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mattb

We are all familiar with the story of Joseph found in the book of Genesis.  First, he’s sold into slavery by his brothers (who meant it for evil, while God meant it for good).  Then, he’s bought by Potiphar and put in charge of his household (because everything he touches turns to gold).  While there, Potiphar’s wife sees the “good” in Joseph and attempts to “know” him Adam and Eve style.  Joseph remains true to his God and his faith, politely declining (okay, running for the hills).  Potiphar’s wife accuses him before Potiphar, who has him put into prison.  In prison, things start turning to gold again, and Joseph ends up running that place.  He interprets a couple of dreams, one of the dreamers reports this to Pharaoh, and whabbam, Joseph’s the number two guy in all of Egypt, extending salvation to all the world.

So, how did Joseph take dominion, and how do we do it his way?  To put it plainly, Joseph did all the work while the lazy pagans, seeking riches and glory, just handed dominion over to him.  Or, to let James Jordan say it (has he did so well in Primeval Saints),

“It is all too easy [for oppressed Christians] to yield to sinful temptation and seek to obstruct the designs of heathen masters by demonstrating half-hearted obedience or active meddling.  The story of Joseph tells us that the road to victory, dominion, and mastery is through service, the humble service of a slave.  Through service and suffering God purges and destroys indwelling sin in the believer, builds character in him, and fits him for the mastery of some portion of the world.  As the lazy wicked see that they can trust the hard-working righteous to keep the machinery running, they will be inclined to turn it over to them.”

So the next time your considering which imprecatory psalm* to sing about your supervisor try performing the humble service of a slave until the Lord has prepared them to turn dominion over to you.

Ecclesiastes 2:26 To the man who pleases him, God gives wisdom, knowledge and happiness, but to the sinner he gives the task of gathering and storing up wealth to hand it over to the one who pleases God. This too is meaningless, a chasing after the wind.

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mattb

*If you need a recommendation, go with Psalm 54–it is tame compared to some others and can really get you in an imprecatory mood**!

**For more on imprecatory Psalms (watch as I pass the buck), see Doug Wilson.

This is a new commercial being put out by American Vision in response to the onslaught of atheistic attacks on Christianity.  Well done.

Download link 

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mattb

…you can get to heaven without it–but why would you want to?

(HT:  ReformedCovenanter) 

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mattb

Altruism in Evolution

According to the above study, Americans give and are as altruistic as chimps in a lab (but more so than chimps in the wild).  This results from our being distant evolutionary cousins to the chimps.  Even though we could not have learned altruism from them since there were no labs, this doesn’t matter in the science of evolution.

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mattb

Many of you have probably already seen the YouTube video of the Welsh opera singer on Britain’s Got Talent.  If you haven’t, you must.  I’ve wanted to post on it myself for awhile now, but just couldn’t find the right words for it.  Someone else has.

So it is worth watching (either for the first or additional time) in light of these comments made by Michael J. G. Pahls at Reformed Catholicism.

And he has the video posted there as well.

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mattb

Episcopal Priest is BOTH Muslim and Christian

–OR–

Catholic Priest is BOTH Reformed and Roman Catholic

I was recently given a parenting book by a genuinely concerned relative.  Seeing that I haven’t posted a blog in quite some time and that this book is such an interesting one, I’ve decided to do my first book review.  Here goes…

The Indigo Children; The New Kids Have Arrived
By: Lee Carroll and Jan Tober

Really more of a compilation of articles, stories and interviews, it’s noble twofold goal is to explain why so many children are being diagnosed with ADHD/ADD and why drugging them is not the answer.*  The authors’ conclusion is that the “Indigo Children” are actually the next step in human evolution and are so far advanced that we are unable to understand their actions.

