Christianity and Capitalism

Every so often it is my distinct misfortune to read or hear someone wax eloquent about the evils of capitalism and imply, suggest, or say outright that Jesus was a socialist, or that He would have favored socialism, or that the early Christians practiced some form of socialism, or that capitalism somehow violates Christian teaching.

It's aggravating as the dickens. Aggravating because it reveals, at the least, appalling ignorance of history, economics, and the Scriptures; or worse, familiarity with one or more of those subjects combined with a serious deficiency in analytical thinking; or, worst of all, outright mendacity and lying. Combine this with the usual syrupy, dripping condescension that accompanies the commentary and you have a perfect recipe for annoying anyone who's devoted, say, 60 seconds of serious thought to the subject.

For what, exactly, is capitalism? It is often said that it is an economic system, but this really isn't the case. Capitalism, beloved, is nothing more--and nothing less--than the economics resulting from people--the mass of people, not merely elites--having both documented property rights and liberty. To the extent you deny the people liberty, or the right to administer their property and the fruits of their labor as they see fit, you depart from capitalism and pitch your tent in the Land of the Planned Economy, aka Socialism. Some prefer to deny those rights in toto; they are communists or socialists (Or fascists, for that matter. Surely you weren't unaware that fascism is but a variety of socialism?) Some prefer to deny them in part; they are liberals. Some prefer to deny them on an ad hoc basis as benefits them personally; they are political hacks, thieves, and liars.

Those who seek to guard and secure Man's God-given rights are commonly called "conservatives" these days.

It floors me that anyone even modestly familiar with Holy Writ would suggest that it does not recognize either the right to liberty or the right to property. How, if a man has not a right to life, do the Scriptures say, "Thou shalt do no murder"? And if a man has a right to life, how can anyone say that it is legitimate for another man to deny him the free use thereof, that is to say, to deny him his liberty? How can anyone be said to have a right to something if he has no right to control the disposition thereof? And if there is no right to property, how is it that the Scriptures say, "Thou shalt not steal," and "Let him who stole, steal no more?" How can any man steal what does not belong to anyone? The commands implicitly recognize the right to property.

And if the Scriptures recognize the rights to liberty and property, beloved, they recognize capitalism, for that is all that results when men have both!

These are amongst the rights the Founders of our country had in mind when they referred to certain unalienable rights granted from the Creator. Rights given by the Creator of mankind and which may therefore not be legitimately denied by men to men. It is largely the denial of such rights that constitutes injustice. Against this, the Scriptures warn us, and tell us that guarding against it is the proper role of the state. Hence, the Founders assertion that it is to secure such rights that governments are instituted among Men.

So much is obvious, as I said, to anyone willing to give the matter a few seconds of serious, analytical thought. I therefore do not hesitate to say that those who do not understand this have, at the least, simply not bothered to engage the material seriously. But there is more.

Consider, beloved, the track records of capitalism and the varieties of socialism. Capitalism has a track record of promoting liberty and economic growth and prosperity for masses of people. To this minute, it is the only economic--for lack of a better word, "system"--with a demonstrable track record of lifting millions of people out of poverty. (As an aside, the evils sometimes ascribed to capitalism are actually the evils resulting from greed, which usually results in the abuse or denial of property rights or liberty, and hence do not result from "capitalism" at all.) Socialism, on the other hand, especially when you consider that fascism and communism are but varieties thereof, has a track record of impoverishing and murdering hundreds of millions of people.

One is left shocked, stunned, in disbelief, at the notion that anyone could seriously suggest that a "system" that demonstrably lifts people out of slavery and destitution is somehow less charitable--and therefore less in accord with Christian beliefs--than a system that routinely enslaves, impoverishes, and murders people. But that is the position that people who take seriously the idea that Christianity is, or somehow should be, a socialist faith, are left with.

Ignorance can be cured. Here are some suggestions:

The Holy Bible
Money, Greed, and God
The Victory of Reason
The Theory of Moral Sentiments
The Wealth of Nations
The Mystery of Capital

The Perfect Church

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This is a still-in-development part of a much larger post I'm working on. There might be a couple of people who might find it interesting.

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I belong to a church in the heart of Tulsa, a church that you could describe as "big," in the sense that the physical plant is pretty big, and "average" in that the total attendance on Sunday morning is about average for most Southern Baptist churches, which is to say, about 200 or so. It is a church like so many in this part of Tulsa, like a very great many across the country, really. It's dying. Most of the churches in the heart of Tulsa are graying and thinning out and they are dying.

Some of them used to be among the fastest-growing and largest congregations in the country.

What happened?

Well, there are a lot of things that have happened. I am still learning about some of it But one of the things, I am convinced, is that transportation and ease of communication are actually working against the neighborhood church.

If you go to a seminar, or have a workshop on church growth, one of the things you will find out is that a church's natural territory--at least in a city, I don't know about in the countryside--is considered to be everything within about a three-mile radius.

Couple that with the fact--at least I think it's a fact--that the majority of people hear about Jesus from a friend or a relative.

Then ask yourself if you, or any of your friends and relatives, live within a three-mile radius of your church. If you go to an older church, in an older part of the city, I think it is likely you are going to say, "No!"

People can drive--so they, or their children, move out to other parts of town and if they're so inclined, they can still attend the old church they've always attended, but their friends, their relatives, their lives, are all outside that three-mile radius around their church. Naturally, it then becomes very, very difficult for the church members to reach the people around the church! Nobody should be surprised. Nothing could be more natural.

Some people are going to home churches or things like that and I see nothing wrong with that, if that's what you want to do, except that I think that it tends to reinforce a certain cliquishness in some cases, that is, I think there is a pretty good likelihood that you are going to get all eggheads in one group, all the emotionistas in another, and so forth, and that's not altogether good.

And then there's the bad teaching--not in my church, actually, I think our pastor is pretty good (critics would say that he appeals to "eggheads" like moi), one of the few left that actually does expository preaching, and he's not inclined to dumb things down--but it seems to me like there's almost an active contempt rampant in the North American church, a contempt for any sort of teaching that goes beyond the very basics. I will never forget asking my then-teenaged oldest son what the problem with Adult Sunday School lessons was, and he immediately shot back with, "It's the kids' lessons, only with bigger words." If you question this, in most churches and most Sunday School departments, you will be told that the material cannot be made too complex or we will alienate visitors, completely overlooking the fact that visitors are not exactly overrunning the building. And then, if you are not already a teacher of some kind, you will be told that you know so much, you ought to be teaching!

No thought will be given to the possibility that most visitors are not so stupid as to be unable to figure out when their intelligence has been insulted.

In my opinion, the teaching in most churches in North America is execrable. I do not even have to go to them to see in order to have a pretty good idea. Why? Well, just ask around. For example, how many Christians do you know that feel confident in their ability to clearly articulate the Gospel? In my experience--and yes, I have asked--most Christians don't feel terribly confident in their ability to clearly articulate the Gospel, or to answer questions and objections, and more often than not, they don't even try (I believe the stats indicate that something less than 10 percent of all Christians will ever share their faith with strangers).

