It’s not just the military

A former Naval officer makes an observation in The Atlantic magazine:

I spent nine years on active duty in the U.S. Navy. I served as an aircraft commander, led combat reconnaissance crews, and taught naval history. But the first thing I did upon joining the military, the act that solemnized my obligation, was swear an oath to support and defend the Constitution. How strange, then, that despite all of my training, the millions of taxpayer dollars devoted to teaching me how to fly, lead, and teach, not once did I receive meaningful instruction on the document to which I had pledged my life.

It’s a fair statement.  I’ve always been interested in the history of our nation and its institutions, so when I served on active duty I had a fairly solid knowledge of our Constitution.  It surprised me how many others did not — and moreover, how many didn’t care.  A member of one of the teams I once led was an enlisted legal resident from the Philippines (did you know citizenship is not required for military service?  You do now…).  She was studying for her citizenship exam, and we were all cheering for her to complete that lengthy process.  Out of curiosity, I asked to see the study materials she’d been given.  It was fairly detailed, and I realized if she mastered it she’d likely have a better grasp of how our nation is supposed to function than most high school graduates do today.  (This is why LEGAL immigration processes and paths to citizenship, rather than amnesties, are important).  For fun, I tossed a few basic questions from the book out to the rest of the team, and was disappointed in how little they could answer.  Like the author of the linked article, I reminded them they’d sworn an oath to protect the Constitution, so they might want to know what’s in it.

The military is in many ways a reflection of the society from which it’s drawn, and this is but one example.  There is a glaring lack of basic understanding of our institutions, particularly among those who are handed the privilege of voting at the tender age of 18.  I taught High School for a year after leaving the military.  The seniors I had for Government were roundly disinterested in the subject (to be fair, they weren’t thrilled with many others, either).  I explained they wouldn’t play any of their sports without knowing the rules.  So why were they content to begin adult life without knowing them?  Frankly, it was a depressing experience.

Almost 2,500 years ago, one of the most successful republics in history inscribed 12 tablets with basic social laws, and placed them in a public forum for all citizens to see.  This action did not create a utopia, of course, and by today’s standards some of the laws are quite questionable.  But it did foster an idea later expressed as “lex rex”  (“the law rules”), as opposed to governance being merely the whimsy of those in power.  Though that republic later fell into tyranny and then disarray, later documents such as the Magna Carta continued this line of thought: that there were limits even to a king’s power.

What limits today do Americans recognize on Uncle Sam and his little cousins, the States?  Can Sam simply take your money without due process?  What about your home?  Is the 2nd Amendment subject to curtailment by the States?  Did the writers of the Constitution intend for the government to be a dispenser of welfare?  Are we supposed to have equal justice under the law, or is your risk of prosecution for similar offenses dependent on whether you are a former deputy FBI director or someone working for a president who acts as an ‘outsider?’

Short of the Bible, there is no more important document in our society’s fabric than our Constitution.  Yet the average American today is alarmingly ignorant of both.  Is it any wonder our nation is so troubled?

Hopeful New Year!

We enter the Year of Our Lord 2020 with political storm clouds gathering.  We know, however, The One Whom even the winds and the sea obey.

No matter what the year may bring, remember His words: “Behold, I am making all things new.”

Happiness is fleeting.  Hope endures.

The empty tomb, not the cross

…is the most significant symbol of the Christian faith.  The cross is where Christ took our place, judged and condemned for our sins.  The pivotal moment, that.  But the empty tomb proved he wasn’t just a madman on a fool’s errand with delusions of grandeur.  Christ claimed to be the Son of God, equal to the Father.  Thus, as C.S. Lewis famously wrote, there are only three ways to respond to Him: call Him a liar, call Him a lunatic, or call Him Lord.  Eternity hinges on which one you choose.

And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished.

If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.

But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.

1 Corinthians 15:14-22

He is risen!  He is risen indeed!

Looking forward

Today we look forward to the promise and potential of the next 12 months — a new calendar year.  That’s nothing, though, compared to the eternal promise we have in Christ.  May the New Year be a reminder of the One who says “Behold, I am making all things new.”

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.  And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.  And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.  He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”  Revelation 21:1-4

A More Merciful God?

