“Truth is not a bunch of puppies running around, you can’t just grab the one you like.”

Emerson Cod, “Pushing Daisies“

“If people let the government decide what foods they eat and what medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in as sorry a state as the souls who live under tyranny.”  Benjamin Franklin

So what would Ben Franklin think about those New Yorkers who have a “nanny state” government telling them what types of fat they can eat?

Take your body back.

And elect a man who will support your doing it.

See Postmillennialists are NOT anti-semitic:

“In Numbers 12, Miriam and Aaron object to Moses’ Cushite wife. Miriam becomes leprous, is excluded from the camp, and restored on the eighth day.

“That is to say: The Messiah’s Jewish sister objects to the Gentile bride, and is cast out of the camp, but then she is cleansed and restored.

“And so all Israel will be saved.”

(Peter Leithart, “Tale of Two Women“)

“But,” said Peace, “I can prove that their pain must come to an end, and suffering is bound to turn to happiness in the end. For if they had never known any suffering, they could never know happiness. No man can grasp what pleasure is who has never suffered, or understand hunger who has never been without food. I am sure that if there were no night, no one would know for certain the meaning of day!…For until we meet with Scarcity no one knows what it is to have enough. And so God of His goodness placed the first man, Adam, in a state of contentment and perfect happiness, and then allowed him to sin and experience sorrow, so that he might learn for himself what real happiness was.”

(Langland, Piers Plowman, as quoted by Douglas Jones in his essay, Where Righteousness and Mercy Kiss: Deep Thanks for the Protestant Heart in his and Douglas Wilson’s book, Angels in the Architecture: A Protestant Vision for Middle Earth.)

“The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the Divinity Himself, and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power.” Alexander Hamilton

This is an important quote because it recognizes our rights come from God Himself, not from the Constitution, nor the Government, nor the will of the masses. If these rights come from God, then they are given to ALL men, not just those who are citizens of America, under the jurisdiction of our Constitution, subjects of our Government, or members of the mass of American voters. Thus, detainees in Guantamo Bay have rights, the citizens of Iraq have rights, unborn children in their mother’s womb have rights, all men have rights.

The U.S. Constitution merely enumerates the God-given rights of man, those seen written in the whole volume of human nature, those found on the pages of Holy Writ, it does not bestow them.

Peter Leithart was recently asked (in a Federal Vision discussion at De Regno Christi) which is the true church? His reply:

“Which church?” Is there more than one? …I know this will sound peculiar if not hypocritical, but I hate movements, not least for the reason Daryl cites: Movements unite people ideologically rather than personally and sacramentally, but that’s precisely the problem we say we’re trying to fix.

I really like what was said by Daryl and quoted by Peter, so here it is again,

Movements unite people ideologically rather than personally and sacramentally, but that’s precisely the problem we say we’re trying to fix.

I have seen this very problem, especially among younger Christians or Christians just learning new doctrine–think Calvinism. I think I heard James White say that new Calvinists often go through a stage he called the “Cage Stage”. That is, the time period when they should be locked in a cage because they are the most irritating with their constant shoving of calvinism down the throats of others. As young Christians, or Christians new to some great doctrine, we often unite ideologically or doctrinally (around Calvinism, dispensationalism, baptism, etc…) rather than around fellowship and sacrament. Interestingly, John makes just our being in the light the grounds for fellowship, not our understanding of various doctrines.

1Jn 1:3-7 That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us: and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ. 4 And these things write we unto you, that your joy may be full. 5 This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. 6 If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth: 7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.

We have fellowship with God, and by that fellowship we have fellowship with others who are fellowshipping with Him in that Light.  Our being in Him (a consequence of the sacrament of Baptism) and fellowshipping with Him (experienced through the sacrament of the Supper) are the grounds of our fellowship with others.  Our fellowship is not meant to be based on doctrinal views, which leads to nothing more than movements, ideological movements.

“When God is excluded from the classroom, we are not merely remaining silent about God.  We are teaching children that they may safely disregard Him.  Whether or not God exists, the lesson goes, His existence is irrelevant to what we are doing here.  So when God is omitted, we are not silent about Him; rather, we are teaching the children in the most convincing way possible that God is irrelevant.  They can safely omit Him when it is convenient to do so.”

(Douglas Wilson, Excused Absence (Mission Viejo, CA:  Cruxpress) pg. 62.

As theologian Cornelius Van Til has poignantly shown, the unbeliever vacillates between rationalism and irrationalism.  In the same way, the unbeliever careens between a fixed ethic and a flexible ethic–whichever suits him.  Because our government schools are institutions dedicated to the propagation of unbelief, we find this patter there, swinging away like a pendulum.

This is why we find a jihad against racism, pollution, or global warming in the government schools at one moment, then seconds later, we find the same absolutist zealots insisting that there is no such thing as absolute good or evil when it comes to homosexuality or other “alternative lifestyles.”  And further, the kids are told that if they do not believe in the relativism dished out to them, they will find themselves doing bad things.  Follow this argument closely:  It is bad to reject relativism because such rejection suggests that there might be such a thing as “bad.”  That would be bad.

(Douglas Wilson, Excused Absence (Mission Viejo, CA:  Cruxpress) pg. 44-5.)

The fact is that the popular modern conception of the individual is derived from Greek thought rather than from the Bible, and may even be regarded as anti-Biblical.  We tend to think of our bodies giving us our individuality and separating us, one from the other.  In the Old Testament it is our flesh–a word for body hardly exists in Hebrew–that binds us to our fellow-men; it is our personal responsibility to God that gives us our individuality.  Since man (’adam) is bound to the ground (’adamah) from which he has been taken, and through it to all who live on the same ground, he cannot help influencing them by his actions.  Abominable conduct causes “the land to sin” (Deu 24:4; cf. Jer 3:1, 9).  That is why drought, pestilence, earthquake, etc., are for the Old Testament the entirely natural punishment of wickedness (cf. Psa 107:33 f.).  If a man dwelt in a polluted land, he could not help sharing in its pollution.  The chief terror of exile was not that the land of exile was outside the control of Jehovah–a view that was probably held by very few–but rather that it was an unclean land (Amos 7:17).

(H.L. Ellison, Ezekiel:  The Man and His Message (Grand Rapids:  Eerdmans, 1956), p. 72, as quoted by R.J. Rushdoony, The Institutes of Biblical Law (The Craig Press, 1973), p. 428.)

New York City, September 11, 2001

The Indian Ocean, Christmas 2004

The Gulf Coast, August 2005

Pakistan and Kashmir, October 2005

These “are a reminder that ‘the problem of evil’ is not something we will ’solve’ in the present world, and that our primary task is not so much to give answers to impossible philosophical questions as to bring signs of God’s new world to birth on the basis of Jesus’ death and in the power of his Spirit, even in the midst of ‘the present evil age.’”

(NT Wright, Evil and the Justice of God, preface.)