They just keep coming to Sunday School and church services, hoping all the while, I guess, that they will eventually gain enough knowledge to be able to tell other people what they believe about God, life, death, eternity, and salvation. To my mind, the situation looks like a massive, systemic failure to educate and train, despite a massive Sunday School program and the availability of enough literature to choke a moose. It doesn't help that a lot of people seem to like it that way. It amazes me how many people say they're afraid to share the Gospel, on the grounds that they don't know enough to answer objections, and then won't come to a Sunday School class heavily geared to equipping people to explain and defend their beliefs.

What to do? How to keep my church and others like it from dying? Well, I envision building a church like this:

On Sunday mornings, first, in Sunday School, we'd tackle whatever subjects the class was interested in pursuing in depth, getting people involved in the discussion and accustomed to discussing and defending what they believed. Then we'd have a service where the Gospel was preached, the text of Scripture was expounded, and Christ exalted. Then there'd be a potluck lunch, and maybe a softball game, or maybe some indoor games (chess or go, anyone?). Then everyone'd go home for a nap, and come back at night for more preaching, teaching, and prayer, maybe followed by some sandwiches (Potluck sandwiches. If you try to make the church responsible for the sandwiches, it'll just create a burden that nobody wants to bear).

I have to say a word about "worship," or, more specifically, about music.

Worship is an absolute joke in most churches, at least most churches I've been to--including ours. That is not to say the music is, quote-unquote, "bad." Often, the music minister and musicians and choir are very capable.

But that is not corporate worship. In all the years I've been going to Baptist churches, I have seen precisely one man I would call a worship leader, in that he always managed to get everybody in the sanctuary singing their hearts out. Most music ministers, together with most choirs, are not leading worship. They are performing for the congregation. That is not right at all.

A worship leader needs to be far more concerned about leading the congregation in corporate worship than about how he and the choir sound.

Monday night'd be visitation. Not like most churches, where "visitation" means visiting people who should've been removed from the rolls years before, or visiting people that brought their kids to the "Fall Festival" five years in a row (that kind of stuff is, in my experience, a complete waste of time), but visiting, first, the members who couldn't be at church due to illness or frailty, those who are having a hard time in one way or another (I am as convinced as I can be that one of the modern church's problems is that we have so emphasized ministry to the community that we have let our ministry to our members slacken. This should not be. Paul suggested strongly that we should tend to the brethren first), and then just going door-to-door in the neighborhood, asking people how we could pray for them, and sharing the Gospel where the Lord opens the door. I would suggest strongly that the same people not do visitation every week, not unless they feel truly compelled. Rather, a whole bunch of people should rotate visitation duties. Nobody should be allowed to become overwhelmed.

Tuesday nights, the clubs would meet. As I mentioned in the section on RyuTe, someday I'd love to teach a class at the church. I picture an energetic, sweaty class, where the emphasis is on health and self-defense, not fighting, not aggression, with maybe just enough free-sparring thrown in to satisfy those that want to compete in an occasional tournament (Tournament fighting is useless for self-defense, but some people find them a lot of fun). There could, and should, be other clubs--whatever people were interested in. Maybe Praisemoves for some. Maybe Pilates. Maybe a homeschooling support group. The point is to have neighborhood Christian people with a common interest be able to satisfy that interest and desire for fellowship through the neighborhood church, not so much to use those activities to attract lost people to the church--although, God knows, you wouldn't want to turn lost people away from those clubs, and you'd certainly want lost people taught the Gospel while they're at the church.

Wednesday nights'd be for discipleship training and prayer. Classes on all sorts of stuff, from in-depth study of various books of the Bible, to home economics (we all need to know how to stretch a dollar, folks), to New Testament Greek. Classes'd be preceded by a potluck meal and followed by a prayer session.

I think that's the way church oughta be. And very frankly, I think in our case, we need to seriously consider merging with the Hispanic church that meets in our building. They are actually growing, in part, I think, because so many Hispanic families have moved into the neighborhood, and, like I said, people do hear about Jesus from their friends and neighbors.

Many times I think the ideal is to have a little church like this in every neighborhood, with the social life of the whole neighborhood revolving around it. I'm about half-convinced that when we got to the point where you had to drive to church instead of walk (or ride your horse), it allowed us to be too darn selective about who we'd associate with. Being able to drive--I've run across people that drive thirty or more miles to church, folks--well, it seems to me that it makes it easier to ignore the people who are right around us, in favor of people that we find it easier to love. Why would we not expect our neighborhood churches to be dying if we refuse to attend the neighborhood church? And conversely, I can't help but think that if the people and their neighborhood church get all wrapped up in Jesus Christ and in one another, both the churches and the people will quit dying.

That's what, in part, I'm working on for the future. I may die before I see it fully realized. But that's the direction I'm headed.

Are Catholics Christians?

I just read/skimmed a post and comments wherein a Baptist preacher was being royally torched for, among other things, having taught that Catholics aren't Christians, and characterizing Catholics as "cult members."

It kind of interested me that no one really contested the torching, and it was a Baptist blog. Time was that most Baptists would tell you that Catholics weren't Christians, but things have changed. I have had Sunday School class members tell me, just directly out and out tell me in class, that Catholics were Christians.

That's quite a change. You have to wonder what happened. Let me see if I can suggest a possibility or two.

One thing is that I am certain, dead certain, that hardly any Baptists, and precious few Catholics, actually know what official Roman Catholic doctrine is. That may sound like an absurd thing to say, especially about the Catholics, but I am totally convinced it is true. Over the years, I have repeatedly had the experience of asking people--sometimes whole classrooms of people--to tell me exactly what the differences between Baptists and Methodists are, or between Baptists and Catholics. Only once or twice has someone even come close on either count. I long ago grew convinced that your average modern Southern Baptist knows virtually nothing of doctrine other than "Jesus saves" and that it is "by grace through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God," and "faith without works is dead." Not that they haven't heard more doctrine than that, but there is a heap of difference between having heard something, even repeatedly, and knowing it.

Now, you might think that that is just those dumb ol' Southern Baptists and that the Catholics are more knowledgeable, but I wouldn't bet on it, not if I were you. I have had the experience of talking to a lady--a lady who attended, I think, Sts. Peter and Paul Catholic Church--whilst her car was being washed during one of our outreach events. My job was to talk to people who stopped by to get their cars washed, and as I talked to this lady, I kept saying things that I knew from my reading went directly counter to official Roman doctrine. To my complete and utter shock, she agreed with every single thing I said! "That's what we believe, too," she kept saying.

To appreciate how significant that was to me, you have to understand that it's not like I haven't read anything about the Reformation! I've read Luther's The Bondage of the Will and part of his Commentary on Galatians, both of which spoke directly against Catholic doctrine. I've read some of Calvin. I've read a pretty fair amount of what James White has to say about Catholicism. I've read books by other authors on the subject, the names of which I cannot recall right now. I've read--or at least I am pretty sure I recall reading--The Council of Trent, wherein the Roman Church specifically anathematized a number of protestant doctrines. I know that Trent has never been recanted. I know the Roman Catholic doctrine on Scripture and Tradition, on the veneration of Saints, on justification, on the interpretive authority of the Magisterium, on the Mass, on the Eucharist, and so forth. I know, and I'm telling you, that the Reformation was not over simple miscommunication!

The heart of the gospel itself was at stake--but the lady I was talking to sure as thunder didn't know it. I had to conclude that either she was lying to me, or she--and maybe the bulk of the people in her church, too--simply didn't know what the official doctrine of their denomination was.

