The Superiority Of Theism Part 1: Worldview Comparisons

Though things change dramatically as the years and centuries unfold with the average person enjoying luxuries now that even the bards of old couldn’t have devised for the Homeric pantheon, some of mankind's most basic aspirations and perplexities have remained constant throughout the course of history. Even though he said it dismissively in an attempt to assuage his own conscience, Pontius Pilate’s exclamation of “What is truth?” rings as true today as it did in the time of the Roman Empire.

In fact, confusion over it and related concepts can be found at the heart of many of the disputes and issues tearing at the fabric of the early twenty-first century world. In “I Don’t Have Enough Faith To Be An Atheist”, Norman Geisler and Frank Turek analyze why it actually requires more effort to remain an unbeliever and provide a number of tools the Christian can utilize to defend the faith in hostile situations before skeptical audiences.

Often, Christianity is downplayed and its influence minimized by secularists in the broader culture through the claim that the system is not objective. From this conjecture, critics diverge into two branches.

Older Modernists will argue that their perspective, superficially free of any prior faith commitments and extolling science as the ultimate foundation for truth, is the only objective viewpoint. Postmodernists, having grown weary of maintaining such a facade, dump the illusion of objectivity all together by postulating that every perspective is merely a matter opinion with no viewpoint being any more universally authoritative than any other. In “I Don't Have Enough Faith To Be An Atheist”, Norman Geisler and Frank Turek endeavor to show how Christianity is the best faith alternative for successfully balancing the tensions between the objective and the subjective.

Whether the detached skeptic --- often holding a tenured university chair --- wants to admit it or not, everyone (including himself) holds to some kind of religious position. In their analysis, Geisler and Turek classify religious worldviews into the three broad categories of Theism, Pantheism, and Atheism (23).

The authors define the first category of Theism as the belief that a personal God created the universe but that He is distinct from it. Examples of theistic belief systems include Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

The second worldview category is Pantheism, the idea that the universe as a mystical totality is God. To better understand this and the differences with Theism, Geisler and Turek provide the following example.

In Theism, God is analogous to an artist and the universe His distinct artistic work that is separate from Him but with which He interacts. In Pantheism, God is the painting. Major pantheist faiths include Hinduism, Buddhism, and the New Age movement.

The third worldview category is Atheism, which denies the existence of God and often a spiritual or immaterial component of reality all together. Under this category, Geisler and Turek have included Religious Humanism because --- even though differentiated from its secularist cousin in that it gives lip service to the existence of a power beyond the material realm --- Religious Humanism still looks to man rather than God as the final authority.

The Modernist and the Postmodernist have further skewered the discussion in their favor by creating barriers between the notions of belief and facts. Geisler and Turek write, “Despite its apparent persuasiveness, the claim that religion is simply a matter of faith is nothing more than a modern myth --- it’s just not true. While religion certainly requires faith, religion is not only about faith. Facts are also central to all religions because all religious worldviews --- including atheism --- make truth claims, and many of those truth claims can be evaluated through scientific and historical investigation (23).”

There is indeed a degree of correlation between what a person believes and the world beyond the self. One only needs to point out that insane asylums and mental wards are full of people who for various reasons and as a result of assorted circumstances have had their minds severed from reality. And though we as a society must exercise vigilance and even vociferously oppose those who would infringe upon the freedom and dignity of those whose outlooks run counter to prevailing perceptions but do not pose a definitive bodily harm to those around them, Christians should advocate for their worldview as the perspective that best harmonizes the inner and outer worlds.

By Frederick Meekins

Will Nanny State Decree How Many Christmas Presents Constitutes Too Many?

Outrage has erupted over a British mother that spent $1800 on Christmas presents for her three children.

She has been accused of spoiling her offspring and even abusing them.

Busybodies in both the social and mainstream media have decreed that she should instead teach her children about the true meaning of Christmas by redirecting the gifts towards charity.

Perhaps the amount spent is a bit excessive.

But is it PROPER (to invoke a term the British like to articulate) to invoke the specter of abuse?

For in overly regulated quasi-police states such as the United Kingdom, the phrase “abuse” usually serves as the bureaucratic pretext to justify intervening in a home for the purposes of subjecting a family to a variety of investigative and surveillance techniques.

Have the British become so totalitarian as to produce actuarial tables detailing what number of presents are allowed before anti-social tendencies begin to set in?

And if it is unacceptable for a parent to spend $1800 at Christmas, why is it acceptable for the Queen to have so many corgis or Prince Charles to have an even greater number of sports cars despite his insistence that he is an environmentalist?

Gifts piled high probably aren't the meaning of Christmas.

But neither is the Pavolian reflex endemic throughout Northern European social democracies that what the nanny state decrees to be excess wealth should be confiscated and bestowed upon the chronically destitute with no strings attached.

It has been claimed that the extravagance $1800 can accumulate will spoil these children.

But what about those making their livelihoods from institutionalized penury demanding increasingly sophisticated levels of luxury instead of expressing a modicum of gratitude for what private or public generosity they have been extended?

Are BBC “news readers” interviewing academics or policy analysts warning of the dangers that might take place as result of too many unearned entitled programs?

Anyone doubting the legitimacy of such a concern or observation only needs to be reminded of the British jihadist born of immigrant parents that not only murdered a member of that nation's armed forces in a ditch alongside the road but also proudly uploaded a video glamorizing the shocking atrocity.

Perhaps that is the subversive element that this concern regarding the consequences of incorrectly reared youth ought to be focused.

By Frederick Meekins

Russell Moore Elevates White Guilt As Religious Sacrament

A common refrain in the analysis of the 2016 presidential election cycle is that this particular contest has rubbed a raw nerve in terms of worldview assumptions and even animosities usually left hidden and simmering below the surface. In a column published initially in the New York Times titled “A White Church No More”, Southern Baptist Ethics and Policy Commission functionary Russell Moore tips his hand to reveal the true radical colors beneath his polished pulpit facade.

Moore commences his analysis by detailing the plight of an Alabama church in decline as the vicinity of the congregation's physical locality transitions from a predominantly White to Black population. Moore blames the decline on the fact that during the tumultuous years of the civil rights movement, often marked by shocking and noteworthy acts of violence, the church decided to focus on its primary mission of “simple gospel preaching”.

But how was the activism Moore would hope for in that historic setting appreciably different than the cultural Christianity that this theologian now explicitly celebrates the demise of? Interesting how Moore calls for the law and justice imperatives heralded in Scripture when it is minority lives and property on the line but seemingly downplays the physicalized expression of outage when it is Whitey's or a capitalist's window being shattered.

In mentioning this tragic violence, Russell Moore hopes to link its perpetrators with Donald Trump and any that might vote for the blunt real estate tycoon. As I have mentioned in previous columns, if we are to pursue this line of reasoning, why shouldn't we conclude that Russell Moore through his assorted ecclesiastical relationships must believe pedophile pastors and the churches that shelter them haven't done anything all that wrong and shouldn't be sanctioned so severely?

For at a recent pastor's conference, Moore's mentor and close colleague Albert Mohler did not chastise C.J. Mahaney for allowing a sex abuse scandal to spiral out of control. Instead, Mohler instead assured the megachurch minister that he was in the company of thousands of his closest friends. Mind you, these are the very same kinds of people that will call the validity of your faith into question if you are not in church multiple nights per week or aren't married by the time you are 23 years old.

In the indictment of Trump that reads reminiscent of the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal, Moore writes, “This election has cast light on the darkness of pent-up nativism and bigotry ...There are not-so-coded messages denouncing African-Americans and immigrants; concerns about racial justice and national unity is ridiculed as 'political correctness'. Religious minorities are scapegoated for the sins of others, with basic religious freedoms for them called into question.”

Daniel Patrick Moniyhan (a Democrat actually) was credited with popularizing the concept of the bigotry of low expectations. Dr. Moore craves nothing more than to be applauded as a Southerner that has come around to the perspective of the Yankee elite regarding racial issues. However, given that he does not apply the same standard to all individuals irrespective of skin color, it must be asked does Brother Moore view minorities as fully human in the same manner as he would his fellow Caucasians?

If Dr. Moore is so concerned about the causes of national unity and racial justice, why doesn't he resign his position from the board of the National Hispanic Leadership Conference? For by the organization's very name, the National Hispanic Leadership Conference is exclusionary of the interests of Caucasians of a non-Iberian ethnography. If Caucasians of a more northern European extraction are not worthy of status and privilege (to invoke the parlance of these crypto-Marxists) on the basis of what color they emerge from the birth canals of their respective mothers, why are Hispanics deserving of such on the basis of Scripture which says that before God there is neither Greek nor Jew?

Despite whatever errors he might have made in terms of his presentation on the Fox News Channel, Glenn Beck is to be lauded for making the public aware that the notion of “social justice” is not about justice at all but rather about in the name of socialism downplaying the rights and protections afforded to the individual in favor of the collective and what is allegedly better for specific groups as determined by largely unaccountable technocrats. That is the kind of threat posed by Russell Moore in his raising the battle cry of “racial justice”.

If persons are not to be considered as individuals and the totality of their accomplishments but rather upon the shortcomings inflicted by and/or on certain groups, what if Dr. Moore's string of highly prestigious positions were seized from him and bestowed upon someone that has hardly cracked a book open a day in their lives but instead knocked over a few liquor stores and sired a number of out of wedlock children by as many women because a life of study and delayed gratification were categorized as acting just “too White”? By the very standards advocated by Dr. Moore, wouldn't a response other than affirmative agreement to such a course of action not only undermine social cohesion but also negate a number of Biblical imperatives such as submitting to authority and turning the other cheek?

