- Martin Luther

Should believers in Jesus Christ have a different view of success? Should that view include suffering hardships, discomfort, and sacrifice? I was reading a book recently that illustrated the views that are held by men and women preparing for ministry. According to a poll conducted among them here are a few criteria to describe their ideal ministry setting:

- be in a church within 90 miles of family and friends

- be in the city or suburbs near shopping malls and supermarkets

- be able to own a large home and have a couple of cars

Please dont misunderstand me, I am not saying that having these things are bad. What I am asking, however, is should that be our goal, or worse our expectation. Consider the words of Jesus:

“And a scribe came up and said to him, “Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.” And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.””

- Matthew 8:19-20

I am starting to see a gap in many Christian churches. This gap is between what the gospel requires of us and what we are willing to do. I have been guilty of staring at that gap in bewilderment and then retreating behind some kind of screen (television, movie, computer, etc.).

There is a road stretching out in font of you and I today. Where it leads only the Lord knows. One thing is for sure that regardless of what difficulties we face God’s grace will be sufficient (2 Cor. 12:9). In fact if we want the garantee of God’s grace, the best place to be is on that road.

How far are you willing to go?

What got me hooked on the show besides the complex characters and fascinating plot twists was the fact that every episode was deeply thought provoking. I like Lost because it is not mindless entertainment. In fact, I have drawn many nuggets of wisdom from some of the characters. One of my favorite lines was one first spoken by Jack Shepherd who is the resident doctor and de facto leader of the group.

In a scene when Jack was attempting to foster unity and teamwork among the crash survivors Jack uttered the phrase, “Live together, die alone.” I doubt whether the writers of Lost studied the New Testament in their preparation but that bit of wisdom smacks of Hebrews 10:24 – 25 which states:

“And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.”

Just like the survivors of Oceanic Flight 815, we have an enemy that wants to destroy us. I Peter 5:8 states:

“Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.”

If we are to survive our real enemy we as believers in Jesus Christ need to apply Jack’s aphorism. What is keeping you from living life together with other brothers and sister in Christ? Whatever it is its high time that you cast it aside and lock arms before Satan finds an easy target. Live together, die alone.

In my last post, I posed a question about Christian community and what it is. I intend to delve into that topic further but before we do I want you to know why. The reason that Christian community is important is because it is the means that God has ordained to display the gospel to a lost and dying world.

I had to give a presentation this morning and I put together an outline that summarizes this discussion. I think you might find it helpful and hopefully thought provoking. I would love to get your feedback on it. I also hope to use it as a segue into our discussion on Christian community. Here is my outline:

What Does The Gospel Require?

1. The gospel requires the work of the Holy Spirit – John 6:49-68

Therefore, since the gospel requires a work of the Holy Spirit we must commit to:

• Live spirit led lives ourselves.
• Pray regularly as individuals and as a church for the Holy Spirit to work in our midst.
• Allow for the Spirit to work in how we plan our times of worship and teaching.

2. The gospel requires us to embrace sacrifice and suffering – Luke 9:23-27;57-62

Therefore, since the gospel requires us to embrace sacrifice and suffering we must commit to:

• Sacrifice whatever personal comforts that stand between us and truly treasuring Christ and obeying Him.
• Take as many opportunities as possible to demonstrate in our own lives a commitment to suffer and sacrifice for the sake of the gospel.
• Teach our children that the gospel requires sacrifice and suffering and provide them as many opportunities as possible to sacrifice and suffer for the sake of the gospel.

3. The gospel requires us to practice community and demonstrate it to the world.

Therefore, since the gospel requires us to practice community and demonstrate it to the world we must commit to:

• Deny ourselves of anything that robs us of time that we should be spending with the Lord, our families, or each other.
• Alter our personal and our family schedules to reflect a primary commitment to Christ’s bride the church.
• Challenge our brothers and sisters in Christ to forsake any activities or events that would hinder their ability to commit to corporate worship, accountability, service of, and fellowship with each other.

