Christian values?

This is in reply to a Conservative website. Conservatives, whose thought exemplifies the "love of money [which] is the root of all sorts of evil", and also "the deceitfulness of riches" whereby the conscience is depraved (both are Biblical quotes) are fond of saying that Western Culture is built on Christian principles. This is arrant and arrogant nonsense. Since when was the West EVER built on love mercy and forgiveness? It never was. Stern moralism was ever the core of societies as diverse as Confucian China and even Aztec America where children were expected to be obedient to parents. People spouting such nonsense as I refer to above know neither their Bibles nor history for moralism alone is not Christian, not when it is common throughout the world, and the distinctive Christian value which makes the difference is not in evidence in any public square

(more may follow)

Lord and Saviour

I am a legalist. This is solidly entrenched and of my own will immovable. Who therefore do I take to be  my Lord and Saviour separate and distinct from Who He is in truth? For I do submit these two are different things

I know that I do not love God, even though for the moment I am putting aside the notion that God loves me to make a point about legalism. My spontaneous responses, my careless words, make the fact that I do not love God abundantly clear, and all my legalism has done is stir up my sin to make it worse even to the point of being no  longer manageable  in any practical sense

Years ago I had a gigantic outburst of aphorism writing. One of them was : "self ruling legalists are not monarchists but autocrats". This was a pun on the Greek  for autocrat means rule of self and by monarchist here I mean being a proper subject of God Almighty. I still seek to rule myself that I may escape the taint of sin. This is not love or faith but the proud refusal to hide any evidence that I am in fact a sinner. It is also a refusal, both proud and fearful, to accept the forgiveness of sin for a trademark of the legalist is to think in his heart of hearts that the forgiveness of  sin is a license to sin. Although legalists make much noise about the commandments of God the whole motivation, given that to forsake God for the Law is deadly heresy, as Paul the Apostle says in his letter to the Galatians, is to rule one's self.  It is in short a flagrant and total denial of the gospel, and as carnal men when serious about their religion are legalist, this confirms that the carnal mind is always at enmity to God, so thus we, as carnal minds are still at enmity to God. This I submit explains why legalists are so cruel and judgemental, even if the cruelty, as in my case, was turned inwards. If their efforts were in true submission to God the fruit of the Spirit would be forthcoming, namely kindness, gentleness, mercy.

Therefore I am my own Lord. Though the average sinner might rule himself by claiming the right to self indulgence the entire dynamic of legalism is still self rule, though more self oppression than self indulgence, but no less self rule for that.

As to stopping myself from sinning  in the hope that if I do God will save me from hell at the last day, well of course the initiative here  rests with the legalist. This denies the scripture "it does not depend on him who wills or runs but on God who has the mercy."   Of course what a legalist cannot admit to he will ignore if he can't tell lies about it. That is why he is forever telling self or others to "make the act of will" or is open to being bullied by others to attempt such,

The thing is that the act of will is not the solution to the issue of sin for the will is the problem, and must be so if we are accountable for our impulses. And if the scripture says that to lust is adultery even before the impulse is acted on, because as a man thinks in his heart so he is, then of course the impulse is the true locus of our will and the true manifestation of sin. So our efforts are acts not of the will but against it, turning us into a divided kingdom that cannot stand

Naturally this goes far too deep for the carnal mind, of whom the legalist is but one kind of representative, So we legalists will either deny  the fact and ignore the scripture that plainly says so, or, if we are really deeply deluded, as I am, we will try by brute force to crush the impulse and have the effrontery to ask God to help us.

But I know for a fact, after decades of bitter experience, that He will never lift so much as  a finger to help me save myself from sin. He will save me from it by leading  me to a heart confession of our own evil desires at the deepest level  of our wicked hearts. But He will do this in gentleness and patience, for if He  did not the knowledge would destroy us if we insisted, and I did, on delving the depths of our own heart like the dwarves of Moria delved too deeply and awoke a literal Balrog  demon. We awake our own sin,  for I only speak metaphorically of Middle earth here, and   knowledge of the same in fear and guilt which is in diametric opposition to that conviction of sin which is a gift of God's grace given in relationship  to Him in One on one counsel; such carnally gotten knowledge of sin will rampage to destroy.

I am not denying His grace here I am saying we have subverted it into something it is not, that the reified power we seek does not exist and our believing that it will aid our decision after and only after we have made it is a cop out, a refusal to face  what our impulses signify and is in fact a manifestation of the Pelagian heresy.

