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​The onus is on us.

8/30/2017

2 Comments

 
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I just heard another unbeliever citing “hypocrisy in the church” as her primary excuse for rejecting Christianity.
 
Unfortunately for those who rely on it, it’s not an excuse that will fly on Judgment Day.
 
In the first place, born-again believers may be ambassadors for Jesus Christ, but we are not Him. We are all, in fact, colossal failures in the obedience department, and that indeed makes us all hypocrites to some extent. It's what makes His grace so amazing.
 
Secondly, our behavior has nothing to do with truth. To equate the two is a fallacy that logicians call a category mistake, “the error of assigning to something a quality or action which can only properly be assigned to things of another category” (Oxford dictionary).
 
The trouble is, unbelievers seem to be unable to grasp any of this. I write as one who spent 30 years of her adult life in that blinded condition, refusing to let such facts interfere with my beloved sin – in particular, my pride, self-righteousness and unbelief. 
 
Instead of investigating, unbelievers tend to cling to this logical fallacy as tenaciously as we believers cling to our Bibles. They use our behavior to judge Christianity’s validity. And that means they almost invariably reject truth, because it’s so very easy to find flaws in us.
 
All of which underscores the eternal importance of cleaning up our acts before unbelievers – because the onus is quite literally on us. It’s our responsibility to present Christ in the best possible light in spite of the unbeliever’s category error.
 
As imperfect beings, we’re going to be angry at times; we’re going to gossip; we’re going to break the speed limit; we’re going to snarl at a surly waitress or an ignorant comment about our faith. We need to repent of our sins, of course. But equally important, we need to do everything we can to avoid committing them before a lost and dying world, and be ready to apologize when we fail.
 
Above all, we need to put the love of Christ on permanent display in our lives, knowing that we are being watched, and that unbelievers are judging Christ Himself on the basis of our behavior. It's the only way we'll earn the right to ​share God's truth with them.
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A safe haven for sinners?

8/22/2017

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News item: Travelodge removes the Bible from every room

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How many lost souls, over the decades, have picked up a Gideon Bible in their lonely hotel rooms, not even realizing it was written for them? 

How many have been transformed by what they found within? 

How many have discovered in its pages the peace that surpasses all understanding? 

How many have crossed the threshold into eternal life upon learning that the price of admission is simply repentance and trust in Christ?

God only knows. But the British motel chain Travelodge has made sure that it won't happen again under its roofs.   

I wonder what pompous little mid-level manager made this decision – and if we will witness him or her trying to justify it on judgment day?
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Relentless regrets

8/19/2017

1 Comment

 
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For most of my Christian life, I’ve hung my head in shame over many things I have thought, said and done in the past. Most of them are from my years as a feminist atheist, but I have to admit to a cringe-worthy episode or two since then – including the day a decade ago when I totally lost my temper over something that would have been easy to justify before I knew Jesus, but was definitely unacceptable in one who professed to follow Him.
 
I know the Bible instructs us repeatedly not to dwell on the past. For instance, as the prophet Isaiah quoted the Lord in chapter 18 of his book, “"Do not remember the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, I will do a new thing, now it shall spring forth; shall you not know it?”  And in the New Testament, Jesus is quoted as saying “No one, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.” (Luke 9:62)
 
Alas, I’ve been unable to leave some of these things behind, instead repenting repeatedly over them. After all, we can’t erase the impact of hurtful thoughts, words and deeds; our victims may forgive us, but they won’t forget. How could they?
 
But then, on a recent Saturday afternoon, I had an epiphany. It’s probably obvious to most of you, dear readers, but I’ll bet one or two of you spend more than a little time beating yourselves up for the transgressions of the past.  Maybe you’ve even popped a pill or two or downed a shot or three in an effort to silence your nagging conscience.
 
Here’s what happened. I was in my garden slaughtering Japanese beetles and singing snatches of favorite old hymns, when a favorite of my late friend Ruth H. came up on my mental juke box: “Whiter than snow, whiter than snow, now wash me and I shall be whiter than snow.”
 
I stopped dead in my tracks: Whiter than snow?
 
I knew that the phrase came from a psalm, but couldn’t remember which one. I raced inside to look it up in my NKJV.
 
And there it was, nestled in the first ten verses of Psalm 51, which was written by King David after the prophet Nathan confronted him for his disastrous sin with Bathsheba:
 
Have mercy upon me, O God,
According to Your lovingkindness;
According to the multitude of Your tender mercies,
Blot out my transgressions. 
 
Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity,
And cleanse me from my sin. 
 
For I acknowledge my transgressions,
And my sin is always before me. 
 
Against You, You only, have I sinned,
And done this evil in Your sight –
That You may be found just when You speak,
And blameless when You judge.
 
Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity,
And in sin my mother conceived me. 
 
Behold, You desire truth in the inward parts,
And in the hidden part You will make me to know wisdom.
 
Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean;
Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. 
 
Make me hear joy and gladness,
That the bones You have broken may rejoice. 
 
Hide Your face from my sins,
And blot out all my iniquities. 
 
