A Retort

Some time ago I posted somewhere on some issue that really is not relevant to the point I seek to make here. But one of the replies was pure legalism. My interlocuter said that we do not get to cherry pick which commands to obey as Christianity is not a smorgasbord.

I saw no point in replying to him in the forum is question, but I think a valid point is to be made.

It says in James 2:10  that he who breaks one commandment has broken them all. It thus follows that only the perfectly sinless obey the Law, by which I mean the Moral law, for everyone else, namely sinners like us, simply do not and have not ever obeyed the Law of God.

And if anyone tries to claim that he is sufficiently free of sin to actually do so, well that is to claim perfection where there is none possible, as I John 1:10 says any who says he has no sin is a liar

Indeed Paul the Apostle also said this was the impossible  thing of the Law, and he tried hard enough to fail with specular agony. I also did and failed with years of real torment,

So, if a person does not obey the Law at all either he has cherry picked those commandments  he actually attempts to try - and failed of course - , or he has failed manifestly in all and his consistent legalistic approach  is useless.

Moreover I  assert that even trying to hold the entire Law in conscious thought to attempt to obey any of it is impossible anyway,  for the sheer strain is too much for any carnal mind.

As regards the question of legalism they ask should Christian keep the moral Law. This is a loaded question for the answer is apparently self evident. But to ask the proper question is to get a totally different answer.

This question is do any of us actually in point of fact obey the Law? The answer is NO.

This renders all our talk and all our efforts pointless.

There can only remain the personal relationship with the Spirit of Christ

My safety in Christ as it is now

I now know that I have never believed that God loved anyone, or that if He did it was only conditional on one's keeping of the Law, which I cannot do, so therefore I am excluded.

There is not the slightest value in my asserting propositions just because they are true. Such is not faith but hypocrisy  and it is an effort I can no longer endure let alone practice.  This effort is not holding fast to sound doctrine  as St Paul commands but is in fact a refusal. a self righteous one to boot, to acknowledge the sin of unbelief  whereby we have already forsaken said sound doctrine.

Thus the primacy of the intellect, a doctrine the Puritans built their lives on, is part of the hypocrite's mandate. In repressing my unbelieving heart I stirred up my unbelief to  an unmanageable extent. It is better to confess unbelief than pretend faith, and C S Lewis notwithstanding, pretending to faith is a blasphemous absurdity.

How can I be a Christian then? Not by what I believe but by Who I met that dark night now just over 38 years ago. Indeed without such encounter I hold that no one is a Christian at all, though what the encounter is, the nature of it,  is to be determined by what God knows is needful in every individual person.

And how does the Lord keep me safe, for my sense of safety in Him is slowly but genuinely growing?

He gives me ecstasy in my meditations of the Mysterium Tremendum, the tremendous mystery of His unutterable holiness.

Some 5 years  after I was converted he gave me a revelation of this, as I previously shared here earlier.

Although at this time my terror is coming out, He leads me in one on one counsel to confess to Him that I am in fact terrified - no "confessions of faith" here. Then He leads me to repent of some aspect of the unbelief behind the fear, whatever it suits His purpose to lead me in at that time. This is pure personal relationship between a terrified child and his daddy, or a patient and his counsellor - but God the Spirit is the only counsellor I will ever accept now - and it is  nothing else. I am totally helpless and reliant on His leading in cleansing.

My safety is that He is Holy and Terrible. This is not fear but Awe. And if I must tell Him that the notion that loving Him is utter nonsense or that He loves anything  but Himself is pure wishful thinking, so be it. Such as this must be confessed, for if not, and it is in you, it will destroy your faith as it nearly destroyed mine.

But I am drawn by the Tremendous Mystery  of the Holy and Terrible. the one thing I have always listened to. If I could admit to it I have discovered  by experience and relationship  His gentleness  patience and kindness, but that I cannot bring my self to do. Not yet, at least.

So though unbelieving I am relatively safe.

This work, though provisional, being a stepping stone to a further goal, is the Lord's doing and it is marvelous in my eyes

Subverted Scriptures 4

"Be angry but do not sin"  Ephesians 4:26 is subverted by being taken out of context, which in this instance is the broader context of scripture as a whole  given that other passages on the subject of wrath are scattered throughout the Bible.

The implication taken from this verse read alone, and I have been told this  by those subverting the verse in the very manner I am writing about here, is that anger is not sin.

This is usually untrue. The Sermon on the Mount is most clear

He who is angry at his brother is a murderer, and elsewhere it is written that the anger of man does not work the righteousness of God. Likewise is wrath listed as one of the fruits of the flesh.