We call our efforts obedience, or mortifying the flesh, and the thinking behind it we call faith. It is nothing of the sort, lest God owe an apology to the Pharisees.,

But of course we do not trust Him, not really, so will cling ferociously to our regime of self brutalization  even though it is killing us.

I am my own saviour,  and this beneath all the rhetoric, my lying rhetoric, to the contrary.

To even believe, I must be saved by the Saviour of mankind, Jesus Christ, God the Son, from my unbelief and that by His leading me to confess it, acknowledging that I in fact do not believe and so all my efforts to do so are blasphemous hypocrisy and deadly dangerous to the  welfare of my own soul.

Such is why, incidentally , I reject that ancient heresy  currently given a new name by John MacArthur - Lordship Salvation, for, as I hope to have explained, it is nothing of the sort .

So as a legalist, intent, nay even hell bent on saving myself, I must continue to seek the Lord the Spirit  to repent of the foul sin which is my own righteousness.

Of course He will get argument from me.

There is no point in concealing it

A declaration

As the modern debacle of the Paris accord shows clearly, with its endorsing of the greatest delusion of modern times, namely that global warming still persists (it stopped in 1998) and was caused by man, we see that modern man is as priest ridden and as irrationally tribal as our medieval European ancestors. In those days the priests were of the catholic church, corrupt and arrogant. These days the priests call themselves scientists and are a corrupt as ever, silencing dissent and not refuting debate, which debate always was always a necessary part of the endeavour of science, but appealing to their priestly authority and tweaking data according to computer programs and assumptions which the raw data refute.

THEREFORE I am now declaring myself a climate PROTESTANT. There is no mediator between man and scientific truth but the evidence and I will not be bludgeoned by priesthoods that usurp the place of evidence and reason, which, as the evidence makes clear, the warmists have done repeatedly. As another most famous protestant said centuries ago, "Here I stand I can do no other"

I will post further. I am convinced that the whole story of man made glob al warming is indeed a delusion and nothing good can come of it

" . . .Pwns atheist on genetic fallacy"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RS5TguR7Sfo

To rebuke death with harsh condemnation is not to offer life, or even show that we who would preach are even alive in the first place

When I saw this link on youtube I was expecting to see a calm, cool,  polite  and respectful demolition of said genetic fallacy. What I saw in stead was a blistering piece of self righteous rage from the apologist aimed at a boy who made a careless assumption.

And we dare call this apologetics and contending for the faith?

How any of us are so lost in logic, apologetic, debate and propositional truth  that our consciences have atrophied to the point that we think our retaliation, and this is what this is, is righteous and godly?

Truth is more, much more, than proposition. Truth is a Person, and though we may witness to proposition by reasoned debate, even reasoned debate done with ill  temper  as I have seen time and time again, to witness to the Man Who is truth  is done with and shown by our fruit. That is to say if we do not have the gentleness and respect that St Peter's letter enjoins upon us we do not know the Person we testify to, and in fact, in reducing the gospel to mere ideology we are thinking and acting according to the principles of the world

The mere fact that the video was entitled  "Cliff pwns atheist on genetic fallacy" when nothing of the sort was done  shows how mission can and does become idolatrous obsession.  Even the word "pwn" which comes from computer gaming, shows this. It speaks of arrogant bragging by a boy who has won an ego context

I'll say it again. If such anger as this is all we have to offer to unbelievers even when they make a foolish comment, then we have nothing to offer and ourselves are in need of the Gospel we show by our fruit to have forsken

Rome and I - in brief

This may be a preliminary post to the issue of Catholicism. It is from a facebook post of mine from some time age

Looking at a video by a notorious catholic baiter. John MacArthur on youtube I replied with this.
Catholics, who believe in the trinity, atonement, resurrection and second coming of Christ, while denying sola fide and sola scriptura are about as saved as we protestants, who believe in, well, yes, the trinity, atonement, resurrection and second coming of Christ but who show by our lives that we do not believe in sola fide (we would not be so legalistic if we did) and sola  scriptura (well, we would not chase preachers and christian writers so much if we did)

So what is the difference?

Catholics are a little more honest about what they really believe whereas we like to hide behind parroted utterances of sound doctrine which our lives show we do not believe.

And of course Protestants like MacArthur need something to hate, and Rome has been the lightning rod for that for centuries.