What on earth could have caused that?

A few years later, I found out about something--something in addition to the general doctrinal ignorance prevailing in these times--that might be part of the explanation. It seems that quite a number of years ago the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (the BGEAs) started working with Catholic churches in their crusades. This move got the BGEAs royally torched by more Baptists than you might think; it was seen as serious doctrinal compromise. But this is the thing: in order for a Catholic church to participate in a BGEAs crusade, it had to agree to use BGEAs material, which is pretty standard Southern Baptist stuff, and which takes a good month or more to get through. So there were lots of people going to these crusades, and yes, some of them went to Catholic churches afterward, but they were getting, for several weeks, Protestant doctrine.

(At this point, somebody who believes in the "trail of blood" stuff will up and say, "But MOTW, Baptists aren't protestants!" Look, save it for now, ok? I'll get to the Trail of Blood another day.)

At any rate, to my mind, when you've had Catholic churches all across the country teaching Southern Baptist doctrine as part of the crusade "deal" for decades, you shouldn't be shocked that a lot of American Catholics no longer know what official Catholic doctrine is.

I've often pointed out to people that Martin Luther did not leave the Roman Catholic church. They kicked him out. Was he a non-Christian right up 'til the time he got kicked out, and then a Christian thereafter? It seems absurd, but that is kind of where you have to go if you automatically assume that Catholics aren't Christians.

The upshot is this: if you compare official Roman Catholic doctrine with the text of the Bible, it is clear, very clear, that Roman doctrine conflicts with what the Bible says at a number of key points, including the gospel itself. I do not believe that the official doctrine of Rome is the saving doctrine of the Bible--BUT I am quite convinced that despite attendance at Mass, despite liturgy, and so forth, rather a lot of American Catholics simply do not know what their church's doctrine actually is. Shoot, their local priest may not believe Rome's official doctrine!

You just have to talk to people on a case-by-case basis. Some have their faith in Christ and Christ alone, and some have their faith in the Catholic church and a mixture of faith and their own works. You don't know 'til you talk to 'em.

It Wasn't Always This Way

I'm not sayin' a word about the rest of the post from which this line comes--I gots my 'pinions, y'know, but I ain't gonna take the time ta lay 'em out tonight--but this line kind of caught my attention:

...a church system that exists primarily to pay professional ministers and to build and maintain buildings.

Hmmm.

Hmmm.

Hmmm.

Y'know, it's kinda hard to dispute.

I don't have a problem with paying ministers. The Bible does actually say, you know, that preachers are entitled to get their living from preaching the Gospel, and I don't begrudge that one little bit. But is that the reason that the "church system" exists? To pay ministers?

To build and maintain buildings?

Well, I know those aren't supposed to be the reasons, but looking at what actually goes on in a lot of churches and para-church organizations might make you wonder.

Look at the Southern Baptist Convention. You know the reason it was formed, and what it was formed from? It was formed from a lot of Baptist churches--independent, every one of 'em--that wanted to have a means to cooperatively support missionaries and seminary education for preachers.

Looking at the SBC today, churches don't seem quite as independent as they used to be--or at least, as I've read they used to be. I really, strongly get the sense that the organization that was meant to be a tool for accomplishing the goals of the churches now sees the churches as tools for accomplishing the goals of the organization.

But maybe that's just me. And truth be known, the solution is always available: the people in the pews can always educate themselves and get involved. If they don't--

--well, they've no one to blame but themselves.

Just How Much Can You Get Wrong and Still Be a Christian?

Shortly after I got saved, I heard one of our church deacons say--I'm afraid I can't remember the context--that we didn't have to have perfect understanding of all the Bible in order to be saved, and that was a good thing, as otherwise we'd all be in trouble.

I have thought of those words many times since then. I thought of them last night. You see, I just read a post, and skimmed/read the comments thereon, that reminded me of them. I rather got the impression that a pretty fair number of folks in the Christian blogosphere have come to the point where they are seriously ready to say that anyone who doesn't publicly denounce a person who's made certain doctrinal errors as a false teacher or a heretic is himself a false teacher or a heretic.

Now, before I go on, let me say that Scripture, in the main, is not that hard to understand, and the main--principle--points of doctrine are really quite unequivocal, and that THERE ARE points beyond which a person cannot go and still be considered a Christian. To deny the bodily resurrection of Christ, for example, is one of those points. To deny that salvation is by grace alone through faith alone, is another. Those are what one blogger--I almost hesitate to mention his name, so controversial is he in some circles--Wade Burleson, might call "primary" doctrines. Those are doctrines that one cannot simultaneously deny and be said to be holding to the Christian faith.

But there are other doctrines, what Burleson and others might refer to as secondary or tertiary doctrines, which, while important and certainly worth the effort of getting right, the denial or misunderstanding of which would not necessarily be an indication of a person having left the Christian faith. Problems--to say the least!--arise when some folks act as though every doctrine is primary, as though a deficiency in understanding about mode and timing of baptism or poor reasoning about the nature of "filthy talking" is enough to make one a false teacher or an apostate.

Sometimes issues arise when people just make mistakes, or are taken out of context. I have read, in the dim and distant past, some people say, for example, that Martin Luther taught justification by works, that is, that it was necessary, in order to be saved, that a person get certain sacraments right. I will admit that I have not read Luther exhaustively--actually, all I have read is his The Bondage of the Will and part of his Commentary on Galatians, but in those, Luther's insistence that salvation is by grace alone, that it is all of God and none of man, that man's works are of absolutely no avail when it comes to salvation, comes across so clearly that I can't help but think that people who are willing to say that Luther was a heretic who taught works-salvation have seized on some of his words to the exclusion of others and greatly mistaken his meaning.

I get the impression that there are bloggers out there who would separate from a preacher if he shared a stage with Martin Luther, or if he, not possessing exhaustive knowledge of every jot and tittle of some other preacher's doctrinal irregularities, generously assumed that the other preacher wasn't a heretic until it was definitively proved otherwise. I would suggest that when you have gotten to this point, you have gone a little bit too far.

Mouse ----! You Understand Mouse ----? or Thoughts on Cussing

Over the years, I have seen a few blogposts dealing with the subject of cussing, or foul language, mostly from Christian perspective. As a matter of fact, I can't recall any post on the subject that wasn't trying to approach it from a Christian perspective.

I have to tell you right up front that I was in the United States Marine Corps Reserve for five years, and at one time, I possessed the usual unmitigated fluency in cussing common to most U.S. Marines. It is, however, very rare that I cuss these days. Cussing events are mostly of the I-hit-my-thumb-with-the-hammer sort. That may color your opinion of what I have to say or it may not, but at least you know.

I have thought about writing this post a million times, I think. Just about every time, a memory has come to my mind, a conversation I once had with a sanitarian, or "health inspector," as you may call them. Y'see, I was in the fast-food business for about fourteen years, and was on friendly terms with several of the city's sanitarians. One time, one of them was explaining some of the difficulties that they occasionally had with ethnic residents. He gave me the example of a time that he found mouse droppings in one Asian-style restaurant, a place where the staff was all from overseas and had a very limited command of English.

"You have mice. You need to call the exterminator."

"What?"

"You have mice. Look, you see? Mouse droppings."

"What?"

"Mouse droppings. Mouse dung."

"What?"

