Pray for repentance

Today is the anniversary of one of the darkest days in American history, the landmark and criminal Roe v. Wade decision that overrode the laws of every state and created a “right” to abortion. The right to an abortion doesn’t exist in the Constitution yet it has become the law of the land in America and tens of millions have paid the horrible, ultimate price. Thirty six years ago on January 22, 1973 by a seven to two majority, the Supreme Court of the United States made murder legal by judicial fiat. These are the seven justices who made this the law of the land:

Chief Justice Warren E. Burger. Associate Justices William O. Douglas, William J. Brennan, Jr., Potter Stewart, Thurgood Marshall, Harry Blackmun, Lewis F. Powell, Jr.

These seven men have the blood of millions on their hands. Their names should be remembered in the same way we remember Joseph Goebbels, Heinrich Himmler, Adolf Hitler, Pol Pot, Joseph Stalin and all of the other mass murderers in human history. That may seem a harsh comparison but the death toll of abortion is staggering and was made possible by these seven men. Adolf Hitler didn’t personally kill a single Jew in a concentration camp, but he made it all possible. In the same way, these seven men may have never performed an abortion but their dishonesty and callous disregard for the law and human life has set this nation of a path of infanticide.

We stand today in a nation awash in the blood of innocents and two days ago we watched a man sworn into the office of President with the words “So help me God”, a man who supports every form of abortion no matter how hideous.

So help him God?! That man should be trembling on his knees for invoking the name of God while supporting abortion!

So help us all God, for the holocaust in our land

More stuff from the New York Times

This time the subject is Darwinian dogma in the Texas public school curriculum. It kills me how the apostles of evolution speak so confidently of how accepted and airtight Darwinian evolution is, yet when it is suggested that a public school textbook designed for practical education of a variety of students of various backgrounds actually look at various theories on the origin of life, they flip out. How dare anyone not blindly accept a given theory! Don’t you people know that every scientific advancement has been made by asserting one “scientific” fact to be true and excluding the discussion or even consideration of any other ideas! Exploring various theories and ideas in science, bah! From the article:

In Texas, a Line in the Curriculum Revives Evolution Debate

AUSTIN, Tex. — The latest round in a long-running battle over how evolution should be taught in Texas schools began in earnest Wednesday as the State Board of Education heard impassioned testimony from scientists and social conservatives on revising the science curriculum.

The debate here has far-reaching consequences; Texas is one of the nation’s biggest buyers of textbooks, and publishers are reluctant to produce different versions of the same material.

Many biologists and teachers said they feared that the board would force textbook publishers to include what skeptics see as weaknesses in Darwin’s theory to sow doubt about science and support the Biblical version of creation.

“These weaknesses that they bring forward are decades old, and they have been refuted many, many times over,” Kevin Fisher, a past president of the Science Teachers Association of Texas, said after testifying. “It’s an attempt to bring false weaknesses into the classroom in an attempt to get students to reject evolution.”

In the past, the conservatives on the education board have lacked the votes to change textbooks. This year, both sides say, the final vote, in March, is likely to be close.

But several biologists who appeared in the hearing room said the objections raised by Mr. Meyer and some board members were baseless. The majority of evidence collected over the last 150 years supports Darwin, and few dissenting opinions have survived a review by scientists.

What is really being dealt with here is whether or not a textbook can include opposing viewpoints on a controversial and far from universally accepted theory on the origins of life. I would think that a real academic who was convinced that the questions surrounding Darwinian evolution would want the chance to interact with and show conclusively that evolution is the only possible explanation for the origins of life. Especially when you consider how many people, a huge percentage of Americans, believe in some variation of the creation narrative or at least the existence of an intelligent designer who was behind it all. Instead they refuse to even consider opposing viewpoints, which really makes it look like they are afraid of the debate and are hiding behind their own dogma. Huh, and I though religious folks were the closed-minded ones…

More from the article…

“Every single thing they are representing as a weakness is a misrepresentation of science,” said David M. Hillis, a professor of biology at the University of Texas. “These are science skeptics. These are people with religious and political agendas.”

Whew, it is good to know that there is not an agenda among the academics and scientists!

Of course we also see the most grotesque of scare tactics, the notion that somehow having a textbook that seeks to ask question and explore knowledge will drive employers away…

Business leaders, meanwhile, said Texas would have trouble attracting highly educated workers and their families if the state’s science programs were seen as a laughingstock among biologists.

