What's a Few Falsehoods Between Friends

Lying For the Cause

Victor Hanson has written a piece in National Review Online in which he discusses the proclivity of modern Western society towards untruth and lying.  To be sure, Islamic societies have endorsed and encouraged lying for centuries.  In Islam it is acceptable to lie to one's wife and to one's enemies and to kaffirs when one is engaged in jihad or holy war (which is pretty much all the time, since jihad occurs whenever someone says it does).  In Islamic ethics, the end (enforced submission to Allah) justifies the means.

But traditionally the Christian West has insisted that truth-telling is an absolute moral requirement.  The Ninth Commandment enjoins: "Thou shalt not bear false witness".  But as Western nations have rejected the Lord Jesus Christ and officially and unofficially replaced Him with secularism and atheism, every one of the commandments have been rejected and dismissed.  But this begs a question: if God is not feared and His absolute commandments are not revered, why should anyone bother telling the truth about anything.  There would be nothing wrong with lying and deceit.  It may be inconvenient, but would not be immoral or unethical.

The Commentariat would doubtless splutter about the damage to commerce and property if one were permitted to lie.

Daily Devotional

Two Kinds of Opposition to Jesus

When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him. (Matthew 2:3)

John Piper

Jesus is troubling to people who do not want to worship him, and he brings out opposition for those who do. This is probably not a main point in the mind of Matthew, but it is inescapable as the story goes on.

In this story, there are two kinds of people who do not want to worship Jesus, the Messiah.

The first kind is the people who simply do nothing about Jesus. He is a nonentity in their lives. This group is represented by the chief priests and scribes. Verse 4: “Gathering together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, [Herod] inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born.” Well, they told him, and that was that: back to business as usual. The sheer silence and inactivity of the leaders is overwhelming in view of the magnitude of what was happening.

And notice, verse 3 says, “When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him.” In other words, the rumor was going around that someone thought the Messiah was born. The inactivity on the part of chief priests is staggering — why not go with the magi? They [however] are not interested. They do not want to worship the true God.

The second kind of people who do not want to worship Jesus is the kind who is deeply threatened by him. That is Herod in this story. He is really afraid. So much so that he schemes and lies and then commits mass murder just to get rid of Jesus.

So today these two kinds of opposition will come against Christ and his worshipers. Indifference and hostility. Are you in one of those groups?  Let this Christmas be the time when you reconsider the Messiah and ponder what it is to worship him.

For more about John Piper's ministry and writing, see DesiringGod.org.

The Clone Wars

Militant Atheism

Secularism or atheism has a militant wing, much like Islamist militants sit out at the edges of Islamic nations.  Both alike claim that they are the true, genuine article.  Tolerant atheists and tolerant Islamic believers are accused respectively of being hypocritical compromisers. 

Our view is that the Islamist case for being consistently Islamic is a very strong one, given the plethora of sura in the Koran, the hadiths, and the historical practice of sharia law--all of which are intrinsic to Islam and the only authoritative standards for that religion.  In terms of orthodoxy and orthopraxy Islamism has the much stronger claim to being authentically Islamic. 

But what about secular atheism's militant wing?  Is intolerance and belligerence intrinsic to atheism?  To be sure, there are plenty of urbane, open-minded, mild atheists.  But do such speak consistently with the logical outworkings of atheism as claimed by its militant wing?  What is clear is that whenever atheism has insinuated into a culture to the point where it starts shaping the law and social institutions it always oppresses, persecutes and enslaves its opponents to one degree or other. 

By their fruits ye shall know them, we are told.  Peter Hitchens documents the fruits of secular atheism in the United Kingdom, as one typical case study:

Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow

On Getting Your Conscience Out of the Dumpster

Douglas Wilson

Blog and Mablog

December 6, 2014

At first I was tempted to call this post “A Little Race Rant,” but I don’t think I will do that. It will be more like a sermon than a rant. It will only seem like a rant to some because I am going to say a few things that it seems to me many people are simply refusing to hear.

“To write in plain, vigorous language one has to think fearlessly, and if one thinks fearlessly one cannot be politically orthodox” (George Orwell, “The Prevention of Literature,” All Art Is Propaganda, p. 263).