"You know--feces."

"What?"

"Poop?"

"What?"

"MOUSE ----! You understand MOUSE ----?!"

The man did indeed understand, "mouse ----," as it turns out.

My question for you is: was the sanitarian cussing? Or communicating?

I don't think the difference is always quite so cut-and-dried as some people like to think.

Usually, when the question of cussing or foul language comes up in Christian circles, people opposed to cussing--that would be most Christians I've met--will cite Paul's admonitions to avoid "filthy talking" or "coarse jesting."

And let me make something clear before I go on: I regard the Bible, including Paul's letters, as the word of Almighty God. I absolutely will tell you that Paul said exactly what God intended him to say, and that it means what it says.

On the other hand, I've read multiple translations of the Bible, and I have yet to find any one of them that gives me a crystal-clear definition of what "filthy talking" and "coarse jesting" are. We have Ephesians 4: 29, which says, in the NKJV, "Let no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth, but what is good for necessary edification, that it may impart grace to the hearers." The NET Bible renders it, "Let no unwholesome word..." The ESV, my favorite translation, has, "...corrupting talk..." Then there is Colossians 3:8, which reads, in the NKJV, "But now you yourselves are to put off all these: anger, malice, blasphemy, filthy language out of your mouth." The NET Bible renders it, "...abusive language from your mouth." The ESV has, "...obscene talk..."

What exactly is a "corrupt word" or an "unwholesome word" or "corrupting talk?" What exactly is "filthy talking" or "abusive language" or "obscene talk?"There are a lot of people who seem to think it's the content of George Carlin's infamous list of the words you can't say on TV. I don't think it's quite that simple.

It's fairly obvious that when writing in Greek, Paul wasn't spending a lot of time thinking about Anglo-Saxonisms that hadn't yet been invented.

It's fairly obvious that it's not the objective meaning of the words that is being referred to. You can say, for example, "manure" without anyone in the world accusing you of cussing, right?

Some folks--including some for whose opinions I generally have very high regard--make an argument that basically amounts to this: Every culture has a list of words that are commonly accepted as being foul. We all know what they are and what they are used for, and it is to this list, at least in part, that Paul refers. Therefore, Christians shouldn't use the words on the list. And to a degree, I agree. There are indeed words that are commonly accepted as foul, the recognized use of which for many, maybe even most people, is to express displeasure, anger, hatred, bitterness, and so forth, precisely the things listed in Col. 3:8. But I do have a small problem with this idea: the list isn't universal, not even within the same country. It changes. It changes over time--I can easily think of words that were completely unacceptable 20 years ago that I now hear on family tv and radio. It changes with age--there are some words that I would never have gotten away with when I was five that nobody would bat an eye at were I to use them as an adult. It changes with your company--please believe me, Marines routinely use words that most people would consider foul with no hostile or foul intent whatsoever, considering them merely, as Spongebob might say, "spicy sentence enhancers." It changes with your education and level of knowledge--as shown in the sanitarian's example given above. And it changes with your personal background--I know more than a few people from rural backgrounds that think nothing of talking of pig ---- or cow ----, etc. To them, it is simply something you shovel out of the barn.

Personally, I think that to get a good sense of what "a corrupt word," "corrupting talk," "unwholesome words," "filthy language," "abusive language," and "obscene talk" are, you have to look to the context of the Scripture. To my mind, that sort of language is language that corrupts a person, imparts nothing good, expresses (perhaps especially intentionally) anger, malice, and so forth. It is language that is intended to hurt or to degrade, and while people may and often do use words on "the list" to do these things, it is not a word's presence on "the list" that makes it foul, but the way it is used.

Having said all that, I still avoid the words on the list. I do that because so many people, hearing them, automatically assume less than wholesome intent on the part of the speaker, and I don't wish to unnecessarily upset anyone. But I have a hard time, a very hard time indeed, coming down on anyone just for using words on the list.

Before I do that, I need to know if they're cussing or if they're communicating. Are they trying to abuse or degrade or offend me, or is that simply the way the people around them talk?

You savvy?

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And don't get me started on "minced oaths." When people not only don't want you to use the words on the list-of-words-that-we-as-a-culture-have-agreed-are-foul, but don't wish you to use words on the list-of-words-that-we-as-a-culture-have-agreed-are-socially-acceptable-substitutes, it seems to me that a double standard is being exposed.

Just my two cents, y'know?

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I Swear I Run into These People All the Time

Michelle Malkin describes a conversation (links in the original) the likes of which I've had, in person and electronically, waaaaaaay too many times. The sort of conversation wherein someone who thinks he knows something about Christianity and/or Christians does nothing so much as reveal what a buffoon he is.

Here’s the errrrrrudite liberal journo Richard Wolffe mocking Sarah Palin for citing famed, beloved Christian author, novelist, lay theologian, and apologist C.S. Lewis as a source of divine inspiration (via The Daily Caller):

Incredibly, Wolffe derides the author of “Mere Christianity,” “The Abolition of Man,” “The Screwtape Letters,” and so many other seminal works as merely a writer of “a series of kids’ books” in order to jab at Palin.

Fellow Palin-basher Chris Matthews tried to save Wolffe from himself by counseling him not to “put down” Lewis. Wolffe ignored him.

When I think of Wolffe and his smug media peers in the intellectual establishment, I think of Lewis’s brilliant musings on Men Without Chests.

He had them pegged.

[snip]

Brian Faughnan called Wolffe out on Twitter. Here was his response. Seriously:

She said “divine inspiration”. Not the traditional reaction to theological essays, even formidable ones by Lewis.

And here’s a reminder again of Wolffe said on MSNBC:

WOLFFE: “Look, divine inspiration from a series of KIDS’ BOOKS. I don’t think, um, C.S. Lewis really would want that.”

MATTHEWS: “But…I wouldn’t put down C.S. Lewis down…”

Wolffe sputters about Newsmax, which Palin says she reads, before again hitting at Palin for — gasp! — drawing religious lessons from a profoundly religious author.

Not to be uncharitable, but it certainly appears that Mr. Wolffe was completely unfamiliar with Lewis' philosophical and scholarly stature, apparently thinking of him "merely" as an author of children's books.

I can't tell you how many times I've seen crap like this.

People telling me this or that about the text or the canon of scripture--blissfully unaware, every one of them, that I've almost certainly read more on the subject than they are aware exists, and that assertions and arguments with which I'm not familiar are DARNFEW and almost certainly of no significance--that is, yes, I think I have at least a lay-level understanding of all the significant arguments. Darn near every one of them relying on pseudo-scholarship that has been discredited for decades (in some cases, for centuries). More than a few relying on half-remembered misinformation from authors that are regarded by more accomplished scholars as little more than bad jokes.

I had one "idiot"--actually, he was a friend of mine, and a fellow member of Mensa--tell me over and over again about the canon of scripture. I had never heard quite the theory he was spouting, and eventually, I asked him for the source. Turned out his wife--a wee snip of a girl probably not more than twenty at the time--had heard it in some college class on religion. Couldn't cite an author, couldn't cite any source, couldn't even remember the teacher's name. But shoot, he thought his wife's half-remembered, probably garbled, "information" from only-God-knows-who was authoritative. That kind of thinking is why I just referred to him as an "idiot," despite his demonstrably above-average I.Q.

