We Will Not . . .

Dobson: 'Fall of Western Civilization' at Hand

'Barring a miracle, the family will likely crumble'

WND

Bob Unruh

Dr. James Dobson, who founded the highly influential groups Focus on the Family and Family Research Council and now runs Family Talk Radio, is warning that if the U.S. Supreme Court redefines marriage as analysts predict, the ruling will presage the “fall of Western civilization.”  “I do not recall a time when the institutions of marriage and the family have faced such peril, or when the forces arrayed against them were more formidable or determined,” he writes in a letter distributed to his hundreds of thousands of supporters.

“Barring a miracle, the family that has existed since antiquity will likely crumble, presaging the fall of Western civilization itself. This is a time for concerted prayer, divine wisdom and greater courage than we have ever been called upon to exercise,” he writes. . . .

“We … are not simply ‘slouching toward Gomorrah,’ as Judge Robert Bork warned in his best-selling book; we are hurtling toward it,” he writes. “The old earthen dam that has held and protected the reservoir of Judeo-Christian values since the days of our Founding Fathers has given way.”

Daily Devotional

Programmatic Christianity

TO MRS. JOHNSON: On God’s unique way with each soul, even in the pattern of conversion; and on various Christian nonessentials.

C. S. Lewis

2 March 1955

It is right and inevitable that we should be much concerned about the salvation of those we love. But we must be careful not to expect or demand that their salvation should conform to some ready-made pattern of our own. Some Protestant sects have gone very wrong about this. They have a whole programme of ‘conviction’, ‘conversion,’ et cetera, marked out, the same for everyone, and will not believe that anyone can be saved who doesn’t go through it ‘just so’. But (see the last chapter of Problem of Pain) God has His own unique way with each soul.

There is no evidence that St. John even underwent the same kind of ‘conversion’ as St. Paul. It’s not essential to believe in the devil; and I’m sure a man can get to Heaven without being accurate about Methuselah’s age. Also, as MacDonald says, ‘the time for saying comes seldom, the time for being is always there.’ What we practice, not (save at rare intervals) what we preach, is usually our great contribution to the conversion of others.

From The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume III
Compiled in Yours, Jack
The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, Volume III: Narnia, Cambridge, and Joy 1950-1963. Copyright © 2007 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers. Yours, Jack: Spiritual Direction from C. S. Lewis. Copyright © 2008 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers.  Sourced from BibleGateway.

Licensing Lusts

The Unbelieving Commonwealth

Christians believe in universal government.  The Christian commonwealth or Christendom is a society in which government is ubiquitous.  But--and this is the telling point--Christians also believe in very limited civil government.  The magistrate, the State, and the judicial powers play a vital role in a Christian commonwealth but it is very limited and focused upon the punishment of evil doers and the administration of just judgment in civil disputes.

But government functions ubiquitously throughout society in a Christian commonwealth.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow

With Maggots Under Their Tongues

Douglas Wilson

Blog&Mablog

My friend Peter Leithart thinks the “most promising, and most peaceable” way out of our current marriage law impasse is a bill currently making its way through the Alabama legislature.

“SB377 would remove the duty of confirming marriages from county probate judges and allow marriages to be recorded by the state after filing a simple contract between two people eligible to be married that is solemnized by a pastor, attorney, or other authorized witness.

“This means that should the bill pass, only heterosexual couples will be eligible, but if gay marriage is legalized across the country by a U.S. Supreme Court ruling, that eligibility would be expanded to homosexual couples.”

And that last phrase shows why this proposal presents no way out at all. If the Supreme Court decides in favor of traditional marriage, then Alabama doesn’t need to change anything. And if they decide against, then the change will have been worthless. It will have been worthless because states which are in agreement with the biblical definition of marriage will then be required to deny righteousness and affirm unrighteousness, and we will continue to have all the same “celebration” battles over registered couples.

. . . what they want is for the march to be from Selma to Sodom, not realizing it then proceeds from Sodom to the Sea of Fire.

This battle is over social and cultural approval. The battle is happening because a particular class of persons wants their sexual perversion to be their ticket into the high nobility of the civil rights movement — what they want is for the march to be from Selma to Sodom, not realizing it then proceeds from Sodom to the Sea of Fire. As long as Christians have the legally protected right to withhold their approval of sodomy in public, this battle will continue. The battle isn’t going anywhere. Neither am I, incidentally.