I want to go straight to the terms of my peroration first, so that there is no mistaking the direction. Outside of Jesus Christ, racial harmony is a pipe dream. Apart from Christ, racial reconciliation is not going to happen, but rather the opposite. In Christ, racial harmony is a theological necessity, a doctrinal requirement, and an eschatological hope.

Not only is the secular dream of “one humanity” far beyond the secularists’ grasp, it is also beyond the grasp of weak sister evangelicals who for some mysterious reason have adopted the secularist vision of racial harmony instead of the Christian one. This, despite the fact that the impotence of the secularist form of it grows more apparent by the minute, and despite the fact that the Scriptures are so plain on the basis for our reconciliation in Christ.

Daily Devotional

Amusing the Enemy

Screwtape offers a helpful image:

C.S. Lewis

Think of your man as a series of concentric circles, his will being the innermost, his intellect coming next, and finally his fantasy. You can hardly hope, at once, to exclude from all the circles everything that smells of the Enemy: but you must keep on shoving all the virtues outward till they are finally located in the circle of fantasy, and all the desirable qualities inward into the Will. It is only in so far as they reach the Will and are there embodied in habits that the virtues are really fatal to us. (I don’t, of course, mean what the patient mistakes for his Will, the conscious fume and fret of resolutions and clenched teeth, but the real centre, what the Enemy calls the Heart.) All sorts of virtues painted in the fantasy or approved by the intellect or even, in some measure, loved and admired, will not keep a man from Our Father’s house: indeed they may make him more amusing when he gets there.

From The Screwtape Letters
Compiled in A Year with C.S. Lewis
The Screwtape Letters. Copyright © 1942, C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. Copyright restored © 1996 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.

Scofflaws, Outlaws, and Unregistered Teachers

Government Monopolies and Guild Socialism

Back in the bad old days New Zealand's economy was more regulated than East Germany's.  Almost all human activity was governed by permits.  One had to have a permit to visit a latrine.  Virtually every occupation was a registered trade.  To practise one had to have the requisite qualifications and a "practising certificate".  It was state sanctioned, and state enforced.  This grand system was ostensibly intended to protect the customer--which it may, or may not have done.  In reality (deliberately so) the permit and certificate system rather protected the jobs of the registrants, creating huge barriers to entry for others.

It was illegal to teach piano to a seven year old, unless one had a permit to do so and was suitably qualified and registered.  To be clear, we believe that registration as a suitably qualified and educated expert to perform a skilled service can be very helpful.  But in New Zealand's case, the multitude of registers were "official"--that is, state managed or endorsed.  It represented a strangle-hold of antiquated guild socialism.  Imagine living in a society where you could only get a job as a software programmer if you were state-registered as such.  But those were the bad old days. 

It's Shocking, I Tell You. Shocking.

Erdoğan, on Women by Burak Bekdil Hürriyet Daily News November 28, 2014 Originally published under the title, "So we are shocked (again)?" Turkey ranked 125th out of 142 nations in the World Economic Forum's 2014 Gender Gap Index, a drop of 20 places over the last eight years. This columnist is often shocked when others are shocked when President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's Islamist-self speaks like an Islamist. What's so shocking about him saying that women cannot be treated equal to men – other than the irony that he said it at a feminist summit? He had said this before. He had also prescribed, numerous times, how many children Turkish wives should make – three, or if possible, four or five. How on earth does the world expect him to speak? Like a liberal? Like a secular Muslim? Like the leader of an EU member state? Or like the leader of a country where an average of three women every day are being killed by men, and where domestic violence, abuse and sexual discrimination is part of the culture?

Daily Devotional

Bethlehem’s Supernatural Star

“Where is He who has been born King of the Jews? For we saw His star in the east and have come to worship Him.” (Matthew 2:2)

John Piper

Over and over the Bible baffles our curiosity about just how certain things happened. How did this “star” get the magi from the east to Jerusalem?

It does not say that it led them or went before them. It only says they saw a star in the east (verse 2), and came to Jerusalem. And how did that star go before them in the little five-mile walk from Jerusalem to Bethlehem as verse 9 says it did? And how did a star stand “over the place where the Child was”?

The answer is: We do not know. There are numerous efforts to explain it in terms of conjunctions of planets or comets or supernovas or miraculous lights. We just don’t know. And I want to exhort you not to become preoccupied with developing theories that are only tentative in the end and have very little spiritual significance.