I'll be blunt: the number of non-Christians I've encountered who have more than a blithering idiot's understanding of canonicity, textual criticism, textual reliability, sola scriptura, basic Christian theology, Christians, even religious history in general, is exactly zero. They gaily spout criticisms they found in the writings of some pop-culture dipstick as though they were Holy Writ, and never, ever, ever exert themselves to see if anyone has a comeback.

They have never read F.F. Bruce. Never even heard of him.

They have never read Van Til. Never even heard of him.

They have never read Norman Geisler on apologetics. Never even heard of him.

They have never read Webster and King. Never even heard of them.

They have never read Metzger. Never even heard of him.

They have never read Zacharias. Never even heard of him.

They have never read Schaeffer. Never even heard of him.

They have never read Kreeft, they have never read Augustine, they have never read Johnson, they have never read Morris, they have never read Morison, they have never read Kaiser, they have never read Luther, they have never read Calvin, they have never read Bunyan, they have never read Piper.

A few--darn few--will have heard of Josh McDowell, but if they've read a sentence he's written, it will be nothing more than his famous tract, "More Than a Carpenter."

Most of them have not even read the Bible and saying that they have only the most tenous grasp of what it says is being extremely charitable.

Oh, there are such non-Christians out there, non-Christians who've made themselves familiar with at least some of these, or other, authors. I am not saying otherwise. But the ones I meet? No. They are not familiar with these authors, indeed, with any authors critical of their hilariously misinformed and one-sided views of scripture, Christianity and Christians. They have not made the smallest effort to become familiar with them. They have not made the smallest effort to even find out if such people exist. Yet they expect me to take their opinions seriously.

Anymore, though, I don't spend a whole lot of time trying to disabuse those folks of their quaint little notions. I don't generally recommend books anymore. I just tell them what the Bible says. I have come to see, per the first chapter of Romans, that these folks' problem is analogous to the sighted man who goes outside and says he doesn't see a sky.

He knows it's there. He can see it. Everybody can see it. It's obvious, so obvious that when he denies it's there, nobody bothers to try to convince him otherwise. Nobody tries to argue for the sky's existence from the evidence. They just look at him as though he's deranged and go about their business.

People that don't believe in God are like this. They know He's there. They can see it. Everything in creation points to His existence. It's obvious. You can try to argue with them all day long, but it's pointless. Their problem isn't the evidence, which is abundant and clear. Their problem is that they don't want to see.

Hey, man, don't blame me. I got it from Paul, who got it from God.

Peter Heck on Christianity and Government "Charity"

More than a few Christians, especially young Christians, are confused on this point:

They tell us that obedience to Christ comes in the form of high taxes on the wealthy to fund social programs for the poor. Even if these programs weren't as miserably ineffective as what they are, look at what they foster: envy, greed, bitterness and resentment. Not exactly the motivations of love and altruism that Jesus said were to be at the heart of our goodwill.

In truth, there is not one recorded instance of Christ advocating government confiscation and redistribution of wealth in the name of charity.

Jesus did say: "The King will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.' (Matthew 25:40)

Jesus did not say: "The King will reply, ‘I tell you the truth, whatever you forcibly took from the masses through taxation in the name of these brothers of mine, you did for me."

Jesus did say: "If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me." (Matthew 19:21)

Jesus did not say: "If you want to be perfect, go, get elected to high office and then use the law to confiscate the property of those who have, and give to those you deem more worthy of it. Then claim you are following me."

You get the point. Barack Obama's social gospel of government sponsored theft is a flat contradiction to what Jesus taught.

In my experience, the way this argument usually unfolds involves blatant equivocation, although the person making the argument doesn't realize that that's what he's done. People say things like this: "But MOTW, don't you agree that we need to help the helpless?"

Well, sure. The questions, though, are, "Who are 'we?'" and "Exactly what is 'helpless?'" If you don't get those answers spelled out clearly and mighty dadgum quick, you will find that instead of talking about the church and people who legitimately cannot work or who have been diligently looking but cannot find it, you are talking about government and any body of people from whom votes can be bought for the price of some public "charity."

And Now, It's Dan Phillips' Turn

He saith:

Qu'ran, Quran, Koran, however you spell it: there is a church in New York Florida that plans to burn Qu'rans on September 11, to commemorate the day Muslim terrorists killed over 3000 Americans in a literally diabolically clever attack targeting non-combatants who were going about their daily lives.

Is it a good idea?

Candidly, part of me really likes it, really wants to give a fist-bump at this display of in-your-face defiance. Muslim extremists — which is closer to a tautology than one wishes — threaten and target anyone who dares speak out against any aspect of their cult, including cartoonists and writers. Here's a church saying, "Oh yeah? Take this!" I like it.

But by the time one celebrates about his fourth or fifth birthday, he is expected to have begun to develop the ability to think about impulses before acting on them. In this case, a moment's thought tells me it's a very bad idea.

If you want to know why he thinks it's a bad idea, read the rest of the post. I do agree with him (as does the inimitable Kat)--yet, as I have implied (or said outright) earlier, I frankly have a very hard time working up a whole bunch of sympathy for all these offended Muslims.

Shoot, you can't say diddly without offending Muslims. After a while, you just come to the conclusion that it's all manufactured outrage designed to make you more malleable as regards their never-ceasing demands for special privileges, special laws, etc. Either that, or you just get tired of them acting like little kids--violent little kids--and want to say, "Will you just honkin' grow up?"

Michael Bates Quotes Sproul about Schaeffer, Christianity, and Statism

Couldn't resist quoting this. I know not all of my readers are familiar with the inimitable Michael Bates and might have otherwise missed this gem:

R. C. Sproul, writing in 2008, recalled asking Francis Schaeffer what was the greatest threat to the church in America. Schaeffer's one word answer: "Statism."

Schaeffer's biggest concern at that point in his life was that the citizens of the United States were beginning to invest their country with supreme authority, such that the free nation of America would become one that would be dominated by a philosophy of the supremacy of the state.

In statism, we see the suffix "ism," which indicates a philosophy or worldview. A decline from statehood to statism happens when the government is perceived as or claims to be the ultimate reality. This reality then replaces God as the supreme entity upon which human existence depends....

Throughout the history of the Christian church, Christianity has always stood over against all forms of statism. Statism is the natural and ultimate enemy to Christianity because it involves a usurpation of the reign of God. If Francis Schaeffer was right -- and each year that passes makes his prognosis seem all the more accurate -- it means that the church and the nation face a serious crisis in our day. In the final analysis, if statism prevails in America, it will mean not only the death of our religious freedom, but also the death of the state itself. We face perilous times where Christians and all people need to be vigilant about the rapidly
encroaching elevation of the state to supremacy.

Penn Jillette on How Christians and Muslims React to Criticism

Robert Spencer quotes Penn Jillette, from an interview in Las Vegas Weekly:

Teller and I have been brutal to Christians, and their response shows that they're good ----ing Americans who believe in freedom of speech. We attack them all the time, and we still get letters that say, "We appreciate your passion. Sincerely yours, in Christ." Christians come to our show at the Rio and give us Bibles all the time. They're incredibly kind to us. Sure, there are a couple of them who live in garages, give themselves titles and send out death threats to me and Bill Maher and Trey Parker. But the vast majority are polite, open-minded people, and I respect them for that....

