Exposing Unbelief In The Military Chaplaincy

Army Controversy Over John Piper’s Book

It  Isn’t About Homophobia — It’s About Jesus

Caroline D'Agati
The Federalist


A senior Army chaplain earlier this month emailed other chaplains the text of “Coronavirus and Christ,” a brief book by famed author, podcaster, and pastor John Piper. The command chaplain of U.S. Army Garrison Humphreys in South Korea, Col. Moon H. Kim, wrote in his email: “This book has helped me refocus my sacred calling to my savior Jesus Christ to finish strong. Hopefully this small booklet would help you and your Soldiers, their Families, and others who you serve.”

This email and the attached book have led to complaints from 22 other chaplains, who’ve enlisted the help of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF). The MRFF, which consistently targets theologically conservative Christians, wrote a letter to Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, saying Moon must be “officially, swiftly, aggressively, and visibly investigated and disciplined in punishment for his deplorable actions.”

Since then, Moon’s comments have come under review, prompting a letter from 20 members of Congress — including Republican Reps. Louie Gohmert of Texas, Andy Biggs of Arizona, and Steve King of Iowa — calling for the Army not to buckle to this agenda-pushing third-party organization. The letter also outlines several other recent attacks of the MRFF on theologically conservative Christian chaplains.

If you read the entire text of Piper’s book, which is available for free, you will see its most incendiary idea is not the single paragraph about homosexuality. This short book ruffles feathers because it affirms the most offensive message in the history of the world: the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Daily Meditation

Confronting Paganism

Ligonier Ministries

Nehemiah served in a pagan government as a believer in God. He was humble and respectful to the king, but proper fear of his king did not stop him from acting to save his people. He prayed to God and made a request of the king, asking for permission to go to Jerusalem to rebuild it. He also asked for letters that he might present to various governors for safe conduct, and even a grant for building materials.

Not all the pagan governors were sanguine toward Nehemiah and his plans. Indeed, some were fiercely resistant to them. When Sanballat the Horonite and Tobiah the Ammonite heard of his efforts, they were deeply disturbed that a man had come to seek the well-being of the children of Israel.

When Nehemiah set about the task of rebuilding, his enemies laughed at him and despised him. Nehemiah, though, did not let his critics determine his agenda. Nehemiah’s temptation would have been to allow the pagans to alter the plans and engage in a joint venture of compromise in the mission. That would have eased the burden on his own people and won him the applause both of the Jews and the pagans. But Nehemiah cared nothing for the applause of men and was totally unwilling to compromise the mission he had undertaken for God.

Instead of worrying about accommodating the pagans, Nehemiah focused on the reforms needed among his own people. The paganism Nehemiah feared was not the paganism of the pagans; it was the paganism of his own people. It was not paganism outside the camp that threatened Israel so much as the paganism within the camp.

Coram Deo

Are you seeking the applause of men rather than the approval of God?

Passages for Further Study

Nehemiah 2:18
Nehemiah 2:10
Nehemiah 4:9

Daily Meditation

Confronting Paganism

Ligonier Ministries

Nehemiah served in a pagan government as a believer in God. He was humble and respectful to the king, but proper fear of his king did not stop him from acting to save his people. He prayed to God and made a request of the king, asking for permission to go to Jerusalem to rebuild it. He also asked for letters that he might present to various governors for safe conduct, and even a grant for building materials.

Not all the pagan governors were sanguine toward Nehemiah and his plans. Indeed, some were fiercely resistant to them. When Sanballat the Horonite and Tobiah the Ammonite heard of his efforts, they were deeply disturbed that a man had come to seek the well-being of the children of Israel.

When Nehemiah set about the task of rebuilding, his enemies laughed at him and despised him. Nehemiah, though, did not let his critics determine his agenda. Nehemiah’s temptation would have been to allow the pagans to alter the plans and engage in a joint venture of compromise in the mission. That would have eased the burden on his own people and won him the applause both of the Jews and the pagans. But Nehemiah cared nothing for the applause of men and was totally unwilling to compromise the mission he had undertaken for God.

Instead of worrying about accommodating the pagans, Nehemiah focused on the reforms needed among his own people. The paganism Nehemiah feared was not the paganism of the pagans; it was the paganism of his own people. It was not paganism outside the camp that threatened Israel so much as the paganism within the camp.

Coram Deo

Are you seeking the applause of men rather than the approval of God?

Passages for Further Study

Nehemiah 2:18
Nehemiah 2:10
Nehemiah 4:9

How Did It Come to This?

God Will Not Be Mocked

The West did not become pagan overnight.  Nor did it become militantly anti-Christian since Barack Obama was elected President of the United States.  These changes have been coming over three hundred years.  Christians and churches have been caught like a frog in the pot.

Many have blithely gone along thinking all was hunky dory.  But suddenly they face hostile rules, workplaces, regulations, law courts, and general public opprobrium--apparently out of nowhere--and they are confused, left staggering.  It as if they had been walking peacefully along the sidewalk, only to have someone come up behind them and smash them to the ground with a "king hit".  Where did that come from?

But in reality these changes, whilst now producing suppurating, rotten fruit, have been long in the generation and nurture.  One of the earliest battlegrounds was education.  Prior to what we call the Modern Period, education was largely the care and concern of Christians and churches.  But following the pagan "Enlightenment" and the French Revolution, education was wrested away from Christendom, and progressively placed firmly in the hands of statists.