Daily Devotional

The Notice of God

"How precious also are thy thoughts unto me, O God."
Psalm 139:17

Charles H. Spurgeon

Divine omniscience affords no comfort to the ungodly mind, but to the child of God it overflows with consolation. God is always thinking upon us, never turns aside his mind from us, has us always before his eyes; and this is precisely as we would have it, for it would be dreadful to exist for a moment beyond the observation of our heavenly Father. His thoughts are always tender, loving, wise, prudent, far-reaching, and they bring to us countless benefits: hence it is a choice delight to remember them.

The Lord always did think upon his people: hence their election and the covenant of grace by which their salvation is secured; he always will think upon them: hence their final perseverance by which they shall be brought safely to their final rest. In all our wanderings the watchful glance of the Eternal Watcher is evermore fixed upon us--we never roam beyond the Shepherd's eye. In our sorrows he observes us incessantly, and not a pang escapes him; in our toils he marks all our weariness, and writes in his book all the struggles of his faithful ones. These thoughts of the Lord encompass us in all our paths, and penetrate the innermost region of our being. Not a nerve or tissue, valve or vessel, of our bodily organization is uncared for; all the littles of our little world are thought upon by the great God.

Dear reader, is this precious to you? Then hold to it. Never be led astray by those philosophic fools who preach up an impersonal God, and talk of self-existent, self-governing matter. The Lord liveth and thinketh upon us, this is a truth far too precious for us to be lightly robbed of it.

The notice of a nobleman is valued so highly that he who has it counts his fortune made; but what is it to be thought of by the King of kings! If the Lord thinketh upon us, all is well, and we may rejoice evermore.

That's Not What We Meant . . .

Snake Oil Well Sold

Peter Hitchens has some trenchant criticisms of secularism's rush to embrace feminism.  It is only now that some of the early radical feministas are starting to say, "That's not what we meant at all."  Too late.  Only the Lord of Glory coming to us and calling forth a Christian reformation will change things now.

I do not think enough attention has been paid to the incredible swiftness and ease of this conquest.  Would genuine revolutionaries really have wanted Helen Gurley Brown, author of Sex and the Single Girl, advancing their honoured banners of the field of conflict.   Whether they did or not, that is what they got, ending up with the noble pleas of Mary Wollstonecraft reduced to the grunts and squeals of "Girl Power" and the raucous equality-in-grossness of the hard-drinking and lewd "ladette".

It's hard to see who has benefited from it apart from major employers, abortion clinics, alcohol manufacturers and the state.  It is the state which in the crudest sense gets the extra taxes, and in a deeper victory sees its old adversary, the married family, weakened to the point where it now barely exists.  The decline in marriage has been one of the swiftest and least noted social changes in British history, as has the disappearance of the full-time mother and the appearance of a gigantic network of day-orphanages for the children left motherless for five days of each week as a result. . . . It is also clear that private life, that essential shelter for free thought and free speech, has been much reduced by it. . . .

Minimum Wage Laws

No Job Apparently a Greater Good

Minimum wage laws hurt the very people they are supposed to help--those in the lowest paid jobs.  The law of unintended perverse consequences applies most powerfully in such cases.  Blogger Patterico profiles the case of Seattle, which passed just such a law.

Seattle Pizzeria Will Close Due to Higher Minimum Wage

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 5:51 pm 

Shocker:

It may be one of the first casualties of Seattle’s new minimum wage law. The owner of Z Pizza says she’s being forced to close her doors, because she can’t afford the higher labor costs.  Devin Jeran was happy to get a raise, when Seattle’s minimum wage went up to $11 an hour at the beginning of the month. “I definitely recognize that having more money is important,” he says, “especially in a city as expensive as this one.”

Sorry, Devin.

Unfortunately, he’ll only enjoy that bigger paycheck for a few more months. In August, his boss is shutting down Z Pizza and putting him and his 11 co-workers out of work.  “Fortunately she keeps us in the loop, she didn’t just tell us last minute.”

Ritu Shah Burnham doesn’t want to go out of business, but says she can’t afford the city’s mandated wage hikes.  “I’ve let one person go since April 1, I’ve cut hours since April 1, I’ve taken them myself because I don’t pay myself,” she says. “I’ve also raised my prices a little bit, there’s no other way to do it.”

Small businesses in the city have up to six more years to phase in the new $15 an hour minimum wage. But Shah Burnham says even though she only has one store with 12 employees, she’s considered part of the Z Pizza franchise — a large business. So she has to give raises within the next two years.