Given the great commonality between Rome and us of the protestant sects if they are not Christians neither are we, but if we Protestants are Christians so are they. We cannot have it both ways, as bigots of both camps insist, that the other set is not Christian

We are as Christian as each other, but that is not much

Subverted Scriptures 3

He became sin, the Word of God says or so it is paraphrased. 2 Cor 5 :21. says that God made Him (Christ), who knew no sin,   to be sin for us that we may become  the righteousness of God 

But what does the phrase made sin mean?

Naïve literalism is always the bane of the evangelical.

In this instance I submit that literalism subverts the meaning of the passage.

Joyce Meyer and others, chiefly as far as I know of the Word of Faith stable of preachers, have offered the fantastic and in my serious opinion blasphemous scenario that Jesus literally became sin. Like the medieval Catholics who they despise but so closely resemble, they need to over do the suffering, to turn the dying Christ into something hideous. In the late Middle Ages we see great tortured crucifixes covered with blood both in carving and painting. We Protestants affect to condemn such things but when our mental pictures are the same it make no difference.  Of course these preachers go further and ignoring that Jesus said "It is finished:"  John 19:30, have him being tortured in Hell, as if the cross really were not enough. Meyer speaks passionately of "My Jesus"  in regard to the fantasy character being so treated  Yes, that is her Jesus. I will concede this, but it is not the Jesus of Holy scripture.

The logic of the matter is that if Christ became sin then he became a sinner, for sin cannot be reified. It is a relationship, not a  thing. It cannot be separated out into some kind of black scum as in the episode of Star Trek the Next Generation  in which Tasha Yar was killed by such a black scum consisting of all the hate fear and rage of those  people it had encountered it. But reification is itself another bane of the naïvely  literalistic.

For if Jesus literally became sin He literally became a sinner,

If He became sin He rebelled against God,  so clearly was not God, so his death not only did not save Himself it did not save us.

What then does the term mean?

The NIV which I use as part of my Greek Interlinear quietly adds a footnote  to the word sin in this passage. This note is or "sin offering."

This is totally correct. Whatever the faults of the NIV this is not one of them.

Of course the term could be interpreted as "took the place of sin to bear its punishment."  But that is the same thing as "sin offering" when it comes to simple practicality.

Jesus the sinless lamb of God suffered in our place AS a sinless Lamb of God and not, dare I say it, as a filthy pox ridden goat.

So. A scripture is subverted. Some run with then and confirm the computing dictum GIGO (garbage in- garbage out)  by producing blasphemous nonsense which, as a reductio ad absurdam of the passage clearly shows not that the passage is in error but their  reading of it is  when it leads to such nonsense.

But alas, that is how most heresies arise. And as the ego of the heretic is usually invested in heresy, that is why heresies stay with us

My View on the Reformation - brief

This is from a comment of mine on you tube, expanded here somewhat

The depravity and foul tempers of the so called Reformers is why I reject the Reformation outright. Oh, the Catholics had the worse doctrine  but the foul fruit of the reformers show that they had their fair share of the spirit of antichrist.

There is more to a living and Biblical Christianity than doctrine. Doctrine is necessary but it is not enough. If it were sufficient then there would be no need for the fruit of the Spirit nor even the Spirit Himself  and as such God would owe an apology to the Pharisees who were, as a matter of historical fact, the one Jewish sect that were closest to Jesus when it came to doctrine. But as we all know they were the most strongly rebuked by the Messiah

I also find it a most bitter indictment of that whore which calls itself the Church of Christ that when religious liberty came to the West it came from the Enlightenment, Deists et al, who decided after seeing the blasphemous disgrace of the hate of the Christians for one another that the questions they murdered one another for were really quite stupid.

These questions were not stupid, of course, but that the Enlightenment men thought so is an example of the name of God being blasphemed by the Gentiles because of us who profess to believe

Of course all of us who are  so bent on defending our idols  will never dream for a moment that the Reformation led, by its very essence of hatred and rage, to the Enlightenment.

Strait is the gate and narrow the way, Jesus said. And looking at the fruit of these Reformation bigots I cannot see that any of them ever found it, or, if they did - and Luther may have -  ever stayed in it

There was no glory of God seen in the Reformation, just the most brutal religious quarrel in history; and I seriously contend that to honour these hate filled men, whose hate can be seen when looking at their pamphlets, full of both violent and obscene language, as well as can be seen in their deeds, to honour these is to honour a past that never was and is therefore  idolatry