I’ve just finished reading a book that really provoked me into a closer examination of Scripture and my understanding of it.  It’s humbling to realize that even as I close in on five decades on this earth, there are things I’ve never considered and discussions of which I’ve been ignorant all this time.

The book is “A More Merciful God: Truth is Older Than Tradition.”  It’s a powerful critique of the common traditional view that those who fail to put their faith in Christ will suffer an eternity of conscious pain and torment.  Prior to reading it, I was only aware of two schools of thought about the destiny of the lost: the aforementioned traditional view, and universalism, which posits that even the lost eventually are relieved of their suffering and restored after a period of punishment.  The latter view being patently unfounded in Scripture, I’ve held to the traditional view, as horrifying as it is when you really stop and consider it.  In “Amazing Grace” we sing of how after 10,000 years of praising God we’ll have “no less days… than when we first begun.”  This is rightfully an encouragement to the believer, an anticipation of our future with our Creator.  Left between the lines of that great hymn, though, is the thought those same 10,000 years leave “no less days” of agony and torment for the lost in eternity.

What if tradition is not only wrong, but slandering the character of God in the process, making it more difficult for people to come to faith in Him?

There is another viewpoint of which I’ve been unaware till now: conditional immortality. …

Well whadya know?

And here we were told the “science is settled:”

Landmark new research that involves analyzing millions of DNA barcodes has debunked much about what we know today about the evolution of species.

In a massive genetic study, senior research associate at the Program for the Human Environment at Rockefeller University Mark Stoeckle and University of Basel geneticist David Thaler discovered that virtually 90 percent of all animals on Earth appeared at right around the same time.

More specifically, they found out that 9 out of 10 animal species on the planet came to being at the same time as humans did some 100,000 to 200,000 years ago.

“This conclusion is very surprising,” says Thaler, “and I fought against it as hard as I could.”

Of course he did.  Any research conclusion that undermines St. Darwin of Galapagos or smacks of the Biblical view of things will be fought against.  What, you thought modern science was objective?  To be fair, animals didn’t spring up at exactly the same time as humans… they showed up anywhere from a few hours to a day prior.   🙂

Too many influential scientists today have taken on the role the Catholic clergy played before the Reformation: dispensers of received truth selectively communicated in terms the average layman can’t understand.  For the priests, it was keeping everything in Latin so the masses couldn’t access scripture on their own.  For the High Priests of Darwinism and the Church of Global Warming, it’s using Latin-derived polysyllabic words most people don’t pursue past mandatory High School science courses.

So it’s refreshing to see an admission that maybe the science isn’t as “SETTLED!” as we’ve been told.  Next thing you know, they’ll be claiming humans walked among dinosaurs!

The horrors!

Choose your own message

While the Babylon Bee is a satire site (a very good one, in fact — enough that I’ve added it to the sidebar on the right), this entry strikes a little too close to home how many people approach the Bible these days:

GRAND RAPIDS, MI—In a move designed to help students of the Word carefully impose their own theology and personal experiences onto the text, Zondervan released its all-new Choose Your Own Adventure Bible to widespread public acclaim Wednesday morning.

Boasting over three hundred different endings, the CYOA Bible allows readers to guide and bend the narrative through all its various twists and turns in order to shape the Bible’s theology to suit their own tastes, biases, and prejudices.

I loved the “Choose Your Own Adventure” books as a kid, but their approach hardly makes for sound Biblical exegesis.  The Babylon Bee does a great job highlighting/ridiculing current issues in the Church.  It’s worth checking out, as is the cartoon site Adam4d.  (Note: Adam Ford, the creator of Adam4d, also runs the Babylon Bee.)

“Noah?” Uh, no.

A Hollywood bigwig is frustrated that Christians want Biblical accounts treated accurately when brought to the big screen:

“I was upset — of course,” the director says of Paramount testing alternate versions of the $125 million epic (“Noah”) as he and the studio break their silence on efforts to appease a small but vocal segment of the faith-based audience: “Those people can be noisy.”

What’s interesting is the characterization of evangelical Christians as a “small” segment of the audience… and yet it apparently involves enough potential revenue the studio is concerned about offending it.  Which is it?