Dr. Moore goes on to lament, “The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr's 'I Have A Dream Speech' did not envision that more than 50 years later 'Go back to Africa' would be screamed at black protesters.” Probably because, as someone enamored in part with the delusions of socialism, Martin Luther King might not have been able to fathom Black people often lavished with a standard of living enviable by world standards descending into debaucheries most of them avoided when the status of this demographic was at its lowest in terms of material prosperity.

Perhaps Dr. Moore should have provided additional context such as where and to what particular group this directional imperative was being directed. For example, could these have been the sorts of protesters that express their disagreement with particular trial verdicts or police actions by appropriating the latest electronics or haircare products unencumbered by medium of exchange after the proprietors of such establishments have left the premises for the evening or in fear of the repercussions the mob might decide to inflict upon bystanding property owners?

Russell Moore is making quite a reputation for himself regularly publishing tirades against what academics such as himself might lament or denounce as White majoritarian culture. Does he ever intend to speak out as eloquently against outrages such as the knockout game?

In Moore's column, one is given the impression that the remark “Go back to Africa” is a negative or bad thing. Yet doesn't fostering this impression expose Moore's own ethnocentricism or White privilege?

For in a world where, as Moore writes, “The man on the throne in heaven is a dark-skinned, Aramaic-speaking 'foreigner' who is probably not all that impressed by chants of 'Make America great again', who is to suggest America is a more desirable place to live than Africa?

Moore continues, “The center of gravity for both orthodoxy is not among Anglo suburban evangelicals but among African Anglicans and Asian Calvinists and Latin American Pentecostals.”

The first part of that statement that ought to be like fingernails across a chalkboard to the mind of the discerning reader is the way in which “Anglo suburban” is articulated like a slur. What it means is that Moore has a problem with Whites that work hard and save their resources to provide for a reasonably comfortable dwelling where the occupants are able to stay to themselves and their individual families.

What the communitarian new urbanists of whom Moore is probably an enthusiast prefer is to chorale people into congested population centers where the residents probably don't even own their property, where they are more easily controlled, and where it is easy to snoop into someone's private affairs. For nowhere in his comments did Dr. Moore condemn the largely White beatnik hipsters that prefer to habitate in largely metropolitan settings.

While we are at it, even if he does not provide his address outright, perhaps Dr. Moore should describe in which manner of dwelling he hangs his own ecclesiastical robes or clerical collars. It is doubtful it is in a rundown apartment project where English is about as dead as Latin.

For in the mind of this theologian under scrutiny in this particular analysis, Mrs. Moore and the little ones are no doubt deserving of a safe and spacious place in which to live and thrive. It is your obligation, dear pewfiller, however to put your own family at risk for reasons little more than because some pulpit blowhard tells you to in order to assuage his ever expanding sense of racialist guilt.

What must be asked next about this assertion that contends that the center of theological gravity is to be found among African Anglicans, Asian Calvinists and Latin American Pentecostals is why is it acceptable for Christians of these particular phenotypes to clump together for the purposes of religious identity and affiliation but not acceptable for White believers to do so? And if you were to grill members of each of these demographics they would probably admit that they are no more eager for their traditional way of doing things to be overwhelmed by the nebulous “other” postmodernist sociologists are always droning on about as those attending the aging Caucasian congregation.

Furthermore, just how much doctrinal compromise ought the Christian to agree to in pursuit of Russell Moore's demographic amalgamation before we are verbally reamed for abandoning those ballyhooed “Baptist distinctives”? After all, the problem with the church initially mentioned by Moore was not necessarily doctrine but rather because it was “too White”.

The Anglicans no doubt practice infant baptism and don't fly into a frenzy as to whether or not adults seeking membership have been dunked or sprinkled in what is considered this Christian act of initiation. This particular modality of ecclesiology also tends to follow a highly ritualized liturgy many Baptists would denounce for stifling the move of the Spirit.

With the Latin American Pentecostals, at the bare minimum the problem would arise at the opposite end of the decorum spectrum from the Anglicans. For an old joke describing how to tell the difference between Baptists and Pentecostals observes that Pentecostals jump over the pews while Baptists sleep in them.

Wanting to look as multicultural as possible, those such as Russell Moore will respond that Whites more uptight in church will just have to adopt the more exuberant forms of religious expression often practiced in minority communities. For if you ask the overly rambunctious to tone it down a bit, you will be accused of demanding that these other groups “act White” before their worship is deemed acceptable in the eyes of God.

But who was it that taught these aging White Baptists so despised by Moore to stifle the expression of their feelings in favor of an order of worship that emphasizes the rationally didactic over emotionalism? Why none other than the professional religionists and denominational functionaries once holding the kinds of prestigious positions now occupied by the likes of Russell Moore! It is amazing how these leaders seldom take responsibility for the policies or decisions of their particular class without first blaming it on the mere pewfillers and concocting ways to make the common church goer feel that they are nothing more than someone obligated to keep the collection plate filled.

Beyond the Pentecostal tendency towards emotional outbursts, for the sake of ethnographic solidarity, just how much Charismatic buffoonery is the average Baptist expected to put up with to placate the honchos flagellating themselves on the floor of the annual convention? Kenneth Copeland has insinuated off and on over the course of his ministry that those of his theological persuasion can resurrect the dead both feline and human. Joyce Meyers believes that she is so important that she shouldn't have to do her own housework. Todd Bently socked an alleged cancer patient in the stomach in the name of curing that particular affliction.

Critics will respond that each of these is White. Fine, if you want to play the game that character is indeed determined by the color of skin, I will be more happy to comply with such a silly standard.

T.D. Jakes has denied that the Godhead is a unity composed of three distinct persons known as the Trinity. Instead, this particular televangelist holds that the verbal identifiers of “Father”, “Son”, and “Holy Spirit” are rather masks or roles assumed by the singular unitary God.

Frederick Price is yet another Black pastor that espouses doctrinal notions nearly as aberrant. The website LetUsReason.org in an article titled “Fred Price: Is The Price Right Or Is The Price Wrong” examines a number of these. Among these rank the idea that we enjoyed a preincarnate existence (not unlike Mormonism) and that Jesus was rich while He dwelt upon the Earth despite Scripture teaching that he didn't even have a place to lay his head.

As errant as these happen to be, Prince propagates others that are even more dangerous. According to Price, the believer is so assured of bodily healing in this life that the truly faithful can even forbid sickness to enter into one's home, meaning that the Christian is in no need of medical interventions such as surgery. Unless of course you are Mrs. Price who had a cancer operation despite similar procedures being frowned upon for the less prominent amongst their flock.

But hey, that's no big deal. If Russell Moore wants to remain consistent, doesn't he have to assure us that compromise for the sake of superficial appearances and heartwarming photo op is more important than sending the wrong impression resulting from standing for the faith once delivered unto the saints.

Galatians 3:28 says that before God there is neither Greek nor Jew. It is also through the providence of the Almighty that all of humanity that traces its origin back to one single family now finds itself distilled into a variety of nations, tongues, ethnicities, and races largely to prevent for the time being the equivalent of another Tower of Babel. As such, a church should extend kindness and courtesy to anyone showing up on its doorstep sincerely seeking the Lord. Yet if particular varieties of people show up more at certain congregations more than others, there is no reason for controlling snobs at denominational headquarters (whose own offices are described nowhere in the pages of Scripture) to hand down pronouncements as to how ungodly such natural affiliation happens to be in their particular eyes.

By Frederick Meekins

Cal Thomas Talks From Both Sides Regarding Trump

In a 7/22/2016 commentary transcript, Cal Thomas condemned Ted Cruz's Republican convention remarks as self-serving.

In those, the Texas Senator, instead of endorsing Donald Trump explicitly, urged the American people to vote their consciences.

It has yet to be explained how that message differed from that articulated by Trump's own daughter who revealed she votes individual rather than party.

If anyone knows self-serving, it is Cal Thomas.

In “Blinded By Might”, the mass communicator allegedly repented of his involvement with Moral Majority and that his fellow Christians ought to embrace a spirit of political pacificism in order to assuage his own conscience.

However, with the ascendancy of Donald Trump, Thomas certainly didn't mind contributing in the name of Christian values to an issue of National Review seeking to derail the Trump candidacy.

But with Trump triumphant, Thomas now goes out of his way to badmouth any conservative or Republican failing to march in lockstep or even question the direction in which this movement might be taking America.

Thomas often likes to point out his tenuous familial connection to Calvin Coolidge.

However, it seems the figure from political history he has the most in common with might be none other than Talleyrand

By Frederick Meekins

Loyalty To Family Ought To Trump Trump

According to a number of Facebook theologians, Ted Cruz's refusal or failure to endorse Donald Trump as the Republican presidential nominee wasn't simply bad manners at best or strategically imprudent at worst. Instead, such thinkers invoke this rhetorical incident to call into question the validity of the Senator's profession of faith as a Christian.

It is claimed that, earlier in the presidential campaign season, Ted Cruz promised to endorse whomever it was that voters (or moneyed secret societies dependent upon your view as to how this process is determined in the end) selected as the Republican candidate. At the time, it was believed that Donald Trump would never be triumphant and that this rhetorical stunt might be enough to forestall a third party bid on the part of the real estate tycoon that would likely result in Hillary Clinton winning the White House.

At the time, it seemed that Donald Trump and Ted Cruz might have had a considerable degree of compatibility. Some pundits and strategists even speculated that Cruz might have even made a good vice president on a ticket headed by Donald Trump.

Given Trump's New Yorker mentality, his preferred strategy consisted of repeatedly insulting his opponents into submission and compliance. By the time he got around to Cruz, it seems this verbal barrage could not be turned off.

A number of Trump's most scathing retorts against Cruz were actually aimed at the physical appearance of Cruz's wife Heidi and at Cruz's father for supposedly being part of the conspiracy to assassinate President Kennedy. For unlike Trump, Cruz apparently takes serious the clause in the traditional wedding vows about marriage being until death and not until the first sign of crows feet.