“I know that I would have stayed here if I had 7 years, just like everyone else, if I had an even playing field,” she says. “The discrimination I’m feeling right now against my small business makes me not want to stay and do anything in Seattle.”

The organizations who pushed a higher minimum wage, upon being informed of this, gave this thoughtful reply:

We reached out to 15 Now Seattle, the organization that pushed for the higher minimum wage. Director Jess Spear hadn’t heard about Z Pizza’s decision to close. So she wouldn’t comment specifically on that, only saying: “Restaurants open and close all the time, for various reasons.”

In brief? They don’t care.

Jeran wonders about all the rallies that were supposed to be about making life better for people like him.  “If that’s the truth, I don’t think that’s very apparent. People like me are finding themselves in a tougher situation than ever.”

Hard to believe that government monkeying around with the economy could harm the lives of lower-paid workers, isn’t it?

If you answered “not really,” then you have been paying attention.

Daily Devotional

Dirty Rags No More

We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment. (Isaiah 64:6)

John Piper

It is true that any shortcoming of God’s law offends against his perfect holiness and makes us liable to judgment, since God cannot look with favor on any sin (Habakkuk 1:13; James 2:10–11).

But what brought a person to ruin in the Old Testament (and it is the same for us today) was not the failure to have the righteousness of sinless perfection. What brought them to ruin was the failure to trust in the merciful promises of God, especially the hope that he would one day provide a redeemer who would be a perfect righteousness for his people (“the Lord is our righteousness,” Jeremiah 23:6; 33:16). The saints knew that this is how they were saved, and that this faith was the key to obedience, and that obedience was the evidence of this faith.

It is terribly confusing when people say that the only righteousness that has any value is the imputed righteousness of Christ. Clearly, justification is not grounded on any of our righteousness, but only on the righteousness of Christ imputed to us. But sometimes people are careless and speak disparagingly of all human righteousness, as if there were no such thing that pleased God.

Proving that Guns Do Not Exist

All The World's An Evolutionist Oxymoron


Evolutionism is a contradiction in terms.  If it can be described meaningfully, it must logically be a false cosmology; if it were a true cosmology, it could never be described.  Moreover, none reading these sentences could make any sense of them.  If, however, they have meaning to the reader, evolutionism is thereby revealed to be bunkum. 

Linguist Vern Poythress explains why this is the case:

Each person who uses language relies on language rules.  Many of the rules he knows tacitly, without having them explicitly taught in a classroom.  He may not be able to formulate what the rules are, but he shows that he knows them by his usage.  For example, if he has begun to learn English, he knows that the word "banana" describes a certain kind of fruit.  He knows that "moved" is the past tense form of the verb "move."  He knows that in making a declaration, the subject precedes the verb: "The cat is on the mat."  He knows that in a question some form of helping verb or some question word precedes the subject."   "Is the cat on the mat?"  He knows that in a noun phrase with a definite article ("the"), the words occur in a certain, fixed order: "The three large cats" is acceptable, while "Large cats three this" is not.

He knows these rules even if he uses languages to deny that we can know anything, or to deny that we can know about language rules.  The rules are indispensable.  Vern Poythress, In the Beginning Was the Word.  Language--A God-Centred Approach  (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books, 2009), p.60f.]

Evolutionism argues (using rules of language and logic) that the cosmos is ruled by no rules.  Everything is ultimately and substantially stochastic or chaotic or random.  Laws, rules, and patterns are false mirages, disconnected from reality.  Thus, evolution is compromised from the very start as being hopelessly self-contradictory.  Any evolutionist who uses language to argue the contrary or deploys logic in the attempt to establish his case represents an oxymoron.  It is as madcap as the chap who shoots his opponent with a Tikka T3 hunting rifle to prove that guns do not exist. 

A Signal Victory

Gordon College Keeps Its Faith and Its Accreditation

Religious liberty is reaffirmed in the face of strong academic and cultural headwinds.  

By David French
National Review Online
May 1, 2015

Last year Gordon College, a Christian school just north of Boston, found itself in the crosshairs of the intolerant “social justice” Left merely because of its Evangelical faith. This week, Gordon prevailed against a dangerous threat and secured an important victory for religious liberty and academic freedom.

The ostensible pretext for the Left’s two minutes hate against Gordon was its president’s decision to sign, in his personal capacity, a letter asking president Obama to include a narrow religious-liberties exemption in his executive order banning sexual-orientation discrimination by federal contractors. The requested exemption was in fact narrower than one that Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren had supported in the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) a mere eight months before.

