06.27.09
Trials and Medicine – A Difficult Lesson
“Trials are medicines which our gracious and wise Physician prescribes, because we need them. He proportions the frequency and weight of them – to what our case requires. Let us trust in His skill – and thank Him for His prescription!”
John Newton, Unknown
G.M.
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06.23.09
Police Examine a Church’s Invitation Leaflet
Instances like this are evidence that things are getting worse in the U.K.
G.B.
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06.17.09
Proud of Being Humble
C. S. Lewis certainly had more than his fair share of errors, but with a particularly enjoyable style and keen insight he is worth a discerning read. In his Screwtape Letters, letters from a senior to a junior devil on how to tempt men, he shows an amazing understanding of human nature and Satan‘s devices. Take this bit of advice from Srewtape regarding how to deal with men becoming humble as an example:
“Your patient has become humble; have you drawn his attention to the fact? All virtues are less formidable to us once the man is aware of that he has them, but this is specially true of humility. Catch him at the point when he is really poor in spirit and smuggle into his mind the gratifying reflection’ ‘By jove! I’m being humble’, and almost immediately pride – pride at his own humility – will appear. If he awakes to the danger and tries to smother this new form of pride, make him proud of his attempt – and so on, through as many stages as you please.” (The Complete C. S. Lewis Signature Classics, p.224)
It is good for us to understand ourselves as we really are, and to understand how Satan encourages us in such thinking. Of course, we must look out to Christ once we really see how bad we are so that we are benefitted and don’t simply despair and doubt our salvation.
He also has Srewtape instructing Wormwood to encourage his patient in a false idea of what humility is:
“Let him think [humility is] a certain kind of opinion (namely, a low opinion) of his own talents and character… By this method thousands of humans have been brought to think that humility means pretty women trying to believe they are ugly and clever men trying to believe they are fools. And since what they are trying to believe may, in some cases, be manifest nonsense, they cannot succeed in believing it and we have the chance of keeping their minds endlessly revolving on themselves in an effort to achieve the impossible.” ((The Complete C. S. Lewis Signature Classics, p.225)
G.M.
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06.13.09
Political Freedom and the Puritans
In among a few comments of mine is a quote that simply shows how vital was the fight for freedom that the Puritans waged in the Seventeenth century. It tells us that we have not a broad enough view of Calvinism if we don’t care deeply about such today – we must love our neighbour and ourselves!
The news two days ago of the State wanting increased control over how home educators raise their children is deeply worrying. We have not fought for the truth that the State should have absolutely no say in how parents decide to bring up their own children (only stepping in when a genuine crime has been committed). God gives children to parents, not politicians and their army of meddlers. Thus, all the State has to do is pretend there is abuse and we will agree that they need regulatory powers to prevent it (as if they have shown any skill in preventing things!) Let them punish real crimes properly, but once we allow them powers to ’save’ us from ‘bad things happening’ and allow them to shift their role to ‘crime prevention’ we invite totalitarianism; a new kind of totalitarianism, though, ‘soft totalitarianism’, with its multiculturalism and ‘political correctness’. And because it doesn’t look like what we know about Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia we fail to see how serious things have already gotten.
“So absolute indeed was the authority of the crown that the precious spark of liberty had been kindled and preserved by the Puritans alone; and it was to this sect that the English owe the whole freedom of their constitution.” (Hume)
God has given the Civil Magistrate the use of the sword alone – not the blackboard, not the stethoscope, not red tape and printing presses. Nor has he given Magistrates the sword in order to coerce us all to eat food without fat and salt, drive little electric cars, and chase toys around the countryside instead of real foxes. When we ask them to do so, calling for all that we don’t like to be made illegal (‘There needs to be a law against it!’), we act foolishly. Not merely because God has not given them such authority (he defines what is and is not to be treated as crime), but also because the meddling we encourage will not take long to turn on us. Christians are suffering already and will suffer the most as this trend continues.
G.M.
P.S. We are aware that the Puritans were not as consistent as we might have liked (or at least some weren’t). But their general principles should help guide us, and their heroic example should inspire us.
