Sometimes You Gotta Take a Stand

All right, getting of the isms for now I have decided that there comes a time where you have to just say enough is enough, period.

There is a sect inside the Church today that aims to rock the very principles upon which the Church is built. They want to redefine Christianity, they want us to be "politically correct", they want to take what the Church has been for two thousand years and make it into something else. They want a modern, progressive, backboneless Church.

Well, that sounds pretty good; a nice new progressive Church. Really? It does? Is that your final answer? I must say I have my doubts.

Going into this there are several issues that need to be addressed and understood.
First, many of these "progressives" come from liberal denominations. I don't mean liberal as in politically (even though the two often coincide). This being the case I'm going to be using that term several times in this post, if you're offended deal with it; you are in the blogosphere now. Now let me give you Robert Frost's definition of liberal: "a man to broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel." I think this definition fits rather nicely.

Second, I'm conservative; the cold hard truth. Now I know if your last name is Pelosi, Clinton, or Kerry you need an inhaler to deal with that but that's the way it is.

Third, I'm am dealing with this from a Biblical standpoint. I mean the whole Bible, I don't take the Gospels and make them more important then the rest. Likewise what Paul wrote isn't any more authoritative then what James or John or Peter or Habbakuk or David wrote. If you try to make an argument by saying "well Jesus never said anything about ___________" and that issue is found elsewhere in the Bible I'm going to delete your comment. Don't try that type of flawed reasoning on my blog.

Alright, now I'm ready to begin. Let's take a group known as The Center for Progressive Christianity head on (anything I claim as one of their points can be found on their website, www.tcpc.org).

Now the question I want to look at first is if progressivism is always a good thing. One time someone presented the argument to me that we should be progressive in order to not be traditional. Well, should we raise woolless sheep just because we traditionally raised sheep with wool? Should we not wear clothes just because we traditionally did wear clothes? Try that in America, you'll get arrested. That argument is flawed to the core. For that argument to be valid the first thing you have to establish is that traditionalism is bad. Then you'd have to prove progressivism is better. Next The Bible says in Hebrews 13:8 that "Jesus is the same yesterday, and to day, and forever." If Jesus is someway once, or says something, even if it was 2,000 years ago it is still practicle and is still very relevant.

Now I intend to look at the beliefs of this progressive movement, and one by one expose them for what they really are.

Progressive belief 1: (beliefs taken from www.tcpc.org)
"By calling ourselves progressive, we mean that we are Christians who have found an approach to God through the life and teachings of Jesus."
Now I must admit that on first glance this doesn't appear bad, or anything the Church hasn't taught for two thousand years; no, you look at that and there isn't much cause for concern. But read what they go on to say.
"Rather than assuming that Jesus is a sacrificial savior, or "The Savior," this first statement suggests that one can be a Christian by considering oneself a follower of Jesus' teachings and using his life, as we know it, as a model. It can also be implied that for those Christians Jesus and Jesus' teaching provide a way to experience, relate to or approach that Energy, that Force or that Presence we choose to call God."
These people want to take all the power out of the Ressurection, they want to eliminate the sacrifice Jesus made. Let me ask them something, what seperates Jesus from any other man if He wasn't the Savior? If He didn't Ressurect? Let me tell you, Paul is very clear that the main belief of Christianity is Christ's ressurection (Romans I think). And God is not some energy or force or presence that we choose. God is God regardless of what man wants to make Him to be. God created this world, God made a covenant with Abraham, God sent His only Son to die for humanity, God raised His Son from the dead after three days; and when Jesus came out of that tomb death, hell, and the grave were all defeated! If your god didn't do all those things then your god and my God are not the same! This isn't a gray area, the Bible leaves no room to doubt about who the One True Lord of the universe is.

Point 2: "Recognize the faithfulness of other people who have other names for the way to God's realm, and acknowledge that their ways are true for them, as our ways are true for us."
This goes back to what I was just saying. There are not many ways to God, at least there aren't if you are a Christian. Jesus said that He is the way the truth and the life and no man comes to the Father except by Him (John 14:6). In this area there is no room for compromise. There are multiple Scriptures that discuss Salvation, and none of them work without Jesus. For example Romans 10:9 "That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved." (KJV). Or Romans 6:23 "For the wages of sin [is] death; but the gift of God [is] eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord." (KJV). And for those of you who thing the KJV is to "traditionalist" let me cite the New Living Translation, Romans 6:23 according the the NLT "For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord." Salvation is God's free gift through (and only through) Jesus Christ. Period.

