“Why Christianity and the ’4th’ are Incompatible” OR “Why this is NOT a day to celebrate” OR “Why my friends wont like me for the next week or so”

June 29, 2010 | by Kurt Willems


I want to start out this post with a huge disclaimer… what I am about to say may sound radical or irrational to some. I also want to say that I have a great respect for those who differ with me on this issue that I am about to discuss, so I invite your ideas on this post as well. Finally, I have a great deal of respect for those who are Christians and who ‘support’ military and our troops. Those who serve our country (although I may disagree with it from my standpoint theologically) deserve respect for their sacrifices and I am glad to have some friends who have served or are serving in the armed forces.

With all of that said, I have been struggling with the idea of the 4th of July for the past couple of years or so. Each year we get together and remember the day when America won her freedom. We reenact the story through live action plays, we set off fireworks as a display of joy, and we sing prideful songs about our freedom from oppression. In many ways, we treat Independence Day like the Jews in Jesus’ day (and even to this day) remember the exodus from Egypt. Now here is the issue I have: No matter what position you hold in regards to being a Christian and war (I happen to hold to nonviolence); I cannot justify glorifying the ‘wining’ of our independence from our friends across the pond, even if using ‘just war theory’ criteria. How can we celebrate that we killed thousands upon thousands of people (MANY OF WHICH WORSHIPED THE SAME GOD!) over the fact that they were taxing our mammon without giving us representation in parliament or whatever?!!!!! This seems just plain wrong!!!!! Yes, there might be some kind of justice issue here, but the greater injustice to taxation without representation is the violent killing of our brethren.

Let me add that I love fireworks, BBQ’s, and any good excuse to hang out with friends. I also love that I have had the privilege to grow up in this country. So, I am not “anti-America” by any stretch; I am happy that I live here. What I think is that as Christians we need to recalculate our past and allow the Gospel to be critical of certain things we now celebrate. Is it honorable to kill because we didn’t like being taxed? I think the Jesus who says “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” would probably say “no.” Mark Noll, who is a historian that is read in almost every seminary across America, said the following in an article he wrote for Christianity Today about just war and the Revolutionary War:

During this confused misunderstanding, the Bible was used as a reservoir of images, moral principles, and types. Many sermons in America (and some in Britain) supported revolt, while a few in America and England argued against it. Serious exegesis, however, of what would seem to us like the relevant passages (such as Romans 13) was very rare. Rather, it was much more common for patriots to liken George III to Pharaoh and George Washington to Moses, or to depict the conflict as a struggle between the Woman and the Beast of Revelation 12. Patriots and Loyalists were both much more likely to add scriptural authority to political reasoning rooted in some other ideology than they were to attempt reasoning from the ground up on the basis of Scripture.



What is quite interesting is that Noll properly points out that the “Just War” principles of St. Augustine were not followed as criteria for the war for Independence. This war was not rooted in scripture, but in a false political agenda. And why was it false? Noll reminds us of how history played itself out: “Americans fought a war to gain the kind of freedom that Canada, New Zealand, and Australia were simply given after not too many decades.” Our nation, in other words, killed other Christians in order to gain independence that would have eventually been granted to them in a “just” fashion, had the founding fathers not been so trigger-happy over issues of taxation and other conspiracy theories.

The most popular rebuttal to what I have said (based on a similar post last year) will probably have to do with the issue of freedom. We have freedom today because of this and other wars. I think that this is a false assumption. I challenge the idea that my freedom to choose came from our independence. I am free to choose because God has given me a free will. Just like the Christians who suffered persecution during the first century and so on, I have the ability to choose because of the grace of God. Even if we had not separated ourselves from England, most likely it would have turned out pretty good. As was already pointed out – Canada never revolted, and they are doing just fine (socialism aside, they have basic freedom).

Is there anyone out there who agrees with me or am I just crazy [if you disagree take it easy on the crazy comments (-; ]? If you agree, why? If not, tell me your thoughts on this historic day and Christian biblical theology.

The End of Men? — A Hard Look at the Future

By Albert Mohler.

What does it mean for large sectors of our society to become virtual matriarchies? How do we prepare the church to deal with such a world while maintaining biblical models of manhood and womanhood? …The real issue here is not the end of men, but the disappearance of manhood.

TUESDAY, JUNE 22, 2010
Is our postmodern, postindustrial society simply better suited to women than to men? Hanna Rosin makes the case for this claim in the current issue of The Atlantic, and her article demands close attention. Men, she argues, are simply falling behind women in almost every sector of cultural influence and economic power. This shift, she understands, is nothing less than unprecedented in the span of human history.

Rosin begins her article with the fact that sex-selection technologies in the West are now more often used to select a preference for girls than for boys, reversing the historical trend. Why? She explains: “Man has been the dominant sex since, well, the dawn of mankind. But for the first time in human history, that is changing—and with shocking speed. Cultural and economic changes always reinforce each other. And the global economy is evolving in a way that is eroding the historical preference for male children, worldwide.”