In other words, Gordon president Michael Lindsay was asking for accommodations slightly to the left of Senator Warren. But, as I noted in a National Review print article about the controversy, the arc of leftist social history moves quickly, and it bends toward intolerance. The November 2013 version of Senator Warren was now the definition of bigotry. It was 2014 and time to reject the sins of the past.

In the effort to punish Lindsay, the Left turned its attention on Gordon, a bastion of Evangelical education more than a century old in the increasingly secular Northeast.  It turns out that Gordon actually holds to Christian orthodoxy on sexuality, asking its students, for example, to refrain from sex until marriage, defining marriage as the union of a man and woman.

Daily Devotional

Little Christs

C. S. Lewis

This is the whole of Christianity. There is nothing else. It is so easy to get muddled about that. It is easy to think that the Church has a lot of different objects—education, building, missions, holding services. Just as it is easy to think the State has a lot of different objects—military, political, economic, and what not. But in a way things are much simpler than that. The State exists simply to promote and to protect the ordinary happiness of human beings in this life. A husband and wife chatting over a fire, a couple of friends having a game of darts in a pub, a man reading a book in his own room or digging in his own garden— that is what the State is there for. And unless they are helping to increase and prolong and protect such moments, all the laws, parliaments, armies, courts, police, economics, etc., are simply a waste of time.

In the same way the Church exists for nothing else but to draw men into Christ, to make them little Christs. If they are not doing that, all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible itself, are simply a waste of time. God became Man for no other purpose. It is even doubtful, you know, whether the whole universe was created for any other purpose.

From Mere Christianity
Compiled in A Year with C.S. Lewis
Mere Christianity. Copyright © 1952, C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. Copyright renewed © 1980, C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers. A Year With C.S. Lewis: Daily Readings from His Classic Works. Copyright © 2003 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers.  Sourced from BibleGateway.

A Perpetual Elite

Riots of Selfishness and Baal Worship


One of the phenomena emerging as an unexpected outcome of Western secular humanism is the rise of an elite ruling class. This is surely true of the United States which has seen two quasi-royal dynasties emerge: the Clintons and the Bushes together with all their respective retainers and advisors. Many of these people have known very little or nothing throughout their working lives except as political moths gathering around the flames of power.

This nouveau-elite is far removed from the lives of ordinary people. Many come from “blue blood” families. Most have attended Ivy League schools. Ironically, when “outsiders”, such as Barack Obama, are elected to office they have achieved only because they have slavishly worked to become part of the elite, gaining thereby an inside track to power.

This elite is utterly secular. In core outlook and philosophy there is now very little to distinguish between the two dominant political parties. Whilst some may profess to believe the Christian faith it rarely goes beyond “private sphere Christianity”, personal morality, and sometimes private religious devotions. The great idol is Baal, the state, America the Beautiful. Political arguments devolve into debates over how best to advance the interests of America's power, with which the interests of the elite are seen as perfectly aligned.

In this matter, whilst we acknowledge in a general sense multitudes of conspiracies, we are not conspiracy theorists, or conspiracists.

Nigerian Bishop Nails It

Bishop: Pro-Abort Hillary Clinton ‘Thinks She is a God’

By Thomas D. Williams
BreitbartNews

In a candid interview, Nigerian bishop Emmanuel Badejo has responded bluntly to Hillary Clinton’s recent assertion that religious beliefs “have to be changed” in order to give women access to reproductive health care.

“If these values are not precious to Hillary Clinton, I think she has no right at all to call for a change in religious values and religious beliefs,” he said. 

“I believe there are three groups of people in this world: those who believe in God, those who do not believe in God, and those who think they are gods. Hillary Clinton I think is one of those who thinks she is a god,” said Badejo, who is Director of Communications for the African Bishops.

Daily Devotional

Our Days Upon the Earth

"I pray not that thou shouldst take them out of the world."
John 17:15

Charles H. Spurgeon

It is a sweet and blessed event which will occur to all believers in God's own time--the going home to be with Jesus. In a few more years the Lord's soldiers, who are now fighting "the good fight of faith" will have done with conflict, and have entered into the joy of their Lord. But although Christ prays that his people may eventually be with him where he is, he does not ask that they may be taken at once away from this world to heaven. He wishes them to stay here.