I risk a generalization to warn you:

From the Stranger Than Fiction Files

Ironic Self-Parody

If ever there were a group which act as if they want to live on another planet it is the Greens.  They are the most disconnected of folk when it comes to understanding or comprehending human beings, human history, human society, and human development.

In New Zealand we were recently treated to the hilariously ironic sight of hundreds of the little dears with heads literally in the sand. 

They were protesting the alleged inaction of New Zealand on climate change.  Their piece of beach theatre was supposed to parody our politicians.  It turned out to be the most delicious piece of unconscious self-parody we have seen in recent years.

The New Zealand Greens. Ostriches? Aliens from another planet?

Nanny Bloomberg Unmasked

The Witch Who Eats Children

Nanny Bloomberg, when he was mayor of  New York, was always hectoring folk to make them healthy, wealthy and wise.  Nanny passed lots of laws banning things like sugar--all in the effort to prevent people from living in ways that Nanny did not approve.  "It was for their own good," he said, as he departed for fresh pastures and campaigns.

Most New Yorkers, who love the Nanny State, thought that Bloomie was an all-round good guy.  He cared, that's why he passed all these laws telling us when to eat and drink and what profile our noses should assume as we breath the no-longer-free air.  He loves us. 

Except that now Nanny Bloomberg's mask has been stripped off.  He is exposed as an evil witch who kills and eats children.  Eric Garner was choked to death by the New York police whilst being arrested.  For what was he arrested, you ask?  For breaking one of Nanny Bloomberg's laws.  He was selling cigarettes on the street, free of Bloomberg's onerous, prohibitive taxes.  He was a criminal, said the police.  He had a record.  He had been arrested previously 31 times.  For what?  Murder?  Rape? Theft?  No.  He had been arrested 31 times for selling "illegal" cigarettes.  For that he deserved to die. 

you will never see fascism like a liberal trying to collect taxes.

May we suggest that instead of a criminal, Mr Garner was--in some senses--a patriot.  Here is Douglas Wilson's take on the matter:

Daily Devotional

Peace to Those With Whom He’s Pleased

“And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.” And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!” (Luke 2:12–14)

John Piper

Peace for whom? There is a somber note sounded in the angels’ praise. Peace among men on whom his favor rests. Peace among men with whom he is pleased. Without faith it is impossible to please God. So Christmas does not bring peace to all.

“This is the judgment,” Jesus said, “that the light has come into the world and men loved darkness rather than the light because their deeds are evil.” Or as the aged Simeon said when he saw the child Jesus, “Behold this child is set for the fall and rising of many in Israel and for a sign that is spoken against . . . that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.” O, how many there are who look out on a bleak and chilly Christmas day and see no more than that.

“He came to his own and his own received him not, but to as many as received him to them gave he power to become the sons of God, to as many as believed on his name.” It was only to his disciples that Jesus said, “Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.”

The people who enjoy the peace of God that surpasses all understanding are those who in everything by prayer and supplication let their requests be made known to God.

The key that unlocks the treasure chest of God’s peace is faith in the promises of God. So Paul prays, “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing.” And when we do trust the promises of God and have joy and peace and love, then God is glorified.

Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men with whom he is pleased — men who would believe.

For more about John Piper's ministry and writing, see DesiringGod.org.

Puff-Pastry Intellectuals

 False Rape Stories

In his book, Intellectuals Paul Johnson indicts successive, famous modern intellectuals for lying.  Not just an occasional porky, but a life-long dedication to fabrication.  Apparently, their "higher truth" and status as superior beings justified lying and living lives of systemic deceit.

This is not to say that all intellectuals are liars.  But the incidence is sufficiently common that anyone with the slightest dose of cynicism would at the very least suspend belief when prominent, celebrated intellectuals are involved.  Indeed, the more celebrity attached to an intellectual, the more likely professional deceit is at the core of their public (and private) personae.  Johnson does the numbers on Jean-Jacques Rousseau, poet Shelley, Marx, Ibsen, Tolstoy, Hemingway, Brecht, Bertrand Russell, Sartre, Victor Gollanz and Lillian Hellman.  All were deceitful liars.  All built and cultivated a public image and a personal narrative that was untrue.

In recent weeks we have seen two incidences of what appear to be fabricated claims about rape.

