-fringe.php
“Will see God” looks forward to that time when Jesus’ disciples will behold God in all of His glory and majesty. The words are not to be interpreted figuratively or mystically as if they referred to special insight into God’s person and nature or to a visionary experience. Nor should the promise be reduced to a sentimental level as if it referred to seeing God in the kindnesses of others. Although the early disciples saw God incarnate in the person of Jesus especially in events like the transfiguration, this promise like most of the others accompanying the Beatitudes anticipates eschatological fulfillment. In the new earth and the new heavens Jesus’ disciples will literally see God.
OT figures longed for this great privilege. Moses came closest to experiencing it when he was placed in the cleft of the rock and allowed to behold the aftereffects of God’s radiance. However, even Moses was warned, “No one can see my face and live.” God’s presence is surrounded by unapproachable light (1 Tim 6: 16), a glory so great that sinners who attempt to look at it are destroyed by it. The new Moses promised His followers what even the old Moses could not experience. When believers are resurrected and glorified and every trace of sin is removed from them, they will have unhindered fellowship with God even to the extent of seeing Him. Those who “seek the face of the God of Jacob” (Ps 24: 6) will see Him at last.Charles L. Quarles, Sermon On The Mount: Restoring Christ's Message to the Modern Church
...WARNING: Indie music is perhaps the most dangerous subject you can discuss with white people. One false move and you will lose their respect and admiration forever. Here are some general rules:• Bands that have had their songs in an Apple ad are still marginally acceptable.
• Bands that have had their songs in ads for other companies are not acceptable.
• If you mention a band you like and the other person has heard of it, you lose. They own you. It is essential that you like the most obscure music possible.
"White people will often say they are “spiritual” but not religious. This usually means that they will believe in any religion that doesn’t involve Jesus. The most popular choices include Buddhism, Hinduism, Kabbalah, and, to a lesser extent, Scientology. A few even dip into Islam, but that’s much rarer, since you have to make real sacrifices and actually go to a mosque.
For the most part, white people prefer religions that produce artifacts and furniture that fit into their home or wardrobe. They are also particularly drawn to religions that do not require a lot of commitment or donations. When a white person tells you “I’m a Buddhist/Hindu/Kabbalahist,” the best thing to do is ask how they arrived at their religious decision. The story will likely involve a trip to Thailand or a college class on religion."
--Christian Lander, Stuff White People Like: A Definitive Guide to the Unique Taste of Millions
"Recall Gandhi's rather distressing counsel to Jews of the Holocaust: they should commit suicide rather than resist Nazi tyranny. Regardless of the moral fiber that supported Gandhi's pacifist convictions, the proper moral response to the Jews--indeed, to any oppressed people--is that of a wise man uttered three millennia ago:-J. Daryl Charles and Timothy DemyIf you faint in the day of adversity,your strength is small.Rescue those who are being taken away to death;hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter.If you say, “Behold, we did not know this,”does not he who weighs the heart perceive it?Does not he who keeps watch over your soul know it,and will he not repay man according to his work?(Proverbs 24:10-12 ESV)"
"This kind of argument can be applied to almost anything, since nothing is literally 100% safe. It has been used against medicines, pesticides, nuclear power, automobiles, and many other targets. Where the issue is the safety of nuclear power plants, for example, the answer to the question whether nuclear power is safe is obviously No. If nuclear power were safe, it would be the only safe thing on the face of the earth. This page that you are reading isn't safe. It can catch fire, which can spread and burn down your home, with you in it. The only meaningful question, to those who are spending their own money to deal with their own risks, is whether it is worth what it would cost to fireproof every page in every book, magazine, or newspaper.
In the case of nuclear power, the question of safety, in addition to cost, is Compared to what? Compared to generating electricity with hydroelectric dams or the burning of fossil fuels or compared to reducing our use of electricity with dimmer lights or foregoing the use of many things that are run by electricity and taking our chances on alternative power sources? Once the discussion changes to a discussion of incremental trade-offs, then nuclear power becomes one of the safest options. But neither it nor anything else is categorically safe."