“The political games we are playing right now are going to burn us all,” said Eric Hennenhoefer, who owns Obsidian Software.

“Yeah we were going to build a $250 million dollar steel plant in your state, but then we looked at you high school science curriculum and pulled the plug.” I couldn’t find much about Obsidian Software other than it was founded in 1997 by three engineers. I looked into Obsidian’s hometown of Austin, Texas and it doesn’t even list them as one of Austin’s biggest employers, much less Texas. So I am not sure what qualifies Mr. Hennenhoefer as a “business leader”.

Really, in the grand scheme of things do employers really look at high school textbooks when deciding whether or not to relocate their business to a state? Even if they did, would the mere suggestion that perhaps the case for Darwinism is not as airtight as the dogma of the evolutionist priesthood makes it out to be serve as a signal for poor preparation and academic achievement? Those sorts of arguments are unserious and shrill, but all too often unchallenged. Give a company enough tax breaks and other incentives and they will move to your state. You can have the image of Charles Darwin branded on every high school student's forehead and if your business climate stinks, no one is moving there.

I don’t really have a dog in this fight. The public schools are free to do whatever they want. After all, no rational person sends their kid to a secularist government school and expects them to learn anything other than a secularist worldview that runs contrary to Christianity and the Bible. The only reasons I bring this up for comment are to remind parents that you cannot think that your kids in public schools are getting an education that is God-honoring and indeed what they are getting denies Christ and His Word, and also that your kids really aren’t getting much of an education at all when you look at how narrowly they define what knowledge is or is not approved and how much political and dogmatic agendas play into what your kids are learning. Text books, curriculum, teacher training, education programs at colleges, teachers unions all have an agenda and not much of it is supportive of the Christian worldview. There is a definite and intentional agenda defined by a secular worldview that drives what kids are learning in public schools and parents who choose to send their kids off to those schools need to get their collective heads out of the sand and realize not only what your kids are not getting (i.e. a Christian worldview education) but also what they are getting (i.e. an education that has as its core a denial of the basic truths of Christianity). There is no such thing as a value neutral educational choice, where and how your kids are educated may be one the most important decisions that a Christian parent makes. You and your kids will have to deal with the aftermath of that decision, one way or the other.

Here is a tricky and dangerous question

Dr. Mohler mentioned a recent article in the New York Times dealing with faith healing, parents refusing medical care for their minor children. This issue pops up periodically, typically when a child is severely injured or in this case dies. It sounded chilling, so I went to the article and read it in its entirety. The event cited in the NYT happened in Wisconsin…

WESTON, Wis. — Kara Neumann, 11, had grown so weak that she could not walk or speak. Her parents, who believe that God alone has the ability to heal the sick, prayed for her recovery but did not take her to a doctor.

After an aunt from California called the sheriff’s department here, frantically pleading that the sick child be rescued, an ambulance arrived at the Neumann’s rural home on the outskirts of Wausau and rushed Kara to the hospital. She was pronounced dead on arrival.
The county coroner ruled that she had died from diabetic ketoacidosis resulting from undiagnosed and untreated juvenile diabetes. The condition occurs when the body fails to produce insulin, which leads to severe dehydration and impairment of muscle, lung and heart function.
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About a month after Kara’s death last March, the Marathon County state attorney, Jill Falstad, brought charges of reckless endangerment against her parents, Dale and Leilani Neumann. Despite the Neumanns’ claim that the charges violated their constitutional right to religious freedom, Judge Vincent Howard of Marathon County Circuit Court ordered Ms. Neumann to stand trial on May 14, and Mr. Neumann on June 23. If convicted, each faces up to 25 years in prison.

Set aside for a moment the issue of refusing any sort of medical care for Christians. That is a whole can of worms that really isn’t pertinent to the bigger question. There are precedents in the Bible for treatment of medical conditions, not necessarily a slew of antibiotics every time your kid gets a cold, but some kind of treatment beyond prayer. For example, Paul urges Timothy to take a little wine for his frequent stomach ailments in 1 Timothy 5:23. So setting aside the issue of modern medicine or natural remedies, the issue I want to look at has less to do with the specific example of this case (faith healing) and more to do with the general practice and protection of religious beliefs in a pluralistic, secular society. The statement that Dr. Mohler pointed out and that really struck me as well was this statement from the presiding judge:

“The free exercise clause of the First Amendment protects religious belief,” the judge wrote in his ruling, “but not necessarily conduct.”