"I Miss You Every Day"

The Ugly Truth of Post-Abortion Syndrome

Testimony from Real Women Who Aborted their Babies

by Thomas D. Williams, Ph.D.  
3 Dec 2014

BreitbartNews

 In 2007, the New York Times stated that scientific evidence “strongly shows that abortion does not increase the risk of depression, drug abuse or any other psychological problem.” This confident assertion—already dubious when it was made—is being overwhelmed by reams of evidence suggesting the contrary: that abortion leaves a discernible wake of sorrow, suffering, and devastation.

Along with the disturbing statistics, however, is the compelling testimony of real women who have aborted their children and of what happened to their lives as a result. Though abortion does often provide a short-term solution to real problems pregnant women face, thus granting some immediate relief, the myth that women come out of abortion psychologically unscathed now seems unsustainable.

Daily Devotional

For God’s Little People

In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration when Quirinius was governor of Syria. And all went to be registered, each to his own town. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the town of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, to be registered with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child. (Luke 2:1–5)

John Piper

Have you ever thought what an amazing thing it is that God ordained beforehand that the Messiah be born in Bethlehem (as the prophecy in Micah 5 shows); and that he so ordained things that when the time came, the Messiah’s mother and legal father were living in Nazareth; and that in order to fulfill his word and bring two little people to Bethlehem that first Christmas, God put it in the heart of Caesar Augustus that all the Roman world should be enrolled each in his own town?

Have you ever felt, like me, little and insignificant in a world of seven billion people, where all the news is of big political and economic and social movements and of outstanding people with lots of power and prestige?
If you have, don’t let that make you disheartened or unhappy. For it is implicit in Scripture that all the mammoth political forces and all the giant industrial complexes, without their even knowing it, are being guided by God, not for their own sake but for the sake of God’s little people — the little Mary and the little Joseph who have to be got from Nazareth to Bethlehem. God wields an empire to bless his children.

Escaping the Modern Prison

The Power of Ancient Books

With approach of Advent, we decided to take up again the ancient Christian classic, On the Incarnation by Athanasius. [Translated and edited by Sister Penelope Lawson.  (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1946.)]  C. S. Lewis wrote an introduction to this edition, in which he commends the old books to Christians.  He warns of the dangers of reading modern Christian books exclusively, writing:

A new book is still on its trial and the amateur is not in a position to judge it.  It has to be tested against the great body of Christian thought down the ages, and all its hidden implications) often unsuspected by the author himself) have to be brought to light. . . .

Every age has its own outlook.  It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes.  We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period.  And that means the old books.  All contemporary writers share to some extent the contemporary outlook--even those, like myself, who seem most opposed to it. . . . The only palliative is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds, and this can be done only by reading old books.  [Op cit., p.xiii.]

But there is nothing magically superior about old Christian books.

People were no cleverer then than they are now; they made as many mistakes as we.  But not the same mistakes.  They will not flatter us in the errors we are already committing; and their own errors, being now open and palpable, will not endanger us.  [Ibid., p. xiv.]

Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow

7 Reasons Why BioLogos Is A Threat to Classical Christian Education

Douglas Wilson

Blog and Mablog

December 3, 2014

Before getting into the thicket, let me briefly define my terms and say a few preliminary things about my concerns. First, by BioLogos I mean this particular project as an attempt to harmonize biological evolution and Christian faith. Second, while I believe that this attempt (however well-intentioned) is a threat to every form of Christian education, I am focusing on classical Christian education because that is where my labors have largely been. And third, nothing said here is intended to question the sincerity or niceness of any particular BioLogos brothers and sisters. I believe their vision is destructive, but if a destructive vision is being promulgated here by very nice people, it wouldn’t be the first time.

There are many places where I could launch this discussion, but I think I will start with the historicity of Adam and Eve.

“Genetic evidence shows that humans descended from a group of several thousand individuals who lived about 150,000 years ago. This conflicts with the traditional view that all humans descended from a single pair who lived about 10,000 years ago. While Genesis 2-3 speaks of the pair Adam and Eve, Genesis 4 refers to a larger population of humans interacting with Cain. One option is to view Adam and Eve as a historical pair living among many 10,000 years ago, chosen to represent the rest of humanity before God. Another option is to view Genesis 2-4 as an allegory in which Adam and Eve symbolize the large group of ancestors who lived 150,000 years ago. Yet another option is to view Genesis 2-4 as an “everyman” story, a parable of each person’s individual rejection of God. BioLogos does not take a particular view and encourages scholarly work on these questions.”