Of course they are keen to subvert the scripture here in order to justify their own anger. But it is not an anger in love for it is not an anger for those who do evil such that they earnestly long for their reconciliation to God and their restoration, even though many will tell bare faced lies concerning their own motive here. For the anger of man requires vengeance first, while for the wrath of God, longsuffering, that is to say patient, anger is the last resort.

Indeed even when as an unbeliever I was under wrath of God  the Holy Spirit himself reached down in love  to save me one dark night almost exactly 38 years ago. This is not the anger of men

There is righteous anger but one must be spiritual to be righteously angry.

And the fruit of the Spirit I have never seen in any living person, Oh, I know some Christian who would count as commonly decent, but as Jesus said if you love those who love you, which is te basic meaning of the term common decency,  there is no merit in it.

(I will return later to provide biblical references for the quotes made here)

Being a good person: the unplatable truth of human nature

The way it goes and I have seen certain questions become litmus tests for this very thing, is that if one wants to show oneself to be a good person then one either seeks to love something, which is difficult for it requires commitment, a love in fact, and effort and even what may be called sacrifice; or one finds something evil to hate. This latter is much easier and I see it time and time again, I have even done it myself. But as scripture says our righteousness is filthy rags, in other words it simply does not count, for it is self righteousness. Righteous anger is not what evil you are angry at but how you are angry at it, otherwise the destructive raping and murdering anger of the Soviet armies as they plunged into Germany at the end of World War II was righteous. Think so? I assuredly do not, and feel it necessary to regard the view I hold here as the only  alternative to such I can find.

When Social Justice Warriors go berserk at an evil, even a real and manifest evil, and riot, throw tantrums, or a preacher rants about executing homosexuals simply because of an out of context misuse of a  verse in the Law of God, we see, independent of any objective truth about the evil, an evil response.

Righteous anger, I assert, is angry not  at the evil doer so much as is  angry for them, deeply desiring their restoration, where human anger simply wants heads to roll in order to make the bad go away for the convenience of the angry person. Hence virtually all the demonstrations against evil I have witnessed over the years, from those against football matches with an apartheid nation, as in 1981, one of which I saw as  a student then, to those for or against homosexuality or abortion are all the anger of men which does not work the righteousness of God (James 1:20), for   even when the issue has no personal connection with the protester, it has become a litmus test for goodness  but it is pointless, being a shibboleth to identify friend from foe not an expression of loving one's enemies

It is a bitter irony that the only people who say that man is evil are great saints, and I know none, or misanthropes, which I have been. However I suspect that misanthropes are embittered because they see perhaps only dimly, but it seems to me clearer than most, what they cannot accept

But as the Spirit leads me to repent of further man pleasing and idolatry I will come to accept what I begin to see, namely that as I am evil I do not need to conjure up a hatred of evil which is self righteousness, nor hold certain positions on certainly litmus questions in order to be seen as good by pothers, nor force good works which are invalidated as good works by their motives (see I Corinthians 13).

That my righteous is filthy rags is unpalatable to all of us. But being honest about it as well as seeking the Lord the Spirit concerning it makes for a much easier life and will contribute to gaining the peace  which surpasses all understanding

Greens and Global Warming

I used to be mildly sympathetic to the ideas of the Green party. But no longer.

I researched Global Warming, now called Climate Change in tacit acknowledgement that the climate has stopped warming for if it were still warming the term global warming would still suffice. I came to the  conclusion that climate operates according to its own immutable laws and human activity is not connected to it in any significant way.

Indeed, for example, in the Medieval Warm period, which was warmer than today, CO2 levels were much lower. In fact you may not have heard of this period of history as the warmists have committed the contemptible fraud of denying it ever happened. But I know it is real  from my reading of history not from gazing at tree ring proxies. Why, I might add, would they have to propound this lie, for a lie it is, if they were speaking the truth? For that alone I might reject their claims as being based on lies. But the fact of the Medieval Warm Period destroys the connection on which the hysteria, and it is hysteria, is based.

Science is a human activity and as such is not immune form politics and fashion. Indeed I totally deplore the fact that too many people get their convictions on this matter from their politics and not from the science, with, in general,  leftists believing in Global Warming and rightists denying it.

I am an exception, and there are a few of us. I am a life long leftist who rejects the claim of man made global warming because of the science and evidence, both historical and empirical, and not from  my politics or any vague sense of leftist guilt

Given that global warming has ceased and was not caused by men, and given that the science saying so is valid despite the cries of those opposed to it, given all these things I have lost all respect for the so called Greens. Green does not mean a party that respects human life or people because after all the Nazis were green. They were even anti smoking long before anyone else . Green is an agrarian fantasy which conveniently overlooks the lives of those who lived in pre industrial societies which were nasty, brutal and short. Indeed the earth can only support the population it now has because of industrial and post industrial technology. This Malthus was dimly aware of when he predicted doom without knowing what industry and science could do. Agrarians must necessarily want to reduce the population by 90 percent, back to a level that is "sustainable" in agrarian terms.