So what this judge is saying is that the First Amendment protects your right to believe whatever you want, but not necessarily to practice your religion however you want. I don’t want to be Chicken Little here, because I know that the law exempts parents in a lot of circumstances. But also there is the issue that while the laws of an individual state protect parents, those laws can be reversed and the underlying issue is the Constitutional expression of religion and what that does or does not apply to.

What does the First Amendment say? A lot of people appeal to the First Amendment but not many actually look to see what the wording was or ask "what does it really say"? People throw the word “rights” around cavalierly but there are certain rights enumerated in the Constitution and there are lots of things that are not spoken of. This is what the First Amendment actually says and concerns:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Note that the key here is religious expression or exercise. Exercise necessarily implies not just belief but outward expression. People often say that the First Amendment protects our “freedom of religion”, but what is at stake here is not merely belief but practice as well.

Where I am troubled is the tension between parental rights and the perceived obligation of the state toward children. It is pretty easy to look at seemingly obvious cases of neglect and say the state should step in. It is harder though when you alter the fundamental ideal that the default is that parents have the right to make decisions for their children. It is not a stretch, and in fact has become law in many places, to see this intrusion spreading beyond merely issues where parents withhold medical treatment and into determining what is or is not appropriate discipline for children. Beating a child to death is not discipline but many assume that any sort of corporal correction for children is inherently child abuse. We have administered stern correction to our children on a fairly regular basis (eight kids=lots of discipline!) and there are some who would say that what we do, while commonplace a generation ago and for most of human history, amounts to child abuse. There is a stream of thought in some circles of academia that seems to be gaining credence that even religious instruction amounts to abuse of children. In other words, you are free to breed if you must but the state and the academics will decide what your kids will think, learn and how they will behave. It is not difficult to see where applications of a narrow interpretation of the First Amendment as merely protecting belief and not practice can lead to outlawing of corporal punishment and homeschooling. A perfect example of this was the raid on the polygamist compound in Texas where one unsubstantiated rumor of abuse led to armed law enforcement officials swooping in and removing hundreds of children from their homes. It took weeks for these children to be reunited with their parents. I am sure that the members of the FLDS cult assumed that could never happen, but it did and we had better be vigilant in our suburban homes and orderly mainstream churches because the same thing could happen to us.

Thus our quandary. No one likes to see an 11 year old die from a very treatable disease. The impulse can very easily be to wonder why the state didn’t step in. But when you read words like: ““The free exercise clause of the First Amendment protects religious belief, but not necessarily conduct.”, it can be chilling. Where do we draw the line? What is to regulate the well-meaning, in some cases, intrusion by the state into parental rights? The law runs on precedent and if the precedent becomes that the First Amendment, especially as it pertains to parents and children, only covers belief and not practice, what will stop the state from mandating public school for homeschooled kids, from banning any sort of corporal discipline in families, ultimately from banning religious instruction for children as being unhelpful to the promulgation of a pluralistic society? These are not alarmist statements, these are real questions we need to ask and think through before we look around and see our children being taken away.

The potential cost of "choice"

How many great people have been lost to "choice"?

(HT Joe VonDoloski)

Obama Administration Day One: Socialism is already on the march!

The Wall Street Journal is reporting this morning that the Obama administration is rushing to get more assistance to troubled banks…

Shares of the biggest names in American banking plunged Tuesday as some investors feared that the government would need to nationalize the most deeply wounded financial institutions, wiping out stockholders.

The hours-old administration of President Barack Obama is expected to move swiftly to try to stabilize the financial system by pumping more capital into weakened banks and buying bad assets. Nationalization appears to be a last resort, but other options on the table move the U.S. in that direction. In one idea under consideration, the government could buy convertible securities from financial institutions, an approach that could ultimately leave the government owning large chunks of many firms' common shares.

The scary part of that is the word “nationalization”. What does that mean?