Even before dedicating the book to Jean Flores, a United Nations worker “who made her transition during the writing of this book”, a poem by Kahlil Gibran from “The Prophet” is quoted.  It is warm and generally appealing to the side of us that wants to love and understand our sometimes difficult children and even makes an illusion to the biblical reference of a man’s children being like arrows in his quiver, although the obvious implication that children are a man’s primary long range offensive weapon of dominion is completely missed.  Including this poem is an obvious attempt to put Christians at ease about reading this book, although it is terribly heretical.  Nothing more should be said about this poem since my own wife failed to find fault with it after two reading.**
It is incredibly difficult to wrap this book up into a brief summary because it dives right into that sacred, yet often uneasy, place where theology, spirituality, philosophy and parenting come together.  The primary message that I got from this book is that there are children being born today that are the next evolutionary step for the most “advanced” life form on the planet we call earth and the three things one learns are: 

I.                    These children are known as indigo children because that is the color clairvoyants and psychics report seeing when viewing their life energy or auras.  This is a new form of energy that has entered earth under contract to help us advance to the next step of being.  If you are parenting an indigo child, and nearly 90% of children born in the past ten years are indigos, you too (before you entered the dimension you know as this life) made a contract with the source of the indigo energy to be its parent as it enters earth to prepare mankind to reach the purest form of energy.

II.                  Since indigo children are a 100% new form of energy on our planet during this evolutionary cycle, they require a completely different approach to parenting than we are familiar with. These children are easily identified by; their inability to sit still unless they are doing something of their choosing that interests them at that time, their refusal to submit to authority that did not first consult them, their insistence on learning and doing things their way, and the inability to cope with criticism.

III.               Because indigo children are an evolutionary advance and their spirits are an energy force here to help our entire race, we should not impede them.  We should not force them to learn that which they perceive they do not need to know.  We should not force our standards of morality or religion upon them since they already know what they need to know in order to guide us forward.  Basically, we should step back and learn from our children and not the other way around.

This book really disturbs me.  Besides the obvious fact that the entire indigo child theory is based upon the evolutionary process, this type of neo-pagan/new age philosophy is prevalent in our society and is no different than “ye witch oke”*** outside of Shechem in the ninth chapter of Judges.  

I am a 27 year old man with two children ages two and four.  It is my generation that is supposedly raising the indigo children.  Interestingly enough our grandparents are the generation that began putting into practice the philosophy of Dr. Freud and our parents added to that a more than healthy dose of Dr. Spock.  Since my generation was brought up under the philosophies of Freud and Spock we were given the space to develop our own morbid sense of morality and justice and we added that to the parental philosophy stew.  Now our children are suffering for their fathers’ sins.

My generation (collectively) was taught that we’re all winners and you never fail as long as you give it your all.  We really believe that load of malarkey but we have a problem.  It’s obvious that we have failed at raising our children.  They can’t even pay attention to something for more than 2 minutes unless it completely changes scenes every thirty seconds and has an upbeat tune to accompany its presentation.  Our children are boldly disobedient, disrespectful and rebellious but instead of admitting that the permissive, instant gratification method of parenting doesn’t work, we either drug them or excuse their ungodly behavior as more advanced than our own.  We have become parents that refuse to parent.

Instead of excusing ungodly and therefore unsuccessful parenting we need to return to the Christian culture of family.  The Christian culture destroyed the last man made empire on earth.  When the Christian culture went through its great reformation the entire continent of Europe was brought out of the dark age and the whole world was forever changed.  Children who were born into families embracing the Christian culture of family grew up to found the United States of America which again changed the world.  I am convinced that it is children raised under the Christian ideals of family that will again change the world to usher in an age far greater than the god of indigo energy ever imagined.

Look on the bright side, the ungodly parents may be making it easier for our children to overcome their own generation.  Ah, the silver lining…

*Please note that neither of my children have been diagnosed with ADHD/ADD, nor have we sought such a diagnosis.

**If you are familiar with this poem, before you contact my pastor to have me excommunicated please consider the fact that I am working overtime to correct this situation. 

***1536 Miles Coverdale Bible

“Rebellion against tyrants is obedience to God.”

                                                     ~ Benjamin Franklin

One would have to ask Mr. Franklin where he gets his understanding of obedience to God before accepting his statement.  However, assuming this claim was being made (either by Franklin or any other) from a Biblical perspective (for the sake of the conversation) I propose two further questions should be asked.