Rosin’s article is well documented and forceful in argument. The bottom line is the claim that the trend and trajectory of the global economy have for some time now been headed toward female skills and talents. At the most basic level, this means a shift from physical strength to intellectual energies and education. At the next level, it also means a shift from leadership models more associated with males toward the nurturing leadership more associated with women. In any event, the changes are colossal.

The Return of Patriarchy? Fatherhood and the Future of Civilization
Nothing has brought this into clearer sight than the current global recession. In the United States, the recession has been dubbed a “he-cession,” due to the fact that three-quarters of the 8 million jobs lost were lost by men. Even more devastating to men, most of these jobs will not return, given the vast changes the recession has brought about. “The worst-hit industries were overwhelmingly male and deeply identified with macho: construction, manufacturing, high finance. Some of these jobs will come back,” Rosin predicts, “but the overall pattern of dislocation is neither temporary nor random.”

It’s not just the United States, either. In Iceland, Prime Minister Johanna Sigurdardottir (the first openly-lesbian head of state) ran her campaign for office with a pledge to end the “age of testosterone.”

But the picture in the United States is particularly striking. For the first time in the nation’s history, women now outnumber men in the workforce. The working class, “which has long defined our notions of masculinity,” Rosin argues, is “slowly turning into a matriarchy, with men increasingly absent from the home and women making all the decisions.”

Why? “The postindustrial economy is indifferent to men’s size and strength. The attributes that are most valuable today — social intelligence, open communication, the ability to sit still and focus — are, at a minimum, not predominately male.”

Rosin actually makes two main points, and both demand attention. The first has to do with what is taking place in working class families. The matriarchy Rosin describes is now coming more fully into view. In many cases, it is husbands and fathers who are unemployed and wives and mothers who have paying jobs. This means a huge shift in male function, and many men just exit the family process or forfeit decision making. Rosin refers to these men as “casualties of the end of the manufacturing era.” Across the nation, older men are increasingly unemployed and younger men face little hope of a job in this sector — the virtual birthright of previous generations.

Of the fifteen job classifications marked for future growth, men dominate only two: janitorial services and computer engineering. The same pattern is now extending to managerial and professional roles, where women currently hold 51.4 percent of jobs. Why are women gaining and men falling behind? Rosin explains:

They make up 54 percent of all accountants and hold about half of all banking and insurance jobs. About a third of America’s physicians are now women, as are 45 percent of associates in law firms—and both those percentages are rising fast. A white-collar economy values raw intellectual horsepower, which men and women have in equal amounts. It also requires communication skills and social intelligence, areas in which women, according to many studies, have a slight edge. Perhaps most important—for better or worse—it increasingly requires formal education credentials, which women are more prone to acquire, particularly early in adulthood.


Beyond the numbers, Rosin reports that office environments and corporate cultures are adapting to women, as well, reshaped by the gender transformation of the last twenty-five years.

And yet, even after all this, Rosin makes her most powerful argument when she looks, not at the current workforce, but at what is happening on America’s college and university campuses. There, she explains, “we can see with absolute clarity that in the coming decades the middle class will be dominated by women.”

She continues:

We’ve all heard about the collegiate gender gap. But the implications of that gap have not yet been fully digested. Women now earn 60 percent of master’s degrees, about half of all law and medical degrees, and 42 percent of all M.B.A.s. Most important, women earn almost 60 percent of all bachelor’s degrees—the minimum requirement, in most cases, for an affluent life. In a stark reversal since the 1970s, men are now more likely than women to hold only a high-school diploma. “One would think that if men were acting in a rational way, they would be getting the education they need to get along out there,” says Tom Mortenson, a senior scholar at the Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education. “But they are just failing to adapt.”

While many theories to explain this pattern have been offered, no one can argue with the numbers. Boys are clearly falling behind girls in both educational achievement and aspiration. The long-term consequences of this shift are momentous and virtually impossible to reverse in a single generation. This pattern has vast implications for marital prospects, since women express a strong preference to marry a man of equal or greater educational and professional potential. The collapse of the marriage culture within the working class, Rosin argues, is due to the fact that women are in control and have set expectations “too high for the men around them to meet.”

Hanna Rosin’s article is not the first salvo of information on these troubling trends, but the fact that The Atlantic chose her essay as a cover story is itself evidence of how this phenomenon is taking hold of attention, even among the elites.

For Christians, the importance of this article is even greater. God intended for men to have a role as workers, reflecting God’s own image in their vocation. The most important issue here is not the gains made by women, but the displacement of men. This has undeniable consequences for these men and for everyone who loves and depends on them.