--Thomas Sowell, Applied Economics: Thinking Beyond Stage One
"The common practice today is to measure the Bible against the so-called modern worldview, whose fundamental dogma is that God cannot act in history--that everything to do with God is to be relegated to the domain of subjectivity. And so the Bible no longer speaks of God, the living God; no, now we alone speak and decide what God can do and what we will and should do. And the Antichrist, with an air of scholarly excellence, tells us that any exegesis that reads the Bible from the perspective of faith in the living God, in order to listen to what God has to say, is fundamentalism. He wants to convince us that only his kind of exegesis the supposedly purely scientific kind, in which God says nothing and has nothing to say, is able to keep abreast of the times...The dispute about interpretation is ultimately a dispute about who God is...
We are dealing here with the vast question as to how we can and cannot know God, how we are related to God, and how we can lose him. The arrogance that would make God an object and impose our laboratory conditions upon him is incapable of finding him. For it already implies that we deny God as God by placing ourselves above him, by discarding the whole dimension of love, of interior listening, by no longer acknowledging as real anything but what we can experimentally test and grasp. To think like that is to make oneself God., And to do that is to abase not only God, but the world and oneself, too."
--Joseph Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth (2007 A.D.)
"In the present age, war will never be eradicated; thus, the just-war tradition avoids the utopian error of thinking--or hoping--that war might be abolished. It reckons with the stubborn reality of human nature and human fallenness, which is not only the normative teaching of historic Christian theology, but the empirical evidence on display in all of human civilization. In this way, basic human discernment and just-war moral reasoning acknowledge that, where the lamb and the lion are presumed to lie together in the present age, the lamb will need constant replacement.""The just-war position is made necessary by the fact that we live in the period of the 'already but not yet,' that is, in the temporal period that is characterized by human fallenness and penultimate peace. Like the pacifist, the just warrior is committed to 'putting violence on trial,' in the words of one theorist; and like the pacifist, he will also evaluate life from the perspective of those who suffer and those who are potential victims. At the same time, unlike the pacifist, he will highly qualify peace and find deficient the world's definition of peace, fully aware that some forms of "peace" are oppressive, totalitarian, and therefore unjust."
"Justice without force is a myth, because there are always evil men, and evil men must be hindered. Thus, reasoned political judgments are a necessary reality, which on occasion will require the application of coercive force. And why? Because the very goods of human flourishing are at stake--goods that need protecting."
--J. Daryl Charles and Timothy J. Demy, War, Peace, and Christianity: Questions and Answers from a Just-War Perspectivehttp://www.amazon.com/War-Peace-Christianity-Questions-Perspective/dp/1433513838/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1344914871&sr=1-3&keywords=j.+daryl+charles
1. It is a new way, an unknown tongue.
2. It is not so melodious as the usual way.
3. There are so many new tunes, we shall never have done learning them.
4. The practice creates disturbances and causes people to behave indecently and disorderly.
5. It is Quakerish and Popish and introductive of instrumental music.
6. The names given to the notes are bawdy, even blasphemous.
7. It is a needless way, since our fathers got to heaven without it.
8. It is a contrivance to get money.
9. People spend too much time learning it, they tarry out nights’ disorderly.
10. They are a company of young upstarts that fall in with this way, and some of them are lewd and loose persons.”
--Thomas Symmes, 1723 A.D.
"Nobody can reach God by his own wisdom or his own morality. Only at the cross can God be known. And this is doubly offensive to men and women of culture. They resent the exclusiveness of the Christian claim, and even more the humiliation implicit in it. Christ from the cross seems to say to us, "I am here because of you. If it were not for your sin and pride, I would not be here. And if you could have saved yourself, I would not be here either.' The Christian pilgrimage begins with bowed head and bent knee; there is no way into he kingdom of God except by the exaltation of those who have humbled themselves."