I know that this is a lot of questions but I think we need to be asking them. I am curious to see what kind of responses I will get to this brief and quizzical post. How will those of you who call yourselves Christians answers versus those who admit they are not believers?

Share your thoughts. I give you the first shot. I will share mine in the coming days.

To be continued…

According to Miller:

“…in practice, the Harvard faculty cannot cope with religion. It cannot agree on who should teach it, how it should be taught, and how much value to give it compared with economics, biology, literature, and all the other subjects considered vital to an undergraduate education.”

The discussion over the relevance of religion in the Harvard undergraduate curriculum pitted English professor Louis Menand against psychologist Steven Pinker. Pinker argued that the academy should be a totally secular space where reason and not religion reigns. Miller accounts for us the result of this struggle between academics:

“In the end, Menand & Co. backed down, and the matter never made it to a vote. A more brutal fight was put off for another day. But that’s a pity—for Harvard, its students, and the rest of us who need leaders better informed about faith and the motivations of the faithful.”

Lisa Miller couldn’t be more correct. It is a shame that an institution like Harvard should fall victim to the secular fundamentalism of the likes of Steven Pinker. It is alarming to see how far Harvard has fallen since its founding. Miller also expressed this sentiment in the following statement:

“Harvard’s distaste for engaging with religion as an academic subject is particularly ironic, given that it was founded in 1636 as a training ground for Christian ministers. According to the office of the president, Veritas was only officially adopted as its motto in 1843; until then it had been Christo et Ecclesiae (“For Christ and the Church”).”

Quo vadis academic freedom and tolerance?

HT: Dr. Al Mohler

“Young people’s sexuality is still contentious for many religious institutions. Fundamentalist and other religious groups — Catholic Church and madrasas (Islamic schools) for example — have imposed tremendous barriers that prevent young people, particularly, from obtaining information and services related to sex and reproduction. Currently, many religious teachings deny the pleasurable and positive aspects of sex and limited guidelines for sexual education often focus on abstinence before marriage (though evidence shows this strategy has been ineffective in many settings). The reality is, young people are sexual beings and many of them are religious we well. There is a need for pragmatism, to address life as it is and not as it might be in an ideal world.”

Planned Parenthood’s pragmatism is troubling for many reasons. First, it is parents that should be the ones who determine what is practical or impractical for their children. Second, that the safety of abstinence is statistically undeniable. Last but not least is that Planned Parenthood is more concerned about power than altruism.

I have documented the philosophically disturbing history of Planned Parenthood in these posts:

Philosophical Dominoes

Not So Secret Conspiracies

Is Black Genocide in the U.S.A. a Reality?

Thanks to Al Mohler for posting on this topic. Read his full post here: Mandatory Sex Education for Ten-Year-Olds? Yours?

-Francois de La Rochefoucauld

I have always felt that liberals were arrogant and condescending. My feelings were not based on any poll but on observation and anecdote. In my mind I had created generalities, liberal straw-men, and caricatures that caused me to distrust those from the left. Eventually all of that broad brush thinking started to bother me that maybe I was just being intolerant and closed minded. Maybe I was but the conduct of the left in recent days has far surpassed all of the mental caricatures I created. Apparently my thinking is not totally unfounded.

In a recent Washington Post article entitled, “Why Are Liberals So Condescending?“, professor Gerard Alexander documents four narratives that liberals use to marginalize the thinking of their political counterparts. The first narrative is that of a “vast right-wing conspiracy”. This was popularized by then first lady Hillary Clinton in response to questions about President Clinton’s conduct. This narrative suggests that conservatives employ nefarious back-room tactics that manipulate the truth and smear their opponents. Alexander illustrates this narrative by stating:

This liberal vision emphasizes the dissemination of ideologically driven views from sympathetic media such as the Fox News Channel. For example, Chris Mooney’s book “The Republican War on Science” argues that policy debates in the scientific arena are distorted by conservatives who disregard evidence and reflect the biases of industry-backed Republican politicians or of evangelicals aimlessly shielding the world from modernity. In this interpretation, conservative arguments are invariably false and deployed only cynically. Evidence of the costs of cap-and-trade carbon rationing is waved away as corporate propaganda; arguments against health-care reform are written off as hype orchestrated by insurance companies.

