The Sanctity of Canine Life

Gary DeMar has an excellent commentary on the Michael Vick situation. Vick has been thorougly villified for his participation in the barbaric practice of dog fighting while the barbaric practice of abortion goes on day by day in this nation with the full support of the government, media and educational institutions. The same people who are horrified at dog fighting, many of whom won't wear fur or eat meat, routinely support the right of a woman to murder her unborn baby because the child is an inconvenience. You have to wonder what kind of compartmentalized lives people like that must live in order to make such a world view work for them.

It's A Woman's Pulpit?

Recently a Baptist Church in Decatur, Georgia associated with the theologically liberal Cooperative Baptist Fellowship hired a woman pastor. This has resulted in no few comments in the media since it’s the first time a Baptist Church, at least one nominally affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention, has allowed a female senior pastor.

Of course these comments are mostly sighs of relief that the Neanderthals of the SBC have finally wised up and gotten with the program, etc. Such was the case recently when Dick Yarborough saw fit to comment on it in the Gainsville Times

Mr. Yarborough took to task Al Mohler of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary for daring to take the position that the Bible teaches differing roles for men and women and that one of the roles God has reserved for men is that of pastor. Of course Mr. Yarborough did not provide any Biblical support or theological analysis for his position. However, what he lacked in theological precision he more than made up for in snide comments and anecdotal “evidence”.

I won’t go into all the reasons here that orthodox Christianity has for hundreds of years viewed the pastorate as an office for men only. The burden of proof in this case is on people like Mr. Yarborough who want to overturn the orthodox position.

So what did Mr. Yarborough offer in support of his position? Gems like these:

“Methodists have had female ministers for a long time.”

Well, yes, true enough, longer, for example than they’ve had homosexual or lesbian ones but how exactly does that bear on whether the Bible supports the legitimacy of a female pastor? I mean just because I’ve done something for a long time does that mean God approves of it?

“Now these many years later, there are a host of crackerjack female ministers in the Methodist Church, and we haven't been zapped by lightning yet.”

Oh, OK. So as long as we’re not immediately struck dead by God when we do something, we can take that as His approval for whatever it is we’re doing.

Then there’s this wonderful of theological insight:

“Do you have any divorcees in your church? Read what the scripture says about them (Matthew 19:9). And, finally, are there any women in your congregation wearing gold or pearls and/or plaiting their hair (1 Timothy 2:9)?”

I’m not really sure what he’s getting at here but he seems to be saying for one thing that he views Jesus’ emphasis on the sanctity of marriage to be over done and that it is just as passé to consider a person who remarries after an unbiblical divorce to be involved in adultery as it is to insist that pastors be men. The belief that divorce (with certain exceptions) is a sin and that remarriage after divorce is adultery is a position, supported by scripture, which has also been taught by orthodox Christianity down through the centuries. However, once you’ve eliminated one Biblical teaching by filtering the Bible through the lens of 21^st century feminism, what’s a few more, right?

“Let's face it: God is a lot smarter than we are”

I have to give him credit for getting this one right. However, what Mr. Yarborough fails to understand is that God is smarter than we are even if what He tells us offends our 21^st century egalitarian sensibilities. The Bible tells us in Proverbs that there is a way that seems right to us but in the end it leads to destruction.

That’s not necessarily immediately being struck dead, by the way Mr. Yarborough.

One Nation Under gods

It takes a lot to surprise me these days but I have to admit I was shocked that the United States Senate allowed a Hindu 'chaplain' to stand in its well and offer up a prayer to his pagan gods last week. I suppose it should not have surprised me, this nation abandoned the one true God many years ago.

Make no mistake, this is a sign that we are in dire straits in this country. Its one thing to ignore God as we've done for many years as a nation. It's quite another to pro-actively worship false gods and idols. I read an article not long ago relating how Christianity is leaving the United States and Western Europe and beginning to flourish in the so-called Third World. Is it any wonder that the Lord is calling His Church elsewhere with this kind of idolatry openly celebrated in our nation's capital?