James Smith, CEO of Webster Financial Corp., a Waterbury, Conn., lender whose shares fell 21% Tuesday, said investors seem rattled by the prospect that the government could nationalize banks and wipe out shareholders in the process. He said nationalization will likely be a last resort. "That last resort doesn't seem so far removed at this point, particularly because of valuations," Mr. Smith said. "There's a lot of fear out there."
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U.S. officials are wary about taking the most extreme step -- nationalizing banks altogether -- worried about the government's ability to run them. The challenges of running Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two large mortgage-finance firms the government took over last fall, are seen as evidence of that.

But as the market value of many firms evaporates, they may be left with no other alternatives to raise cash. From a political standpoint, there's not much support for protecting shareholders of banks when the government is pouring billions of dollars into the institutions and in some cases guaranteeing their debt.

So in essence, if you own shares of stock in a bank my understanding is that your shares would lose all of their value. That would permanently wipe out a lot of wealth. If you own, as I do, shares in banks that have lost a ton of value the hope is that they will recover their value over time. But if I am understanding this correctly, nationalizing these banks means that Uncle Sam takes over and you lose your equity forever. That is not going to hurt just the fat cat bankers in pinstriped suits, smoking cigars. Lots of pension funds, mutual funds and individual investors also invest in banks and they will lose a ton of money. How confident do you feel that the same government that let Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac collapse and that handled the Hurricane Katrina aftermath will make super-great bankers? Me, not so much.

I do not think that there is not an easy answer to this problem. The fact remains that banks are one of the economic drivers of our economy, especially since we are so dependent on credit to fuel the economy. If you want to buy a car, you typically need access to credit. If you want to buy a house, same thing. Because people can’t get credit, they cannot buy and sell houses freely, leaving more and more houses in foreclosure. People can’t buy cars, so the auto plants sit empty. As I drive around the Detroit metro area, it is weird to see all these huge auto plants sitting with empty parking lots. It is going to take a lot more than empty rhetoric about “hope” and “change” to fix what ails us, it is going to take some backbone and a willingness to let things get worse before they get better. Otherwise the economic downturn will turn into a permanent state of malaise, dumping trillions of dollars in debt onto future generations and leaving much of our nation’s economy in the hands of the Federal government which will be disastrous. Some other nation will eventually fill in the vacuum whether China or India or some as yet unseen future economic power. If we abdicate control of the economy to the government, we will go the way of Western Europe as a fading power.

I would say that I got out of banking just in time.

Nice political speech

But I thought it was supposed to be a prayer? Rick Warren asked for forgiveness for everything but our sins before God. At least he invoked Jesus in about a dozen different languages...

Never thought I would see the day

Setting aside, just for a second, his politics did you ever think you would see a black man standing on the steps of the Capitol taking the oath of office as President of the United States?

More on the Supper

The Assembling of the Church: What makes a meal the Lord's Supper?

Alan Knox took my previous post and launched an excellent discussion. There is a particularly interesting exchange between Alan and a guy named Todd about the nature, authority, parameters of the local church where we see the impact of traditional church definitions coloring the understanding of not just who the church is but who and what can participate in the Lord's Supper. The idea is that if an unbeliever takes the cracker and juice in a local church body, that doesn't mean he is observing the Lord's Supper because he is not one of Christ's sheep. Likewise believers in a home who are gathered in fellowship together are observing the Supper even though they are not in a church building. I particularly liked this comment from Alan:

To be completely honest, I am not interested at all in how unrengerate people approach the Lord's Supper, because they cannot partake of the Lord's Supper, even if they eat and drink. Instead, I am concerned with the church. I am not concerned with a particular church organization - with membership decided by some group or bylaws or whatever. I'm talking about God's children - the regenerate, the saved, believers, whatever you want to call them. As far as I can, in Scripture, the only requirement for being part of the church is being a child a God - being regenerate.

Check it out, this is good stuff!

A media free zone

I am declaring myself to be in a media free zone today. I listened to regular radio last night on my drive home and it was wall to wall Obama. The nonstop breathless comparisons of Obama to Lincoln, FDR, JFK and Reagan all in one are ridiculous for a man who hasn't even been sworn in yet. People are going to be awfully disappointed tomorrow morning when they find out the economy is still in the doldrums, the is still war and hatred in the world and their mortgage company still expects a payment this month.