The failure of boys to strive for educational attainment is a sign of looming disaster. Almost anyone who works with youth and young adults will tell you that, as a rule, boys are simply not growing up as fast as girls. This means that their transition to manhood is stunted, delayed, and often incomplete. Meanwhile, the women are moving on.

What does it mean for large sectors of our society to become virtual matriarchies? How do we prepare the church to deal with such a world while maintaining biblical models of manhood and womanhood?

The elites are awakening to the fact that these vast changes point to a very different future. Christians had better know that matters far more important than economics are at stake. These trends represent nothing less than a collapse of male responsibility, leadership, and expectations. The real issue here is not the end of men, but the disappearance of manhood.

What makes a good sermon?

Some say that it doesn't matter how you deliver it, the sermon's power is in the message.

I beg to differ. I can say that Jesus saves in such a dull way, as to look that I don't mean it at all.

Haddon Robinson gives us some pointers as to what makes a good sermon.

Calvin Vs Servet in the Afterlife

A funny cartoon, which I think says a lot of true.

Servet was a heretic by denying the Trinity, yet, he didn't deserve to be killed or to be exiled.

This proved that even the Reformers were victim of what they condemned in the Catholic Church, of intolerance.

Sound like the age of relativism started there and then.

The Joy the endures for ever

The Joy the endures for ever

Luke 10:20

Intro

Joy, or happiness, could be said it’s the one thing most looked for in our culture, and for that matter, throughout all of history. Nobody likes living a place where war takes place, famine, hardship, or difficulty. All of us strive to have a better, more pleasant life. It was Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the USA, and the one who wrote the American Constitution, that wrote the following:”We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

These three rights form the idea of the “American dream”. However, commentators are saying that that dream is more and more difficult to obtain, because even though Americans may have life and liberty, they don’t enjoy their lives as much as they used to.

Today we see how Jesus deals with the disciple’s misplaced source of joy. It is interesting to see that this passage is found in the gospel of Luke, the gospel that is considered the gospel of joy, due to its many references to joy, chairos (in the passage, and the other forms of Joy in the Greek found in this gospel) more than the other 3. Jesus gives the disciples, and us today, a corrective as what it is that we should consider as the source of our joy, a joy that does not change at all, but is assured for us in heaven.

The wrong sources of Joy

Sometimes we read Jesus and we feel that he may be downplaying his disciples. He just sent them to preach, and they bring a good report. All the things that he has commanded to them in the previous verses, they have accomplished. Yet, Jesus dismisses their reason for feeling joyful. Why????

We all have our moments of joy. This morning, most of us have our families with us, and that’s a source of joy. Do you remember how you felt last Christmas, at the table, sharing with your family, that’s a time of joy. Kids, when they are playing their Xbox, PS3, or Wii games, and finished them, they experience joy at having ‘clocked’ the game. When you finally bought your house and moved in, were you full of joy that now you had a home of your own??

If you think about it, all that you have accomplished in life, has been due to the Lord’s grace to you. Even minute things, it is the Lord that has given you the skill, and intelligence, the ability to accomplish this or that task. Just as the disciples were given authority to do miracles, we have been given abilities to accomplish things in our lives from the Lord. But just as the disciples got carried away by the success of their mission, you may also fall victim to that temptation, of measuring your happiness to what YOU have accomplished. This will be condemned by Jesus again in the gospel, cf. The parable of the Rich Fool, cf. Lk. 12:19 and the Parable of the Rich man and Lazarus, cf. Lk 16:19.

What is then, is the source of joy for us Christians??

The rightful source of Joy/Happiness.

It is amazing for me to thing that my mane, Luis Jovel, is written somewhere in a book in heaven. This idea comes from the Old Testament, especially Daniel 12:1. Jesus is telling his disciples, and us today, that our sources of joy, are but temporary. How long will your house stand? How many Christmas will you be able to get your family together for Christmas, or for any other occasion?? Kids, when you finish a game, how long do you have that joy in you? I have finished many games, and done many things that were joyful at that moment, but now, are just memories, and sometimes, I have forgotten them!!!

Jesus is showing us a better way, the real source of joy and happiness. It’s not something that we pursue, as Thomas Jefferson suggested, but something that is given to us by God through Jesus, if only we believe in him!!! As I mentioned last week, not all human beings are children of God, despite of popular culture, but only those who receive him and believe in his name that he gives them the right to become children of God, cf. Jn. 1:12.

Conclusion

Let us therefore, get our right perspective as to the source of our happiness. Our successes and good times will pass away, and will be forgotten, or at best, become good memories. But let your joy’s source be in the knowledge that no matter what happens in your life, you can be assure, that your names are written in heaven, and no matter what happens on earth, be it good or bad, nobody can deny you that joy, ever.

Nehemiah 8:10b Do not grieve, for the joy of the LORD is your strength."

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