1. The first thing to notice is that while encouraging “scholarly work on these questions,” they are not subjecting their own options to any kind of rigorous or logical analysis. So genetic evidence shows that humans descended from a group of several thousand about 150,000 years ago? Now when walking upstream like this, one wonders why they stopped right where they decided to stop.

Daily Devotional

Daily Devotional

"And the Lord shewed me four carpenters."
Zechariah 1:20

Charles Spurgeon

 In the vision described in this chapter, the prophet saw four terrible horns. They were pushing this way and that way, dashing down the strongest and the mightiest; and the prophet asked, "What are these?" The answer was, "These are the horns which have scattered Israel."  He saw before him a representation of those powers which had oppressed the church of God. There were four horns; for the church is attacked from all quarters.

Well might the prophet have felt dismayed; but on a sudden there appeared before him four carpenters. He asked, "What shall these do?" These are the men whom God hath found to break those horns in pieces. God will always find men for his work, and he will find them at the right time. The prophet did not see the carpenters first, when there was nothing to do, but first the "horns," and then the "carpenters."

Moreover, the Lord finds enough men. He did not find three carpenters, but four; there were four horns, and there must be four workmen. God finds the right men; not four men with pens to write; not four architects to draw plans; but four carpenters to do rough work. Rest assured, you who tremble for the ark of God, that when the "horns" grow troublesome, the "carpenters" will be found. You need not fret concerning the weakness of the church of God at any moment; there may be growing up in obscurity the valiant reformer who will shake the nations: Chrysostoms may come forth from our Ragged Schools, and Augustines from the thickest darkness of London's poverty.

The Lord knows where to find his servants. He hath in ambush a multitude of mighty men, and at his word they shall start up to the battle; "for the battle is the Lord's," and he shall get to himself the victory. Let us abide faithful to Christ, and he, in the right time, will raise up for us a defence, whether it be in the day of our personal need, or in the season of peril to his Church.

Making Sport For Neighbours

Left Wing, Right Wing, and Industrialised Inhumanity

Mr Bennett once sarcastically remarked that the raison d'etre of the Bennett household was to make sport for its neighbours, so the Bennetts, in turn, could laugh at them.  It was a wickedly clever line parodying respectable society in Georgian England.    Similar observations could be made in our day about our "masters" the political classes, and their fawning, downstairs attendants--the media.

Let's face it.  The media long ago ceased to be the bastion of liberty and the ever vigilant constructive critic of politicians and government.  However much the modern clutch of media personnel may deny it, however they may mock and laugh at the antics of those upstairs, in reality they need those pollies for their jobs.  They depend upon them.  The political classes and the media are our modern version of the Bennetts and their neighbours. 

Every so often little tizzies break out in the neighbourhood.  It makes sport for the rest of us.

Letter From Turkey (About "Huge Hatred" and Great Courage)

The Turkish Governor's "Huge Hatred"

by Burak Bekdil
The Gatestone Institute
November 29, 2014

At the beginning of the 20^th century, Edirne, a Turkish province in Thrace, hosted a prominent community of some 20,000 Jews – a larger community than the entire Jewish population of about 17,000 in Turkey today. Most of the Jews of Edirne were forced to leave the city after the pogroms of 1934. In 2000, the Jewish population in Edirne had dropped to 2 (no typo: two) people.

Earlier, in the Ottoman Turkey of 1907, Sultan Abdulhamid had ordered the construction of what would become one of the world's two biggest synagogues (and Europe's biggest), known in Turkish as "Buyuk Sinagog," or the "Great Synagogue", in Edirne. As the Jews left the town, the Great Synagogue turned into a sorrowful wreck.

In late 2000s, the Jewish community in Turkey applied to the governor's office in Edirne to have sermons and wedding ceremonies at the synagogue. Luckily, in 2010, the Great Synagogue was declared a historical site and brought under a $1.7 million restoration program to reopen for prayers and visits – not that the Turks thought the building would serve the (literally) couple of Jews left in town, but that they thought it could lure tourists (and money). The restoration work is almost complete.

Daily Devotional

The Long-Awaited Visitation  

“Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has visited and redeemed his people and has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David, as he spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets from of old, that we should be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us...” (Luke 1:68–71)

John Piper

Notice two remarkable things from these words of Zechariah in Luke 1.