This article makes clear that any concession to Biblical accuracy will merely be an attempt to gain revenue.  It is not a reflection of any respect for the message of the account of Noah: that there IS a God who, despite His desire to have a relationship with humanity, will not suspend judgement of sin indefinitely.  And yet that same God provides a means of deliverance from judgement, for those who will trust Him.

That is a message the world needs to hear as much today as it ever has — so naturally, the Prince of the Power of the Air(waves) will do his utmost to muddle it.

Dear Christian: if you have any commitment to Biblical truth, vote with your wallet and take a pass on this film.  Spend your money with those who respect the messages of God’s Word, not just its box office potential.  If your curiosity must be sated wait and rent it from Netflix, so that those folks only get to sell a single DVD, not thousands of theater tickets.  Anything else sends a green light to Hollywood to make more of this junk.

The Prince of Peace and a world at war

As the world settles in to celebrate Christmas the Prime Winter Holiday, a telling public brouhaha has occurred:

You see, Robertson didn’t simply attack and disparage the sexual preferences of a minority, as Alec Baldwin recently did in a hateful rant. No, Robertson’s opinion—couched as it was in scriptural references that suggest he not only owns a Bible, but also reads it—reflects the teaching and practice of historic Christianity and, by extension, the opinion of a sizable portion of the American public. Indeed, according to a June 2013 Pew Research Center survey, roughly half (45 percent) of Americans polled said they believe homosexual actions are a “sin.” In an apparent effort to convince this demographic that homosexual actions are not sinful, GLAAD spokesperson Wilson Cruz said Robertson’s views are not Christian. The strategy here seems to be “divide and conquer”—separate Robertson from his religion and let public opinion do the rest. The theologians at GLAAD will have to do better, because what Robertson said is not inconsistent with a Christianity that sees the Bible as a source of Divine authority and inspiration—and Louisiana gun-toting evangelicals are not the only ones who embrace that Christianity. On the contrary, Cruz’s statement appears naive when one considers that Pope Francis, Time Magazine’s Person of the Year for 2013, has previously called gay marriage the work of the devil and “a total rejection of God’s law engraved on our hearts.” Judging by Thursday’s precedent, A&E would fire the pope.

Just as the recent post about the “atheist church” shows, people are more than willing to accept the comforting trappings of Christian culture… as long as Christ isn’t a central part of the prescribed recipe. Part of the appeal of the “Duck Dynasty” show for many has been the unabashed faith of the family. A&E has been happy to bank on that appeal… until the more challenging aspects of the Biblical worldview come into view. Many a critic of Phil Robertson will raise a “cup o’ Christmas cheer” over the next couple of days. One wonders what the point is.

For too long, the West has seen Christmas as a time to celebrate peace… but has forgotten the nature of that peace. “Peace on earth, goodwill towards men,” the angels proclaimed. Goodwill from Whom? From the Creator — who, that first Christmas, was sending His only Son to live among us. But never forget amid the serene scenes of shepherds and mangers and a little baby that the Child was an invader — a divine messenger who would have a brief time to proclaim once again all that God had been trying to tell us since the Fall. At the end of that time, the Child everyone oohs and ahhs over this time of year would meet the most horrible death imaginable: stripped, whipped, battered, bleeding, nailed to a cross He didn’t deserve.  All because the world hated Him.

It still does.

That is why no Christian should be surprised when quoting Scripture causes stones to be hurled. The world fought the Master, so it will certainly fight His followers. Truth is no more welcome coming from us than it was from Him, even when we remember to speak that Truth in love.   We persist and endure becuase there are those individual hearts, softened by the Spirit, who receive that Word and are transformed. 

And what is that Word? That the only true equality of Man is that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” And yet, “God so loved the world so much He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him will not perish, but have eternal life.” The Christmas story is one of a divinely orchestrated jailbreak, where God arranged for us to be freed from prisons of sin and eternal separation from Him. *That* is the root of the feelings of comfort and glad tidings this time of year.  Any human action inspired by it is but a mere echo. Let us not forget, though, that the jailbreak is still in progress, and it’s our job to involve as many prisoners as possible through the help of the Spirit. We’re not home, yet. That is why one of my favorite Christmas songs is “O Come, O Come Emmanuel.”

‘Rejoice, Rejoice, Emmanuel will come for thee, O Israel.’

A blessed Christmas to all who read this!  — Jemison