At around noon today Obama takes office. I wish I could be as excited as so many other people, but I really wish that someone other than an far left, rabidly pro-abortion black man was the first to break the color barrier. In other words, somebody other than Barack Obama (J.C. Watts would have been nice...) This is a "historic event" (perhaps the most overused term of the year, every inauguration is a historic event) but it is also a sad one. It is a great testimony to our nation that since John Adams assumed the Presidency from George Washington in 1797 we have an unbroken string of peaceful transfers of power. Even when Presidents Lincoln and Kennedy were assassinated, our system worked and it is working again today. But it is sad that this man, of all men, is the one taking office today.

I am planning on spending some time at noon today in prayer, praying that God in His sovereign mercy will change the heart of Barack Obama as it pertains to the murder of the unborn. Proverbs 21:1 says: The king's heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord; he turns it wherever he will. God can change Barack Obama's heart. In fact only God can change his heart. I am praying for our nation to repent for the blood of millions of unborn innocents that has been shed in this country, sacrificed on the altar of choice and profit. I know these verses in Ezekiel are speaking of Israel and not directly applicable to America, but the theme is similar and the words are chilling.

20 And you took your sons and your daughters, whom you had borne to me, and these you sacrificed to them to be devoured. Were your whorings so small a matter 21 that you slaughtered my children and delivered them up as an offering by fire to them? 22 And in all your abominations and your whorings you did not remember the days of your youth, when you were naked and bare, wallowing in your blood. Ezekiel 16: 20-22

So let us pray today for repentance, for forgiveness, for the changed heart of a ruler. If today is not a day that inspires prayer, what day is?

Confessions, priests and control

One of the great verses concerning the forgiveness of our sins achieved at the cross of Christ is 1 John 1:9: If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. How sweet are those words to the sinner! How magnificent and glorious is our Savior, faithful and just and forgiving! Unfortunately there have always been some who wish to add conditions and structures around this passage.

A new report is out that the church in Rome is seeking to reinvigorate the doctrine of penance by opening up the archives of the really bad sins that only the "pope" can forgive.

ROME – One of the Vatican's most secrecy shrouded tribunals, which handles confessions of sins so grave only the pope can grant absolution, is giving the faithful a peek into its workings for the first time in its 830-year history.

The Vatican has long lamented that fewer and fewer Catholics are going to confession, the sacrament in which the faithful can receive forgiveness if they sincerely confess their sins to a priest.

To combat the decline, the so-called "tribunal of conscience" invited the public into the frescoed halls of its imposing 16th-century palazzo for a two-day conference that ended Wednesday.

The aim was to explain what the Apostolic Penitentiary actually does, and thereby encourage more of the faithful to go to confession, said Monsignor Gianfranco Girotti, the tribunal's No. 2 official.

"Even though it's the oldest department of the Holy See, it's very little known — specifically because by its nature it deals with secret things," he said. "We want to relaunch the sacrament of penance."

I found it interesting that the biggest sins are not genocide or other horrific crimes but sins that strike at Roman dogma, tradition or ceremonies.

Confessions of even the most heinous of crimes and sins — such as genocide or mass murder — are handled at the local level by priests and their bishops and are not heard by the tribunal.

Its work involves those sins that are reserved for the pope — considered so serious that a local priest or bishop is not qualified to grant absolution, said Cardinal James Francis Stafford, an American who heads the Apostolic Penitentiary.

These include defiling the Eucharist, which Catholics believe is the body and blood of Christ. Stafford said this offense is occurring with more and more frequency, not just in satanic rites but by ordinary faithful who receive Communion and then remove the host from their mouths and spit it out or otherwise desecrate it.

Others include a priest breaking the seal of the confessional by revealing the nature of the sin and the person who sought penance, or a priest who has sex with someone and then offered forgiveness for the act.

These sins bring automatic excommunication from the church. Once absolution is granted, the excommunication is lifted, Stafford said.

So what is the problem? Shouldn’t we confess our sins, isn’t that what 1 John 1:9 says? Absolutely we should confess our sins, but is it a requirement that we confess those sins to a Roman priest? For that matter do we need or should we seek a human priest at all?

Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. (Heb 4:14-16)

Christ and Christ alone is our only priest, and we no longer have nor do we need nor should we desire to have another. Is Christ sufficient or is He not?