Yet how frequently does the wearied pilgrim put up the prayer, "O that I had wings like a dove! for then would I fly away and be at rest;" but Christ does not pray like that, he leaves us in his Father's hands, until, like shocks of corn fully ripe, we shall each be gathered into our Master's garner. Jesus does not plead for our instant removal by death, for to abide in the flesh is needful for others if not profitable for ourselves. He asks that we may be kept from evil, but he never asks for us to be admitted to the inheritance in glory till we are of full age.

Christians often want to die when they have any trouble. Ask them why, and they tell you, "Because we would be with the Lord." We fear it is not so much because they are longing to be with the Lord, as because they desire to get rid of their troubles; else they would feel the same wish to die at other times when not under the pressure of trial. They want to go home, not so much for the Saviour's company, as to be at rest.

Now it is quite right to desire to depart if we can do it in the same spirit that Paul did, because to be with Christ is far better, but the wish to escape from trouble is a selfish one. Rather let your care and wish be to glorify God by your life here as long as he pleases, even though it be in the midst of toil, and conflict, and suffering, and leave him to say when "it is enough."

Faithful Consistency

Refining Fire

The Scriptures tell us that when God comes in judgment, it often begins with the household of God.  We read:

Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you share Christ's sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed. If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you. But let none of you suffer as a murderer or a thief or an evildoer or as a meddler. Yet if anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God in that name. For it is time for judgment to begin at the household of God; and if it begins with us, what will be the outcome for those who do not obey the gospel of God? And,

“If the righteous is scarcely saved,  what will become of the ungodly and the sinner?”

Therefore let those who suffer according to God's will entrust their souls to a faithful Creator while doing good.  [I Peter 4: 12-19]

Our constant prayer is that God will move quickly and powerfully to arrest and reverse apostasy in the West.  As He does so, we can expect that His people will firstly be refined by hardship and oppression.  What form might this take?  Various forms.

Some Advice for the NZ Labour Party

Labour Must Look Beyond the Metropolitan Elite 

Chris Trotter
The Press
May 5, 2015

Whether the United Kingdom has a Labour Prime Minister by the end of this week remains to be seen. What cannot be disputed, however, is that among Labour's traditional working-class constituency, much of the Conservative/Liberal Democrat Government's programme remains surprisingly popular.

Four out of five trade union members, for example, told pollsters that they thought the £26,000 (NZ$52,300) cap on benefits was a good idea. Indeed, Matt Ridley, Member of the House of Lords and author of the bestselling book, The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves, reports that "Tory candidates out canvassing tell me they are finding that welfare reform, while horrifying the metropolitan elite, is most popular in the meanest streets — where people are well aware of neighbours who play the system".
If this wasn't true, it is hard to explain how, after five years of swingeing austerity, the Conservative Party is polling neck-and-neck with Ed Miliband's Labour Party.

Daily Devotional

God Demonstrates His Love

God demonstrates his own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:8)

John Piper

Notice that “demonstrates” is present tense and “died” is past tense.

The present tense implies that this demonstrating is an ongoing act that keeps happening in today’s present and tomorrow’s present.  The past tense “died” implies that the death of Christ happened once for all and will not be repeated. “Christ died for sins once for all, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God” (1 Peter 3:18).

Why did Paul use the present tense (“God demonstrates”)? I would have expected Paul to say, “God demonstrated (past tense) his own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” Was not the death of Christ the demonstration of God’s love? And did not that demonstration happen in the past?

I think the clue is given a few verses earlier. Paul has just said that “tribulations work patient endurance, and patient endurance works proven character, and proven character works hope, and hope does not put us to shame” (vv. 3–5).  In other words, the goal of everything God takes us through is hope. He wants us to feel unwaveringly hopeful through all tribulations.  But how can we?

Paul answers in the next line: “Because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us” (v. 5). God’s love “has been poured out in our hearts.” The tense of this verb means that God’s love was poured out in our hearts in the past (at our conversion) and is still present and active.

God did demonstrate his love for us in giving his own Son to die once for all in the past for our sins (v. 8). But he also knows that this past love must be experienced as a present reality (today and tomorrow) if we are to have patience and character and hope.  Therefore he not only demonstrated it on Calvary, he goes on demonstrating it now by the Spirit. He does this by opening the eyes of our hearts to “taste and see” the glory of the cross and the guarantee that it gives that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:39).