First, nine months earlier, Zechariah could not believe his wife would have a child. Now, filled with the Holy Spirit, he is so confident of God’s redeeming work in the coming Messiah that he puts it in the past tense.   For the mind of faith, a promised act of God is as good as done. Zechariah has learned to take God at his word and so has a remarkable assurance: “God has visited and redeemed!”

Second, the coming of Jesus the Messiah is a visitation of God to our world: “The God of Israel has visited and redeemed.” For centuries, the Jewish people had languished under the conviction that God had withdrawn: the spirit of prophecy had ceased, Israel had fallen into the hands of Rome. And all the godly in Israel were awaiting the visitation of God. Luke tells us in 2:25 that the devout Simeon was “looking for the consolation of Israel.” And in Luke 2:38 the prayerful Anna was “looking for the redemption of Jerusalem.”

These were days of great expectation. Now the long awaited visitation of God was about to happen — indeed, he was about to come in a way no one expected.

For more about John Piper's ministry and writing, see DesiringGod.org.

The Revelation of Loud Silence

Modern Blasphemy Laws

Blasphemy laws have long since fallen by the wayside.  But that is not to say that reality of blasphemy and strident opposition to blasphemous speech has disappeared. They are as strong as ever.  But the object has changed.

Every society has things which is holds sacred, requiring special reverence.  To speak disparagingly or disrespectfully about the sacred (however conceived) is tantamount to blasphemy.  The deeper the respect for the sacred object or entity, the more society will demand publicly respectful speech concerning that entity.

The Chambers Dictionary defines blasphemy as:

blasphemy noun (blasphemies) 1 a speaking about God or sacred matters in a disrespectful or rude way; b an action, word or sign that intentionally insults God, or something held sacred, in such a way. 2 law blasphemous libel. 

The secular society long ago stopped believing in the Living God.  But that does not mean it ceased to be religious.  Rather it has substituted its own religion.  About the things which it holds sacred, dear, and holy one must not speak disrespectfully or disparagingly.  This is consistent with all human society everywhere.  Every society has holy people, offices, and objects.  Every society will not tolerate ill or disrespectful speech concerning that which it regards as holy.

Michelle Malkin provides one example of how modern blasphemy conventions operate in the United States.

Cry the Beloved Country

Vicar of Baghdad: Christian Children Are Being Beheaded by ISIS for Refusing to Convert to Islam

BreitbartLondon

By Donna Rachel Edmunds  

2 Dec 2014

Canon Andrew White, the Vicar of Baghdad, has told of how Christian children in Iraq were beheaded by ISIS forces for refusing to convert to Islam. Around 250,000 Christians have fled northern Iraq in the face of ISIS. They were the last remaining Christians in a region that had been home to more than one and a half million Christians before the war.

White, who has been ordered by the Archbishop of Canterbury to leave Baghdad for fears over his safety, spoke movingly of the plight of the Christians during a recent interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network, Christian Today has reported.

“Things were bad in Baghdad, there were bombs and shootings and our people were being killed, so many of our people fled back to Nineveh, their traditional home,” he said. “It was safer, but then one day, ISIS – Islamic State. They came in and they hounded all of them out. They killed huge numbers, they chopped their children in half, they chopped their heads off, and they moved north and it was so terrible what happened."

Daily Devotional

God Alone

"Behold, all is vanity."
Ecclesiastes 1:14

Charles Spurgeon

Nothing can satisfy the entire man but the Lord's love and the Lord's own self.

Saints have tried to anchor in other roadsteads, but they have been driven out of such fatal refuges. Solomon, the wisest of men, was permitted to make experiments for us all, and to do for us what we must not dare to do for ourselves. Here is his testimony in his own words: "So I was great, and increased more than all that were before me in Jerusalem: also my wisdom remained with me. And whatsoever mine eyes desired I kept not from them, I withheld not my heart from any joy; for my heart rejoiced in all my labour: and this was my portion of all my labour. Then I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought, and on the labour that I had laboured to do: and, behold, all was vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit under the sun."

"Vanity of vanities, all is vanity." What! the whole of it vanity? O favoured monarch, is there nothing in all thy wealth? Nothing in that wide dominion reaching from the river even to the sea? Nothing in Palmyra's glorious palaces? Nothing in the house of the forest of Lebanon? In all thy music and dancing, and wine and luxury, is there nothing? "Nothing," he says, "but weariness of spirit." This was his verdict when he had trodden the whole round of pleasure.