Create in me a clean heart, O God,
And renew a steadfast spirit within me. 
 
And there it was: a poignant reminder that Christ died not to bury, nor cover, nor white wash, the sins of the world.  
 
He died to wash them away!
 
It’s a recurrent theme throughout the Bible – perhaps most notably in this oft-cited line from the apostle John’s first epistle: “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” (1 John 1:9)
 
And just think of the result. As David wrote in Psalm 103:
 
For as the heavens are high above the earth,
So great is His mercy toward those who fear Him;
As far as the east is from the west,
So far has He removed our transgressions from us.
 
As far as the east is from the west – why, wouldn’t that be infinity?  
 
I had read these passages time and time again – apparently, without taking them to heart. But now, thanks to a precious old hymn written in the 19th century by Irish immigrant and postal clerk James L. Nicholson, I was set free at last from these relentless regrets.
 
“Therefore if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed.” (John 8:36)
 
Hallelujah! 
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Beware the straw man

8/14/2017

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Let me begin with a caveat: I have no idea if R.C. Sproul really advanced the argument above. It’s entirely possible that someone else pasted it atop his photo and stuck his name in the attribution spot and sent it on its way to unsuspecting, Calvinist-leaning Christians. In turn, these folks eagerly passed it on, thinking that it makes an air-tight case for their chosen philosophy.
 
Except that it does no such thing. In point of fact, it is a totally irrelevant argument, based as it is on an underlying straw man – a logical fallacy that purports to refute an opposing argument, even though the opponent never said any such thing.
 
I’ve studied Calvinism in depth, and I have never heard anyone but a Calvinist advance the argument addressed in this meme, and then only to knock it down. I have never heard an anti-Calvinist suggest that Calvinism is wrong because it’s unjust. Not once.
 
Maybe Calvinism’s opponents would be reduced to such irrelevance if there were no solid biblical arguments against the philosophy. But there are plenty. Consider just a handful:
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  • God’s will is salvation for all (see, e.g., 2 Peter 3:9, 1 Timothy 2:3-4, Romans 11:32, 2 Corinthians 5:19)
  • God provides for salvation for all (1 John 2:2, John 6:40, 1 Timothy 2:6, Hebrews 2:9, Isaiah 53:6, Romans 5:18, 8:29)
  • God gives man the choice to believe or not (John 3:16, Acts 13:46)
  • God draws all men (John 12:32)
  • God enables man to respond (John 1:9, Mark 16:15-16, Acts17:30,16:31)
  • Men drawn do refuse (Romans 10:21)
  • God commands preaching gospel to all (Mark 16:15)
 
And that’s just the start. If you are among those who’ve been knocked off the rails of sound Biblicism by the use of words like “elect” and “chosen,” hold on! Next time you come across a form of these words, ask yourself:

  1. Elect or chosen for what purpose?
  2. Elect or chosen on what basis?
 
If you are being honest with yourself and refuse to go beyond what is written, you will NEVER come up with “for salvation” as the answer to #1. And you will NEVER answer #2 with “because it was God’s good pleasure to save or condemn this person.”
 
I got this meme from a friend who’d received it as a “told you so!” email from a Calvinist acquaintance. My friend knew it was wrong, but she wasn’t sure exactly why – this in spite of the fact that she’s been an ardent Bible student for over half a century.
 
And that’s what makes straw-man arguments so dangerous: Because they’re unbiblical to begin with, they’re impossible to refute directly with a verse or two or three from the Bible. Which means some people are going to fall for them.
 
Do straw-man practitioners know what they’re doing? In other words, is the deception deliberate?
 
Beats me; I certainly don’t know their hearts. 
 
But I do know that the Bible warns us repeatedly to be wary of such devices. As the apostle Paul wrote in Colossians 2:8, "Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ."
 
There are many other deceptive techniques being used to battle biblical truth today – including the ever-popular “Has God indeed said?” introduced by Satan himself in Genesis 3. But the straw-man argument is one of the most common, perhaps because it’s so easy to use, and can send true Bereans on a fruitless search for passages to counter it.
 
So use caution. Don’t let yourself become the straw man’s next victim!
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What's missing from this picture?

8/8/2017

2 Comments

 
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I have a special fondness for the movies of the 1940s and early ‘50s, for a number of reasons – not the least of which is the chance (silly as it may seem) to get a glimpse of the furniture and fashions of my happy childhood. For instance, one of my favorites is Mildred Pierce, the 1945 Joan Crawford melodrama featuring a supper club that was surely modeled on one my family frequented over a half century ago. 

And then there’s anything starring Dana Andrews, surely the cutest actor who ever graced the big screen and the son of a Baptist pastor, which may explain why he stayed married to the same woman for more than 50 years, until the day he died. No word on his spiritual life; his latest journalism-professor biographer clearly thinks “religion” is the height of foolishness, and doesn’t explore his subject’s most profound beliefs. 

But even as I grow hungrier for glimpses of a happy past that surely point to a joyful forevermore, I find myself increasingly disturbed by the take-away messages of these movies. 