And what, you might wonder, did he have to say about the religion of pieces Islam, since we all know that all religions teach the same basic moral values?

... we haven't tackled Islam because we have families...I think the worst thing you can say about a group in a free society is that you're afraid to talk about it...

And there you have it, folks: two religions that, obviously, teach the same basic moral values, and clearly reacting in the same broad-minded fashion to criticism...

Ah, no, that's not it...

Actually, there's a heckuva difference...

And even atheist Penn Jillette knows it.

Some Bon Mots from Dennis Prager

Mr. Prager has several interesting things to say in this column:

...the God-based morality of the Declaration of Independence and all the Founders.

Yes, all the Founders. Even the so-called deists, while not theologically Christian, were ethical monotheists, i.e., strong affirmers of ethics rooted in the will of the Creator. As Steven Waldman, no conservative, writes in "Founding Faith," a book that has been praised by Left and Right, "Each felt religion was extremely important, at a minimum to encourage moral behavior and make the land safe for republican
government."

[snip]

Leftism functions as a secular religion, and its adherents understand that the major obstacle to the dominance of Leftist policies and values is traditional religion, specifically Christianity. With the demise of Christianity in Western Europe, Leftist ideas and values came to dominate that continent. America, the most religious industrialized democracy, remains the great exception.

[snip]

Leftism opposes America's three great values -- what I call the American Trinity...-- "E Pluribus Unum," "Liberty" and "In God We Trust." The Left uses diversity and multiculturalism to undermine E Pluribus Unum ("From Many, One"). It substitutes equality (of result) for liberty, and the powerful state for the powerful free individual. And it seeks, perhaps above all, to replace "In God We Trust" with a secular society and secular values.

[snip]

The Left tells us that non-Christians are offended by the government celebrating Good Friday. As a Jew, permit me to say that any non-Christian offended by Good Friday or Christmas gives new meaning to the word "narcissist." To seek to erase the name Good Friday is an exercise in self-centeredness and ingratitude that is jaw-dropping. We non-Christian Americans live in the freest society in human history; it was produced by people nearly every one of who celebrated Good Friday, and we have the gall to want to rename it?

[snip]

Most Americans will characterize the Davenport attempt to rename Good Friday "Spring Holiday" as Political Correctness. That it is. But the term itself is Politically Correct. Like everything PC, the term itself hides its true meaning, which is Leftism. Political Correctness is invariably produced by the Left. The term, therefore, should not be PC; it should be OTL, "Offends the Left."

One of the most galling things about the way the Left deals with Christianity is its habit of saying the most moronically uninformed and ignorant things about it. Leftists get their ideas about Christianity from a mutually-reinforcing group of Christianity's critics and the Westboro Baptist Church, and hardly ever bother to actually read the Bible or anything decent defending Christianity. More often than not, they sound embarrassingly ignorant on the subject and aren't even aware of it. Then they have the unmitigated gall to act as though a country whose founding laws and documents are thoroughly rooted in Biblical ideas and whose founders explicitly said that they were counting on the religious character of the people--that being overwhelmingly Christianity at the time--has somehow moved beyond the faith that shepherded it into being.

Kat Writes a Good 'Un

Read this one. Your time won't be wasted.

Listen to Pat

Again, Pat Buchanan is not right about everything. But if you miss the lesson he's teaching in this column--well, it's an important lesson. C'mon, read the whole thing.

Ethnonationalism, that relentless drive of peoples to secede and dwell apart, to establish their own nation-state, where their faith is predominant, their language spoken, their heroes and history revered, and they rule to the exclusion of all others, is rampant.

[snip]

In speaking of the rising tribalism abroad, Schlesinger added, "The ethnic upsurge in America, far from being unique, partakes of the global fever."

Friends and neighbors, I am the last person to say that ethnic differences cannot be overcome. They can. My own ancestry is largely Irish, but we have Choctaw blood, too. My nephew is part Jewish. My children are part Mexican. Some of the people I like seeing most every week are the Mexican immigrants in the ESL (English as a Second Language) class I teach. The head of the karate system I study, RyuTe, is an Okinawan immigrant. I do believe in the "melting pot" concept.

But (you knew the "but" was coming) for the "melting pot" to work, something has to provide the "heat." There has to be something, some overriding thing in common, that overcomes ethnicity and cultural division. I submit to you that a more-or-less common religious faith--and Christianity was once professed by the overwhelming majority of the inhabitants of this country--is the best candidate, followed closely by a burning desire for liberty, liberty having its strongest foundation in the view of man and God to be found in the Scriptures. For many decades, we had a more-or-less homogeneously Christian, government-phobic, liberty-loving population. That is sufficient to make the "melting pot" concept work. But now? Though the majority of Americans profess to be Christian, polling them on the details reveals that most don't quite understand the basics of the Christian faith and fewer and fewer attend church services or show other signs of a living Christian faith. More and more Americans have gradually been lured onto the government teat in one way or another and are loath to give up what they mistakenly perceive as security in exchange for more liberty. We are rapidly losing the very things that made the "melting pot" work, and it seems to me that the day is coming when this nation might very well fragment. It might not be within my lifetime (though it wouldn't shock me if it were), but unless things change soon, I think it is coming.

The Pastime that Never Really Ends

One of my favorite pastimes is reading/listening to someone who hasn't the foggiest notion what in the sam hill he is talking about lecture forth, gloriously unaware what a fool he is making of himself. I know, I know; seems almost a bit cruel, doesn't it? Wouldn't it be nice, wouldn't be charitable to enlighten a poor fellow like that, to gently correct his misunderstandings?

Of course it would. But one of the things that makes these people absolutely hysterical is that they will almost automatically reject the input of anyone more knowledgeable on the subject of the day than they themselves are--unless, of course, said input agrees with their already-uttered opinions. So, for example, when it comes to Christianity and poverty, they will listen to Jim Wallis; when it comes to Christianity and homosexuality, they will listen to Barry Lynn; they will never, not at any time, listen to you (even if your stock of learning on a given subject dwarfs theirs) or to anyone whom you recommend. They will insist that their chosen authorities are the only acceptable authorities, despite rather obviously being completely unequipped to judge whether their authorities know what they are talking about! This makes them marvelously un-correctable, so to speak.

So you wind up with the amusing spectacle of people who have, for example, rather clearly never actually read the whole Bible, lecturing Christians who have read it--and commentaries along with it, in more than a few cases--over and over and over again that the multiple Biblical injunctions to God's people to care for the poor actually amount to injunctions for the state to care for the poor--accepting, briefly, for the sake of argument that what the state does to for the poor is actually "care"; people who have never read either the Bible or the Qu'ran lecturing Christians that Christians and Muslims worship the same god (sometimes Mormons get dragged into this discussion, too!); people who've barely read the Constitution (if at all), let alone The Federalist Papers, lecturing others on the meaning of the General Welfare clause, the Tenth Amendment, the First Amendment, and the Second Amendment; and so forth. It would not be difficult to supply many more examples.

Fortunately for my pursuit of this pastime, I have a more-or-less continual supply of such shenanigans coming to me via the good graces of Google Reader.

With the Usual Disclaimer...

That "usual disclaimer" being that I don't agree with every jot and tittle of what Wade Burleson writes. There, now that that's out of the way...