I may not be representing the "official" dogma of the Roman church on penance, but the practical interpretation is that in order for sins to be confessed and forgiven, one must appear before a Roman official, and only a Roman official, and confess them and receive some sort of penance. From the Catholic Encyclopedia…

The Sacrament of Penance

Penance is a sacrament of the New Law instituted by Christ in which forgiveness of sins committed after baptism is granted through the priest's absolution to those who with true sorrow confess their sins and promise to satisfy for the same. It is called a "sacrament" not simply a function or ceremony, because it is an outward sign instituted by Christ to impart grace to the soul. As an outward sign it comprises the actions of the penitent in presenting himself to the priest and accusing himself of his sins, and the actions of the priest in pronouncing absolution and imposing satisfaction. This whole procedure is usually called, from one of its parts, "confession", and it is said to take place in the "tribunal of penance", because it is a judicial process in which the penitent is at once the accuser, the person accused, and the witness, while the priest pronounces judgment and sentence. The grace conferred is deliverance from the guilt of sin and, in the case of mortal sin, from its eternal punishment; hence also reconciliation with God, justification. Finally, the confession is made not in the secrecy of the penitent's heart nor to a layman as friend and advocate, nor to a representative of human authority, but to a duly ordained priest with requisite jurisdiction and with the "power of the keys", i.e., the power to forgive sins which Christ granted to His Church. (Emphasis Added)

We not only don't have but we don't need a human priest nor do we worship a God unfamiliar with human suffering. He opened the way, He intercedes for His people. The idea that we need to confess a sin to a priest, or that certain sins require different levels of human intercession are foreign to the Bible and illegitimate. The only “duly ordained” priest that exists or we need is the great High Priest Jesus Christ, our only intermediary: For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, (1 Tim 2:5) Why does Rome even have these sorts of dogmas when they serve no purpose and are so clearly directly contradictory with the Scripture? One word: control.

The confessional is but one of the control methods exerted by Rome. By making the institution of the church essential for all aspects of the Christian life, the institution begins to exert control over individuals. The institution of the church is the sole source for so much in the Catholic's life. Have sins you want to confess? You have to go to the priest. Baptism and communion? Available only though the institution of the church and the intermediaries it appoints. Seeking to hear the Gospel? You need a priest to declare it and interpret it for you. How can a regular Joe without a seminary degree and a priestly collar hope to read the Word and understand it? From birth through your whole life to the Last Rites at death, you are controlled by the institutional Roman church and she controls you completely because you have abdicated all control to that organization.

There are many who wish to gloss over the differences of doctrine and core beliefs between Rome and orthodox Christianity. They urge us to focus on social issues, to find common ground. Christian leaders lined up to praise deceased disciples of Rome from “Pope” John Paul to “Mother” Theresa. However there can be no common ground among those who affirm and those who deny the Gospel, a Gospel that proclaims that sinners are justified by faith alone by grace alone in Christ alone. I am all for reconciliation with Rome, just as soon as Rome rejects the anathemas of Trent, when the “pope” stops having men bow before him and kiss his ring, when Rome declares that sinners are not and cannot be justified by anything other than the blood of Christ. Isn’t that harsh, don’t we all believe in the same basic things? No, we don’t. Christians recognize that a sinner is made right with God only one way, through faith alone in Christ. That essential, core doctrine is not only not taught by Rome, it is rejected as anathema.

Canon 9: "If any one saith, that by faith alone the impious is justified; in such wise as to mean, that nothing else is required to co-operate in order to the obtaining the grace of Justification, and that it is not in any way necessary, that he be prepared and disposed by the movement of his own will; let him be anathema."

Canon 12: "If any one shall say that justifying faith is nothing else than confidence in the divine mercy pardoning sins for Christ's sake, or that it is that confidence alone by which we are justified ... let him be accursed"

Canon 30: "If any one saith, that, after the grace of Justification has been received, to every penitent sinner the guilt is remitted, and the debt of eternal punishment is blotted out in such wise, that there remains not any debt of temporal punishment to be discharged either in this world, or in the next in Purgatory, before the entrance to the kingdom of heaven can be opened (to him); let him be anathema."

(for a complete list of these anathemas and the Scriptural refutation of them, see CARM’s article Council of Trent: Canons on Justification)

So what the Roman leaders at the Council of Trent declared almost 500 years ago, and has never been refuted or reversed by Rome, is that the Gospel of Jesus Christ of the unmerited justification of sinners by faith alone is anathema. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is declared accursed. How can we have any sort of fellowship with an institution that declares the Gospel anathema?