One recent attraction was 1949’s My Foolish Heart, starring Susan Hayward, along with – you guessed it – Dana Andrews.  In this movie, hard-drinking Hayward is stuck in a miserable marriage. We find out through the film-length flashback that she had become pregnant by her true love Andrews just before he was killed in the war. Then, to cover her shame, she married her best friend’s boyfriend. Hence, the miserable marriage. Although the heroine eventually pays for her moral failings with her self-inflicted misery, she brings the story to a close by pulling herself up by the bootstraps and doing what she sees as the right thing. 

Movies like this one seem to have one critical theme in common: There’s no sign of God in any of them, no sign of an afterlife. You would think that, if she really loved the Andrews character in My Foolish Heart, the Hayward character would have explored the possibility of him still existing somewhere out there – and would have learned that Jesus is the way, the truth and the life, and that no one comes to the Father apart from Him. Then, on the hope that her true love had trusted in Him before dying, she could have pursued the Lord’s truth in the hope of being reunited with him for all eternity. 

But sadly, the happy endings of this era, and this genre, offer only temporal happiness, with each character apparently staggering to a Christ-less eternity.  

What a great example of what has gone wrong with the western world. True, it’s been underway for a long, long time; it was in 1889 that the old reprobate Oscar Wilde wrote, “Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life." But it’s clear that motion pictures have raised the influence of “art” on our culture, and individual lives, exponentially, with eternally tragic implications.
2 Comments

Urban blight and eternity

8/1/2017

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There’s no doubt that urbanization is conquering the world. According to the UN, 82% of North Americans live in urban areas today, and it’s expected that two out of three people worldwide will live in cities by 2050. 

Any way you look at it, these facts have far-reaching implications for the entire human race. Imagine, for instance, what it will mean to our food supplies in the decades to come. And think about what it could mean to our systems of government; some observers point out that it’s a whole lot easier to control a population concentrated in major cities than it is to monitor small settlements of people scattered across enormous swaths of countryside. What might that mean to our way of life a few decades down the road?

But there’s an aspect of urbanization with eternal implications. And that’s the fact that this trend is making some aspects of biblical truth increasingly tough to grasp, especially in the western world.  

Consider how easy residents of agrarian cultures would have found it to understand the Bible’s frequent references to, and analogies about, everything from livestock to farming – and how difficult it would be for today’s thoroughly modern urbanites.

Take, for example, the beloved 23rd Psalm, which tells us of the Lord’s incredible care for His children, and His loving invitation to simply trust Him. Do you know what prerequisites the Good Shepherd has already addressed before He can get us to “lie down in green pastures”? Do you understand the significance of our heads being anointed with oil? If your idea of an outdoor adventure is a walk in a park, you probably won’t have a clue, and won’t draw the intended comfort from this beautiful psalm.    

Another example: Jesus’ parable of the sower in Matthew 13. Is the soil of your heart ready for successful cultivation? Or is it packed down, stony or filled with weed seeds just waiting to germinate and choke out the good seed of the gospel? If any of the latter conditions prevail, how could the soil of your heart be transformed into the good stuff? If you’re a farmer or experienced gardener, you can figure it out with a little meditation on this passage. But if you’ve never grown more than a prepackaged tray of grass for your cat, you’ll be at a great disadvantage.

One more example: Jesus’ discussion of grapevines in John 15. If you’re going to count the cost of following Him, you should understand what Jesus meant when He said that non-fruiting branches will be cut out and burned, and those that fruit will be pruned as needed to ensure a better crop. How do you make sure you’ll be able to bear fruit? And if you succeed, what should you expect in the way of pruning? Scripture answers all such questions – but how will you understand if you’ve never even shaped a simple yew or renewal-pruned a tired old lilac?   

Will our increasing ignorance of cattle and cultivation mean growing alienation from the word of God? Perhaps. According to a recent Barna survey, only 9% of today’s young Americans have any curiosity about the Bible’s content to begin with. And it’s likely that few them would understand passages like these, should they get that far in their reading. 

Fortunately, there are plenty of resources available to help even the most concrete-bound understand such wonderful imagery. Phillip Keller’s “Shepherd” books are fascinating explorations of not only the 23rd Psalm, but also the Bible’s references to the Good Shepherd and the Lamb of God. You could learn about soil’s impact on growing plants from seed in any volume on home gardening. And the surprising severity of effective grapevine pruning can be observed by spending a few minutes on youtube.   

Does any of this matter? It does if Jesus was speaking the truth when He said we must be born again to see the kingdom of God (John 3), and if Peter was right in saying that we are born again through the word of God which lives and abides forever (1 Peter 1).  

Of course, so many things about mankind are like pendulums, swinging from one extreme to the other and back again. Maybe there’ll be an exodus to the countryside again one of these years, and a return to both our agrarian roots and biblical truth. As is the case with just about everything, only God knows. Beyond exploring what He has shared in His word, we’ll just have to wait and see how it all plays out.   
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    Kitty
    Foth-Regner

    I'm a follower of Jesus Christ, a freelance copywriter, a nursing-home volunteer, and the author of books both in-process and published -- including Heaven Without Her. 

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