I read this post with interest, and if you have any interest in Christian giving, you might find it interesting, too. The upshot, as far as I am concerned, is that Wade Burleson has said out loud in a widely-read forum what an awful lot of Bible-reading folks have long thought, but not said out loud, for fear of the looks they will get, or being preached at by certain people:

There is no command in Scripture for Christians to give a certain percentage of their income.

You heard me. None. There are plenty of commands to give generously, joyfully, as led by the Spirit, proportionately, and so forth, but there are no commands given as to a specific percentage, nor even as to where it's supposed to go.

I know an awful lot of you have grown up in churches where tithing--and contrary to one well-meaning-person-I-know's assertions, tithing does specifically refer to ten percent, not "regular on-going giving"--has been taught for decades. Many of you have read your Bibles over and over, and when you casually give thought to what you hear from the pulpit on the subject of giving from time to time, the thought has crept into the back of your head that something doesn't quite add up...

You're right. Again, there is no command in Scripture for Christians to give a specific percentage of their income. You do not have to take my word for it. Get yourself some Bible software--you can go to E-Sword and get some for free (you can even get the ESV for free with it), and do the searches. Look for "tithe," "tithing," "tenth," and "giving," and anything else you care to look up. You will find plenty of instructions for Jews to tithe (and even that tithing was handled and carried out considerably different from what you might have been led to believe), but you will not find one command for the Christian to do that.

You will say, "But MOTW, I've heard all my life that we're supposed to tithe. If there's no such command, where do preachers get that?"

I wish I knew. I've never, ever heard an argument from Scripture that didn't torture it in the process of being made. Usually, preachers argue from some instance in the Old Testament and then tell you that they've found "a principle" in the Old Testament about tithing.

Mark it well: when a preacher tells you that he's discovered "a principle" to which he wants to hold you accountable, it usually means his case from Scripture is weak.

Don't assume from this that I think Christians shouldn't give, and give generously. That's not the case. I just don't see the point in trying to hold them accountable to a command that simply does not exist.

The Ol' Memory Works Slow, It Does

After the comments-exchange I had with Russ yesterday, I knew that the whole thing reminded me of something, but it took me a few minutes to remember exactly what. It is this passage from Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God, which expresses quite well what I think about the whole issue of God's sovereignty in salvation and what Christians believe about it. Here 'tis, for those interested. Emphasis, where present, is mine and in bold:

Nor...am I going to spend time proving to you the particular truth that God is sovereign in salvation. For that, too, you believe already. Two facts show this. In the first place, you give God thanks for your conversion. Now why do you do that? Because you know in your heart that God was entirely responsible for it. You did not save yourself; He saved you. Your thanksgiving is itself an acknowledgement that your conversion was not your own work, but His work. You do not put it down to chance or accident that you came under Christian influence when you did. You do not put it down to chance or accident that you attended a Christian church, that you heard the Christian gospel, that you had Christian friends and, perhaps, a Christian home, that the Bible fell into your hands, that you saw your need of Christ and came to trust Him as your Saviour. You do not attribute your repenting and believing to your own wisdom, or prudence, or sound judgment, or good sense. Perhaps, in the days when you were seeking Christ, you laboured and strove hard, read and pondered much, but all that outlay of effort did not make your conversion your own work. Your act of faith when you closed with Christ was yours in the sense that it was you who performed it; but that does not mean that you saved yourself. In fact, it never occurs to you to suppose that you saved yourself.

As you look back , you take to yourself the blame for your past blindness and indifference and obstinacy and evasiveness in face of the gospel message; but you do not pat yourself on the back for having been at length mastered by the insistent Christ. You would never dream of dividing the credit for your salvation between God and yourself. You have never for one moment supposed that the decisive contribution to your salvation was yours and not God's. You have never told God that, while you are grateful for the means and opportunities of grace that He gave you, you realize that you have to thank, not Him, but yourself for the fact that you responded to His call. Your heart revolts at the very thought of talking to God in such terms. In fact, you thank Him no less sincerely for the gift of faith and repentance than for the gift of a Christ to trust and turn to. This is the way in which, since you became a Christian, your heart has always led you. You give God all the glory for all that your salvation involved, and you know that it would be blasphemy if you refused to thank Him for bringing you to faith. Thus, in the way that you think of your conversion and give thanks for your conversion, you acknowledge the sovereignty of divine grace. And every other Christian in the world does the same.

It is instructive in this connection to ponder Charles Simeon's account of his conversation with John Wesley on Dec. 20th, 1784 (the date is given in Wesley's Journal): '"Sir, I understand that you are called an Arminian; and I have been sometimes called a Calvinist; and therefore I suppose we are to draw daggers. But before I consent to begin the combat, with your permission I will ask you a few questions...Pray, Sir, do you feel yourself a depraved creature, so depraved that you would never have thought of turning to God, if God had not first put it into your heart?" "Yes," says the veteran, "I do indeed." "And do you utterly despair of recommending yourself to God by anything you can do; and look for salvation solely through the blood and righteousness of Christ?" "Yes, solely through Christ." "But, Sir, supposing you were at first saved by Christ, are you not somehow or other to save yourself afterwards by your own works?" "No, I must be saved by Christ from first to last" "Allowing, then, that you were first turned by the grace of God, are you not in some way or other to keep yourself by your own power?" "No." "What, then, are you to be upheld every hour and every moment by God, as much as an infant in its mother's arms?" "Yes, altogether." "And is all your hope in the grace and mercy of God to preserve you unto His heavenly kingdom?" "Yes, I have no hope but in Him." "Then, Sir, with your leave I will put up my dagger again; for this is all my Calvinism; this is my election, my justification by faith, my final perseverance: It is in substance all that I hold, and as I hold it; and therefore, if you please, instead of searching out terms and phrases to be a ground of contention between us, we will cordially unite in those things wherein we agree."

Couldn't a-said it no better m'se'f...except that I would add that it is also all my predestination, all my the-will-is-not-free.

An' that's 'bout all I have to say 'bout that.

---

But it is not all that might be said. I have had way too much time on my hands today. It has not even been realistic for me to try to figure out exactly why my Bronco II isn't running well enough to drive. Maybe tomorrow. But I was poking around and found something very similar to the above material, only from C.H. Spurgeon. Here's the quote:

You have heard a great many Arminian sermons, I dare say; but you never heard an Arminian prayer—for the saints in prayer appear as one in word, and deed and mind. An Arminian on his knees would pray desperately like a Calvinist. He cannot pray about free will: there is no room for it. Fancy him praying,

Lord, I thank thee I am not like those poor presumptuous Calvinists. Lord, I was born with a glorious free-will; I was born with power by which I can turn to thee of myself; I have improved my grace. If everybody had done the same with their grace that 1 have, they might all have been saved. Lord, I know thou dost not make us willing if we are not willing ourselves. Thou givest grace to everybody; some do not improve it, but l do. There are many that wilI go to hell as much bought with the blood of Christ as I was; they had as much of the Holy Ghost given to them; they had as good a chance, and were as much blessed as l am. It was not thy grace that made us to differ; I know it did a great deal, still I turned the point; I made use of what was given me, and others did not—that is the difference between me and them.