Point 3: "Understand the sharing of bread and wine in Jesus's name to be a representation of an ancient vision of God's feast for all peoples".

Well this one is rather simple. I Corinthians 11:27 "Wherefore whosoever shall eat this bread, and drink [this] cup of the Lord, unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord." The original word for unworthily is "anaxios"; literally meaning "irreverently:--unworthily" (Quickverse). So the way I see it is one has to have accepted Christ, otherwise they are not reverent towards Him. But that's just my opinion; at any rate it seems to me that communion is a Christian practice.

Point 4: "invite all people to participate in our community and worship life without insisting that they become like us in order to be acceptable (including but not limited to):

* believers and agnostics,
* conventional Christians and questioning skeptics,
* women and men,
* those of all sexual orientations and gender identities,
* those of all races and cultures,
* those of all classes and abilities,
* those who hope for a better world and those who have lost hope;
* without imposing on them the necessity of becoming like us."

Well, I really would like for more people to come to church period, regardless of race, gender, etc... I couldn't agree more with inviting all people to come join us. However what you often see is people who don't agree with everything the Bible says (such as an agnostic, or homosexual) leave the Church. Now I would love for those people to find and accept Jesus, I really would, but that feeling is contradictory to the TCPC's point here. They don't believe it is necessary to have Jesus in order to be a Christian. I believe that there is no Christianity outside of Christ and Christ is the only way to God and Heaven. That's what the Bible says, don't expect everyone to agree with me; but if you are a real Bible believeing Christian you can not disregard what the Bible says.

There are more points that I'll discuss later, as this post is already rather lengthy. God bless!!

Let me know what you think.

More Philosophy

Fire!!!!!!

Just kidding, wanted to make sure I had your attention.

What I want to discuss today is existentialism, another philosophical movement, but one that involves far less science then naturalism.

Existentialism is a philosophy that holds human existence is basically unexplainable and values are subjective to the individual. A complete definition of existentialism is difficult being that there are so many different beliefs held by existentialists.

Prepare to be amazed, to everyone's suprise I don't agree with this philosophy , shocking that I would disagree with something, I know (I'm being a little sarcastic).

Here I think might be the only place I can agree with a naturalist, we can both agree that human existence is not unexplainable. I think we can also both agree that there are things that are absolutely true, even though we might not agree on what they are.

Now I'd like to go into point number 1.

Human existence is definately not unexplainable. Really to make it simple God created man (and the earth for that matter). Now some people believe God used evolution, some like myself believe in a literal six-day creation; that's not what I want to debate in this post. Even in an exchange of ideas with a naturalist we both agreed that evolution, if it was true would not deny the existence of God. Human existence is most definately not unexplainable.

Now the more difficult part of the discussion. Perhaps some values are subjective, maybe you feel very strongly that you should not drink Kool-Aide, whereas I will drink it. In situations like that I could really care less how you feel about it. In Corinthians Paul talks about some people being able to eat meat and others not, solely on the basis of their conscience. In situations like that you just need to do what your conscience feels. However there are absolutely situations where values are absolute. Terrorists flying planes into a building to kill people are wrong! I don't care if they do believe it is in a holy war, murder is wrong. Attacking innocent civilians is wrong.

What we must keep in mind here is there is a difference between opinion and fact. Fact, the Earth is not flat; opinion, Republicans are a better political party. What we also must keep in mind is that we as the church have taken far to many issues that are simply traditional, cultural, or personal and preached them like they are Biblical (Edwards). Let me give you a list from Dwight Edwards book Releasing the Rivers Within in which he challenges us to look at a list of issues and rate them as Cultural, C; Biblical, B; Traditional, T; or Personal, P. (I've shortened it for times sake). I've put my response next to each.

Praying before meals (B
Having a daily devotional time (B
Having a daily devotional time in the morning (T
Going to church each Sunday (C, day is irrelevant as long as we have one.
Lifting hands during worship (B
Dancing during worship (B
Allowing children to run inside the church building (T or C
Playing golf on Sunday morning (T
Drinking alcohol (P
Drinking alcohol in public (B
Kissing before marriage (P
Having sex before marriage (B
Masturbating (P
Dating and marrying of mixed races (C

The point is every issue we try to make Biblical isn't. The church today has in a very real way become a bunch of Pharisees and legalists. We condemn people for playing golf on Sunday and wink when they break the speed limit (and the law).