Unfortunately there are some creeping intrusions and some vestiges of Romanism in many Christian institutions and organizations.

Try becoming a member at a local Baptist church without having been properly baptized in a like-minded church. Try telling them that your friend Steve, who is a mature and committed Christian lay person, witnessed to you of Christ and after much prayer and wrestling with the Word you were born again by the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit and submitted to baptism by Steve in a local river in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. See if that flies. Why, how can that be? Your friend Steve has not been duly ordained by a registered, incorporated 501(c)(3) church body! You need a pastor to interview you to make sure you are really saved, as if a pastor is more apt to recognize the fruit of conversion than a lay person. As if men with seminary degrees are not baptizing people who show no sign of regeneration outside of walking an aisle every Sunday across this nation. The heresies of Rome are insidious and seductive. The only defense against them is the Word. Stray from that and start placing your trust in men, in confession, in organizations and the slippery slope becomes almost inevitable.

Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. Hebrews 10:23

Consider yourself warned

I am trying to clean out the 80 draft blog posts I have accumulated over the last year or so and I am feeling feisty and full of (self) righteous indignation, so it is going to be blogging fast and furious and more than a little smarmy.

You have been warned.

Two thoughts on headcovering

So I keep beating this drum, and I imagine that those few hardy souls who read this blog are getting sick to death of hearing about it and frankly I am getting a little weary of writing about it. Having said that, I find myself writing about head covering again because I really think that this issue is one that exposes the disconnect between what is said and what is practiced in so many churches. It is said that this church or that is all about the inerrancy and infallibility of the Scripture, but there are still places where church traditions run contrary to the Word, and too often the tradition wins. The wearing of headcovers is kind of my poster child for the need for reformation in the church, not because I think that if all Christian women start to cover their heads it will fix all of the problems in the church but because it is an issue that really gets under the skin of the traditionalists in the institutional church. It is interesting the reaction some people have to this issue. Many people give it careful and prayerful study and consideration. Not all of them come to the same conclusion but at least they are working through the issue. However some people see this issue as a threat to their traditions and as such seek to quash it. Often times the source of this hostility is the pulpit or the pen of “learned” men. Some men preach on this text when they come across it through expository preaching and some men preach on it to make some sort of point. When you preach with a personal agenda instead of preaching the Word, you are on shaky ground.

What kind of set me off again was that I read John MacArthur in a sermon dealing with the first half of 1 Corinthians 11 called The Subordination and Equality of Women . One of his opening paragraphs says:

To try to understand exactly what the situation was in the city of Corinth secularly, what it was in the church of Corinth in terms of the spiritual life, what was going on in the mind of Paul and push all of that up into the modern day is not easy. We don't have a lot of background.

It is intersting that Dr. MacArthur admits that we don't have a lot of the background on Corinth, but that doesn't stop him from using that limited knowledge to deny what Paul wrote. Dr. MacArthur’s mantra regarding headcovering is: It's cultural, it's cultural, and it’s cultural! But in other places, he argues just the opposite about other Scriptural issues regarding men and women. Biblical complementarians have a rocky path when affirming Biblical roles for men and women against the prevailing culture on one hand but then appealing to cultural norms and practices to reject women covering their heads on the other.

So I have two points that have come to mind regarding the practice of head covering.

The first goes back to the primary argument against headcovering, the culture of Corinth argument. The argument that headcovering is cultural and reserved for Corinth at that time and in that place only can sound great on the surface, and indeed much of the reasoning is sound. There is only one problem. The culture argument doesn't exist. Paul nowhere in 1 Corinthians 11 refers to head covering as a cultural issue or one reserved for Corinth. He barely speaks of Corinth at all. The language he uses is anything but specific to Corinth but is instead appealing to universal doctrines of creation order, of Biblical headship, of submission.

What the “it is only cultural” arguments try to do is impose a cultural framework, a cultural explanation for headcovering where one doesn't exist in the Scriptures. It may be true that headcovering was a tradition of Corinth, but that is irrelevant to the text because Paul does not appeal to or refer to that cultural tradition of Corinth at all. In fact the traditions he does refer to are traditions that he taught them, not local traditions: …maintain the traditions even as I delivered them to you.(1 Cor 11:2, emphasis added). Paul certainly did not deliver the traditions of Corinth to the Corinthian people. That would be like someone from India flying to Boston on St. Patrick’s Day to deliver the traditional Irish celebration of that holiday. So how does it make any sense to assume that Paul is speaking of Corinthian traditions when he explicitly says to maintain the traditions he brought and makes no mention of the alleged Corinthian traditions at all? All throughout the New Testament we make universal applications of teachings addressed to specific locales. Even in 1 Corinthians 1 we see the admonition of Paul against factions within the church. That was a problem apparently in Corinth because he specifically says it was an issue, but the application is universal. What about 1 Corinthians 5? I assume that no one brushes off the admonition against having relations with your step-mom as being a cultural issue!

What we see is the taking of a cultural norm, and I am not sure if it really is a cultural norm in Corinth or not, I am just taking their word for it, and then assuming that is what the Scripture is speaking of. I would hazard that many of the men who throw the “Corinthian culture” argument out really don’t know a thing about the culture in Corinth outside of what they have read someone else say about Corinthian culture. Good, solid, conservative Christian teachers would reject the idea of applying external culture to the Scripture in issues ranging from women teachers to divorce to homosexuality. Yet they will stumble over themselves in finding alleged cultural norms in Corinth to explain away headcovering. The modus operandi is to throw out some assertions about life in Corinth, say that is what Paul is talking about, quote a couple of famous contemporary Bible teachers and then slip out the back door. There is a logical fallacy here. Just because a condition exists does not in and of itself require that it is the underlying issue especially when Paul makes no mention of the culture of Corinth in relation to head covering. None.

The second point is this. Even if you say that 1 Corinthians 11 is speaking of headcovering as a cultural manifestation of a wife's Biblical submission to her husband, which I reject but go with it for a second, doesn't that mean that even if headcovering itself is not a universal principle, then the principle of a wife exhibiting submission publicly to her husband is a universal principle? Verse 10 says: That is why a wife ought to have a symbol of authority on her head, because of the angels. (1 Cor 11:10). If we say that headcovering itself was a cultural symbol, the underlying universal principle is that women should exhibit some sort of sign of the authority of her husband. But what symbol of submission do we see in our culture? Honestly, outside of headcovering there isn't one. I have already dealt with the wedding ring, that is clearly not a sign of submission. Some of the most cowed men in America have wives wearing rings. So what else is there? Is there a suitable substitute? Can proper behavior substitute for a sign or symbol of authority? If an angel or messenger or visitor sees women in church with heads bowed and praying, how can they tell who are living under the Biblical authority of their husbands without a visible sign? How can we tell a woman who accepts and embraces the authority of her husband from one who doesn’t? Maybe they can wear little buttons with an “S” for submissive? Or maybe, just maybe, they could wear a covering on their head.

I can assure you of this, within the church, a woman who is wearing a headcovering is seen as exhibiting submission to her husband. Many of the feminized, egalitarian, "submissive in name alone" women in church will pity the poor thing but they will understand what she is doing even in today's Biblically illiterate church. I am one of the few male bloggers who speak of headcovering, most of the advocates of headcovering are women and their husbands are the reluctant ones. Those women are not poor repressed creatures, they are seeking to walk more closely in accord with the Word and that should be praiseworthy and not downtrodden by self-proclaimed learned men. Would that more Christians sought a closer walk of obedience to Scripture in deed and not just word! I am convinced that for the majority of women in the church, the issue has little to do with head covering in and of itself, rather it is a visceral reaction to being told what to do coupled with a reluctance on the part of men to tell them what they should be doing. I get nauseous when I listen to or read of men from the pulpit dealing with Ephesians 5:22 or 1 Timothy 2:12 stammering or wringing their hands or telling jokes or worst of all apologizing to avoid the wrath of women because they are afraid to preach what God's Word says for fear of offense. Man up and preach the Word boldly or sit down and be quiet! If you cause offense to the unruly and disobedient and they stop giving, get a job and keep preaching!

Ultimately the practice of headcovering should have one goal, that is of giving glory to God. 1 Corinthians 10: 31 says So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. What we do, we ought to do for the glory of God. If you cover your head or if your wife covers her head, it ought to be done out of obedience to the Word in command and out of Biblical submission. But above all it should be done to the glory of God. Not so you can seem externally more pious than your neighbor, or so you can use it as an exclusion of others but as a humble submission to the apostle’s teaching.

(To those who rail against headcovering, how is doing so bringing glory to God?)