--John Stott, Between Two Worlds (1982 A.D.)
"Leaving property rights undefined is even more disastrous than imperfectly defining them. Wild animals are often hunted to extinction precisely because they do not belong to anyone. They can by fiat or by metaphor be said to belong to 'the people,' but unless it is feasible to apply force to exclude poachers, there is no property right in reality. It is precisely those things which belong to 'the people' which have historically been despoiled--wild creatures, the air, and waterways being notable examples. This goes to the heart of why property rights are socially important in the first place. Property rights means self-interested monitors. No owned creatures are in danger of extinction. No owned forests are in danger of being leveled. No one kills the goose that lays the golden eggs when it is his goose. Even chickens who lay ordinary eggs are in no danger of being killed before their replacements have been provided. No logging company is going to let its own forest become a mass of stumps, though it may do that on 'public' land."
--Thomas Sowell, Knowledge and Decisions
One of the last refuges of someone whose pet project or theory has been exposed as economic nonsense is to say: "Economics is all very well, but there are also non-economic values to consider." Presumably, these are supposed to be higher and nobler concerns that soar above the level of crass materialism. Of course there are non-economic values. In fact, there are only non-economic values. Economics is not a value itself but merely a method of trading off one value against another...Economics does not say you should make the most money possible…. What lofty talk about "non-economic values" usually boils down to is that some people do not want their own particular values weighed against anything.
- Thomas Sowell
Part One: Events Introduction to Jesus’s Saving Events
1 Christ’s Incarnation
2 Christ’s Sinless Life
3 Christ’s Death
4 Christ’s Resurrection
5 Christ’s Ascension
6 Christ’s Session
7 Christ’s Pentecost
8 Christ’s Intercession
9 Christ’s Second Coming
Part Two: Pictures Introduction to the Pictures of Jesus’s Saving Events
10 Christ Our Reconciler
11 Christ Our Redeemer
12 Christ Our Legal Substitute
Just for a preview of the work, here is an excerpt from the chapter on Christ's sinless life. Here Peterson is dealing with the statement in Hebrews 5:8-10: "13 Christ Our Victor
How was the incarnate Son “made perfect”? Certainly, nothing was lacking in his divine nature. And his humanity was always without sin. In what sense, then, did he need to be made perfect? A hint is provided when Hebrews 2:10 says that God made Christ “perfect through suffering.” This idea is expanded when Hebrews 5:8 says that Jesus “learned obedience through what he suffered.” The Son was made perfect when, over the course of his earthly life, he learned to obey the Father, especially by enduring suffering. An illustration will help. Imagine that in the first-century Jerusalem Gazette a listing appears in its “Help Wanted” section for the job of Redeemer of the world. There are three requirements for the job. First, the applicant must be God; no others need apply. That would narrow the job pool to three. Second, the applicant must also have become man. That would exclude all but one.
The point of the passages in Hebrews that teach that the incarnate Son was made perfect is found in the third qualification in the job description for Redeemer. Not only must the applicant be God incarnate; he must also have on-the-job experience. Although Jesus’s humanity was never sinful, in God’s plan it must be tried and found true. God did not send his Son to earth as a thirty-three-year-old to die and be raised. He sent him as an infant in order for him to experience human life, with all of its trials and temptations, triumphantly.
It is critical to note the purpose for the Son’s being made perfect, that is, experientially qualified to be Savior by learning obedience through suffering. “And being made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him, being designated by God a high priest after the order of Melchizedek” (Heb. 5:9–10). Jesus’s sinless life was necessary for him to become “the source of eternal salvation” for every believer. His proven sinlessness enabled him to die and rise to save sinners. It qualified him to offer himself as a sacrifice in his ministry as our great “high priest after the order of Melchizedek.”
--Robert A. Peterson, (2011-11-09). Salvation Accomplished by the Son: The Work of Christ
http://www.amazon.com/Salvation-Accomplished-Son-Work-Christ/dp/1433507609
“What Love is this of thine, that Cannot be
In thine Infinity, O Lord, Confined,
Unless it in thy very Person see,
Infinity, and Finity Conjoin'd?