The second narrative that liberals offer is that Americans are stupid and easily distracted by conservative red herrings such as family values, abortion, and gun control. Alexander cites liberal author Thomas Frank’s 2004 best seller “Whats The Matter With Kansas?” as claiming that working class voters had gotten so distracted by issues like abortion that they had voted against their own economic self-interest. Comments that President Obama made in reference to rural Pennsylvanians further demonstrates the extent of this narrative:

they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

The liberal response to conservatives who voice their concerns is to listen but dismiss any calls for policy change because such concerns are devoid of any real reason.

The third narrative liberals use to dismiss conservatives is that they play on white sympathies and prejudices. Alexander references liberal authors Thomas Byrne Edsall and Mary D. Edsall who proposed that Nixon and Reagan disguised prejudice against blacks by using socially acceptable terms like crime control, low taxes, and welfare reform. This narrative totally ignores the fact that prejudice against blacks have sharply declined and that many of the prominent conservative leaders are themselves black.

The final narrative liberals offer is that conservatives are driven by fear of change. Their case, so they say, is more difficult to make because all conservatives have to do is play on fears whereas liberals must appeal to evidence and logic. This narrative furthers the idea that conservatives are suspicious, irrational, conspiracy theory believers who cannot be talked of the proverbial ledge. Alexander cites Daily Kos publisher Markos Moulitsas as an egregious example of this narrative:

Markos Moulitsas, publisher of the influential progressive Web site Daily Kos, commissioned a poll, which he released this month, designed to show how many rank-and-file Republicans hold odd or conspiratorial beliefs — including 23 percent who purportedly believe that their states should secede from the Union. Moulitsas concluded that Republicans are “divorced from reality” and that the results show why “it is impossible for elected Republicans to work with Democrats to improve our country.” His condescension is superlative: Of the respondents who favored secession, he wonders, “Can we cram them all into the Texas Panhandle, create the state of Dumb-[expletive]-istan, and build a wall around them to keep them from coming into America illegally?”

Conservatives, however, are not not without fault. There are conservatives that attempt to demonstrate liberals as being all wrong all the time. These conservatives tend to be overlooked even by other conservatives. By contrast, the narratives presented above are relentless and ubiquitous emanating from Hollywood and the White House and many points in-between.

Regardless of who wins when liberals successfully marginalize conservatives, it is the American people who lose. The national dialogue is better when both points of view are taken seriously and considered. Alexander closes his column by demonstrating the danger of liberal arrogance:

Democrats have been busy expanding, enacting or proposing major state interventions in financial markets, energy and health care. Supporters of such efforts want to ensure that key decisions will be made in the public interest and be informed, for example, by sound science, the best new medical research or prudent standards of private-sector competition. But public-choice economists have long warned that when decisions are made in large, centralized government programs, political priorities almost always trump other goals.

Even liberals should think twice about the prospect of decisions on innovative surgeries, light bulbs and carbon quotas being directed by legislators grandstanding for the cameras. Of course, thinking twice would be easier if more of them were listening to conservatives at all.

I encourage you to read Dr. Alexander’s article which can be found here.

- Robert E. Lee

Can you imagine living in a world without borders, fences, walls, dividers or lines. There is no here or there; everything is relative. This is essentially the kind of world we hand our kids when we don’t teach them our nations history…all of it.

Some officials in the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction evidently don’t have a problem with such a world. They are debating changing their curriculum so that the study of U.S. History will begin at 1877. If these officials have their way, North Carolina high schools students will not learn of our pilgrim forefathers, the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the American revolution, the development of the Constitution, the wisdom of our founders, or the War Between the States. Can an American who has no knowledge of such basic events and ideas truly be considered educated?

It is also somewhat odd when these educational bureaucrats decided to begin their new curriculum. 1877 marks the beginning of the progressive era of United States History. Could this be an attempt to wipe out the philosophy of the founders and replace it with a more socialist, progressive philosophy? I have no way of knowing with Cartesian certainty if this is so, but the time-line being discussed here is very suspect.

Making such a move will, nonetheless, do irreparable harm to an already anemic public education history curriculum. It is one thing to seek to educate it is quite another to open the door to indoctrination. When students have no point of reference or cornerstone on which to rest their minds they become disoriented to any direction offered them. This is the danger we now face.

If you would like to voice your opinion to the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction their email is: feedback@dpi.state.nc.us.

Also, if you are unclear as to why progressivism is problematic, please read a post I previously wrote entitled Philosophical Dominoes.

Author, and pastor John Piper put Lewis into perspective in a recent lecture delivered at the Desiring God Pastors Conference. In his address entitled, Lessons from an Inconsolable Soul: Learning from the Mind and Heart of C. S. Lewis, Piper said:

“He doesn’t believe in the inerrancy of Scripture, and defaults to logical arguments more naturally than to biblical exegesis. He doesn’t treat the Reformation with respect, but thinks it could have been avoided, and calls aspects of if farcical. He steadfastly refused in public or in letters to explain why he was not a Roman Catholic but remained in the Church of England. He makes room for at least some people to be saved through imperfect representations of Christ in other religions. He made a strong logical, but I think unbiblical, case for free will to explain why there is suffering in the world. He speaks of the atonement with reverence, but puts little significance on any of the explanations for how it actually saves sinners…In other words, Lewis is not a writer to which we should turn for growth in a careful biblical understanding of Christian doctrine.”

So why is it that so many Christians even those who, like Piper and myself, are at odds with Lewis doctrinally find in him a sympathetic soul?

Piper explains,

“Which brings us back now to why that is. What was it about the work of C. S. Lewis that has helped me so much? The answer lies in the way that the experience of Joy and the defense of Truth come together in Lewis’s life and writings. The way Lewis deals with these two things—Joy and Truth—is so radically different from Liberal theology and emergent postmodern slipperiness that he is simply in another world—a world where I am totally at home, and where I find both my heart and my mind awakened and made more alive and perceptive and responsive and earnest and hopeful and amazed and passionate for the glory of God every time I turn to C. S. Lewis. It’s this combination of experiencing the stab of God-shaped joy and defending objective, absolute Truth, because of the absolute Reality of God, that sets Lewis apart as unparalleled in the modern world. To my knowledge, there is simply no one else who puts these two things together the way Lewis does.”

I strongly urge you to read the whole lecture which can be found at Piper’s website.

You would think that such a story would be a source of encouragement and inspiration for millions. It makes perfect sense that such a story would be broadcast in a commercial to be aired during this year’s Superbowl. Who would not want to celebrate life in such a fashion? Well the list of pro-abortion groups who are incensed at this ad and CBS’s decision to air it is long and illustrious.

One of the more notable interviews on the Tebow ad controversy aired on the O’Reilly Factor this past Tuesday evening. Mr. O’Reilly had as his guest Jehmu Greene, president of the Women’s Media Center. It was interesting to note her complaint about the ad. Watch the following clip:

So according to Ms. Greene, and those whom she represents, the ad is objectionable because celebrating life denies women of their rights? If there is one thing that Ms. Greene illustrates by employing such vacuous statements is that there is not one shred of logic, or moral gravitas that favors abortion on demand. The people who support unrestricted abortion are offended by this ad because the message is clear: abortion is murder. If they cant take the heat then get out of the kitchen and spare the lives of millions of unborn innocents in the process.

I congratulate the Tebow’s and the Focus on the Family organization for wanting to air this ad. I hope that millions will see that life is precious. Too precious to be murdered by the abortion doctors saline solution and suction tubes.