This is remarkable. At about the 15 minute mark, author Eric Metaxas talks about how focused the Nazis were on race. Their corrupt view of purity and polluted ideas about the Jews became woven into almost every German, Christian and non. Bonhoeffer among a few others argued against the Nazis racism in part because he had seen racial division in the United States.
Category Archives: Religion
I am neither a prophet, nor the son of a prophet
It was one of those rare, perfect moments in preaching.
While living in Florida some years back, due to limited choices I was attending a church of a different denomination than my own. It was a large, growing, dynamic congregation. The pastor announced a series of sermons on Revelation. But when he started preaching, it quickly became clear he was not teaching the Dispensational Premillenial (i.e., Left Behind) interpretation that’s so popular in our day. He was an amillennialist.
Many congregation members were not happy about this, and made their opinion known.
After a few weeks of controversy, the pastor got into the pulpit one Sunday morning and announced that, for the sake of peace, he was discontinuing the sermon series on the End Times. Instead, he would take up a topic that would trouble people less.
“I’m going to preach on Hell,” he said. Continue reading I am neither a prophet, nor the son of a prophet
Paradise Is So Holy It Would Spew the Unholy Should They Be Allowed to Enter
I came across this remarkable language in an essay on holiness by Thomas Brooks (1608-1680), and I thought I would share it.
The eighth argument to prove that without real holiness there is no happiness; that without holiness on earth no man shall ever come to a blessed vision or fruition of God in heaven, is this, The Scripture, that speaks no treason, styles unholy persons beasts, yea, the worst of beasts ; and what should such do in heaven? Unholy persons are the most dangerous, and the most unruly pieces in the world, and therefore are emblemized by lions, Ps. xxii. 21, and they are cruel; by bears, and they are savage, Isa. xi. 7 ; by dragons, and they are hideous, Ezek. xxix. 3; by wolves, and they are ravenous, Ezek. xxii. 27; by dogs, and they are snarling, Rev. xxii. 15; by vipers and scorpions, and they are stinging, Mat. xii. 34, Ezek. ii. 6; by spiders and cockatrices, and they are poisoning, Isa. lix. 5; by swine, and they are [still grunting, Mat. vii. 6. No man in this world is more like another than the epicure is like a swine; the fraudulent person a fox ; the lustful person a goat; the backbiter a barking cur; the slanderer an asp ; the oppressor a wolf; the persecutor a tiger; the seducer a serpent. Certainly the Irish air will sooner brook toads and snakes and serpents to live therein, than heaven will brook such beasts as unholy souls are to live there. Surely God, and Christ, and the Spirit, and angels, and ‘the spirits of just men made perfect,’ are not so in love with dogs and swine, £c., as to put them into their bosoms, or make them their companions. Heaven is a place of too great state to admit such vermin to inhabit there. Continue reading Paradise Is So Holy It Would Spew the Unholy Should They Be Allowed to Enter
I Lift Up My Soul to the Merciful Lord
How many times have you read verses like this and thought little of them?
“To you, O LORD, I lift up my soul.”
Those are the opening words of Psalm 25:1, not even the whole verse. I usually think of words like these as the Psalmist saying hello, but look at what Charles Spurgeon wrote about these words. Read more on cbmc.com.
Literally Devoted
The word for today from the Wordsmith is bibliolatry, used in this sentence: “Fifty percent of college graduates expect Jesus to be here any day now. We are, says Paul Boyer, almost unique in the Western World in combining high educational levels with high levels of bibliolatry.” Martin Gardner; Waiting for the Last Judgement; The Washington Post; Nov 8, 1992.
Bibliolatry is defined as “excessive devotion to the Bible, especially to its literal interpretation.” It’s also the worship of any book, but sticking to the first definition, I have to laugh when I see references to a literal interpretation of the Bible. I hesitate to use labels, but I’ll do it anyway. The idea in the example sentence is the essential thing conservatives think of when defining academic and some other types of liberals. They tell us if we would use our brains we would see the nuance, the deeper meaning, the shades of gray in the situation and not be so cock-sure of ourselves, but when pressed for a good answer, they don’t have one. They can only criticize the answers the conservatives have given.
Bibliolatry in this sense does not exist. There can be no excess in devotion to the Word of God. See Psalm 19 and Psalm 119, but don’t take them literally. Take them poetically. Your soul may not “cling to the dust,” because you can have life in His Word.