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06.11.09
What the Bible says about Homosexuality (2)
Having introduced the subject in our first post we wish to move through some key passages of Scripture to establish what the bible says about homosexuality. As we proceed we will interact with arguments that are put forth by churchmen/women who attempt to defend homosexuality on biblical grounds, but we are persuaded come the end of our study what the Bible says will be clear to any honest mind.
1. The Created Order – Gen 1-2
Gen 1:27-28 ‘So God created man in his own image, in the image og God created he him, male and female created he them. And God blessed them and said unto them, be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth and subdue it.’
Gen 2:18, 20, 23-24 provide more detail concerning the creation of woman & the coming together of man and woman in marriage.
v18 ‘It is not good that the man should be alone, I will make an help meet for him.
v20 ‘And Adam gave names… but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him.’
Adam had no companion in all of creation. So God created woman & brought them together v23-24.
‘And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.’
Its put forward by those in favour of Homosexuality that these verses are silent on the issue of homosexuality and therefore laregelly irrelevant to the debate, however there is an obvious significance in this silence.
(i) The Creation Order. God created man male & female.
When Adam had no helpmeet, God created a woman who was different to him physically, emotionally and sexually yet at the same time physically, emotionally & sexually COMPATIBLE to him.
Homosexuality lacks this compatibility and involves the use of body parts for purposes totally alien to what they are designed for and yet the great pretence of our society is that somehow this is natural. In reality this is a rejection of the obvious and a denial of what is self evident.
(ii) The Creation Mandate – to be fruitful, multiply and replenish the earth.
Homosexuality cannot fulfil this. The command can only be fulfilled by this designed sexual compatibility by which a man and a woman together have the potential to reproduce and procreate the race. Are we to believe that this command of God to precreate life, as given to our first parents, has homosexuality in view which of necessity is a culture of death.
(iii) The Creation Ordinance – Marriage as defined by Gen 2:23-24.
What God says here sets the legitimate parameters for all human sexual relations. One man and one woman joined together in marriage become ‘one flesh’ which includes physical intercourse. This excludes all pre-marital sexual promiscuity; adultery, polygamy and Homosexuality. The consistent and uncontradicted teaching of Scripture when it comes to human sexuality is that there are only two legitimate options – heterosexual marriage or celibacy.
The points made above are what we will be referring to as the ‘natural order’ or the ‘created order.’ It has become common to define what is natural in the realm of sexuality by our sinful tendencies after the Fall whereby we have perverted sexuality in a whole host of ways. But what God established in the beginning for man is what we are to regard as natural.
G.B.
06.10.09
A Double ‘Hold-Fast’
“This inward hold-fast which Christ has of us, and we of him, is mutual, he apprehends us in our perishing condition, and we apprehend him, (Phil. iii. 12,) just as a man fallen into water, reaches his hand to us, and we put forth our hand to catch hold of him. There is hand in hand, Christ clasping us by his Spirit, we him by the hand of faith. Christ first seeks us that were lost, and by his Spirit lays hold on us; then do we that fled from him, turn to him, and lay hold on Christ.” (William Lyford, The Instructed Christian, p.135)
Thinking and meditating on Christ is about thinking and meditating on such truths as above. Here is another from the same Puritan author:
“It behoved Christ to be a man, that he might suffer death; he must also be God, that he might be able to bear and overcome the punishment of sin. Man’s nature can suffer death, but not overcome it. The divine nature cannot suffer death, but can overcome all things. And he must be God and man in one person, that the sufferings performed in the human nature might be of value and efficacy to save. 2 Cor. xiii. 4.” (pp.122-3)
G.M.
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06.03.09
Augustine and Torture
In the book Augustine, by Henry Chadwick (Oxford, 1986), Chadwick states: “Augustine was much opposed to torture, which was regular in criminal procedure and especially treason trials; it made innocent people confess to acts they had not committed and left them maimed.”
I would personally suggest that this is a much more Christian position than that of many misguided Neo-conservative-minded evangelicals today. And as with many other powers that Christians have foolishly granted the state (particularly powers to interfere in families and control the economy), this one may come back to bite us.
G.M.
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