To embrace our Lord Jesus, to dwell in his love, and be fully assured of union with him--this is all in all. Dear reader, you need not try other forms of life in order to see whether they are better than the Christian's: if you roam the world around, you will see no sights like a sight of the Saviour's face; if you could have all the comforts of life, if you lost your Saviour, you would be wretched; but if you win Christ, then should you rot in a dungeon, you would find it a paradise; should you live in obscurity, or die with famine, you will yet be satisfied with favour and full of the goodness of the Lord.

We Have No Memory

Jaded Secularism and Its "Tricks"

This year New Zealand will "mark" the 200th year since the Gospel of Jesus Christ was first proclaimed in New Zealand (as far as we are able to tell).  Our Lord had commanded that we, his servants, proclaim to the farthest reaches of the earth, His death on behalf of all men for the forgiveness of sin.  New Zealand is about as far away from Jerusalem (where He laid down this command) as is possible to get.  Thus, in terms of biblical theology and Christian eschatology, the first coming of the Gospel to this far flung country is of great symbolic significance, at the very least.

For that reason alone all Christians everywhere should take a great interest in the coming of the Gospel to a far-away land, where the inhabitants were lost in the dark night of sin.  But the nation as a whole will barely notice this bicentenary.  That's because New Zealand is officially a secular country, which means that the religion of secularism is its established religion.  To our official, established religion, the coming of Samuel Marsden to New Zealand to preach the Gospel on Christmas Day 1814 is more of an embarrassment than anything else.  It reflects a former, benighted age when people superstitiously believed in gods rather than stochastic atoms. 

Paul Moon, one of our leading historians of the period, laments the present studied ignorance of the event.

The Western Mien of "Holocaust Denial"

We Must Speak Up for Persecuted Christians in the Islamic World

by Michael Coren  

2 Dec 2014

Breitbart London

Just a few weeks ago Prince Charles, a man sometimes criticized for being too supportive and praising of Britain's Muslim community, made a passionate speech calling for the Islamic world to stop persecuting its Christian minorities. It was entirely coincidental but hugely significant that the same day of the royal statement, it was reported that a Christian couple had been beaten to death in Pakistan for allegedly defacing a copy of the Koran.

Whether they did such a thing is doubtful but, anyway, irrelevant. Only barbaric regimes and barbaric religions believe in killing people for marking inanimate objects.

The victims were a young couple, hoping to build a life for themselves even though their country, Pakistan, routinely persecuted Christians. As such they were moving into a new house and in clearing out the possessions of the family who had previously lived there they may have moved a box that contained a copy of The Koran. That's all. But it was enough.

First their legs were broken so that they could not run away. Then they were beaten to death. Then their bodies were burned beyond recognition. I wish I could say that this grotesque incident was unique or even rare; tragically it is not, and has been repeated and replicated in almost every country where followers of Islam form a majority of the population.

Daily Devotional

A Living Man

C. S. Lewis

And now we begin to see what it is that the New Testament is always talking about. It talks about Christians ‘being born again’; it talks about them ‘putting on Christ’; about Christ ‘being formed in us’; about our coming to ‘have the mind of Christ’.

Put right out of your head the idea that these are only fancy ways of saying that Christians are to read what Christ said and try to carry it out—as a man may read what Plato or Marx said and try to carry it out. They mean something much more than that. They mean that a real Person, Christ, here and now, in that very room where you are saying your prayers, is doing things to you.

It is not a question of a good man who died two thousand years ago. It is a living Man, still as much a man as you, and still as much God as He was when He created the world, really coming and interfering with your very self; killing the old natural self in you and replacing it with the kind of self He has. At first, only for moments. Then for longer periods.

Finally, if all goes well, turning you permanently into a different sort of thing; into a new little Christ, a being which, in its own small way, has the same kind of life as God; which shares in His power, joy, knowledge and eternity.

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.

One More False Risible Idolatry

Protesting Too Much

All human beings have ultimate belief systems--whether they are self-conscious about them or not.  In that sense, all human beings are incurably religious.  In our secularist age, secularism has defined religions to be the (mistaken) belief in an ultimate, transcendent being.  But the secularist asserts, "there ain't none" and so simplistically claims that secularism is, well, secular and not religious in any way.