The French and Italian branches of the liberal tradition that stems from the French Revolution treated religion as an enemy.  The German, British, and Scandinavian branch treated it as a competitor.  Later, liberals in most places gave up liberal ideas for some amalgam of Marxism and Freudianism, firmly embedded in statism.  The pure version of these doctrines, in addition to the late-nineteenth-century vitalism that merged with other elements to form fascism, have taken European souls from Christianity and Judaism.

Rodney Hide Gets It

Re-floated Paganism

Rodney Hide

NZ Herald

December 14, 2014

The four pou erected on the new Waikato River bridge on the Ngaruawahia section of the Expressway, it was explained, tell the stories of Tainui's involvement with the river. Photo / Getty Images

I am quite taken by the striking Maori totems on the new Kopu and Waikato Expressway bridges. I figured the taxpayer was milked for them. There would be outrage if they were Christian crosses but somehow they are okay because they're Maori.

I decided to find out more. A Google search turned up nothing. I emailed the New Zealand Transport Agency. I thought it would have a brochure to explain the history and spiritualism behind what are I now know to be called pou. Nope. Nothing.

Letter From America (About Those Dastadly Missionaries)

Showing Up the Home Team

One of the complaints made by Emperor Julian the Apostate against Christians is that they were so much better and committed to taking care of the poor, the sick, and the indigent than his fellow pagans were.  Echoes of resentment against Christians for their "doing good to all men" are found in several classical Roman authors and writers.  Now it is appearing once again.

Pagans and Christians

Ross Douthat

New York Times

October 3, 2014

Occasionally in the debates about Christianity’s weakened position in American culture, you’ll hear traditionalists and conservatives analogize the Christian situation, now or soon, to the environment the faith faced in its earliest centuries, as an embattled minority in a hostile pagan empire. I’m not a particular fan of this analogy, for various reasons: Not only because lions-and-catacombs imagery risks trivializing the concept of persecution at a time when Christians outside the United States face actual Diocletian-style consequences for their beliefs (and don’t always receive the charity they deserve from their American co-believers), but also because describing contemporary American culture as pagan in the style of the ancient world strikes me as a category error, which underplays the extent to which middlebrow American spirituality is still infused with Christian-ish sentiments and assumptions and ideas, and underplays, as well, just how radically different a thoroughly repaganized society would be from the one we (happily) inhabit today.

All of that said, I wouldn’t want to say that there are never echoes of the ancient world in contemporary religious debates.

Roe v. Wade, Part III

The Most Poisonous Pollutant

Forty years have passed since the calamitous Roe v. Wade decision by the Supreme Court of the United States.  Looking back, the reasoning behind the decision shows all the hallmarks of a bunch of Unbelievers scratching around for a pretext to rationalise what they really wanted to have transpire--abortion on demand, the crowning glory of a culture of death.

In order to permit the unborn child to live, he or she must have "the capability of meaningful life" said the justices.  Since the unborn child could not speak for himself or herself, and since mother was speaking against it, seeking the baby's death, clearly the capability of a meaningful life was severely diminished.  Inability to communicate or to have your nearest and dearest deny your continuation implies a severe diminution of meaningful existence, after all. 

But the "value" which persuaded the court most of all and which proved to be decisive was the "right to privacy".  Harold O J Brown commented:

Pagan Wolves

 A New-Age Leader of the Pack

We read periodically of the return of the wolf to Europe--once feared extinct, now running hunting packs throughout northern Europe and Spain.  But metaphorical wolves are also returning to re-establish a once long thought extinct pagan culture in Europe and the West. 

The following is a call-to-action from an officer in the Anglican Church of New Zealand. 

The newly appointed vicar of Auckland's Anglican church St Matthew-in-the-City has called on the church to approve same-sex marriages and ordination of gay vicars.  Reverend Dr Helen Jacobi, in her sermon on Sunday, spoke to the church's two-yearly General Synod, being held this week.

Adorning the Gospel of God

Charity and Its Fruits

David Bentley Hart writes on the Christian revolution that transformed the late classical world: Christian charity towards the needy made the Gospel radically different from the pagan cults.

Christian teaching, from the first, placed charity at the centre of the spiritual life as no pagan cult ever had, and raised the care of widows, orphans, the sick, the imprisoned, and the poor to the level of the highest religious obligations.  Thus, in the second century, Tertullian could justly boast that whereas money donated to the temples of the old gods was squandered on feasts and drink, with their momentary pleasures, the money given to the churches was used to care for the impoverished and the abandoned, to grant even the poorest decent burials, and to provide for the needs of the elderly.

The Didascalia, a fascinating Christian document of the third century, describes the duties of a bishop as encompassing responsibility for the education of orphans, aid to poor widows, and the purchase of food and firewood for the destitute, as well as strict vigilance over the money flowing through the church, lest it issue from men guilty of injustice or of the abuse of slaves, or lest it find its way into the hands of persons not genuinely in need.  In 251 the church in Rome alone had more than fifteen hundred dependents on its rolls, and even small local churches kept storerooms of provisions for the poor, such as oil, wine, and clothing (especially, tellingly enough, women's clothing).  In this way the church, long before Constantine, had created a system of social assistance that no civic or religious office of the pagan state provided.  [David Bentley Hart, Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and its Fashionable Enemies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), p. 164.]