1.  What is a tyrant?

2.  What is rebellion against him?

In James Jordan’s book, Primeval Saints, he describes a tyrant in a way that leads me to define him as one who breaks covenant.  For example, he describes Isaac as a tyrant when he is trying to pass along the covenant blessings to the unfaithful Esau (covenant blessings that God had promised to Jacob).

By my understanding, rebellion would be the act of either overthrowing and replacing or reforming the covenant-breaking tyrant.  Again, in the case of Isaac, Rebekah successfully rebels against Isaac (in the reforming sense of the word) by bringing him to see his disobedience through her deceiving him into blessing Jacob.  After the fact, Isaac willingly extends the covenant blessings to Jacob as he heads off to find a wife.  She rebelled against him via deception, and he was reformed via his repentant act of obedience.

If this example serves to prove the point, it would still lead to the inevitable question, “What about Romans 13?”  Here, Paul has exhorted Christians to submit to the ungodly rule of the Romans.  However, we must look at this in light of the above questions and answers.

1.  A tyrant is a covenant breaker.  Wherein consists Rome’s covenant breaking?  Rome was not breaking covenant with her people (as Britain broke the covenant–charters–made with the colonies and as America is with her disregard for the Constitution–her covenant with her people).

2.  Rebellion is an act of overthrow/replacement or reformation by those with whom the covenant is being broken.  Therefore the rebellion against Rome comes not from the people, but from God in judgment.  God prepared Rome for such judgment by His people.  Wasn’t the obedience of first century Christians (and the worldview in which they were living) an act of overthrow and reformation?  Read Quo Vadis (which does an excellent job of showing the torment a Roman went through in trying to reconcile the Christian worldview with his own) and you can see the rebellion being lived out in a “my Kingdom is not of this world” kind of way.

This is not an exhaustive look at this topic, just some thoughts I’ve had as of late.  So, I’d love some feedback on this.

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mattb

How do we hear that we are justified by faith?  Pastor Leithart answers that question in this post of his, reproduced below.

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mattb

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Justification by Faith
by Peter Leithart

We are right before God because Jesus has obeyed perfected, offered Himself on the cross, and received the verdict of righteousness in the resurrection, a verdict in which we are included by union with the Risen Christ. We come to share in this verdict by faith.

But a question arises: Where do we ever hear this verdict? How is it communicated to us? We need to hear the verdict. What good is a verdict that’s never declared to us?

We could say: I hear it in my heart. But how do I know that what I hear in my heart is God’s verdict or my own self-justification?

We could say: In the preaching of the Word. Correct. But how do I know the promise delivered in the preaching of the Word is addressed to me, individually and personally?

We could say: I hear God declare me righteous when I hear His minister pronounce my sins forgiven in worship. Correct. But again that is a general declaration of forgiveness. I hear it, so to that extent, it is personally directed at me. But it doesn’t have my name attached.

Here’s one of the points where baptism links up with justification. Baptism is not the “ground” of justification; the ground is the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, the results of which we share in our union with Him. Baptism is the declaration of the verdict, to me personally, with my name attached.

In baptism, God promises to forgive me my sins for Jesus’ sake. In baptism, He communicates His verdict to me, just as truly as He communicates it in preaching, but in baptism he more obviously communicates it to me. In baptism, He says that I am included in Christ, and in the verdict that He passed on Jesus. This is what it means for baptism to join us to Christ’s death and resurrection, since the resurrection is the Father’s verdict over the Son through the Spirit (Rom 4:25; 6:1-7).

I receive what my baptism declares only by faith. If I don’t believe what God says about me in baptism, then I don’t receive the verdict, for I make Him a liar.

In this sense, the relation of baptism-justification-faith is the same as the relation of preaching/absolution-justification-faith. God declares sins forgiven in the preaching of the gospel, calls me to believe that declaration; and I believe. God declares that He forgives my sins in my baptism (”for the remission of sins”); and I’m called to believe what He says.

This is not trusting in water. This is trusting the God who declares me cleansed through water. This is justification by faith.