Sign of the times?
I’m not a great one for end-of-the-world prognostications, but all my life I’ve heard of this (or something like it) as being a sign of the Last Days:
Protestant translators expect to have the Bible — or at least some of it — written in every one of the world’s 6,909 spoken languages.
“We’re in the greatest period of acceleration in 20 centuries of Bible translation,” said Morrison resident Paul Edwards, who heads up Wycliffe Bible Translators’ $1 billion Last Languages Campaign.
Portable computers and satellites get the credit for speeding things up by about 125 years.
Full story here, from the Denver Post.
Apocalyptic or not, it’s good news.
Pastoral letter from the future
A PASTORAL LETTER
From Bishop Judith Hardanger-Hansen
Dearly beloved,
There has been considerable dissension in our fellowship recently, and a number of hard words have been spoken, causing much pain. I feel it my obligation to address the matter directly, exercising openmindedness and charity, both to the enlightened, Christ-like people who agree with me, and the knuckle-dragging Nazis on the other side.
From its inception, the Merry Pride movement has been like the wind of the Holy Spirit, breathing new life and new ideas into the church. Sadly, however, some people do not welcome change, and run from the challenges of a new day.
In case anyone reading this is unaware of recent history (home-schooled people, perhaps), the term “Merry” was adopted by the oppressed group formerly known as “adulterers,” employing a pun on the word “marry,” to give their lifestyle a more positive public face. They felt it intolerable to be forced to live any longer with a name that bore the weight of centuries of misunderstanding, prejudice, and oppression. Continue reading Pastoral letter from the future
Infamy
I attend a Lutheran congregation in north Minneapolis, one that belongs to the church body I work for. It’s large but not huge. The senior pastor has made himself visible in the media for a number of years as a critic of the liberal church, and of modern trends such as universalism, women’s ordination, higher criticism of the Bible, and the normalization of homosexuality. He is a single man.
Last night, while watching local news on television, I discovered that he’d been “outed” as a homosexual.
He was not discovered in a “gay” bar. He was not discovered having sex with another man in a public rest room.
According to the news accounts I’ve seen (emanating from liberal sources) he was discovered attending a support and accountability group in a Roman Catholic church. He was speaking honestly, to men he trusted, about his struggles, slips, and temptations.
In other words, he was doing precisely what people on our side of the argument say a man in his situation ought to do. He is the very opposite of a hypocrite.
On the basis of the accounts I’ve read, the “journalist” who produced the story infiltrated this accountability group, lied about his purposes, and then broke the promise of confidentiality he made to get in.
The television story pretended to be a high-minded think piece about whether it’s ever appropriate to “out” someone against their wishes.
I don’t believe that was the real purpose of the story. I believe it was to splash my pastor’s picture all over TV screens in our state, with a metaphorical scarlet letter on his chest.
My pastor has my full support, and my prayers. God bless him, and all godly men in his situation.
How do we know if we don't know?
To really write properly on this subject, I should have read all five articles, but I only read the first in this series linked by Grim at Grim’s Hall. It’s about scientists who are studying the mystery, not only of not knowing, but of not knowing that we don’t know certain things. In other words, problems we don’t solve because we’re not aware of any problem—even when we have to live with the consequences of not solving it.
DAVID DUNNING: Well, my specialty is decision-making. How well do people make the decisions they have to make in life? And I became very interested in judgments about the self, simply because, well, people tend to say things, whether it be in everyday life or in the lab, that just couldn’t possibly be true. And I became fascinated with that. Not just that people said these positive things about themselves, but they really, really believed them. Which led to my observation: if you’re incompetent, you can’t know you’re incompetent.
Truth-telling is, like, so legalistic
Over at Townhall Magazine, Prof. Mike Adams tears into Don Miller, author of Blue Like Jazz:
The only problem with this story is that it isn’t true. Oddly, Don came back to visit that Christian camp just a few years ago. When he did, he was confronted with his very public and untruthful account his time at Summit Ministries.
In response, Don just said it wasn’t a big deal. He fabricated the story just to make a point. He was confronted privately but was unrepentant, which was not too surprising. Remember that Don thinks Christianity is not about rules. It’s about a relationship with God.