Yet it would seem surprisingly to the most thoroughgoing and rigorous of Christians that PR stunts along the campaign trail are a far more serious matter than promises made before God at the marriage altar or loyalty to family.

Apart from a situation resulting in profound criminality such as treason, terrorism, or an act that would result in discernible quantifiable harm to an individual, one's foremost loyalties ought to be to one's family rather than the state necessarily. Even much less is owed to an individual that hasn't even as of yet been elected to public office.

Ted Cruz might have promised to endorse whomever the Republican candidate was to be once the dust settled. However, that promise was made before Trump disparaged Cruz's family in some of the most visceral ways imaginable.

Yet as of much concern to the spiritually inclined ought to be the elevation of this incident at the Republican convention to the level of a litmus test by which Senator Cruz's profession of faith is judged valid or not.

There are a number of different interpretations as to the procedural mechanics by which an individual attains the state of salvation according to the various confessional traditions within the Christian faith. However, at the most fundamental, a Christian is someone that has professed faith in the Lord Jesus Christ for dieing upon the cross as payment for our sins and rising from the dead so that those that believe in Him might have eternal life in Heaven.

Nowhere in the historic creeds held by any legitimate denomination does it say anything about your mansion in the beatific beyond being forfeited as a result of renigging on your promise to endorse a particular presidential candidate should your relationship with this aspiring leader turn sour. Pietistic sticklers might snipe that Scripture dictates by someone's fruits that you will know a person and that faith without works is dead.

According to the concepts of the orders of creation and subsidiarity, for the smooth functioning of human society, God established certain spheres of authority to oversee the complexity of the world and that the authority closest to a particular concern ought to be the one to address the matter. As such, the loyalty that ought to be the strongest should be for immediate family such as one's spouse, children, parents, and siblings. In a properly balanced system, the loyalty and deference due a distant aspiring leader and even the offices which such figures seek ought to be minimal or perhaps even tentative at its most intense.

By conscious volition in terms of the marriage vows before God and men, the first loyalty of Ted Cruz is to his wife. Coming in at a close second is that to his father given that, from all indication, it seems that the two have an intact familial relationship. If anything, Ted Cruz's profession of faith should be called into question if he did not prioritize their honor by taking some kind of symbolic stand that realizes that, while there might not be any other electorally viable alternative to Hillary Clinton other than Donald Trump, in good conscience he cannot pledge fealty to the man.

The conspicuously devout that pride themselves on finding a Biblical text for nearly every life contingency will no doubt rush to the Old Testament and invoke the narrative of Jepthah as proof that the believer is obligated to abide by his promises no matter how outlandish. Jepthah in Judges 11:31 vowed that he would offer as a sacrifice the first thing he saw emerge from his domicile upon his return home if the Lord would grant him victory over the Ammonites.

It turned out that that would be his daughter. And to prove that he was a man of his word, Jepthah did kill her.

Religious enthusiasts will rejoice, “See! This is proof that Ted Cruz is obligated to fulfill his vow to Donald Trump and the Republican Party.” Maybe, maybe not. Perhaps those holding to this position ought to contemplate the implications of what they are advocating.

Jepthah made this vow to God. So are those critical of Cruz regarding this matter telling us that Trump is, in their view, God or deserving of the same unwavering loyalty that is owed to the Almighty?

Even in terms of the traditional wedding ceremony, the binding lifelong nature of that union is probably characterized as such more so because one swears this promise not so much to one's intended spouse as one is making this promise to and before a righteous and holy God. Since Donald Trump has been married three times with an undisclosed additional number of women before, during, and after each of these marriages, it is pretty safe to say that he does not rise to the same level of perfection as the triune Godhead.

Those that continue to insist that Ted Cruz is likely not a Christian or at least not a very good one need to be quite careful. For does not Scripture say that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God?

As such, does that not also include those leveling these kinds of accusations against Senator Cruz? If these critics continue to insist that they are without sin, does not I John 1:8 say of them that they are liars? If they are going to hold that the slightest shortcoming in the life of the professed believer is evidence of the likelihood that the individual is likely not a believer, might these types wallowing in self righteousness in regards to the Ted Cruz question be in danger of the hottest hellfire of all?

You aren't going to get through life without a few mistakes which theologians would categorize as sin. On the Day of Judgment would you rather stand before God having failed to uphold the honor of your wife and father or having failed to placate a presidential candidate that by that point probably doesn't even reside in the desired habitation of the Afterlife if he continues to insist that he has never done anything wrong in need of a Savior's forgiveness in the first place.

By Frederick Meekins

The Pied Piper Of Apostasy?

Throughout the history of His people first in terms of pre-Messianic Israel in the form of the Psalms and then ultimately in terms of the Church following the death, burial, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, music has played a crucial role in conveying the great truths of doctrine and teaching to the faithful. As such, many of these lyrical works referred to as hymns have endured for decades and in some instances even for centuries.

The Emergent Church movement is a philosophy of ecclesiology holding that much of what Christendom professed throughout the modern era was either in error or in needs of being reformulated as society transitionally progresses into an epoch more postmodern in orientation. However, given that its musical tastes have apparently found it difficult to expand beyond so-called “Seven Eleven Choruses” where songs composed of a mere seven words are sung over and over for what seems like eleven times in a row, this methodology of ministry might have hit something of a roadblock in terms of didactic lyricism.

Emergent Church poobah Brian McLaren announced that he thinks he may have found a way around this formidable impasse. He contends that, if generations of Christians have enjoyed classic songs to such a noticeable extent, why throw out the baby with the bathwater? That might happen more often in a literal sense than you think given the support for the deliberative neo-natal infanticide epidemic throughout the circles of religious leftism.

Instead of composing entirely new songs that may or may not catch on, according to an article published at Christianpost.com, Mclaren has decided to simply formulate new lyrics in compliance with his doctrinal preferences and peculiarities to those tunes that have stood the test of time. It also probably doesn't hurt that most are probably so old that they have also passed into the public domain in terms of copyright status.

The first released by McLaren bastardized in this fashion is “Onward Christian Soldiers”. That particular hymn wasn't good enough to be left alone, in McLaren's view, because of its emphasis of warfare against “the foe”.

According to McLaren, his sensibilities were unsettled by the original version because “the foe” could be interpreted to mean “our neighbors outside of the Church”. McLaren further insists that metaphors of warfare were not in accord with Jesus' and Paul's program of peacemaking.

So once this apostate is finished, will he next turn his cross hairs to explicitly rewriting the Bible? The argument could be made that McLaren is already well down that path in terms of the warped practices he advocates as evidenced by his co-officiating at his son's homosexual wedding.

Like it or not, the Bible is already full of war metaphors. For example, at His Second Advent, Christ does not intend to return as the friend the lowly Jesus, but instead upon a white steed amidst a battle where the blood is prophesied to flow up to the bridals of the horses.

The timid will respond that is merely a metaphor for the ultimate triumph over evil. Maybe so, as the interpretation of eschatological motifs is not the point of this particular analytical exposition.

As such, even if one wants to go that interpretative route, that does not take away from the truth that the Messiah proclaimed in the pages of Holy Writ is not one that turns away from conflict at all costs.

Jesus says in Matthew 10:34-35 that He has not come to bring peace but rather to set son against father and daughter against mother.

McLaren assures that he would not have as much of a problem with the song if “the foe” had been identified with his own preferred bogeymen such as greed, racism, domestic violence, or apathy. But aren't those things that nearly all Christians oppose when these evils are defined in a traditional sense irrespective of whether one views oneself closer to one of the primary dichotomies of either Fundamentalism or Progressivism?

A primary danger of the Emergent Church movement is how it often defines terms in ways that catch the unsuspecting off guard. For example, corporate greed is often defined as little as simply making a profit or those participating in a business undertaking keeping most of their financial reward for themselves without most of it siphoned off in taxes or in the form of assorted bribes more commonly referred to as contributions to mollify an assortment of radical activist groups.

Likewise, “racism” becomes little more than failing to blame Whitey for the preponderance of problems gripping the contemporary world and that certain minorities should be excused for their substandard behavior. Domestic violence is downgraded simply to mean raising your voice in response to a nagging banshee that first raised her voice at you.

Nearly all rational Christians deep down want to diminish the impact of these evils when they actually exist in the world in order to make it a better place the few short years we reside here in comparison to the eons of pending eternity. However, from McLaren's emphasis for a number of years now, one has to stop and wonder if this particular thinker actually believes that this world is all that exists.

For along with “Onward Christian Soldiers”, it seems that Brian McLaren has a particular disdain regarding hymns emphasizing and teaching about Heaven. This vehemence runs so deep that, in this article, McLaren admits that the first lyrics he mangled in the name of propaganda were actually to “I'll Fly Away”.

In that particular song, the composer says that, in a few short days when his life on Earth is through, he'll be flying away to Glory. In the McLarenite reworking, the emphasis is instead placed upon how “I'll Get Involved” in which the theologian urges the faithful “not to evacuate but to engage and transform”. “Transform” is usually a euphemism how everyone else (with the exception of the religious and cultural elites who will continue to enjoy their posh lifestyles as vanguards of the proletariat in classic Soviet tradition) ought to have what they've worked to accumulate redistributed largely to those that often did not toil away in a similar manner.

Admittedly, there are a number of Christians that are, as is said, so heavenly minded that they are no earthly good. However, one must ask is McLaren's problem with songs that misinterpret Biblical doctrine sound teaching and theology itself?

When “I'll Fly Away” says that when life on Earth is through that the composer will fly away, such a declaration is not a call for the passive resignation and detachment of the Eastern mystics. McLaren would probably have little problem with that spiritual methodology when it came to emphasizing existential inwardness over objective creedal dogma or when the time came to separate people from their possessions during the great redistributive upheaval advocated by religious leftists.