State Terrorism

Cruel and Unjust Punishment

With the execution of the Bali Nine in Indonesia the death penalty has come back into the frame.  According to Wikipedia, Indonesia maintains the ultimate judicial sanction for nineteen offences:

• Attempt with intent to deprive the President or Vice-President of his or her life or liberty or to render him or her unfit to govern (Indonesian Criminal Code (Kitab UU Hukum Pidana – KUHP) Art. 104)
• Aiding or protecting Indonesia’s enemies at war (KUHP Art. 123 & 124)
• Fraud in delivery of military materials in time of war (KUHP Art. 127)
• Killing the head of state of a friendly state (KUHP Art. 140)
• Premeditated murder (KUHP Art. 340)
• Robbery or theft resulting in grave injury or death (KUHP Art. 365)
• Piracy resulting in death (KUHP Art. 444)
• Instigating or inciting rebellion or riot against a state defense company during times of war (KUHP)
• Extortion with violence (KUHP)
• Possession and misuse of firearm and/or other explosive (Emergency Law No. 12/1951)
• Criminal acts during air flights or against aviation infrastructure (Law No. 4/1976)
• Production, transit, import and possession of psychotropic drugs (Law No. 5/1997 on Psychotropic Drugs)
• Production, transit, import and possession of narcotics (Law No. 22/1997 on Narcotics)
• Corruption under “certain circumstances,” including repeat offenders and corruption committed during times of national emergency/disaster (Law No. 31/1999 on Corruption)
• Gross violations of human rights, including genocide and crimes against humanity (Law No. 26/2000 on Human Rights Courts)
• Acts of terrorism (Law No. 15/2003 on Combating Criminal Acts of Terrorism)

However, in actuality only murder and drug trafficking have resulted in the ultimate penalty being handed out.  But more sinister is the fact that the death penalty has been applied in Indonesia extremely rarely (whether for murder or drug trafficking) until this year (2015), where fourteen people have been executed for drug trafficking thus far.

It seems as though a political campaign is underway in Indonesia.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow

Handing the Child Over

Douglas Wilson
Blog & Mablog

Last week I saw a Facebook thread that had been kicked off with a comparison of abortion and infant baptism. Quite a discussion ensued, as you might expect. The initial point being made concerned things parents do that they have no warrant from God to do, and since I am writing here as a paedobaptist it is not surprising that I agreed with the pushback the post generated. There is an important difference between slaughtering your children and dedicating them to God.

At the same time, there is a sense in which I want to commend the instinctive wisdom of the initial observation — a wisdom that is often missing from the saints who practice infant baptism.  The meaning of baptism is death. The initiatory Christian rite is baptism (Matt. 28:18-20), and as Bonhoeffer observed, whenever Christ calls a man, He bids him come and die.

Daily Devotional

The Great Exchange

For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed. (Romans 1:16–17)

John Piper

We need righteousness to be acceptable to God. But we don’t have it. What we have is sin.

So God has what we need and don’t deserve — righteousness; and we have what God hates and rejects — sin. What is God’s answer to this situation?

His answer is Jesus Christ, the Son of God who died in our place. God lays our sins on Christ and punishes them in him. And in Christ’s obedient death, God fulfils and vindicates his righteousness and imputes (credits) it to us. Our sin on Christ, his righteousness on us.

We can hardly stress too much that Christ is God’s answer. It is all owing to Christ.  You can’t love Christ too much. You can’t think about him too much or thank him too much or depend upon him too much. All our justification, all our righteousness, is in Christ.

This is the gospel — the good news that our sins are laid on Christ and his righteousness is laid on us, and that this great exchange happens for us not by works but by faith alone.  Here is the good news that lifts burdens and gives joy and makes strong.

Hypocrisy at the Top

Ed Miliband's Hate-speech

Here's a bit of a hoot.  Ed Miliband, who may well become Britain's next Prime Minister, has made lots of promises to the Islamic community in the UK.  First of all, he promises to be a big tough guy cracking down on Islamophobia.  It is to be highlighted as a serious hate crime.

A future Labour Government is committed to outlaw the scourge of Islamophobia by changing the law and making it an aggravated crime, according to the Party’s Leader Ed Miliband.  “We are going to make it an aggravated crime. We are going to make sure it is marked on people’s records with the police to make sure they root out Islamophobia as a hate crime,” Miliband told the Editor of The Muslim News, Ahmed J Versi in a wide ranging exclusive interview.

“We are going to change the law on this so we make it absolutely clear of our abhorrence of hate crime and Islamophobia. It will be the first time that the police will record Islamophobic attacks right across the country,” he said.

What is Islamophobia, one may well ask?  Well, the word literally means "Fear of Islam".