The Church needs to wake up and start preaching Jesus of grace; not the Christianity of condemnation.

Philosophy, ooooo la la

Ok, so I have to do this research paper on one of the philosophical isms (Romanticism, Idealism, Realism, Naturalism, Existentialism) in English class. We had to do an abstract on each one before we could decide which one to do, and yesterday in class we compared our abstracts with others in our small group.

Of course we got into some good discussions about some of these philosophies; and I thought I would blog on some of this stuff and see what all of you had to say. Well, here we go.
We'll start with naturalism.

Naturalism defined: Naturalism is the philosophy that holds that all phenomena can be studied and proven naturally. It does not claim the supernatural does not happen, but claims it can be studied by natural methods and investigation and therefore has a natural explanation.

I'll be honest with you all, I think naturalism is a load of rubbish. Not everything does have a natural explanation; take for example the resurrection of Christ. Here are some of the natural explanations:

1. Jesus survived the cross. Ok, let's say that hypothetically that did happen. After surviving the cross He would have been in a condition where you could practically see His internal organs; He lives in a tomb that way with no food or water for three days, rolls a several hundred pound stone uphill and defeats an entire Roman guard. He then inspires His disciples to preach His rising again with the promise they shall receive bodies like His. That explanation just doesn't stand to reason.

2. The disciples stole His body from the tomb. His 11 disciples (Judas Iscariot is no longer with them) armed with at most two swords for the 11 of them defeat an entire Roman guard, and then preach Jesus rose again, and die preaching that they saw Him rise again. That explanation doesn't make sense, they would not have died for what they knew was a lie, nor could they have defeated a Roman guard (the traditional two soldiers is not a accurate depiction, scholars believe it was many more then that).

The only probable explanation (and the only one with real historical merit) is that Jesus indeed rose from the dead. There are four eyewitness accounts of it in the Bible in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Paul also testifies to it and cites in I Corinthians a list of eyewitnesses who saw Jesus risen again (over 500, most of which were alive when Paul wrote this). Given that most of the eyewitnesses were still around had Paul or the Gospel authors distorted the truth they would have been battered down with objections by eyewitnesses. There is also secular citations of the Christ's rising again, take Josephus for one. The evidence for the Bible is more then I can cover in a single post, this is just a brief summery.

Now I want to move on to Naturalism in the origin debate. Many hold that because of natural explanation there is no longer any need for a Creator. Let me make this clear, putting aside the literal six day creation/day age debate, evolution does not eliminate the need for a Creator. Even if we are to assume the Earth is billions of years old, and macro-evolution has taken place that still wouldn't eliminate the need for a Creator.

I think most of you know I'm a literal six day Creationist. Let me explain why evolution does not eliminate a Creator.

There are many Creationists who are not six day literalists like myself; I'll leave that debate up to a later post. What I want to establish now is that modern science does not eliminate God.

Nothing comes from nothing. The universe (regardless of its age) could not have possibly come from nothing, it had to originate from something at some point in time. Many atheists try to claim the age of the universe is infinite, but that just doesn't make sense.

For example, let us say I have an infinite amount of marbles, and I want to give you an infinite amount of marbles; I could just give you all my marbles. You have infinity I have none. Or I could give you the odd numbered marbles, you have infinity, I have infinity. Or I could give you all the marbles from 4 up, I have 3 marbles, you have infinity. The problem is those equations contradict themselves: in the 1st infinity-infinity=0, in the 2nd infinity-infinity=infinity, in the 3rd infinity-infinity=3. That argument could be applied to God if that was the classical idea of God; that is if God didn't transcend time. But God does transend time, He is eternal.

Another theory atheists try to use as science to discredit Creation is the big bang. Well the big band actually supports Creation more then evolution; in that right after the big bang there are thousands of advanced lifeforms appearing with no ancestors, which completely is opposed to what evolution says should've happened. This corresponds with what the Bible records as having happened, God creates the earth very fast and life appears very fast. Aside from that even if the big bang supported evolution where did the rocks come from? The vacuum? Where did the vacuum come from? These arguments come to the conclusion that there must be a Creator.

There are many other arguments that could be made, but maybe I'll make some of those replying to comments. I think I've given you all enough to argue or agree with, so let it begin.

God bless!