That is a prayer for the devil, for nobody else would offer such a prayer as that. Ah! when they are preaching and talking very slowly, there may be wrong doctrine; but when they come to pray, the true thing slips out; they cannot help it. If a man talks very slowly, he may speak in a fine manner; but when he comes to talk fast, the old brogue of his country, where he was born, slips out. I ask you again, did you ever meet a Christian man who said, “I came to Christ without the power of the Spirit?” If you ever did meet such a man, you need have no hesitation in saying, “My dear sir, I quite believe it—and I believe you went away again without the power of the Spirit, and that you know nothing about the matter, and are in the gall of bitterness and the bond of iniquity.” Do I hear one Christian man saying, “I sought Jesus before he sought me; I went to the Spirit, and the Spirit did not come to me?” No, beloved; We are obliged, each one of us, to put our hands to our hearts, and say—

“Grace taught my soul to pray,
And made my eyes o’erflow;
‘Twas grace that kept me to this day,
And will not let me go.”

Is there one here—a solitary one—man or woman, young or old, who can say, “I sought God before he sought me?”No; even you who are a little Arminian, will Sing —

“O yes! I do love Jesus—
Because he first loved me”

---

I Lack Passion?

Someone told me the other day that I wasn't passionate about anything.

I don't know about that. I'm sure it seems like it to some. But I think it's more a question of having pretty much come to my conclusions and settled on what I need to do.

I am pretty well convinced that at best, the United States is sliding toward European-style welfare statism and quite possibly balkanization. I really don't anticipate the situation turning around anytime soon. The only thing that could turn it around is another Great Awakening, I think.

One of the things I think I need to do is to do my best to situate myself and my descendants so that we'll be better able to ride out the next--What? Fifty years? A hundred? Who knows? Could be more than that.

We--Mrs. MOTW and I, that is--have pretty much all the material things we really need and can use. Not that there aren't little odds and ends, but truthfully, all we need is to pay off the house and improve and maintain our property so that hopefully, our children can sell the house and split the proceeds when we croak. We've got to maintain, if at all possible, our health and mentality so that we are as little a burden as possible in our old age. And we've got to finish educating and preparing the kids, not merely to make a living, but to help prepare their descendants.

The other thing I think I need to do is to do my best to pass on what I can, what I know, of the Gospel, of the thinking that lies at the roots of any government that genuinely respects and protects man's rights, and the things that have proven practically useful to me or are likely to prove useful to my descendants and others of like mind. That's part of the purpose of this blog. It's true that I also use this blog to vent, but nevertheless, knowing that nothing ever really dies on the internet, I'm in hopes that some people, somewhere, sometime, will find some of these scribblings useful.

There'll be other things I try to pass on, stuff that will not appear in this blog. Sorry. I can't share everything in this forum. But I will share the introduction to a multi-generational project very soon.

Those things are long-term. All the short-term goals pretty much relate to the long-term goals in one way or another.

I suppose this mindset might seem passionless to some. It's not, not really. It's just that I'm more oriented, now, to situating self and family for the long haul. It's a mindset that calls more for steadily glowing coals of thought than for white-hot thinking.

Ideas don't, I think, ever really die. One day, the ideas behind the American Revolution, behind the Constitution, will likely experience a genuine reflowering. And when that day arrives, whether it is, by God's grace, near at hand, or a long time from now, the MOTW family will be ready.

An Excellent Post on Reformation Day

This is an excellent assembly of thoughts and video regarding Reformation Day. Well worth your time.

Conservative Anti-Capitalists?

I have to admit that when I clicked on Carl Horowitz's column, "The Anti-Capitalist Impulse on the Right" I had a vague presentiment of what was to come, but I did not quite anticipate some of the detail that he threw in.

There are some who might be a little surprised to find that there are conservatives who have a certain distrust of capitalism. This may seem absurd on its face; how can a political philosophy that, almost without exception as far as I can tell, champions the right to property distrust capitalism? And the answer seems to be that so highly do some people value hierarchy, tradition, and moral structure that they look on the opportunities for license and indulgence afforded to the masses in a capitalist society with horror, so much so that they seem to think that the answer to the situation is government intervention. As Mr. Horowitz writes:

Traditionalists generally find this infuriating. For them, the exercise of personal freedom is tantamount to its misuse. A healthy culture, in their minds, must prevent adults from attending immoral concerts, watching immoral TV programs, and reading immoral magazines (or allowing their offspring to do likewise)...As licentious appetites must be whetted in today’s carnival of consumption, they argue, authorities should restrain people from indulging those appetites. Capitalism, while more efficient than socialism, undermines virtue. New sumptuary laws, of a sort, are needed...As long as people such as Hugh Hefner are permitted to run profitable enterprises, Kristol argued, capitalists would be the gravediggers of capitalism.

Mr. Horowitz argues strongly against this point of view, and I recommend you read the column, bearing in mind that I have points of difference with him, some of which may not be immediately apparent, so make no assumptions, please!

For my part, I pretty much always default to liberty. I have an almost total distrust of government's capacity to execute anything successfully, even its legitimate, God-ordained functions, let alone what you might think of as governmental extracurriculars, such as legislating morals. And yet I would agree totally that in a "healthy culture" people do not attend immoral concerts, watch immoral TV programs, read immoral magazines and the like (and I am by no means contending that I have been without sin in my life when I say that). So you might legitimately wonder how I say that the good society is a capitalist society, where people have both liberty and property rights and yet also a society that rejects the libertinism fueled by the rise in personal prosperity that capitalism affords. The answer is to be found in an old quote from Edmund Burke:

Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains on their own appetites. Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere, and the less of it there is within, the more there is without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.

What actually happens in the world is this, and I think you can see the process happening around you right now: you can have freedom, liberty, and property rights, the having of which necessarily entails the possibility of doing immoral things with them, and if enough people persistently do those immoral things, eventually the building blocks of society break down, and so much societal chaos ensues that people begin to clamor for order at any price, even the price of the liberty that they formerly cherished. The only way around this is for the members of a society, a culture, to regulate their own behavior, to, as Burke puts it, "put moral chains on their own appetites," that is, though they may have the means and the liberty to run around on their spouses and drink themselves into the gutter, they do not have the inclination. The most effective way of accomplishing such a state of affairs is through the thorough Christianization of a society, which means, ultimately, that the maintenance of liberty and property rights rest on the foundation of the preaching, teaching, and living out of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and where the church fails in this, in the long haul, society suffers collapse, tyranny enters--sometimes swiftly, sometimes by degrees--and the abuse of liberty brings about its own downfall.

At least, that's how I see it.

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Afterthought: After reading Dave's question (see the comments), I thought, "Now, that's the problem with doing everything in one draft: occasionally, you're going to lack consistency." In this case, having said in one part of a sentence, "The most effective way...," which, obviously, means that there are other ways, I gave the impression in rest of the sentence that there wasn't another way.

Not the most consistent writing in the world. I amend the sentence thusly, new material in bold:

The most effective way of accomplishing such a state of affairs is through the thorough Christianization of a society, which means, ultimately, that the maintenance of liberty and property rights is best founded on the preaching, teaching, and living out of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and where the church fails in this, in the long haul, society is far more likely to suffer collapse; tyranny enters--sometimes swiftly, sometimes by degrees--and the abuse of liberty brings about its own downfall.

I chose to make the change here, rather than in the body of the post as originally written because had I done otherwise, Dave's question wouldn't have made sense to later readers.

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