What hath thy Godhead, as not satisfied
Marri'd our Manhood, making it its Bride?
Oh, Matchless Love! filling Heaven to the brim!
O're running it: all running o're beside
This World! Nay Overflowing Hell; wherein
For thine Elect, there rose a mighty Tide!
That there our Veins might through thy Person bleed,
To quench those flames, that else would on us feed.
Oh! that thy Love might overflow my Heart!
To fire the same with Love: for Love I would.
But oh! my straight'ned Breast! my Lifeless Spark!
My Fireless Flame! What Chilly Love, and Cold?
In measure small! In Manner Chilly! See.
Lord blow the Coal: Thy Love Enflame in me.
Edward Taylor, "Meditation 1"
“There are all sorts of things in this world that offer to give it to you, but they never quite keep their promise. The longings which arise in us when we first fall in love, or first think of some foreign country, or first take up some subject that excites us, are longings which no marriage, no travel, no learning can really satisfy. I am not now speaking of what would be ordinarily called unsuccessful marriages, or holidays, or learned careers. I am speaking of the best possible ones. There was something we grasped at, in the first moment of longing, which fades away in the reality. I think everyone knows what I mean. The wife may be a good wife, and the hotels and scenery may have been excellent, and chemistry may be a very interesting job: but something has evaded us…If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probably explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing.”
C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
"The word inerrancy does have a certain disadvantage...The word has come to suggest to many the idea of precision, rather than...mere truth. Now, precision and truth are not synonyms, though they do overlap in meaning. A certain amount of precision is often required for truth, but that but that amount varies from one context to another. In mathematics and science, truth often requires considerable precision. If a student says that 6 + 5 = 10, he has not told the truth. He has committed an error. If a scientist makes a measurement varying by .0004 cm of an actual length, he may describe that as an error, as in the phrase margin of error.
But outside of science and mathematics, truth and precision are often much more distinct. If you ask someone's age, the person's conventional response...is to tell how old he was on his most recent birthday. But this is, of course, imprecise. It would be precise to tell one's age down to the day, hour, minute, and second. But would that convey more truth? And if one fails to give that much precision, has he made an error? I think not, as we use the terms truth and error in ordinary language. If someone seeks to tell his age down to the second, we usually say that he has told us more than we want to know. The question "What is your age?" does not demand that level of precision. Indeed, when someone gives excess information in an effort to be more precise, he actually frustrates the process of communication, hindering, rather than communicating truth. He buries his real age under a torrent of irrelevant words...
We must always remember that Scripture is, for the most part, ordinary language rather than technical language. Certainly, it is not of the modern scientific genre. In Scripture, God intends to speak to everybody. To do that most efficiently, he (through the human writers) engages in all the shortcuts that we commonly use among ourselves to facilitate conversation: imprecisions, metaphors, hyperbole, parables, and so forth. Not all these convey literal truth, or truth with a precision expected in specialized contexts; but they all convey truth, and in the Bible there is no reason to charge them with error.
Inerrancy, therefore, means that the Bible is true, not that it is maximally precise. To the extent that precision is necessary for truth, the Bible is sufficiently precise. But it does not always have the amount of precision that some readers demand of it. It has a level of precision sufficient for its own purposes, not for the purposes for which some readers might employ it."
--John M. Frame, The Doctrine of the Word of God (2010 A.D.)
http://www.amazon.com/The-Doctrine-Word-Theology-Lordship/dp/0875522645
"In order to be able to expound the Scriptures, and as an aid to your pulpit studies, you will need to be familiar with the commentators: a glorious army, let me tell you, whose acquaintance will be your delight and profit. Of course, you are not such wiseacres as to think or say that you can expound Scripture without assistance from the works of divines and learned men who have laboured before you in the field of exposition. If you are of that opinion, pray remain so, for you are not worth the trouble of conversion, and like a little coterie who think with you, would resent the attempt as an insult to your infallibility. It seems odd, that certain men who talk so much of what the Holy Spirit reveals to themselves, should think so little of what he has revealed to others."