Instead, the song is a realization that life here is short at its longest but that we at least have somewhere else worthwhile to go if we profess Christ as Lord and Savior. That is the essence of divine revelation.

James 4:14 reminds that life is but a vapor. Job 14:1 laments, “Man that is born of a woman is of few days, and full of trouble.” Psalm 90:10 establishes that the average lifespan is three score and ten years and four with sorrow and suffering.

Yet Jesus assures in John 14:2-3 that He goes to prepare a place for us and that in His Father's house there are many mansions. If, as McLaren seems to teach and imply, the fullness of Christ's kingdom is in the here and now of this world rather than in the future glory of the Celestial City, we had better see what we can do about getting a refund from the Almighty.

To those steeped and even mired in pious verbal formulations, such a sentiment might sound overly blunt as they claim to be satisfied with a Jesus they perceive to be primarily about tender moral axioms. However, I Corinthians 15:19 boldly declares that, if only in this life we have hope, of all those in the world we are the most miserable and pathetic.

McLaren further conveyed that many of these songs that emphasize the transient nature of this temporal existence plant the worldview presuppositions that lead to the environmental abuse that put the planet in peril. But what about McLaren's own globetrotting lifestyle as he hops from location to location spreading his borderline apostasy?

McLaren doesn't simply sit at home writing books or Internet postings to advance his ideology. An inordinate amount of fossil fuels are consumed to enable him to speak at venues as divergent from one another as Australia and Great Britian.

Nor in his days of pastoral ministry was McLaren merely a humble storefront or country preacher. McLaren's suburban Washington congregation (interesting how suburbs are evil when inhabited by those valuing free market exchange but perfectly acceptable when inhabited by Rolls Royce revolutionaries) took what was once a productive farm and converted it into a religious entertainment complex. Yet, in a podcast a few years ago addressing environmental issues, McLaren lamented how it was somehow an abomination in the eyes of God that people live within four square walls.

Every movement that wants to persuade others as to the superiority of a particular set of values at one point or another utilizes music in order to do so. Perhaps it is a sign of the theological bankruptcy of the Emergent Church that its foremost spokesman feels that the only way to do so is to hijack the joyful noise of a tradition on surer dogmatic footing.

By Frederick Meekins

Trump Equated With Italian Tyrant

On the cover of the summer 2016 issue of New Politics is a caricature of Donald Trump dressed as Benito Mussolini with his arm outstretched in the infamous Fascist salute.

Interesting how these very same leftists feign contempt and outrage whenever conservative pundits invoke similar imagery from the time of the Second World War.

It is claimed that that period's loss of life was so overwhelming that it ought to only be referred to in connection to itself and must not be cheapened by using such horrors as a basis for other historical or political comparisons.

Even more worthy of reference is the accompanying caption insisting that Donald Trump's slogan is “Make America White Again”.

The candidate said nothing of the sort.

All Trump threatened to do is to enforce existing immigration laws and to implement a number of possible security measures to keep out those not coming here in compliance with established procedures and those intent upon harming the nation.

If the editors of New Politics construe the phrase “Make America Great Again” as “Make America White Again”, aren't these intellectuals the ones insinuating that, without a White majority, America won't likely be able to retain its preeminence in the world or standard of living.

Even if Trump did run on a platform of making America White again (which he is not), how is such an aspiration any worse than the desire of Ray Nagin to keep New Orleans as a “Chocolate City” as he enunciated during his tenure as that metropolis' corrupt executive?

How is making America White again as a rallying point of a campaign anymore outrageous than activists that lament “gentrification”, a fancy way of saying its better off for inner cities to remain in a state of decay than for them to become inhabited by an infestation of White interlopers desiring to reside there for whatever reasons.

By Frederick Meekins

Obama Invokes Military To Conceal His Own Incompetence

In his speech at the Democratic National Convention, President Obama said, “Donald Trump calls our military a disaster.”

By this, the President meant that Donald Trump was directly attacking the men and women that comprise the armed forces of the United States.

As formidable and impressive as they are, in a constitutional republic they only do as ordered by the elected civilian leadership.

In his remarks, what President Obama did was deflect the necessary critical analysis of his own lackluster leadership.

For it was not the frontline infantryman that authorized the premature withdrawal from Iraq.

It was not the humble field medic tending the wounds of a fellow soldier mutilated by an improvised explosive device that authorized resources to provide “gender reassignment procedures”.

Nor was it an MP standing guard that decided that the attack on Fort Hood was merely an incident of workplace violence that did not quite rise to the level of terrorism.

In the very same paragraph, the President continued, “He cozies up to Putin, praises Saddam Hussein, and tells the NATO allies...that they have to pay up if they want our protection. Well, America's promises do not come with a price tag.”

It seems that nothing ever does with this financial profligate.

It is said that freedom isn't free.

Often that is thought of in terms of the sacrifices made by those protecting the nation and its people.

The statement can also be taken literally.

The fielding of armies does not come cheap.

Ultimately those equipping and supplying these vast military forces are not doing so solely out of a sense of selfless altruistic patriotism.

Any shocked by such a remark need only be shown the invoice for a single fighter jet.

Why shouldn't our so-called “allies” be expected to shoulder part of this expense?

After all, does not President Obama favor increasingly punitive taxation imposed upon the productive whom he eagerly reminded that they were not really the ones responsible for the enterprises, accomplishments, and achievements that they mistakenly assumed were their own?

If Donald Trump is on the record of speaking favorably of Vladimir Putin, how were his remarks anymore out of line than those articulated by prominent Democrats over the years?

For did not President Obama poopoo Mitt Romney last campaign cycle for viewing Russia as a strategic challenge rather than as a close alley?

Was not the comment that the 1980's called and the decade wanted its foreign policy returned? And during her own tenure as Secretary of State, was not Hillary Clinton the one that insisted she was the one that pushed the reset button for a closer relationship with Russia?

By Frederick Meekins

Technocrats Fret Hitler Quote Exposes Modus Operandi

Technocrats Fret Hitler Quote Exposes Modus Operandi A popular truism holds that those that don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

On the surface, that insightful observation might apply to those that know the factual details of history but refuse to embrace that field of study's numerous object lessons.

However, for the aspiring tyrants, oligarchs, and elites eager to exert their control over a targeted population, it can be just as easy to censor and oppress those examples most likely to arouse suspicions those advocating nefarious agendas might otherwise prefer remain dormant.

Through the horrors of the Holocaust, the lives destroyed or ruined as a result of the Second World War, and the nightmarish curtailment of civil liberties that took place in Germany under the auspices of the Nazi Party's, mere utterance of the name “Adolf Hitler” stops the discerning and reflective in their tracks to take stock of what is being said so that life and liberty might be preserved.

For what happened under the oversight of this particular dictator saw one of Europe's most advanced nation's transformed into one of the most brutal regimes this world has ever known.

Given the scope of the atrocities perpetrated during the Nazi era, the average person often concludes that this organization must have must have stormed into office with only the most brutal and violent of tactics that only the most courageous were willing to withstand.

And while these were always the stock and trade of the most diehard of Nazis, the movement was also able to warp for its own purposes those aspirations of the human heart towards which nearly all have a desire.

Some of the dicta propagated sounded disturbingly similar to the public service announcements of our own day.

In the attempt to draw attention to the subtle spiritual war waged at the worldview level, Life Savers Ministries sponsored an Alabama billboard that consisted of a picture of a group of children and two contrasting quotes.

One attributed to Adolf Hitler read, “He alone who owns the youth gains the future.”

The second from Proverbs 22:6 admonished, “Train up a child in the way he should go, even when he is old he will not depart from it.”

Put up on a Friday in June 2014, the billboard was taken down by the following Tuesday as a result of the ensuing hullabaloo.

The ministry's founder was quoted in an account appearing in the Columbia Ledger Enquirer as responding, “We are pulling the billboard and actually never intended to cause confusion...Herbert Hoover would have been a far better one to quote when he said, 'Children are our most valuable resource'. We are a children's organization and had honorable intentions and nothing else.”

Granted, it is easy to cave when tolerancemongers are eager to rip out one's throat (possibly even literally with the threats of violence such fanatics often make in the name of peace, understanding, and inclusion).

However, what this pastor or evangelist should have done is to use this incident as what President Obama would call a “teaching moment” when the Chief Executive desires to lecture the American people in an exceedingly condescending manner.

Glenn Beck's yeoman's efforts to the contrary in struggling to educate the population as to the dangers of 20th century Progressivism, but why doesn't anyone get all exercised over this Herbert Hoover quote?

For shouldn't those seeing this alternative quote get jacked out of shape over children being dehumanized to the level of a resource like coal or, in this era of mass legalization, industrial hemp?

A resource, after all, has no will of its own and little to no rights.

The purpose of a resource is to be shaped, utilized, and discarded by those to whom in belongs once the owner or those holding title to it see fit for their own benefit.

Perhaps failure to notice that is an indicator of just how conditioned many of us have become to the statist mindset. Such a concern is similar to that unsettled by how dangerously close our world in general and our country in particular are on the verge of mirroring the early days of Nazism.

Of course, at this point, we are not close to placing the assorted undesirables onto boxcars.

But there are signs all around that such a worst case scenario is not beyond the realm of plausibility.

Government agencies whose sole distasteful purpose is to simply and dispassionately collect revenue are use to suppress speech prevailing elites find distasteful.

Millions of the unborn are snuffed out as an inconvenience by those who apparently didn't find it inconvenient to find the time for the carnal pursuit through which new life is brought into existence.

Thousands concerned over the revolutions in morality and lifestyle remain silent for fear of an act as innocent as a donation to a perfectly legal organization could one day be used against them as grounds for terminating employment.