A UK Court Recognises the Higher Authority of God

A Servant of God

In the UK the materialist world order has taken a bit of a knock.  A court has ruled that God exists--not just abstractly, but as a power and authority in the world.  He is someone whom the courts must recognise and acknowledge.  Expect a secularist display of raw militancy and febrile anger. Or not.

Daily Devotional

No Ordinary People

C. S. Lewis

There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilisations—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendours. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn: We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously—no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be a real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner—no mere tolerance, or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment. Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses. If he is your Christian neighbour, he is holy in almost the same way, for in him also Christ vere latitat—the glorifier and the glorified, Glory Himself, is truly hidden.

From The Weight of Glory
Compiled in A Year with C.S. Lewis
The Weight of Glory: And Other Addresses. Copyright © 1949, C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. Copyright renewed © 1976, revised 1980 C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers. A Year With C.S. Lewis: Daily Readings from His Classic Works. Copyright © 2003 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers. Sourced from BibleGateway.

Autonomous Rights Over One's Body

Slimy Lusts

The following article has appeared in the NZ media:

Young pregnant teens don't have the mental maturity to understand the implications of an abortion, new research suggests.  Parents should be involved in the abortion decision, rather than giving all girls, no matter what their age, the right to consent, Otago University masters law student Michael Morrison said.  The current "clumsy" legislation that allows teens to chose to have an abortion without their parent's permission is outdated and should be repealed, he said.   "We're relying on an ancient piece of legislation."

Letter From the UK (About the Madness of Human Rights Laws)

When the Law Becomes an Ass

Human rights laws are a form of administrative law.  They are trying to organise society according to a particular paradigm.  Not only do such laws risk the introduction of tyrannies (e.g. not wearing a cross pendant on a necklace at work), but they also risk absurdities.   Here is an example:

Revealed: the Extremist Preacher Living Freely in West London thanks to the Human Rights Act

By Donna Rachel Edmunds

An extremist preacher with links to Jihadi John and the Muslim Brotherhood is living freely in West London in taxpayer funded accommodation, as the British authorities are unable to deport him thanks to the Human Rights Act.

Hani al-Sibai, 54, a trained lawyer, first came to Britain in 1994 and claimed asylum. During his application process he admitted to his connections to Islamist groups including the Muslim Brotherhood, telling the British authorities that he had been tortured in Egypt thanks to his work acting as a lawyer for those groups the Telegraph has reported.

His application was denied, and in 1998 he was jailed pending deportation. However, thanks to human rights laws which state that it is illegal to deport an asylum seeker to a country in which they may be tortured or murdered, his deportation was blocked. The UK has never been able to secure assurances over al-Sibai’s treatment from the Egyptian authorities, and consequently he remains in the UK.

Daily Devotional

Winds and Tempests

"Thou art my hope in the day of evil."
Jeremiah 17:17

Charles H. Spurgeon

The path of the Christian is not always bright with sunshine; he has his seasons of darkness and of storm. True, it is written in God's Word, "Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace;" and it is a great truth, that religion is calculated to give a man happiness below as well as bliss above; but experience tells us that if the course of the just be "As the shining light that shineth more and more unto the perfect day," yet sometimes that light is eclipsed. At certain periods clouds cover the believer's sun, and he walks in darkness and sees no light.

There are many who have rejoiced in the presence of God for a season; they have basked in the sunshine in the earlier stages of their Christian career; they have walked along the "green pastures" by the side of the "still waters," but suddenly they find the glorious sky is clouded; instead of the Land of Goshen they have to tread the sandy desert; in the place of sweet waters, they find troubled streams, bitter to their taste, and they say, "Surely, if I were a child of God, this would not happen." Oh! say not so, thou who art walking in darkness. The best of God's saints must drink the wormwood; the dearest of his children must bear the cross.

No Christian has enjoyed perpetual prosperity; no believer can always keep his harp from the willows. Perhaps the Lord allotted you at first a smooth and unclouded path, because you were weak and timid. He tempered the wind to the shorn lamb, but now that you are stronger in the spiritual life, you must enter upon the riper and rougher experience of God's full-grown children.

We need winds and tempests to exercise our faith, to tear off the rotten bough of self-dependence, and to root us more firmly in Christ. The day of evil reveals to us the value of our glorious hope.