-Charles Spurgeon, "Commenting and Commentaries"
"What you think of as being head over heals in love is in large part a gust of ego gratification, but it’s nothing like the profound satisfaction of being known and loved.
When over the years someone has seen you at your worst, and knows you with all your strengths and flaws, yet commits him- or herself to you wholly, it is a consummate experience. To be loved but not known is comforting but superficial. To be known and not loved is our greatest fear. But to be fully known and truly loved is, well, a lot like being loved by God. It is what we need more than anything. It liberates us from pretense, humbles us our of our self-righteousness, and fortifies us for any difficulty life can throw at us.
The kind of love life I am talking about is not devoid of passion, but it’s not the same kind of passion that is there during the days of naiveté. When Kathy first held my hand, it was an almost electrical thrill. Thirty-seven years later, you don’t get the same buzz out of holding your wife’s hand that you did the first time. But as I look back on that initial sensation, I realize that it came not so much from the magnitude of my love for her but from the flattery of her choice of me. In the beginning it goes to your head, and there is some love in that, but there are a lot of other things, too. There is no comparison between that and what it means to hold Kathy’s hand now, after all we’ve been through. We know each other thoroughly now; we have shared innumerable burdens, we have repented, forgiven, and been reconciled to each other over and over. There is certainly passion. But the passion we share now differs from the thrill we had then like a noisy but shallow brook differs from a quieter but much deeper river. Passion may lead you to make a wedding promise, but then that promise over the years makes the passion richer and deeper."
--Tim Keller, The Meaning of Marriage
http://www.amazon.com/The-Meaning-Marriage-Complexities-Commitment/dp/0525952470/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1339590116&sr=8-1&keywords=the+meaning+of+marriage
"SOME of what Ron Paul says he wants to do, I want to do too. But I want to do it over a generation, because it absolutely will never get done if it is not done over a generation. The nature of society will not allow for the blowback that would exist by the unthoughtful radicalism of what Paul says he would do (and of course even he knows it would never, ever happen, but you can’t get those $10 donations without it). It took us over 100 years to become this progressive and nanny-dependent as a society. It took over 100 years for the citizen to beg the government to do as much as it does for the citizen, and for the government to oblige said citizen. It will not be undone in 100 minutes. It will take a lot of work. Political change will take a lot of work. Cultural change will take a lot of work. It is work I have dedicated my life to. I work as a senior vice president at a company with 62,000 employees, serve on four or five boards of non-profits and political groups, am raising three children under the age of six, manage the financial well-being of 150 high net worth individuals, families, and institutions, and am beyond passionate about the direction of my country. And frankly, I feel like I am not doing enough! I know that my life’s aspirations can not come true overnight, but I work and I work and I work. And when I die, I hope there will be some change as a result of what I am doing (should God see fit to smile upon my efforts). Where is a vision from the nucleus of Ron Paul cheerleaders? Where is the commitment to multi-generational and incremental change? I understand that the task at hand is going to be HARD, but I find their selection of “Door #3″ to be perverse. Yes, in door #3 you never have to worry about winning an election. You get to comfort yourself with platitudes and self-righteous cliches about being the only one really fighting the good fight. You can protest every candidate, or every bill, but you never get your own candidate elected, or get your own bill passed. You are the quintessential man outside the ring, looking at the two boxers fighting, telling the other bystanders around you how bad the two men fighting are."
--David Bahnsen
"[Ron] Paul routinely says that he's the only candidate who promises real change. For instance, he proposes cutting $1 trillion from the budget in the first year of his presidency. Now, show of hands: Who thinks Ron Paul could get those kinds of cuts through Congress? Anyone? OK, anyone who also believes the Council on Foreign Relations is a secret cabal determined to create a North American super-state?