Swarms of supposedly “youthful” foreigners are detained for who knows how long in government warehouses because a militarized or enclosed border is supposedly less humane.

By contrasting the rhetorical similarities between the Book of Proverbs (a source of world religion's most profound wisdom) and Adolf Hitler (a personification of fallen man in his most unredeemed states), one is forced to confront the two basic paths a child can be led down as they make their way towards their eternal destination.

Parenting is not a spectator sport.

Like it or not, the soul of each child will end up in the hands of one of the two great forces waging war for the ultimate allegiance of mankind.

Without a doubt, once in Satan's grasp, though not an impossibility to be freed by the infinite compassion of the works of Christ's death upon the cross and His resurrection from the dead, it becomes all the more harder and complex for the individual to accept this free gift of salvation there for the asking.

By Frederick Meekins

Will Russell Moore Become A Theological McLarenite?

It is often remarked that history appears cyclical in nature. By that, it is meant that, if one watches long enough, one can detect certain patterns that come back around from time to time. And with certain social currents seeming to speed by faster than ever before, often these “temporal ebbs” pour over a society or movement before those watching are even aware.

Today, Brian McLaren has branded himself as a Christian that advocates a number of positions that many other Christians would have a hard time accepting. For example, one can follow his spiritual path from a stance downplaying the relevance of the Afterlife such as the eternality of Hell and that the Kingdom of God is not so much about everlasting life in Heaven but rather about establishing utopia here on Earth to co-officiating at his son's gay wedding.

However, about 25 to 30 years ago, one would have probably have had to have been quite skilled at socio-theological forecasting to predict how far McLaren would have fallen off the deep end. For at around that time, McLaren was an academic with a specialty in literature laboring to establish a post-denominational church with the desire to get back to the simplicity of the Gospel truth all sincere Christians profess.

Those wanting to get in on what is near the ground level of a similar phenomena only need to watch Southern Baptist Commission On Ethics & Public Policy President Russell Moore. For while at the moment holding to a foundational theology sounder than Brian McLaren's, one can now hear Moore's articulation of a certain number of beliefs that is setting him down a path not all that markedly different than the one Brian McLaren has previously trodded.

This is evident in the column published by Russell Moore titled, “Why This Election Year Makes Me Hate The Word 'Evangelical'”. In those remarks, Dr. Moore announces that he no longer wants to be known as an “evangelical” because the connotations that have accrued surrounding the term subverts the cause of Jesus. Instead, Moore clarifies that he is a “Gospel Christian”.

As in regards to the other word games played by those in the arenas of public policy, who could possibly object to the term “Gospel Christian”? For such a phrase, much like the founding motivations of McLaren's Cedar Ridge Community Church, brings to mind the primary narrative of Scripture though which the remainder of divine revelation is understood and brought to life in the heart and soul of each professing believer.

But as in the case of other terms bandied about in the media such as “choice”, “equality”, and “tolerance”, those invoking the term “gospel” often do so for the purposes of imbuing it with meanings altered enough to undermine the traditional understanding as well as support for those one must view as one's opponents or adversaries.

Moore writes, “Part of the problem is that more secular people have for a long time misunderstood the meaning of 'evangelical', seeing us almost exclusively in terms of election-year voting blocs or our most buffoonish television personalities.” Moore is himself tottering close to becoming one of these if he is not careful.

What is so wrong if activist Evangelicals are seen primarily as a voting bloc and why is it the fault of the average Christian that realizes that now is the time for all good men to come to the aide of their country? For apparently Dr. Moore has no problem with reducing Evangelicalism or “Gospel Centered Christianity” to a set of platform positions when it apparently advances the agenda preferred by Russell Moore.

Moore continues, “The other problem is the behavior of some evangelical leaders. I have watched as some of those who gave stern and windy speeches about 'character' in office during the Clinton administration now minimizing the spewing of profanities, .... race-baitingm and courting white supremacists ... [and] debasing public morality and justice through the casino and pornography industries.”

Have not Moore and his closest associates not done the same thing? Donald Trump has verbalized gruff things that have gone over the line, particularly in reference to Megyn Kelly, Karli Fiorinia, and Heidi Cruz. However, at no time did Donald Trump “race bait”.

In regards to “race baiting”, all that Donald Trump did was call for the enforcement of U.S. immigration law and proffer as suggestions a number of proposals such as a wall that might protect the lives of Americans living in what has become a dangerous area. How is this any different than the policies implemented by the Jewish State of Israel which so many Evangelicals are so chummy with that they conveniently overlook the hostility of this competing world religion to Christianity's most fundamental tenet that Jesus is both Messiah and God?

If Russell Moore is going to stand rigorously by the principle that it is essentially sinful for ethnic groups or nationalities to advocate policies that are more favorable to the particular group in question, instead of sitting on the board of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, shouldn't he resign from that position and publicly repent of the organized ethnocentricism he goes out of his way to condemn when it is supposedly engaged in by White people? For in his column, Russell Moore condemns Donald Trump for courting White supremacists.

Mistaken as that pernicious ideology is on a number of points, perhaps disaffected Conservatives and even Evangelicals have decided to give that disreputable element a hearing because many average Americans that have never done a thing to injure a Black person or another minority are fed up with churches and denominational leaders that live higher up the socio-economic ladder beating the mere pewfillers over the head about how horrible Black folks and illegal aliens have it. That message is further compounded by the assumption promoted that somehow the average American is at fault for the misery allegedly endemic among these supposedly oppressed demographics when in reality such is often the result of many in these particular ethnicities failing to exercise self control and a little delayed gratification.

The sincere Christian is obligated to admit that Donald Trump is hardly a role model when it comes to important aspects of his individual character. However, it seems that bold “Gospel Christians” such as Dr. Moore are as guilty of the selective outrage that he has accused his coreligionists of when it comes to certain celebrities and public figures.

Some Christians might have gotten a little cozy with a candidate that wasn't quick enough to distance himself from those perceived as White supremacists (which in this era run amok in political correctness can be defined as little as failing to commence the automatic self-denunciation for simply being White as command of entrenched elites and social engineers). However, a number of Southern Baptists with whom Moore is closely associated are disturbingly reluctant to distance themselves from C.J. Mahaney.

To say that C.J. Mahaney is a controversial pastor would be an understatement. Not only under Mahaney's ecclesiastical leadership did child molesters get by relatively unscathed. He also ran the Covenant Life Church he pastored in Gaithersburg, Maryland along the lines of a cult.

For example, it was not enough for members to show up regularly for the Sunday morning and even the Sunday evening services. They were also expected to participate in a number of prisoner of war style encounter groups referred to as discipleship meetings where they were to spill their innermost secrets included as to how they kept their homes.

Moore writes, “We have been too willing to look the other way when the word 'evangelical' has been coopted by heretics and lunatics. This sort could deny creedal Christianity and gospel clarity with impunity, as long as they were on the right side of the culture war. Thankfully, this sort of evangelicalism is not the future.”

Perhaps Dr. Moore might prefer an Evangelicalism where believers are to overlook any number of abuses on the part of those that articulate not only the required doctrine but also a number of additional peculiarities to let it be known in the process how much they despise the traditional American way of life. Usually such statements take the form of detailing how horrible White people are and how the institutionalized church ought to exercise direct control over areas of your personal life over which God did not originally provide much detail other than a few broad principles He'd probably rather you figure out on your own how to implement.

Like Brian McLaren that went down this path before him, Russell Moore possess the ability to articulate his particular understanding of the Christian faith before a number of generational demographics. It is just unfortunate that each of these figures has grown increasingly liberal as this ability has earned each of them wider circles of acclaim.

By Frederick Meekins

Anti-American Rhetoric Pervades Even Conservative Denominations

On an episode of Issues Etc. examining pop culture apocalypticism, Lutheran Minister Jonathan Fiske admonished that believers need to get away from an American Republican view of Christianity that we are meant to live a good life here and now to a ripe old age after which we go on to our eternal reward in Heaven.

Interesting how the default term to denigrate these days out of the mouths of so many professional relgionists is “America”.

Furthermore, is his enunciation of the term “Republican” also invoked to besmirch the ideological proclivity of those assembling under the banner of the GOP to believe that the path towards the broadest swath of prosperity for the greatest number is to be found in individuals for the most part left alone to pursue their own well being, dreams and callings?

Does Rev. Fiske intend to cast as much aspersion upon an American Democratic view of Christianity that instead sees the path to a society approaching something akin to justice as one where the individual is nothing more than a cog in whatever group one happens to be a part of for the purposes of the government dispersing its largess to favored demographics and constituencies?

Furthermore, is the desire to maximize pleasure and evade misery necessarily a distinctively American characteristic?

Or is it that America through the blessings of the Almighty has been more successful than most regimes in achieving this most desirable yet elusive state of affairs?

For one will find that the average Third Worlder (unless brainwashed by the likes of fanatic Islam) is usually as averse to pain as most Westerners.

It is just that their respective society has not been as successful in alleviating these vicissitudes.

Often those given towards ostentatious verbalized declarations of their own piety articulate a willingness to welcome increased suffering.

However, was it not the God such souls claim as their primary loyalty the one that imbued part of His creation with that mysterious quality known as life along with a desire to see that distinct gift continued for as long as possible?

Though it may be ended as a result of a wide variety of intervening contingencies, if the believer strives to live by these principles God has established in the social sphere, won't the odds be in your favor for a life characterized by a bit less trouble?

After all, does not Scripture urge one to honor your mother and father so that your days upon the Earth might be long?

That text even admits it is a Scripture that dangles before the hearer a carrot in order to encourage compliance.

By Frederick Meekins

Pope Downplays Islamist Invasion

In an interview downplaying the Islamist invasion of the West, Pope Francis assured in a La Criox interview that he has seen “Muslims come to venerate the Virgin Mary and St. George.”