Taking Sides

Christophobia And the Modern Democratic Party

In the US, one politician is calling out the Christophobia now regnant in the Democratic Party.  Ted Cruz has spoken of a "liberal fascism" in the Democratic Party, and a "rabid zealotry" in Democratic ranks.  Here's an article reporting on the Senator's allegations:

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) on Saturday said Democrats had gone to extremes in their persecution of Christians.  “Today’s Democratic Party has decided there is no room for Christians in today’s Democratic Party,” he said at the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition summit in Waukee, Iowa.  “There is a liberal fascism that is going after Christian believers,” the 2016 GOP presidential candidate continued.  “It is heartbreaking,” Cruz argued. “But it is so extreme, it is waking people up.” 

Cruz said same-sex marriage had produced rabid zealotry in Democratic ranks. This ideology, he argued, was excluding people of faith.“Today’s Democratic Party has become so radicalized for legalizing gay marriage in all 50 states that there is no longer any room for religious liberty,” he said.

The Texas lawmaker said this stance was against America’s traditional values. Religious liberty, Cruz claimed, was one of the nation’s founding principles.  “We were founded by men and women fleeing religious persecution,” Cruz declared.  “We need leaders who will stand unapologetically in defense of the Judeo-Christian values upon which America was built,” he concluded. [The Hill]

Assuming that Cruz is hitting near the mark, it's appropriate to inquire what is going on.

Letter From America (About "Nuts!")

Cultural Conservatives Have Barely Begun to Fight

A response to Rod Dreher’s “Benedict Option”

By David French

National Review Online

An atmosphere of gloom and despair pervades some cultural-conservative circles, and, at first glance, it’s easy to understand why. There’s no question that hysterical public assaults on Christians or others who dissent from leftist sexual orthodoxy are increasing in volume and frequency. It seems as if every day there’s a new story of an attempt to silence, intimidate, or publicly shame social conservatives.

It’s not enough to express disagreement with cultural conservatives — they must lose their jobs, lose their businesses, and close their schools, unless they bend the knee to the sexual revolution. Bonds of friendship and loyalty are meaningless if the cultural conservative holds the wrong view on same-sex marriage, and Christian clubs are vile discriminators if they simply want to be led by Christian leaders. In the “blue” sectors of America, particularly the academy, some Christians feel that they have to live under deep cover to protect their careers.

All of this is true. All of this is daunting. And none of it is cause for cultural retreat. Yet that is exactly what one of America’s more influential cultural conservatives is proposing. Rod Dreher, formerly at National Review and now at The American Conservative, advocates what he calls the “Benedict Option” in the face of the cultural onslaught:

Daily Devotional

Seek Your City’s Good

Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon, “Build houses and live in them; and plant gardens, and eat their produce . . . And seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf; for in its welfare you will have welfare. (Jeremiah 29:5–7)

John Piper

If that was true for God’s exiles in Babylon, it would seem to be even more true for Christian exiles in this very “Babylonian” world. What, then, shall we do?

We should do the ordinary things that need to be done: build houses; live in them; plant gardens. This does not contaminate you if you do it all for the real King and not just for eye service as men-pleasers.  Seek the welfare of the place where God has sent you. Think of yourself as sent there by God. Because you are.

Pray to the Lord on behalf of your city. Ask for great and good things to happen for the city. Evidently God is not indifferent to its welfare. One reason he is not is this: In the welfare of the city his people find welfare.

This does not mean we give up our exile orientation. In fact we will do most good for this world by keeping a steadfast freedom from its beguiling attractions. We will serve our city best by getting our values from the “city which is to come” (Hebrews 13:14). We will do our city most good by calling as many of its citizens as we can to be citizens of the “Jerusalem above” (Galatians 4:26).

Let’s live so that the natives will want to meet our King.

Unintended Consequences

Do They Realise?

 The real problem, for those who would overturn the Christian moral order is not whether it might be true that the young could be influenced into homosexual acts, habits and milieux.  The problem is that this possibility could be seen as a danger rather than an opportunity.  Thus the very suggestion that it might be worse if that young man chose a homosexual orientation rather than a heterosexual one is the real offence against the new code of belief. The new order is based upon the idea that there is no moral distinction between homosexual and heterosexual acts, that those who believe that there is are morally faulty, and that the human race can be educated out of its general disapproval of homosexual acts.  Do those who support it, claiming that they do so in the name of tolerance, realise the radicalism of the programme they are supporting?  I suspect not.  [Peter Hitchens, The Broken Compass: How Left and Right Lost Their Meaning (London: Continuum, 2009), p.120f.]