And what has been the reaction of our citizens to this abomination? For the most part its been a non-event. The people of this country by and large couldn't care less.

"And Elijah came near to all the people and said, "How long will you go limping between two different opinions? If the LORD is God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him." And the people did not answer him a word." - II Kings 18:21

Sadly we're like the people of ancient Israel during Elijah's day. We don't mind a little 'Christianity' mixed in with our yoga or as one element of our 'faith journey'. However, let someone take a stand for Christ as the one and only way and suddenly there will be plenty of people puffed up with righteous indignation.

I'm sad when I look back at what this nation once was and even sadder as I look forward to what it will be for my children. For unless the Lord grants revival, things will get far worse before they get better. I'm thankful, however, that we serve a God who is faithful to His people and that our trust and security ultimately do not rest in the state of affairs in the United States but in the hands of the Sovereign of the Universe. Whether God sends judgment or revival to this country He is still on His throne. Nevertheless, I pray that He will be gracious and grant us repentance as a nation before its too late.

Innocent as a New Born Babe?

I came across an interesting article this evening in the British newspaper The Telegraph. It seems that babies are not as innocent as everyone (well, psychologists anyway) had originally thought. In this article researchers explain that children as young as six months already have the capacity to lie, something psychologists previously thought was not possible until about the age of four.

Why, it's almost as if human beings come into the world with a natural inclination to sin!

"Behold I was brought forth in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me" Psalm 51:5

The Death of Shame

There was a time in this country (in virtually any country for that matter) where a picture of a man kissing another man would have been the stock and trade of the blackmailer. A time when a person who had engaged in such behavior would have felt shame for having done it and would have wanted anything other than for a record of their exploits to be published for all to see.

Those days are gone.

This AP report highlights a firestorm created because a New Jersey high school obscured a picture in the yearbook of a male student kissing his 'boyfriend'. This student was 'embarassed' by having the photo NOT shown and is demanding a public apology from the school board, which I predict will shortly grovel at the altar of political correctness and give him one (they've already issued a written apology but that's not enough for the poor fellow).

What a sad day we live in when those things once done furtively and in secret are now flaunted publically and those who dare to be offended are the ones labled perverted. The scriptures tell us that when a people forget God they will begin to call good evil and evil good. They will not only feel no shame at their sin but will actually glory in it. This is the sitation in which we find ourselves in early 21st century America.

Only the Lord's intervention can save us from the destruction for which we're headed. I pray that He will be gracious and send revival.

Is Al Gore 'Reasonable'?

I just read an exerpt from Al Gore's new book The Assault on Reason over at Time Magazine's website . In it he expresses a deep concern for the future of our country due to the many problems he sees in our culture. I cannot disagree with the notion that we should be concerned for the state of our country, nor can I deny that many of the problems he points out are real and serious. For example, he bemoans the lack of respect for truth in the public arena, clearly a problem we face from the federal level down to the local school board.

My disagreement with Mr. Gore would be with his identification of the root cause of these problems. It is our having abandoned 'reason' according to Gore that has lead to our troubles. He says we must have more "faith in the power of reason" if we are to save ourselves. He says:

Our Founders' faith in the viability of representative democracy rested on their trust in the wisdom of a well-informed citizenry, their ingenious design for checks and balances, and their belief that the rule of reason is the natural sovereign of a free people.

Perhaps Mr. Gore is not a student of history, but it occurs to me that a nation once tried to build itself on this concept of the sovereignty of reason and the result was that during the French Revolution the streets of Paris ran red with blood. "Reason" was literally the god of the French revolution but without the God of the universe in the picture, it was a disaster.

The missing element in our culture is not reason it is a desire to respect and honor the one true God of the Bible. Gore's assertion that reason was viewed as the 'natural sovereign' by our Founders is laughable. The sovereign our Founders looked to was the God of the Bible and without His influence in our culture, no amount of man-centered reason can save us.