That doesn't cut it.

Unless you believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and be saved, you are still going to Hell no matter how highly you think of His earthly mother.

She was, after all, a sinner in need of a savior like every other human being.

In the same interview, the Pope went on to assert that the state must be secular and that the ones that are confessional in nature in that they adhere to an established creed end badly.

So, as a sovereign state of its own, does this assessment also apply to the Vatican?

Will those of a mindset similar to Ian Paisley or Jack Chick at their most militant be invited to establish a print shop on Vatican territory as a symbol of this dedication to pluralism?

by Frederick Meekins

Narcissism Or Aversion To Communalism?

The cover of the 5/20/2013 edition of Time Magazine reads, “Millennials are lazy, entitled narcissists who still live with their parents. Lazy and entitled narcissists might be reason for moral concern and reflection, but on what grounds is it the business of the wider society as to whether or not individuals live with their parents?

In regards to such an issue, Scripture is largely silent with individuals of regard and esteem living in a variety of ways in relation to their respective parents. It seems Isaac remained at home until his 40's. Some have speculated that the Virgin Mary might have been as young as 15 or 16 before having the Christ child and fully becoming the wife of Joseph

It might be that the demographic targeted by this intended smear might skew a little “too White” to be extended a number of the privileges other such categories.

When was the last time a major news weekly (if it hadn't already ceased print publication) published a cover story criticizing welfare recipients (especially minorities) for being “lazy and entitled narcissists”?

Yet many of those not only incessantly suckle off the public teat but also grumble indignantly nearly to the point of threatened uprising if what flows through the civic nipple grows increasingly sparse or diluted in their opinion.

Just what is being categorized as “entitled”?

Does this include things such as Obama phones and the cancellation of student loans after 20 years irrespective of whether or not those willingly assenting to such debt are anywhere near to fulfilling this financial obligation?

Is “entitled” apparently preferring to live in the comforts of the home they have known their entire lives rather than in cramped, roach-infested apartments filled interestingly with the kinds of “entitled” folks good liberals such as the editors of Time Magazine lack the spine to criticize?

Young adults born into American families (especially of a Caucasian phenotype) apparently deserve condemnation should they decide for whatever reason to stay with their parents beyond the time upheld as standard ironically by those the most insistent that standards do not exist.

Yet these very same radical relativists heaping condemnation upon typical American young adults living at home with their parents turn around saying how wonderfully family-oriented it is when nearly a dozen immigrants pack themselves into domiciles that begin to feel cramped with four people residing in them.

Granted, self-absorption can be taken to extremes. Lindsay Lohan, numerous members of the Kenendy clan, or the British royal family clearly attest to this truth.

However, given what is known about the kind of liberal mindset predominant at the highest echelons of American journalism as typified by Time Magazine, the discerning should probably read a little between the lines.

If an individual is residing with their parents, it can inoculate them to an extent against a number of social or mental pathologies that many liberals and secularists applaud as the “New Morality”, which isn't quite so new anymore. Such allegedly cutting edge ethical reflection is beginning to sag in many places like the aging hippies that thrust their decadence into the face of American popular culture and public awareness.

For example, sin can take root in any of our lives in the dark corners that we would least expect. However, the young adult living with parents that expect those living under their roof to abide by what would be considered a broadly traditional morality will probably have to work a lot harder at things such as boozing and generalized carousing if those are the deepest longings of one's heart beyond those brief temptations that plague us all in weak moments.

In the collectivist mindset serving as the foundation of contemporary liberalism, “narcissistic” does not necessarily mean a propensity to wallow in the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life as warned in Scripture. To many of those that would like to see American society revolutionized away from an ethos of responsible individualism and single family orientation to something more group oriented, narcissistic can mean nothing more than tending primarily to the concerns of one's own household, looking to one's own abilities and resources to make it through the struggles of life, and expecting that all but the extremely disabled or the aged that have paid into the system ought to do the same for themselves

This is evidenced in the numerous graduation exhortations delivered on the part of the Obamas. In these orations, the President and his consort admonish the students not to pursue private sector careers marked primarily by what they consider the material comforts that accrue as a result of success and achievement in that particular sector of human endeavor. Instead, those persuaded to embrace President Obama's vision of the good life will give themselves over to what is considered the public sector such as government and forms of the nonprofit activism fomenting revolutionary upheaval such as community organizing.

However, it is through the overwhelming majority of businesses that exchange a good or a service for financial profit that most needs and desires are met. As John Stossel pointed out in a documentary on the subject, though her motivation may have been nobler, corporations such as Walmart and Microsoft have actually done more to elevate the material status and quality of life of a greater number than Mother Terresa ever did.

To those of the Obamaist mindset, the ideal place for young adults is not laboring to establish the foundations of their future by either getting their own place or by residing with their parents and saving for the day when they will be on their own by purchasing their own home or inheriting one upon the passing of their parents. Rather, the totalist progressive would like nothing more than to see these organic sociologically processes disrupted by altering whatever trajectory the productive young adult might find their life headed by conscripting them into some form of involuntary servitude.

The minds of most are set to a default to conceptualize of that as some form of military service. As such, many are programmed to respond, “And what is so wrong with that?”

Nothing in a time of actual declared war where the very survival of the nation is on the line. However, contrary to the hypothesis put forth by luminaries such as historian Stephen Ambrose and, to an extent, even William F. Buckley, the military during peace time does not exist to ensure that everyone sings from the same songbook.

During such periods in American history, the nation is better served by a force of volunteers that have decided to pursue military service as a life's calling or only for a short season. That way the number is sufficient so that the country is protected but not so large that the interests of the military threaten the well being of civilian institutions.

However, when liberals such as President Obama extol the glories of compulsory voluntary service, those tasks within the narrowly defined parameters of the military are the last such orators are calling for the completion of. What these elites have in mind are more akin to the police state functions undertaken by the infamous totalitarian regimes of the early decades of the twentieth century.

For example, as he was laying the groundwork for his regime, Barack Obama announced his vision for a civilian security force as large as the military and capable of intruding into areas of your life where the traditional military would never dream of intruding. Michelle Obama reiterated that, under Barack, we would not be allowed to return to our lives as we had previously known them.

Though abandoning or altering a number of fundamental worldview assumptions regarding the nature of work and the relationship of the individual to the overall economy, communalist elites are able to manipulate the unsuspecting into viewing the most basic and innocent of activities as acts surpassing the most vile acts of debauchery in terms of overall subsversion.

By Frederick Meekins

Hipster Nazarene Insists Daily Bathing Perpetuates Western Imperialism

In a sermon, a Nazarene pastor condemned everyone as an oppressor.

In a self-flagellating confession, the pastor admits he is guilty of this particular evil by taking showers everyday while the natives of an area of Africa to which he went on a short term missions expedition did not have the luxury of using water in such a carefree manner.

And how is that the pastor's fault?

Neither can the Africans probably afford airline travel halfway around the globe.

However, that apparently did not prevent the pastor from engaging in such extraneous travel.

More importantly, did this pastor ever stop and think that these Africans are probably being denied the benefits of modern utilities such as an advanced sewer system as a result of the environmentalist organizations that such self-aware hipsters usually support insisting that the bushmen are more adorable in a state of perpetual primitivism?

Furthermore, even if the White man was magnanimous enough to gift these savages with the latest water distribution technology, will these backward cultures be willing to maintain it or will they get too distracted by the overwhelming compulsion to slaughter the neighboring tribe?

By Frederick Meekins

Trump No Less Pious Necessarily Than Average Christian

In contemplation as to whether or not Donald Trump is a Christian, Pastor Sean Harris of Berean Baptist Church in a SermonAudio podcast alleged the presidential candidate has not produced any fruit testifying to such.

As an example, this pastor did not offer any proof such as Trump enunciating an errant Christological profession or even the tycoon's shocking confession that he did not have any sins needing forgiveness.

Rather, the criteria referenced by Harris included no proof of regular church attendance, lack of a spirit of generosity, and lack of fidelity to a single woman.

How is charity being defined?

By the tossing of money at a particular cause or organization with no expectation of anything in return?

By that definition, the financial oblation many believers place in the collection plate each week doesn't count either.

For most are doing that for the purposes of curring favor with God or to workout some kind of arrangement between the taxman and/or the church leadership.

Secondly, it must be admitted that Trump's conjugal relationships are less than ideal.

However, unlike Bill Gothard, Josh Duggar, Jack Schaap, at least Trump seems to be attracted to woman over the age of consent or not beneath him on an organizational flowchart where the occupational statuses of the objects of his desire are not threatened if they spurn his advances.

By Frederick Meekins

I Am Not Bought

By Gordon E. Finley, Ph.D.

 

After yet another Democratic debate -- this one moderated by PBS -- it has become increasingly clear that Hillary Clinton has become a one woman myth making machine.

 

In the PBS, debate Hillary sought to defuse a potential Wall Street-Gate on top of her existing Benghazi-Gates and Email-Gates. She proudly proclaimed that she was not bought and paid for by Wall Street and that indeed she was going to rein them in -- speaking fees notwithstanding.    

 

All this brings to mind one of the most notorious and best remembered lines in political speech making -- "I am not a crook" -- by one of the greatest dirty tricksters ever, Richard Milhous Nixon. 

 

Perhaps Hillary's speech writers should work on this one.

 

Gordon E. Finley, Ph.D. is Professor of Psychology Emeritus at Florida International University in Miami.

Headline Potpourri #84

Pastor Jason Cooley in a SermonAudio homily counseled Christians celebrating Christmas that the holiday is not a hill to die on. Those insistent upon continuing to do so only look foolish. As opposed to what? That particular pastor's own brand of legalism elevating his own idiosyncrasies to the level of a clearly delineated dogma?