I thought so.
I like, even love, many of Paul's proposals: turning Medicaid into block grants, getting rid of the Department of Education, etc. But he's not the man to get them accomplished, largely because the president doesn't have unilateral authority.
Presidential power is the power to persuade — Congress, the media and ultimately and most important, the American people. The power of the purse, meanwhile, resides on the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.
Paul has been in Congress, off and on, for nearly 30 years. In that time, he will rightly tell you, Congress has spent money with reckless abandon, expanded the state's police powers, launched numerous wars without a declaration of war and further embraced fiat money (he got into politics when Richard Nixon took us fully off the gold standard). During all of that, he took to the floor and delivered passionate speeches in protest convincing … nobody.
Paul's supporters love to talk about how he was a lone voice of dissent. They never explain why he was alone in his dissent. Why couldn't he convince even his ideologically sympathetic colleagues? Why is there no Ron Paul caucus?
Now he insists that everyone in Washington will suddenly do what he wants once he's in the White House. That's almost painfully naïve. And it's ironic that the only way the libertarian-pure-constitutionalist in the race could do the things he's promising is by using powers not in the Constitution.
--Jonah Goldberg
"Because of the balance of global wealth and power, there is a general assumption that white people are pretty shrewd. And for the most part, history has proven this to be true. But white people have one great weakness: organic food.
Just as with farmer’s markets, white people believe that organic food is grown by farmers who wear overalls, drive tractors, and don’t use pesticides. In spite of the fact that most organic food is made by major agribusiness, which just uses it as an excuse to jack up prices, white people will always lose their mind for organic anything. Never mind the fact that if the entire world were to switch to 100 percent organic food tomorrow there would be mass starvation and famine.
White people don’t care about this. As long as they aren’t eating pesticides, they are pretty sure they can live forever. It’s almost guaranteed that if some Colombian drug lord can start offering “organic” cocaine, he’ll be the richest guy ever."
--Christian Lander, Stuff White People Like: A Definitive Guide to the Unique Taste of Millions
"...Our natural reason . . . takes a look at married life...and says, 'Alas, must I rock the baby, wash its diapers, make its bed, smell its stench, stay up nights with it, take care of it when it cries, heal its rashes and sores, and on top of that care for my wife, provide for her, labor at my trade, take care of this and take care of that, do this and do that, endure this and endure that, and whatever else of bitterness and drudgery married life involves? What, should I make such a prisoner of myself? O you poor, wretched fellow, have you taken a wife? Woe, woe upon such wretchedness and bitterness! It is better to remain free and lead a peaceful, carefree life. I will become a priest or a nun and compel children to do likewise.'
What then does Christian faith say to this? It opens its eyes, looks upon all these insignificant, distasteful, and despised duties in the Spirit, and is aware that they are all adorned with divine approval as with the costliest gold and jewels. It says, 'O God, because I am certain that thou hast created me as a man and hast from my body begotten this child, I also know for a certainty that it meets with thy perfect pleasure. I confess to thee that I am not worthy to rock the little babe or wash its diapers, or to be entrusted with the care of the child and its mother. How is it that I, without any merit, have come to this distinction of being certain that I am serving thy creature and thy most precious will? O how gladly will I do so, though the duties should be even more insignificant and despised. Neither frost nor heat, neither drudgery nor labor, will distress or dissuade me, for I am certain that it is thus pleasing in thy sight. . .' God, with all his angels and creatures is smiling—not because the father is washing diapers, but because he is doing so in Christian faith."-Martin Luther, "The Estate of Marriage" (1522 A.D.)
“The paradox is that the natural law is both really known, and really suppressed. Among my Catholic friends, who see the knowledge, I stress the suppression. Among my Reformed friends, who see the suppression, I stress the knowledge. Sometimes people think that suppressed moral knowledge is the same as weakened moral knowledge with weakened power over behavior. On the contrary…pressing down on one’s conscience does not make it weak any more than pressing down a wildcat makes it docile. It only makes it more violent. Its claws are even sharper in a culture with a Christian past, like ours, for then people have more to suppress.”