So, as one critic said, they are melons: green on the outside red on the inside, or they are green as they are too yellow to call themselves red.

And now to what  moved me to post this. In my own country  the Labour Party, which I have supported with carrying degrees of commitment all my life, has made an alliance with the NZ Green Party. I deplore the NZ Labour party wanting to get into bed with such dangerous dreamers just as I deplore the self righteousness of the Green saying that those who care for the environment must therefore green. I deplore the big polluters as much as they do but their "solution " is ham fisted

Why do I take them to be genocidal as well as fantasists? The technologies touted by them are inefficient. They deplore fracking and despise nuclear technology, which is,  like it or not the only way to produce cheap energy in abundance. And note: the increase in lifespan noted over the last two centuries can be directly linked to the increase in energy production. So they must therefore, if at all consistent or well thought out - though to be fair they probably are neither of these things-  want to reduce the population by a great amount. Think about it. Do you want to return to the medieval period. a peasant in a mud hut dead before the age of 40 like our ancestors who lived green?

Diverting resources from real need to solve a bogus problem will itself kill people, just as I hear that the price of food has skyrocketed as farmers are rushing to grow bio fuels.

Sense must prevail otherwise seeking to avoid an imaginary disaster may produce a real disaster albeit it of as different kind.

Preachers and History I

Over the years I have heard many preachers appeal to history, both church and world history. As a history buff who really should have trained as a historian, I am not impressed. All too often their appeals are to justify a denominational prejudice or theological bandwagon.

For example, the Seventh Day Adventists have made up their mind that the Pope is the Antichrist. But as of course there has been more than one pope over the centuries they have to cut their cloth to fit their presumption. Thus to them the Beast is a system and an office, not a man.  How do they make this work? As always a good knowledge of scripture is required, but one that is resourceful, economical with truth and with no regard for historical fact or biblical context. 1260 days in prophecy is literally 1260 days but to cover a hatred such as theirs a period that  spans a millennium or more is requisite. So 1260 days becomes 1260 years and the fatal wound of prophecy becomes not a man literally rising from the dead but an institution losing temporal power . So they decide that the capture of the pope in 1798 by French Revolutionary forces will do. Then they work back 1260 years arriving at 538. The pope at the time was Vigilius. They claim that he received his power from the Emperor Justinian (though some preachers are so grossly incompetent as to not be able to get that one right) so Justinian was the dragon mentioned in scripture. But Vigilius was not favoured by his emperor. He in fact spent time in prison at the ire of Justinian for he would not compromise over a doctrinal issue concerning Monophysitism where the Emperor was desperate to keep the Eastern provinces in his Empire quiet by pleasing them where the were largely Monophysite

However such details matter not to the doctrinaire hater, so they invent an all powerful papacy But such is easily refuted

And this is done by refuting the claim that the popes had absolute power from 538 to 1798. The House of Theophylact.   is one such case. Its most notorious member was Marozia, daughter of Theophylact, Senator of Rome who was at the height of her power in 931. She was mother grandmother and great grandmother of popes, and she and her daughter held the papacy in her gift. The popes were pawns. The rule of these women was called the pornocracy (rule of whores) . But polemical catholic haters have never heard of this. It suits them to have an all powerful papacy as proof it is the Beast of Revelation. But this was not the only instance of papal impotence. When , after Boniface VIII claimed to be King of all the Earth (Unam Sanctam, 1302) the King of France showed his awe struck compliance by deporting the popes to Avignon (now southern France where he could keep an eye on them) for the next 70 years - 1309-78. they were puppets of the French King.

That Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV was made to submit to a pope at the village of Canossa in 1077 is taken as proof of papal power. But context determines all. Henry got his revenge some time later when it was politically expedient. Papal victory was not lasting. Neither was papal power.

Facts like these, ignored by polemicists, is why I no longer trust any preacher who claims he is speaking from history. If his lies are egregious and obviously so I write him off as a man of God. If his speech is better than that I will check it. But I have learned that as Christian men are not honest men one should never give unqualified assent to any preacher on this subject (history) ever again, nor, actually, if sola scriptura is true, should we be uncritical about any preacher on any subject at all, for it never ceased to be the case that we should test all things.

There are other issues where preachers show ignorance of history thus ignorance of truth. I may continue this as a short series

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)