In a SermonAudio oration on the myth of nonessential doctrine, Pastor Jason Cooley insisted that the Emergent Church movement is the child of Fundamentalism because of the Fundamentalist movement's propensity towards compromise. However, it is also the result a wing of Fundamentalism to clamp down on things where there is no clear mandate provided by Scripture other than individual conscience.

Often in their repeated emphasis about children being born inherently sinful and wicked, it would be helpful if these particularly rigorous Reformed theologians would clarify that such a soteriological observation is not being invoked to justify the mistreatment of such unsuspecting youngsters. For from the manner and in the contexts in which this reminder is proffered one almost takes away the impression that the ones making such verbalizations would enjoy nothing more than beating a small child senseless for the smallest infraction in the eyes of some aging prune neurotically obsessed with finding as many faults as possible.

An episode of Generations Radio addressed the topic of “Why Science Fiction Authors Tend To Be Atheists”. For one thing, Christian youth that might have skill in that genre are not often encouraged by their private school educators to pursue opportunities in such areas. About the only vocational guidance they are given regards the foreign mission field. That is fine and dandy that there is concern for the Pygmies and Hottentots. But what about outreach to Americans through their own cultural idiom for a change?

Shouldn't there be greater outrage at President Obama speaking at a mosque with ties to Islamic terrorism/extremism than presidential candidates that spoke at Bob Jones University in the days when the school forbade interracial dating?

What did Ben Carson think that other candidates and media pundits were going to speculate as he rushed back to Florida to do his laundry as the caucus process was reaching its crescendo? Makes you wonder how many times he pulled something similar in the operating room. More importantly, it also gives one pause to consider if he can handle the pressures of the Oval Office is a campaign where no lives are directly on the line causes near exhaustion or an emotional breakdown.

Regarding the schools that are requiring students to telework during snow days. Are the schools going to pick up the tab for Internet access or tech support?

Contrary to what was insinuated from a pulpit, there are dangers in the contemporary church other than a critical spirit. Isn't it an example of the critical spirit to be critical of the critical spirit? And perhaps most importantly, at times isn't what is viewed as a critical spirit actually discernment?

In a sermon illustration, a pastor poked fun at a hypothetical parishioner that spotted the alleged shortcomings of others at the worship service such as immodest dress and signs of inebriation. But isn't that Christian merely applying that they have been indoctrinated regarding for years by the kind of pastor now spoofing such exercise of judgment. There is rarely any winning at this sort of thing if you are a mere pewfiller.

On SermonAudio, a pastor remarked that a person ought to abide where God has placed us. In other words, one ought to simply obey and not question those invoking a higher status over and above you.

In a sermon, Gideon was mocked for hiding in a wine press. What is so wrong with hiding from an adversary tactically superior in number to you prior to your receiving direct revelation from God regarding what to do about the situation. There is no winning with these kinds of ministers. If Gideon had decided he had had enough and was going to slay any Mideonites coming in his direction, we would have been subjected to an endless number of homiletical expositions about vengeance being the Lord's and why Gideon was in error for failing to instead appeal for the intervention of the civil magistrate.

It was said in a SermonAudio podcast that most people like themselves too much in terms of self esteem. As proof of this out of control ego, the theologian presented the example that most people clothe and feed themselves. Are we supposed to sit passively and wait for the church consistory or deacon board to determine the privilege of what provisions with which we are to be bestowed?

In a discussion of the impact of talk radio upon the political process, home school activist Kevin Swanson suggested that the believer should be leery of the hosts such as Glenn Beck, Michael Savage, and Rush Limbaugh that are divorced. It was a wonder such a fanatic did lump in Laura Ingram or Monica Crowely for simply being female. There was no divine mandate from Heaven barring access to the airwaves or the First Amendment those than have been divorced. Mass communications is not an explicitly church office. And what about forgiveness? If these figures are to be banned from non-ecclesiastical occupations on the basis of divorce, should the radical Christian Reconstructionists or Dominionists ever seize power, what is to prevent them from implementing a religious caste system similar to that found in Hindu India that would ban all but the most doctrinally rigorous from certain professions?

In condemnation of talk radio that he categorized as secular, Kevin Swanson warned that hosts must be careful to obey the admonition of not mocking rulers or dignitaries. But America, the authority is actually the Constitution; not the occupant of a particular office or even the office itself. So just how debauched can the offices be that we are obligated to respect? Must Hugh Heffner and Larry Flint be respected as the dignitaries of their respective firms (that being their respective businesses and not the assorted carnality they peddle)? Does this deferential respect also apply to the Anti-Christ and False Prophet which are just as much offices as they are personalities?

In condemnation of radio talk shows that might be considered more secular in that the programs do not constantly beat you over the head with direct Scriptural quotations in regards to every issue addressed, homeschool activist Kevin Swanson criticized the medium for the failure to emphasize that it might be God's sovereignty to turn the reigns of government over to the tyrannically reprobate. So does that mean when the jackboots come to ravish and debase the daughters of homeschoolers that the truly godly such as Pastor Swanson would encourage surrender to and applaud such defilement?

Towards the end of the Dec. 23, 2015 issue of Christian Century, readers are urged to click through to Amazon.com from the publication's website. By surfing that particular route, the Christian Century will earn a percentage of anything purchased. But isn't that part of the capitalism that the religious left any other time denigrates as systematic oppression and undermining face to face COMMUNITY exchange?

In condemnation of Donald Trump, Cal Thomas during a Chicago radio morning show interview castigated the assembled at the candidate's rallies as mostly old and mostly White. But can you really get much older or Whiter than Cal Thomas? By the standard appealed to by Thomas, was the widespread destruction of property in Baltimore and Ferguson mitigated by the predominance of minority faces in the mob? Does Thomas now flagellate himself for the White privilege that has played a role in enabling him to become, as he bills himself, the nation's mostly widely syndicated columnist if such racial pandering has now become part of his stock and trade.

Instructive, Donald Trump confessed that he is capable of transforming into anything that he needs to.

In a campaign commercial, Hillary Clinton assures the child of illegal aliens during a loving embrace not to worry about the disposition of her parents and to leave that to Hillary. Will similar gestures of comfort be extended to the distressed offspring of members of the Bundy Militia or those whose parents have been financially ruined for failing to comply for reasons of conscience with gay marriage mandates? For is not violating immigration law as much a violation of the duly promulgated laws of the land as these politically incorrect causes?

In an examination of President Obama's 2015 National Prayer Breakfast remarks comparing recent Islamic violence with that committed by Christian's centuries ago, homeschool activist Kevin Swanson observed that both Islam and Roman Catholicism have both made the error of being faiths inordinately concerned with power and its accumulation. And Swanson's own theological persuasion of Calvinism has been immune from this particular temptation? Servetus might insist otherwise. Swanson, ministering with the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, would no doubt likely align himself with Christian Reconstructionism or a Postmillennialism that insist that a feckless Christ is not able to return until optimal sociopolitical conditions are achieved. So apart from power (the ability to make people do that which they would not otherwise often under threat of violence or actual violence), how does Swanson intend to implement his sect's particular peculiarities?

In his tremendous consumption of fossil fuels and the expansion of his carbon footprint, Pope Francis appeared on the border between Mexico and the United States as part of a staged pity party on behalf of the swarms of illegals violating the sovereignty of American territory. He went as far as to insinuate that Donald Trump was not even a Christian. Does this mean that the Pope will celebrate the conspicuous disrespect of Vatican property and decorum? Let's see if the Pontiff remains similarly broadminded if he is awakened in the middle of the night by raucous music and the uninvited wantonly urinating on the floor of St. Peter's Basilica.

“Pete's Dragon” is being remade. But from the trailer, it looks like this interpretation won't be a family musical. Instead, the narrative looks to be constructed as a serious fantasy. Just wait until “Mary Poppins” gets a similar treatment. No longer will the chimney sweeps be depicted as happy-go-lucky as they dance across the rooftops of London. Most likely these laborers will be depicted as oppressed proletarians suffering a variety of chronic health problems. And forget about the tunes “A Spoonful Of Sugar” or “Feed The Birds”. Child nutrition and animal welfare activists will probably put an end to these beloved classics.

Greta Van Sustern is celebrating her 3500th episode on Fox News. I remember back when her primary focus was serial killer of the week.

In a recitation of his sins at the National Prayer Breakfast, NASCAR personality Darrell Waltrip enumerated among these transgressions being aloof. Aloof is defined as being emotionally distant, reserved, or unwilling to take part in things. This might be an era where one of the primary modalities of Christian fellowship consists of regurgitating the contents of one's inner being for group condemnation on a level just below that of what would take place in a Marxist prisoner of war camp. However, so long as you politely nod to those greeting you as you saunter through the church narthex Sunday morning, I've yet to find a Scripture condemning those that primarily stay to themselves.

In reference to Donald Trump, Marco Rubio hypothesized that, if a candidate despised by nearly fifty percent of the party wins the nomination, the Republicans will implode as they turn on one another. So why are Trump supporters obligated to betray their convictions and fall in line dutifully behind Rubio? Why shouldn't the Marcoists be the ones to stifle their dissent and relent to Trumpian preferences?

By Frederick Meekins

Pope Exposes His Biblical Ignorance In Hurry To Promote Globalist Agenda

As part of the centuries-long effort on the part of Vatican elites to collapse the United States on behalf of the New World Order, Pope Francis said regarding Donald Trump, “...a person that thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not about building bridges, is not Christian.”

However, it would seem that most of the things said about walls in divine revelation are overwhelmingly positive.

For example, Proverbs 25:28 counsels, “He that hath no rule over his own spirit is like a city that is broken down, and without walls.”

Some might dismiss that as rhetorical metaphor rather than as a literal example where actual people and lives are involved.

In terms of history, an entire book of the Bible is dedicated to an individual moved by God to take on as his life's work the rebuilding of the wall around the Jerusalem that he loved.