J. Budziszewski, The Revenge of Conscience: Politics and the Fall of Man
"It is a mistake to suppose that all men...want to be free. On the contrary, if freedom entails responsibility, many of them want none of it...The aim of untold millions is to be free to do exactly as they choose and for someone else to pay when things go wrong."
-Theodore Dalrymple
“…Adults do not have the option of concealing the truth. Kids know, no matter what. When children of widely differing academic abilities are mixed in classes, their differences are highlighted, not obscured. If the teacher calls on the children equally, then the deficits of the slower children are put on display for all their classmates to see. If the teacher calls only on the brighter children who know the answers, the kids quickly figure out what is going on. Children understand that academic ability varies and know the intellectual pecking order in every classroom. The slower children will get labeled whether or not they are grouped. It will be hurtful to them, to varying degrees. Educators do not have the option of preventing that hurt. What educators can do is put the relationship of performance in the classroom and merit as a person into perspective. People who are academically gifted can be fickle, humorless, dishonest, and cowardly. People who are not academically gifted can be steadfast, funny, honest, and brave. Merit as a person and academic ability are different things"
-Charles Murray, Real Education: Four Simple Truths for Bringing America’s Schools Back to Reality
“A friend expressed dozens of objections to the point I was making about God; whenever I shot one down, he just deployed another. Recognizing that he was merely laying down a smoke barrage, I asked ‘Suppose we took a few weeks and I answered every one of your objections to your complete intellectual satisfaction. Would you then believe?’ He answered, ‘No’—and that ‘No’ was a moment of illumination, for he realized for the first time that his real problem with God was not in his mind, but in his will.”
-J. Budziszewski, The Revenge of Conscience
"What Is Your Biggest Problem?
When we rightly identify the source of our problem, we are on our way to a solution that celebrates the grace of Christ. But we must first acknowledge that the problem is us! It is inside us, deep in the recesses of our hearts. How do you react to this news? Are you shocked?
Disappointed? Offended? Angry? It’s certainly not what we want to hear. When I am impatient with my children, the last thing I want to admit is that it is my fault. I want to blame my child and justify my sin! But if we don’t face our own sins, we will never get to the real solution. We will minimize the redeeming love of Father, Son, and Spirit or bypass it completely. This is deadly.
There is nothing more serious!
The Bible says that my real problem is not psychological (low self-esteem or unmet needs), social (bad relationships and influences), historical (my past), or physiological (my body). They are significant influences, but my real problem is spiritual (my straying heart and my need for Christ). I have replaced Christ with something else, and as a consequence, my heart is hopeless and powerless. Its responses reflect its bondage to whatever it is serving instead of Christ. Ultimately, my real problem is a worship disorder."
-Paul Tripp and Timothy Lane, How People Change
"Memorial Day, originally called Decoration Day, was instituted to honor Union soldiers who died in the Civil War. After World War I, the purpose of the day was expanded to include all men and women who died in U.S. military service. Today, Memorial Day is mainly thought of as the unofficial start of summer-a long weekend with a car race, playoff basketball, and brats and burgers on the grill.
It is always tricky to know how the church should or shouldn’t celebrate patriotic holidays. Certainly, some churches blend church and state in such a way that the kingdom of God morphs into a doctrinally-thin, spiritually nebulous civil religion. But even with this dangers, there are a number of good reasons why Christians should give thanks for Memorial Day.
1. Being a soldier is not a sub-Christian activity. In Luke 3, John the Baptist warns the people to bear fruit in keeping with repentance. The crowds respond favorably to his message and ask him, “What then shall we do?” John tells the rich man to share his tunics, the tax collectors to collect only what belongs to them, and the soldiers to stop their extortion. If ever there was a time to tell the soldiers that true repentance meant resigning from the army, surely this was the time. And yet, John does not tell them that they must give up soldier-work to bear fruit, only that they need to be honest soldiers. The Centurion is even held up by Jesus as the best example of faith he’s seen in Israel (Luke 7:9). Military service, when executed with integrity and in the Spirit of God, is a suitable vocation for the people of God.
