Political Correctness

— Posted inCulture and Society — 4 min read

I think I just committed an act of racial profiling – and what’s more, it was a good thing. An Hispanic mother and her two young daughters came to the door, looking to pick up “Devon” to take him to school. “He doesn’t live here”, I explained. They were distressed, for if they didn’t take him to school he wasn’t going to get there.

They didn’t know the address they were looking for either, so I couldn’t help them that way. But then I remembered that a new family had moved in two doors down about three months ago.

“Is he black?”, I asked. “Yes”, the older girl answered. I explained about some black kids having moved in. Her face lit up, “That makes sense, because he’s new in class!”

And so they thanked me, apologized for the bother, of which there was none, and everyone went on their way. It was a nice convergence of three races helping each other.

What bothered me about the incident is that it reminded me that our benighted powers-that-be have deemed mentioning race to be a bad thing. Under the beneficent regime of political correctness, how many times have you read of a dangerous criminal on the loose, and been given all kinds of identifying information save for the one parameter that would immediately reduce the field by anywhere from 50% to 85%: his race?

My guess is that they don’t want to feed racial stereotypes, both on the side of whites fearing non-whites and of non-whites having poor self-identity.

Those are laudable goals, but the problem is with their outcome-based strategy in reaching them. They are not telling us the truth and it is hurting us.

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The Presence of the Lord; Death and Life; Morality Trumped by Love

— Posted inPrayer, Spiritual Growth — 5 min read

Things have been changing lately, in subtle but tangible ways.

Nothing exteriorly has changed (unfortunately, from my POV), but I have had a new sense of God’s Presence.

It’s both a more constant sense and a stronger sense. It has absolutely surrounded me at times. And it has had a new quality of solidity about it. I almost expect to be able to see it or feel it physically, but I’m not quite there yet.

I was thinking that the best thing about this Presence is that it causes me to remember to rest in Him when I begin to go off into my own anxieties.

But a new revelation came just a while ago. I found myself responding to the Presence by telling Jesus that I loved Him, but then I realized that that wasn’t quite accurate. I paid closer attention to the feeling and then I identified it. It wasn’t that I loved God, it was that He loved me!

That distinction may seem esoteric, but I assure you it is not. True love originates only from the Author of love. We reflect His love back only because He first loved us -1Jn 4.19. The order of incidence is extremely important, otherwise we are operating on soul power.

When Gibson’sPassion of the Christcame out a few years back, I saw it in the theater and thought, “I’m glad I saw it once, but there’s really no need to go through this again.”

How wrong I was. It took me a couple of years, but I became drawn into a “Passion Marathon” a while back, where I simply could not stop watching the film each evening for over a week. And the parts that transfixed me, that I skipped around to, actually were the brutal parts – the scourging and the crucifixion itself. As I watched, I received a greater revelation than ever before that this was G-O-D suffering and dying. This was the greatest crime perpetrated in the history of Creation, and it was perpetrated by none other than GOD HIMSELF. Jesus Himself said, “No man takes my life; I lay it down on my own initiative” -Jn 10.18. He could have called twelve legions of angels to rescue Him, but He chose the Cross. -Mt 26.53

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Why Shooting Abortionists Is A Bad Idea

— Posted inBible, Culture and Society — 7 min read

Most readers don’t need an article on why murdering an abortionist is a bad idea. But there are some of us who actually must go through the mental exercise in order to be at peace with the subject.

After all, the matter is serious. It is human beings who are being torn apart in the womb by these abortionists. And it is the women, men, and family survivors of abortion that are deeply affected. So the question arises, why then not take out an abortionist as a matter of defense of the innocent?

Two scenarios

Consider this. In Numbers 25, Israel was sinning badly. Through the treachery of the prophet Balaam, they had joined themselves to Moabite women and had sacrificed to the Moabite god, Baal. In plain terms, that means that immorality and unfaithfulness were rampant. At its most flagrant high point, Phinehas took matters into his own hand. He thrust his spear through two fornicators, putting an abrupt end to the party – and to the plague from the Lord that had befallen the Israelites. And make no mistake: the Lord honored Phinehas for it:

‘Behold, I give to him my covenant of peace,and it shall be to him and to his descendants after him the covenant of a perpetual priesthood, because he was jealous for his God and made atonement for the people of Israel.’ ” – Nu 25:12-13

But now consider another case, Israel’s plight some decades earlier. While they were still in Egypt, trapped in slavery, the evil Pharaoh had decreed that all Hebrew babies would be destroyed immediately upon birth. The Hebrews had no human rights at all, so when a certain promising young Hebrew ruler, by the name of Moses, saw a Jewish brother being abused, he killed the Egyptian surreptitiously. Moses thought he would spark a revolt among his people, but the next day he found out that he had failed to unify the fragmented Israelites.

Moses’ personal attempt to right a truly horrible situation had achieved exactly nothing, and he was forced to flee deep into the desert to meditate on that fact in the hot sun for the next forty years. It wasn’t until God showed up, with a far better plan of deliverance, that Israel’s captivity ended.

So what’s the difference between the two scenarios? With Phinehas, Israel was under a binding covenantal system of law. To be sure, the nation had badly fallen in practice from this standard, but nonetheless the law was still in place and still binding. The problem was that the officials were not executing their responsibilities. So when Phinehas stood up and defended the law, he was successful and was honored by God.

In the earlier, Moses, scenario, the existing system of law was not covenantal to Israel, but was alien and hostile. There was no authority to appeal to, so Moses understandably chose revolt. But he failed because he did not do it God’s way.

Our situation

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Hebrews 6: Restoration for fallen Christians

— Posted inBible, Spiritual Growth — 14 min read

This is a study on Hebrews 6, for Christians who feel condemned because of something they have done even after accepting Christ. So often the guilt and remorse of such a one is unbearable. Know that if your sin weighs heavily on you because of a sense of offending Holy God, that indicates that your heart is not hardened. There is hope.

Often this passage of Hebrews is used to quash that hope just when it is most needed. I intend to show that that was not the writer’s purpose at all; quite the opposite.

The goal: Christlikeness

Therefore leaving the elementary teaching about the Christ, let us press on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God,

of instruction about washings and laying on of hands, and the resurrection of the dead and eternal judgment.

And this we will do, if God permits.

To move on in Christ we need to lock in the basics and then press forward into maturity. Maturity does not merely involve agreeing intellectually with dogma, it involves Christlikeness, shown by  having both power to love and a sound mind. It’s about Kingdom character, obedience, and effectiveness. It enables us to fulfill our destiny in Christ. (more…)

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