That was none other than Nehemiah.

And to those that dismiss that entire account as Old Testament, the New Testament speaks perhaps even more favorably of walls.

For example, in Revelation 21:14, Heaven or the New Jerusalem is described as having a wall made of jasper having twelve foundations (each named for one of Christ's twelve Apostles).

With this wall measuring 12,000 stadia in length, width and height, assorted Bible scholars estimate this wall to be 1400 miles long, 1400 miles wide, and 1400 miles tall.

Given that Heaven is where the concentrated presence of God dwells, it is safe to conjecture that God must really like walls.

As the institutionally professed Vicar of Christ, does the Pope now take it upon himself to claim that he apparently knows more about what God wants than God?

Lastly, what about the walls built by the Roman Catholic Church in terms of doctrine and dogma to control access to God?

For example, it is doubtful that one will be granted access to what those administering this form of Christianity believe to be the gateway by which to enter the Kingdom of God (namely Communion, the Lord's Supper, or the Eucharist) unless one consents to this denomination's particular peculiarities.

As such, why shouldn't the United States be allowed to determine for itself by what criteria outsiders will be granted permission to enter here as well?

By Frederick Meekins

Sword Of The Lord Columnist Insinuates Sci-Fi Fans Not Fit To Teach School

For decades, the Sword Of The Lord has served as a voice of independent Christian Fundamentalism. This publication has fulfilled that mission by regularly standing its ground against the encroaching liberalism and modernism plaguing broad swaths of the Christian church.

One of the most interesting regular features of the paper is “The News and Views” column by Dr. Hugh Pyle that usually applies Christian plain-spokenness to a number of items of public interest. However, in the October 21, 2005 issue of the Sword Of The Lord, Dr. Pyle goes beyond his normal commonsense to draw conclusions not supported by the evidence or deducible from it.

In his Oct 21, 2005 column, Dr. Pyle laments the poor example set by many contemporary public school educators and how in times past these guides along the path of learning imbued their students with a sense of spiritual as well as academic knowledge. As proof of his thesis, he cites a feature in his local paper where an interviewed teacher responded to a survey that his favorite movie was Star Trek.

Dr. Pyle responds, “You had better give your children all the education you can at home and in a good, fundamental church and Sunday school.” From his reaction, you’d think the teacher had admitted to having a stash of girlie videos. Would Dr. Pyle have said this had the teacher admitted to liking sports

With all the nonsense going on in the public schools, you’d think that a teacher that enjoys Star Trek and related science fiction would be the least of any concerned citizen’s worries and might even be considered an asset on an academic faculty. For despite the moral shortcomings that pop up from time to time in the plots, over the course of its various incarnations, Star Trek has consistently remained one of the few expressions of popular culture to present itself as if ethical reflection actually mattered and was often essential to the story.

Dr. Pyle further laments, “Usually my teachers were well read in good and great literature, which included the Bible, and it showed up in class.” And what exactly did this great literature consist of? Shakespeare? It may come as a surprise, but the plays of Shakespeare were the Star Trek of their time because --- while we consider them highbrow literature today --- these dramas were performed primarily as popular entertainment. Paying homage to this tradition, Star Trek has often employed Shakespearean allusions and motifs throughout its history.

Though I cannot speak fully as to Dr. Pyle’s personal convictions about the matter, for a number of those operating in a closely related socioecclesiastical circle even literature produced by fellow Christians is not even good enough. For while most Christians were pleased about the attention given to C.S. Lewis as a result of the cinematic adaptation of The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe even if they had reservations about every last point in his systematic theology, more hardline pastors, scholars, and evangelists want Lewis roundly condemned on all counts rather than to sift the wheat from the chaff in what he has written and some come close to heaping damnation on anyone that dares crack open one of this professor’s books. One pastor in an audio sermon, in an attempt to scare Christians away from seeing the film, claims demons literally hovering in the theater might latch on to unsuspecting viewers (as if this won’t happen in most churches these days, many of the Fundamentalist ones included).

Others a bit more reasonable in their criticisms such as David Brown of the First Baptist Church of Oak Creek, Wisconsin claim C.S. Lewis is inappropriate for Christians to read since Narnia is inhabited by creatures of a questionable spiritual pedigree such as centaurs, fauns, and witches. However, such insights fail to properly analyze classic Western fantasy literature.

Just because there is a witch in The Chronicles Of Narnia does not set off the Harry Potter alarm. Unlike Rowling, Lewis conforms to traditional literary aesthetics by casting the witch in the role of the antagonist or villain.

The most thoroughgoing separationists ---- the term in this sense meaning those that choose not to ecclesiastically affiliate with those of differing religious viewpoints rather than those misinterpreting the First Amendment --- contend that Lewis must still be avoided since to have a witch in a story in any capacity is a violation of II Corinthians warning the Christian to touch not the unclean thing.

If that’s the case, then what are Patch The Pirate Clubs doing in numerous Fundamentalist churches? In much the same manner as Rowling has glamorized witchcraft, numerous churches have romanticized the life of high-seas piracy.

Potter critics rightly point out there is no such thing as a good witch. Likewise, there is no such thing as a good pirate.

Why not just organize Jack The Carjacker Clubs for kids since that’s what pirates essentially were in the Age of Sail. Better yet, why not update things for the current millennium and start Tommy The Terrorist Clubs?

At least Lewis had the decency to cast the witch as the villain. What’s the excuse for this strand of Fundamentalism that demands every last detail be in apple pie order or they’ll bring the legitimacy of your Christian faith into question? Pirates have probably ruined as many innocent lives and possibly even more than the average witch ever has.

If every character in every story abided by every last behavioral norm and stricture insisted upon by many Fundamentalists, frankly there’d hardly be any literature worth reading. This does not mean though that a book must be filled with promiscuity or profanity to be interesting.

To these critics, even the most wholesome classics uncomfortably push the limits of acceptability. According to Kevin Swanson of Generations Radio, Little House On The Prairie suborns lesbianism since Laura Ingalls Wilder dared to exhibit a bit of an independent streak; I guess Half-pint was too tomboyish or spoke her mind one too many times for old Pa Swanson’s tastes.

As evidence, Swanson cites Laura’s refusal to say "obey" in her wedding vows. However, it must be remembered that these are simply a cultural manifestation of a Biblical imperative and despite popular conceptions to the contrary aren’t spelled out verbatim in the pages of holy writ.

No Chronicles Of Narnia. No Little House On The Prairie. Doesn’t exactly leave much to read and from the literary theories expounded by these pious ascetics, it’s a wonder they still let the good Christian read the Bible. For while David might have been a man after God’s own heart, there’s a goodly portion of his life you’d hardly want your children emulating.

Perhaps some Christians are too quick to embrace C.S. Lewis in his entirety without casting a discerning eye on those areas where he did come up short. But if that is the case, these overly-exacting members of the clergy have themselves to blame in large part.

For if these divines find contemporary speculative fiction to be inappropriate if it does not adhere to their particular systematic theologies on every point, are they themselves doing anything to produce acceptable alternative narratives, sagas, and epics? Furthermore, are they actively encouraging the bright young minds in their congregations to pursue artistic or literary callings. Because from what I have studied of and experienced from those of this particular Evangelical perspective, most have adopted a proto-Romanist mindset that those possessing a religionist vocation are somehow more important than the rest of us and the work of such sanctified journeymen more essential to the fulfillment of God’s good purposes. That’s why in many churches, Christian schools, and youth groups one hears an awful lot about becoming a missionary to the heathen savages in some far off jungle but precious little about targeting the barbarians that are taking over this culture and trying to undue the consequences of godless thinking upon our own institutions of thought and learning.

Interestingly though, the Sword of the Lord does not hold a consistent position against all forms entertainment. For while fans of science fiction aren’t fit to teach and a Christian had better not dare go to a movie since even the money from more wholesome motion pictures is likely to flow into the coffers of reprobates, the staff at the Sword of the Lord gets as googoo-eyed around celebrities as the remainder of the population and turn a blind eye when it suits their fancy to the exacting standards of deportment usual insisted upon by the publication.

Featured in the top-left corner of the December 20, 2005 edition is a profile of outdoor sports host Chad Schearer. In his testimony, Chad tells of being invited to a NASCAR race by one of the stockcar owners. If the Sword of the Lord is to be consistent, shouldn’t this individual be chastised and disfellowshipped for going somewhere where alcohol, scantily clad women, and profanity are bound to be present?

As outcast in Christian circles these days as I am among the heathen, I don’t have much of any moral qualms about motorsports. However, I am not the one whose publication is insinuating one is some kind of deviant if one likes laser guns and spaceships and calling into question the legitimacy of one’s Christianity for occasionally associating with conservative Southern Baptists or level-headed Charismatics.

However, I guess if you are part of the “in crowd”, you don’t necessarily have to abide by the rules and standards derived from a particular interpretation of God’s Word the common believer in the pew is expected to adhere to. For you see, Chad’s pappy is pals with the editor.

Furthermore, if Christians are suppose to stay away from works of imaginative speculation such as Star Trek and The Chronicles Of Narnia, how is it that these pastors and evangelists know so much about them? Unlike some things one knows to be inherently wrong by their mere existence, to nitpick these narratives on a nuanced doctrinal level one is going to have to sit there and study them for awhile.

Therefore, if preachers are going to address the issue from pulpit and pen, doesn’t the admonishment to be a Berean compel us to do our own first hand research since in the Protestant tradition one is not to blithely accept the ruminations of the clergy without some kind of collaboration through the application of one’s own critical thinking skills to what has been postulated by those holding ecclesiastical office. If anything, by speaking out against imaginative literature, pastors should rather be pleased then when members of their congregations go to research these works for themselves.

By Frederick Meekins