2. The life of a soldier can demonstrate the highest Christian virtues. While it’s true that our movies sometimes go too far in glamorizing war, this is only the case because there have been many heroics acts in the history of war suitable for our admiration. Soldiers in battle are called on to show courage, daring, service, shrewdness, endurance, hard work, faith, and obedience. These virtues fall into the “whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just” category that deserve our praise (Philippians 4:8).
3. Military service is one of the most common metaphors in the New Testament to describe the Christian life. We are to fight the good fight, put on the armor of God, and serve as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. When we remember the sacrifice, single-minded dedication, and discipline involved in the life of a soldier, we are calling to mind what we are supposed to be like as Christians in service to Christ.
4. Love of country can be a good thing. As Christians we have dual citizenship. Our first and ultimate allegiance must always be to Christ whose heavenly dwelling is our eternal home. But we are also citizens of an earthly country. We will stand before God not as individuals wiped clean of all earthly nationality, but as people with distinct languages, cultural affinities, and homelands. It is not wrong to love our distinct language, culture, or nationality. Whenever I’m at a ball game I still get choked up during the singing of the National Anthem. I think this is good. Love for God does not mean we love nothing else on earth, but rather that we learn to love the things on earth in the right way and with the right proportions and priorities. Love of country is a good thing, and it is right to honor those who defend the principles that make our country good.
5. This may be controversial to some, but I believe the facts of history will demonstrate that on the whole, the United States military has been a force for good in the world. Obviously, as a military power, we have blundered at times, both individually and corporately. But on the whole, the men and women of our armed services have fought and are fighting for causes that promote freedom, defend the rights of human beings, and reject tyranny. War is still hell and a tragic result of the fall. Praise God for his promise to one day end all human conflict. But in a world where people are evil by nature and leaders are not always reasonable and countries do not always have good intentions, war is sometimes the way to peace-at least the best peace we can hope for between peoples and nations this side of heaven.
And finally, a favorite quote of mine from Thomas Sowell on patriotism:So thank God for a day to remember God’s common grace to America and his special grace in enlisting us, poor weak soldiers that we are, in service to Christ our Captain and conquering King."
“Despite a tendency in some intellectual circles to see the nation as just a subordinate part of the world at large—some acting, or even describing themselves as citizens of the world—patriotism is, in one sense, little more than a recognition of the basic fact that one’s own material well-being, personal freedom, and sheer physical survival depend on the particular institutions, traditions, and policies of the particular nation in which one lives. There is no comparable world government, and without the concrete institutions of government, there is nothing to be a citizen of or to have enforceable rights, however lofty or poetic it may sound to be a citizen of the world. When one’s fate is clearly recognized as depending on the surrounding national framework—the institutions, traditions, and norms of one’s country—then the preservation of that framework cannot be a matter of indifference while each individual pursues purely individual interests. Patriotism is recognition of a shared fate, and the shared responsibilities that come with it. …Conditions may become so repugnant in one country that it makes sense to move to another country. But there is no such thing as moving to “the world.” One may of course live in a country parasitically, accepting all the benefits for which others have sacrificed—both in the past and in the present—while rejecting any notion of being obliged to do the same. But once that attitude becomes general, the country becomes defenseless against forces of either internal disintegration or external aggression. In short, patriotism and national honor cannot be reduced to simply psychological quirks, to which intellectuals can consider themselves superior, without risking dire consequences, of which France in 1940 was a classic example. It was considered chic in some circles in France of the 1930s to say “Rather Hitler than Blum.” But that was before they experienced living under Hitler or dying after dehumanization in Hitler’s concentration camps.”
-Thomas Sowell, Intellectuals and Society
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| Kevin DeYoung |
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| Thomas Sowell |