But secularism--which we acknowledge to be the established and societally entrenched religion of our day,  is an ultimate belief system, asserting that matter is all there is, and their ain't no god.  Secularists reverence their religion, and their god of empirical man, just as any disciple does.  It has a "gospel" of joy: there is no transcendent being to judge me for my moral transgressions.  Whoopee.  Freedom.  The truth (of secularism) has set me free.

But at the same time, ironically, secularists believe in an ultimate authority, delivering truth and law.  Its  ultimate authority is the cold hard dictat of empirical reality coupled with cool detached reason.

Letter From America (About Lies, Lies, and Intimidation)

When Truth Dies, Justice Is a Fast Follower

by Ben Shapiro  
28 Nov 2014
BreitbartNews

 

On Monday night, after the release of the grand jury verdict rejecting indictment of Officer Darren Wilson in the Ferguson, Missouri shooting of 18-year-old black man Michael Brown, President Obama took to the microphones. “We need to recognize that this is not just an issue for Ferguson, this is an issue for America,” he said. “[T]here are still problems and communities of color aren't just making these problems up.”

Obama was wrong, at least in the case of Darren Wilson. In viewing thousands of pages of FBI interviews and grand jury testimony, it becomes eminently clear that many members of the local community did make up the story about Michael Brown being executed by Wilson – and pressured others to lie to police or keep silent.

According to the St. Louis County Police Investigative Report, the mob mentality took root almost immediately after the shooting. By the time detectives arrived at the scene of the incident, there was “a large crowd of bystanders and a large uniformed police presence at the scene when detectives arrived.” That crowd included both Brown’s mother and his stepfather, according to witness testimony. The police report states, “Many individuals were clearly upset and were expressing their frustration, by at times yelling obscenities and threats, and attempting to encroach on the crime scene itself.”

It got worse:

Daily Devotional

The Only Conscience-Cleanser

How much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God. (Hebrews 9:14)

John Piper

So here we are in the modern age — the age of the Internet, smart phones, space travel, and heart transplants — and our problem is fundamentally the same as always: our consciences condemn us and make us feel unacceptable to God. We are alienated from God.

We can cut ourselves, or throw our children in the sacred river, or give a million dollars to charity, or serve in a soup kitchen, or a hundred forms of penance and self-injury, and the result will be the same: the stain remains and death terrifies.

We know that our conscience is defiled — not with external things like touching a corpse, a dirty diaper, or a piece of pork. Jesus said it is what comes out of a man that defiles, not what goes in (Mark 7:15-23). We are defiled by attitudes like pride and self-pity and bitterness and lust and envy and jealousy and covetousness and apathy and fear.

The only answer in this modern age, as in every other age is the blood of Christ. When your conscience rises up and condemns you, where will you turn? Hebrew 9:14 gives you the answer: turn to Christ.
Turn to the blood of Christ. Turn to the only cleansing agent in the universe that can give you relief in life and peace in death.

For more about John Piper's ministry and writing, see DesiringGod.org.

Shelob's Cobwebs

Ideological Inanities

". . . When thou speakest, people say,
Did we hear a donkey bray?"

Of all world-views which compete in today's ideological marketplace, statism ranks as one of the more gullible, ignorant and one-dimensional.  One can confidently predict what our numerous resident statists will say on any public issue of the moment.  Whatever concerns or ails us, doubtless more government rules, regulations, controls, intrusions, money, and government programmes will fix the problem. 

This becomes even more ludicrous when controversies arise in those few areas where the state already runs a monopoly, such as education.  The failings of our monopolistic government schooling system are well documented.  When you are already operating in a statist monopoly, the only response left when failures emerge is for the statist to adopt an Oliver-Twistian pose, stick out the porridge bowl and demand more (taxpayers' money). 

The Green Party is a statist party.  All it ever wants for Christmas is more government, less freedom.  True to form, its education spokesman and ardent advocate for monopoly government schools, Catherine Delahunty slammed a poor little one-year-old, nascent charter school, the Vanguard Academy over the weekend.  It was failing, terribly.  Why?  Because it has just experienced a substantial drop in its roll.  Commissar Delahunty unsheathed her Cossack sabre and launched a full frontal attack, slicing through the air with a dreaded press release: