Now, certainly, I’m exaggerating a touch for the sake of my argument.  But the point is no less valid.  I have sat in a number of psychology-type discussions where there has been some kind of summary statement of what defines “Masculine” and “Feminine”.  Almost every time I have been raging inside after that discussion was over.  The reason?  Everyone should have the capacity to do those things that define both “Masculine” and “Feminine” in almost all of those discussions.  Some have gone so far as to say that everyone DOES have both the masculine and the feminine in them, but the question is which side is dominant.  If that’s true, couldn’t we scrap the “Masculine/Feminine” terminology and call it what it really is–Human?  Let me give some examples.

You cannot be a responsible leader (“masculine” trait) until you have learned to be a good follower (“feminine” trait)– people who lead without knowing what it is to follow become tyrants or fools… inexorably.  Objective judgment (“masculine” trait) devoid of subjective perception (“feminine” trait) leads to injustice and poor decision-making– no one advocates executing a child for accidentally shooting their friend, even though it is murder.  You cannot bestow (“masculine” trait) unless you have received (“feminine” trait)– as musician Aaron Weiss said, “A glass can only spill what it contains.”  Most of the world’s greatest (greatest= influential/governmental; uber-masculine trait) Orators (orator= speaker; speaker=talks a lot; talks a lot = uber-feminine trait) were men.  During WWII, one of the largest demographics in the manufacturing industry (uber-masculine trait) were women… partly because the men were off dying.

The point of this inquisition isn’t to rally the troops to some ultra-neo-feminazi cause of “We’re all the same!!!”  Rather, the polar opposite.  We are all so radically different in our “sameness” that any kind of blanket generalization about humanity is near-impossible.  If I walk down the street and see someone that I want to know about, the only solution is to talk to them… or their friends, depending on how comfortable I am being creepy.  Why are women capable of starting businesses?  Because they have the same humanity that men do. Why are men capable of staying home and raising children?  Because they have the same humanity that women do.  

I hear someone asking, “what about the Bible?”  I would counter that by asking where the Bible states what the natural division is between men and women.  The only answer I can come up with is Genesis 1-3, and the clear distinction between them is their part in reproduction.  God makes Eve for two reasons– the first is that Adam has named all the creatures of the earth and has found that he is the only thing like himself.  The second is summed up in God’s first command to humanity which was to multiply and subdue the earth.  Even Adam himself does not produce a philsophical wounderment about the difference between male and female–opting instead to declare that she is “bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh”.  Translation: “She’s just like me!”  In fact, the Bible only claims a direct difference existing between two sets of people groups– the line that the Old Testament establishes between Jew and Gentile and the division between the believer and the unbeliever in the New Testament.  

Ultimately, I believe that these dissections of the human psyche into “masculine” and “feminine” need to be dropped.  If we can begin to look at our various qualities, abilities and tendencies as more “human” than gender specific, it gives us hope that we can all conform to the pattern of Jesus himself.  I (as a man) need to be more humble, more emotionally connected and a better nurturer… because that’s what it means to become like Jesus.

Adam

We can probably trace most of it to the Industrial Revolution and the Modernist mindset.  When the sudden explosion of invention and progress happened, it brought with it a tremendous philosophical change.  Where previously people had yearned for “the good old days”, they instead looked to the future with the expectation of great progress.  This brand of optimism manifested itself in many ways and forms, including the World’s Fairs of the early 1900′s that brought together the most prolific minds to showcase their inventions.  This blend of optimism and progress led many to believe that we were building the most perfect of societies where, given enough time, we could overcome any and all obstacles and challenges.

This explains many of our societal quirks.  For example, why are we in such an uproar when the government “fails” to protect us from a food borne illness, lead paint in imported toys, or the corruption of a few bankers?  Because these showcase the failures of the system.  Why do we so jealously guard the system?  For the same reason so many try to destroy it… we want our freedom from responsibility.  Draft dodgers, the hippies, anarchists– these people all want to be free from the responsibility of being in a society– those in the society are trying to build it to the point that the system can govern for us.  For Americans, specifically, there is this mentality that the government is supposed to bear the burden of most of our lives while we do the “bare essentials” to care for ourselves and kick back relaxing for the rest of the time.

However, simply building a machine isn’t good enough.  It is a rare individual who think that the law is to be applied indiscriminately to any given set of circumstances.  For example, in the opening scene of Les Miserables (the musical) we see a man who has been imprisoned for 19 years because he stole a loaf of bread to feed his starving child and resisted arrest (according to Inspector Javert, five years for theft and fourteen for fleeing arrest).  Now, to even the staunchest supporters of the rule of law, it is obvious that the punishment doesn’t fit the crime.  This is where the modernist machine faces a collision with post-modern relativistic morality.  It is almost like our never-ending quest to create a true Artificial Intelligence extends into our quest to build the perfect society.  At the end of the day, the law cannot take into account every exception, exemption and quirk of circumstance that could possibly be presented to it.  The law is insufficient to build a perfect society because it cannot bend without shattering its own moral authority.

This quest for the intelligent machine must ultimately end in failure.  What many have not yet fully realized is that the machine is only a reflection of the image of the creator.  If we want a human society that will be intelligent and responsive, it requires a leader that will be intelligent and responsive.  For christian theology, this is relevant because Western Society’s quest for relativistic mechanics is what will ultimately lead both the fall of Western society and the rise of the antichrist.  On the flip side, this is also the logical foundation for the millennial rule of Christ.  If society is to be holy, it must be led by holiness.  If society is to be godly, it must be led by God.  If society is to be just and perfect, it must be led by someone who is just and perfect.

Adam

Okay, at the end of the day this post is about eisegesis– the pracitce of taking a section out of a passage of literature regardless of the meaning given by the surrounding context.  However, I think the specific form of eisegesis I’m talking about is the fruit of our Platitude-o-philia (author’s note: not a real word).  While the comedic example of why eisegesis (proof-texting) is bad is fairly obvious– Mat 27:5, “Then Judas threw down the pieces of silver in the temple and departed, and went and hanged himself…”  Luke 10:37b, “…Go and do likewise”– there are many people who are guilty of it without even realizing that they are doing it.

For example, how many of us have heard some well-meaning individual at some point or another pull out the good ‘ol saying, “without faith, it is impossible to please God”?  This slightly squishy phrase has been morphed to cover just about everything from why the wicked need to be saved to why the righteous just need to stop feeling bad about poor circumstances.  However, to “platitudinate” (author’s note: also not a real word) this verse does such a great violence to the text as to render it almost unrecognizeable from it’s original intent.

To put it simply, Hebrews 11:6a (“But without faith it is impossible to please God…”) fits in the context of Hebrews 11 (go figure), which is a continuation of the argument from Hebrews 10 (no duh).  After a careful reading of the text and a little bit of background research, you find that the book of Hebrews is written to those in the Jewish Diaspora who believe in Jesus and are suffering for their faith.  After eight chapters describing how Jesus is superior to all the spiritual giants of Judaism, Hebrews 9 and 10 begin an exhortation to the reader to not throw away their faith on Jesus because Jesus is so superior to that which they are considering returning to.  Hebrews 11 then continues this argument by talking about faith, and more specifically about the faith of the “saints of old” such as Abel, Enoch, Noah and Abraham… apart from the Law of Moses.  This is why Hebrews 10 between the one who dies at the word of two or three witnesses under the law, and the punishment awaiting the one who has crushed the Son of God underfoot.  Thus, Hebrews 11:6 is most specifically about the superiority of faith to the ineffecacy of the circumcision to attain salvation.  Without faith it is impossible to please God, because it is by faith in the High Priest (Jesus) that we are able to approach God at all.

In this example, using the beginning of Hebrews 11:6 to browbeat those who are in a rough spot over their lack of faith is not actually anything even slightly resembling a proper use of the text.  Based on the implications of the text, we could say something more along the lines of, “going to church on sundays is no enough to save your soul.  Why?  Because without faith, it is impossible to please God.”  The point of Hebrews 11 is that faith is the stick by which everything else should be measured, not that God’s displeasure is a sign of your lack of faith.

So now we have to ask the question of why.  Why are we so prone to this?  History and mindset play a significant role, but the other part of it is our basic lack of humility.  Being steeped in Greco-Roman culture as we in the West are, we love our platitudes.  Little bite-sized chunks of truth that we can substitute for critical thought and ethics are how we are raised.  Why does almost every story have to have a moral?  Because we want to have a three sentence “point” that we can file away to feel like good people.  The problem is that the Bible is not Poor Richard’s Almanac.  Jesus wasn’t Aesop.  For that matter, St. Paul wasn’t Socrates.

The problem is that Life doesn’t always have a quick, throw-away answer that can be spouted in 30 seconds or less.  If nothing else, the book of Job should teach you that.  Someday, I hope that we will wake up and realize that our platitudes are worthless because we are “answering” problems we know nothing about with information we haven’t taken the trouble to learn.  For right now, however, that day doesn’t seem to be coming.

Adam

I’ll admit: as a kid, I had a W.W.J.D. bracelet because I thought it was cool.  I lost it when I was about 13 and have never sought to replace it.  Considering that wearing it didn’t actually stop me from sinning one time (that I can think of), it seems a bit of a waste of my money.  As the band Dead Poet Society once said, “This is all my Jesus junk…”  That being said, the W.W.J.D. question is one that we need to re-examine.  Why?  Because to answer it requires that we actually know him.  I can count on one hand the number of people on this earth who can accurately predict what I will do in any given scenario, and the reason they can is that they have spent copious amounts of time in my company.  If we are to do the same for Christ, I dare say the same rule applies.  This is why I have a certain level of incredulity when it comes to someone in the Social Justice crowd telling me what Jesus would be doing.

I was reading a post on WordPress recently titled “Why I Don’t Go to Church”, where the blogger detailed an account of her and her friend trying to volunteer for a soup kitchen.  After a bit of showmanship relating to her amazing tolerance of the “Christian Outreach”  at the core of the charity–so selflessly disregarding her own opinions about religion and all–there was an expression of shock and near-outrage when the director told her to spend Christmas with her family.  The crowning moment was when this person asked the rhetorical question, “If Jesus came back on Christmas day, do you really think he would spend it in your house with your family or out on the street helping those less fortunate?!”  If I’m being truly honest with my Biblical study, I would have to say the former.  Here is why:

1) Jesus celebrated the Passover like any religious Jew.  This should not be missed.  Yes, Jesus helped those who needed it, but he did not mind adhering to the rules of religion and tradition either… even though he transcends them because he is God. If I’m really being honest, I think Jesus would be most likely to spend a Christmas with a family of prominent Atheists… think Christopher Hitchins, Dan Brown, Richard Dawkins–that sort of folk.

2) Jesus didn’t have a problem with having personal time.  The man had a habit of wandering off by himself to pray all night.  He also fled from crowds on several occasions.  That whole Transfiguration episode?  Had a total audience of three people.  This idea that Jesus was Mother Theresa on steroids does not fit with the actual Gospel accounts of his life.

3) Jesus’ ministry was incidental to his preaching.  The crazy thing that people miss is that almost all of Jesus’ miracles happened when he was on his way somewhere or about to preach.  Jesus’ main goal was to proclaim the Gospel of the Kingdom (Mark 1:14-15), not to up-end the Roman oppression of Israel.

It is things like this that pervade the Social Justice movement as they seek for a reason the legitimize what they do.  When you discount the person of Christ and the teachings he gave, you remove any reason for Social Justice.  Let’s take another, slightly more inflammatory issue:  Illegal immigration.

During a practicum class this last spring, we took a pair of articles from preachers on both sides of the issue of Illegal Immigration and compared them.  The thing that stuck out to me was in an article written by a Hispanic pastor who was the son of illegal immigrants.  He said that the church should be aiding Illegal Immigrants because Jesus would be standing at the border with blankets, water bottles and hot food.  I have to substantially disagree.

1) John 9:39-10:5. And Jesus said, “For judgment I have come into this world, that those who do not see may see, and that those who see may be made blind.”  Then some of the Pharisees who were with Him heard these words, and said to Him, “Are we blind also?”  Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would have no sin; but now you say, ‘We see.’ Therefore your sin remains.  Most assuredly, I say to you, he who does not enter the sheepfold by the door, but climbs up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber. But he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep.  To him the doorkeeper opens, and the sheep hear his voice; and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.  And when he brings out his own sheep, he goes before them; and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice.  Yet they will by no means follow a stranger, but will flee from him, for they do not know the voice of strangers.”

2) One again, Jesus’ ministry was incidental to his preaching.  He was in a certain place, someone needed help, and he helped them.  The exact same is true of Phillip preaching to the Ethiopian.  The entire point of Phillip leaving the city he was in and being translated away to Samaria were (A) so that he could preach to the Ethiopian and (B) so that he could preach in Samaria.  Go figure.

3) Disrespect of the law is a sign of the Apocalypse.  I can hear people now rolling their eyes and thinking that I’ve gone off the deep end, but Jesus said it himself in Matthew 24:12.  If nothing else shocks us in this issue, it should be that there are some who are openly advocating lawlessness.

This brings us back to the original question… Why is it that people who do not actually know Jesus are becoming the experts in what he would do?  As the Social Justice Movement continues to reject the supremacy of Christ, it should become more apparent that (A) the church should not cooperate with such people and (B) that we need to bring our focus back Christ.  It is great to hear messages in church about fiscal responsibility and living clean… but we cannot continue to let the world instruct the world about the nature of Christ.   This is why I pray in the prayer room.  This is why the church in the Western World needs revival.  At the end of the day, we need Jesus.

Adam

I know it may be hard for some people to believe, but I have a bit of a history with offending people.  Okay, it may not be hard to believe, but it bears saying anyway.  It hasn’t always been my fault, but it has been enough of the time that I like to think I have “some” wisdom about how and when the proper time is to be offensive.  I’m going to start by asking the question that should come up when we are presented with an opportunity to interact with the world: “To offend, or not to offend?”

TO OFFEND:

First off, there are very few times in the Bible where one of the main protagonists (good guys, for those of you who aren’t into technical language) specifically avoided being offensive.  Jesus seems to have almost made a point TO offend the people who were hanging around to see who would actually stay.  Prime example, John 6:24-71.

The Jews therefore quarreled among themselves, saying, “How can this Man give us His flesh to eat?” Then Jesus said to them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you.  Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.  For My flesh is food indeed, and My blood is drink indeed.  He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him.  As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who feeds on Me will live because of Me.  This is the bread which came down from heaven–not as your fathers ate the manna, and are dead. He who eats this bread will live forever.”  These things He said in the synagogue as He taught in Capernaum.
Therefore many of His disciples, when they heard this, said, “This is a hard saying; who can understand it?”  When Jesus knew in Himself that His disciples complained about this, He said to them, “Does this offend you?  What then if you should see the Son of Man ascend where He was before?  It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life.  But there are some of you who do not believe.” For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were who did not believe, and who would betray Him.  And He said, “Therefore I have said to you that no one can come to Me unless it has been granted to him by My Father.”
From that time many of His disciples went back and walked with Him no more.  Then Jesus said to the twelve, “Do you also want to go away?”– John 6:52-67

Now, there is a lot to be said of this passage.  Sure, we “understand” that Jesus was talking spiritually here, but the original audience clearly did not.  Before getting too anxious to declare “Ahhhh, those silly Jews…” I think we need to stop and ask ourselves if we are giving ourselves to much credit.  If a man that I respect as a purveyor of truth says that I need to eat his flesh and drink his blood to have eternal life, I’m going to think that he wants me to eat his flesh and drink his blood.  In fact, I would wager that since the church’s attempts to explain away the offense of this verse have ended in muddled and slightly mystical doctrines that the Bible doesn’t clarify, we have actually done ourselves a disservice.  But that is just me.

Another great example of not being afraid to offend would be that of St. Stephen in Acts 7.  I can almost guarantee you that Stephen did not wake up that day and plan to get himself killed.  However, when he was placed before the Sanhedrin and accused of preaching Christ, he gives this logical and extremely well-formed sermon about both Israel’s history of denying God and their persecution of those who have been messengers.  Had Stephen softened his words that day, it is arguable that he would not have been killed.  Had Stephen softened his words that day, the members of the Sanhedrin would not have been “cut to the heart”.

Example number 3: Apostle Paul.  If you have read the letters to the Corinthians and not been offended at the flagrant use of sarcasm and scathing critiques of the Corinthian lifestyle, I dare say you need to try reading them again and take them personally.  Paul, however, had a point to being offensive… namely, he was trying to shake a church out of compromise in sexual immorality and doctrine.  The unifying factor in all three of these examples is that they had a point to being offensive.

TO NOT OFFEND

“So how does this square with the sermon on the mount?!”  “What about being gentle as doves?!”  “Shouldn’t we be ‘fishers’ of men?!”

These are all great questions and thoroughly valuable to consider.  The problem is that none of them excuse us from preaching the truth.  While the sermons in Acts change their overall velocity in preaching the Gospel, they are all preaching the truth that men everywhere need to repent and be saved.  The thing to notice is that none of the men who offended other people in Gospel did so without a point.  There is no eternal value inherent in standing on a street corner holding a sign that declares that “God hates fags!” because there is no point to it.  We have gone from exposing an overwhelming problem to condemning without mercy.  Yes, Jesus offended his audiences on a regular basis.  However, when Bartimaeus and the Centurion come to him asking for mercy, he does not call them grubbing heathens.  When Mary is weeping at the feet of Jesus because her brother has died, Jesus does not stop her saying, “You silly woman, he is going to live again…”  Jesus wept with her.

John 11:35 is quite possibly the single most powerful ministry moment in the entire Bible.  Beyond the miracles, the sermons, the salvations and martyrs… God wept with a woman because she loved her brother.

So, in answering the question of whether we should offend our audience or not, I have to give a “caveat-laden” answer.  A) What is the point?  B) Are you sure that is the proper response to the situation?  C) Are you about to give the entire body of Christ a black eye?  If you don’t have an answer to two of those three questions, skip it.

That being said… don’t be surprised if my next couple of posts are offensive.

Adam

There is much in Western theology that is very well thought-out and biblically based.  For example, I much prefer the Western formula of the procession of the Holy Spirit to the Eastern formula.  I may talk about that more in a future post, but if you aren’t sure what I’m talking about right now, don’t worry… it isn’t the point of this post.  That being said, if you can go a year without having a shift in your theological bearing you are either a much better Christian than myself (which is a definite possibility) or there is a lack of diligence in your study.

For example, we have all heard–

For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek.– Romans 1:16

–from people being browbeaten into a work of evangelism that is more an exercise in contrivance than the overflow of a loving heart.  While it is not necessarily “bad” to hear the verse used that way, it must be understood that that meaning has absolutely no bearing on what the apostle meant when he said it to the Roman church.  In fact, in it’s proper context, Paul’s statement of not being ashamed of the Gospel is related to his apparent dismissal of the Roman church due to his “failure” to not visit and teach them during his missionary journey through Greece, and not a spur to get on the evangelism bandwagon.

However, things such as this are only small pebbles compared to some of the bigger blunders waiting to be made.  In the book of Job, for example, we find a small chunk of narrative that brackets some 35 chapters of discourse, philosophy and debate about the nature of God, the human delimma and why bad things happen to people.  However, towards the end of that 35 chapter section of monologues, God comes on the scene and declares that most of it was in error.  However, I cannot count how many times I have heard people quote Job’s three friends and think that they are giving you a definitive ultimatum because it’s in the Bible.  Yes, everything in the Bible has value, and without a doubt there are things to be learned from every single verse to be found therein (even the genealogies… good luck with that, thought).  However, we have to remember that (A) the Bible is written by human authors and (B) that every verse has a context and culture to which it is primarily suited.

Yet the same problem is not encountered when we deal with one another.  If I give someone a quote from the president that makes him like a jerk, the first thing people want to know is what the context is or why he said it.  We understand that all forms of communication have a context that gives them their meaning and can alter the meaning of even the individual words spoken… except, apparently, when it comes to scripture.  The result is theology that is about as water-tight as a t-shirt.  For a very direct example, how different does Paul’s admonishment to the women to keep silent in church look is we understand that the church gatherings in Corinth were apparently in chaos (as indicated by the surrounding verses talking about etiquette while prophesying and speaking in tongues) and that Paul’s directive was for the women of the church at Corinth to hold questions regarding the church until they had left and could ask their husbands in private? (1Cor 14:26-40)  While this verse (v. 35) has been used to blatantly subject women to an inferiority complex, Paul isn’t even addressing the teaching of scripture on the whole– rather a problem in a specific church.  While there is definitely more to be said about that specific issue (in fact, my sister has done much looking into it and I won’t take the time to develop it here), it should be obvious from that single example that doctrine cannot be merely as simple as “the Bible says ‘X’ and therefore ___________”.

We must remember that the books of the Bible have a serious difference from blog posts.  While blogs are written for the benefit of the random passersby that happen across them, the books of the Bible were always written to a specific audience for a very specific reason.  If that reason is forgotten, the purpose of the writing is lost and it becomes nothing more than a shadow of what the author originally intended.  As a smart guy once said, “A text with no context is a pretext for disaster.”

Never forget: all things have their context.  Without the context, it is like looking at Mona Lisa’s index finger and declaring her the homeliest buzzard that ever walked the earth.

Adam

New York Mexicans under assualt

Now, for sure, I have a massive amount of sympathy for both the victims of the attacks and the fear that is now running rampant in the NYC Hispanic population.  That being said, there are a lot of talking points in this article that need to be highlighted and probably screamed from housetops until somebody realizes what is going on…

1.  Shouldn’t you know who is a victim of what?

If you read the entire CNN article, it should become clear that the lack of clarity on the immigration issue is (A) hindering the police force from taking any real definitive action and (B) is causing at least some of the violence that Make the Road New York was marching against.  Why do I say that?

“The victims might be undocumented and could be seen as competitors for scarce jobs, said Edward Josey, president of the Staten Island NAACP.”

Now, brushing aside for the moment that the president of the Staten Island NAACP is in quite a pickle because all but one of the people described as attackers are black, we have to notice that nobody is really sure why the Mexicans in New York are getting beat up on their way to work.  Later in the same article, the president of Hispanics Across America is talking about how some of these are probably nothing more than just robberies.  Aside from the really weak reason as to why this may “just be robbery”, nobody is really sure why these guys are getting beat up because nobody has any idea who the victims really are.  Yeah, there is a body in the hospital getting patched back together again, but no one has a clue who that person is.  Under those circumstances, illegal immigrants need to be moved back to Mexico for their own safety and to prevent an international incident… to say the least.  The only thing I can say for this definitively is that we need to put some grease on the gears of immigration reform because people are actually getting hurt while we sit on our collective duff arguing about it.

2. This is a self-inflicted problem.

In a tough economy (which is largely of the DNC’s own design anyway), those who are most likely to be okay being exploited are the first to get jobs.  Just like how prostitution is a recession-proof occupation, not having an option to complain when you get paid $2.50/hr is a great way to make sure you stay in a job.  Because of a lax view on immigration over the last 20 or so odd years, we have been inundated with people who will get paid way less for twice the work.  In that sense, Edward Josey is absolutely correct… they are competition for scarce jobs… and if Capitalism has taught us anything, it is that the lowest price equals the greatest popularity.  Supposing that these punks in NYC are trying to target undocumented workers illegal immigrants, of course they are going to attack Mexicans.  If you want economic-related violence against illegal immigrants to go away, the far easier option is to actually take care of getting the illegal immigrants back to Mexico where they have a legal standing.

3. New York is a really long way from Arizona…

The quote from the protester at the end of the article is absolutely priceless… so much so that I am going to regurgitate it here…

“Violence in the form of hate crimes and violence in the form of policy are not part of who we are. Our country is not one that decides that some people are better than others, and the Arizona law wanted to make that the law of the land in Staten Island…”– Ana Maria Archila

First off, Arizona making a law saying that they can double-check a person’s immigration status if they have reason to believe someone is “undocumented” has no direct consequences for Staten Island.  While I would love to mutter “Geography FAIL” and move on, there is far more to be said here.  For example, I didn’t realize that showing proof of legal entry to a country constituted violence in the form of policy.  If I had to take a wild guess, Ana Archila has not read the law she was protesting.  The law does not read “show your passport at every security checkpoint or we throw you in the gulag.”  It does not read “have you R-1 visa handy or we will throw you to a pack of rabid Hispanic Haters”.  But that is beside the main point that I have to make… the idea of one person being “better” than another.

It is true, our country is officially out of the business of judging one group of people as being better than another after a very rich 200 year history of doing exactly that.  However, that is beside the point because there is a fundamental difference between the US Government declaring black people 3/5′s human in 1770 and simply saying that someone has no legal standing because they didn’t sign up to enter the country legally.  The law allows for illegal immigrants to be fully human and just as valuable as any other individual… just like it does for murderers, extortionists, Mafioso, thieves or any other person who breaks the law.  The division of people into better classes because of legal standing is not actually a fault of the law, but rather in the mentality of the people yelling about the law.  Being in America has not (yet) been added to the UN’s list of basic human rights, and I have never seen a document by the founding fathers saying that we had a nation that belonged to the whole world.  Based on what God did to Tyre when they were viewed as the world’s nation, we don’t want that tag anyway.

In fact, in the modern prop the closest the US Government has come to actually leveraging the power of the law to declare a group of people as “less than human” is Roe v. Wade… and while that is dancing on thin ice, it is a completely different topic.

To close this out, it should be noted that people are actually being hurt by the government not tightening the border security.  Phoenix is now the kidnapping capital of the nation.  Ranchers on the border in Texas are getting attacked by drug smugglers.  Police officers are being killed by people crossing the border.  Drugs are pouring into San Diego at dizzying paces.  Now, those of Mexican descent are being attacked in urban areas because they are associated with illegal immigration by race.  In view of all of this, what was our wonderful federal government’s response?  800 national guardsmen (the majority of whom are desk jockeys, apparently) to help patrol the Arizona border and 700 more to help secure the borders of California, New Mexico and Texas… Arithmetic FAIL.  GRRRR!

Adam

With a traditional newspaper, there is a very distinct order in which the news is presented therein.  While part of this is just the reality of spacial planning (meaning, it is impossible to deliver everything at the same time), there is far more logic to it than that.  For example, there is a reason that the horse-racing forms are on the back page while baseball, basketball, and football take up the front three-quarters of the same section.  Sure, some part of that is because that is what is perceived to be the focus of the readership, but this also goes a long way to prevent growth in the interest of a sport.  If you have to make it all the way to the back of the section to find it, of course the average reader isn’t going to be interested (ie, soccer/futbol in the United States).

Now in print media, stories have a very clear hierarchy.  When something is hot, it is all over the front page.  As the interest and “breaking information” about the story fades, it gradually moves further and further back from the front page until it gets all the way to the editorial column at the back.  After this brief stint, the story then disappears.  However, it seems the exact same thing happens in the new media.

When something happens, it is all that CNN, FoxNews and MSNBC can talk about for that day.  Remember the day that Michael Jackson died?  Case in the point.  Reasonably soon thereafter, the story moves from the “breaking news” platform to the pundits.  Geraldo Rivera, Anderson Cooper, Sanjay Gupta… you know, the annoying angry people who are paid to feign compassion and experience the world for us.  After being beat to death by the pundits, the story, which by this point has been resolved (at least in part), turns into the three week special event where a paid pundit (ie, Anderson Cooper) take three weeks to rehash everything that has already been covered and tell you everything you could possibly imagine wanting to know about the story.  After the special event, you will hear about the story in 30-second blurbs during the morning news summary and again at night.  After that, the story disappears.  Case in point: the tsunami that hit southeast Asia three years ago… and even, to some degree, the Haiti earthquake.

All of this to say that when these news cycles change out so quickly from incident to being forgotten, I am very impressed that the major news outlets have been so effective at maintaining the furor over the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.  For those of you who haven’t been counting (ie, every human being with a life), the oil has been leaking into the Gulf for 78 days now.  For sure, this has been tragic and it has affected the livelihoods of many people involved in the seafaring industries (like fishing), but it has not warranted the kind of coverage it has been getting.  Day 78 and we are just now getting to where the story is being relegated to the pundits?!  How slow has this year been that we haven’t had anything more pressing to talk about for the last two months?  Not even Joran van der Sloot getting arrested for murdering ANOTHER teenage girl got that kind of attention… I guess we didn’t really care about Natalee Holloway that much after all.

I’m sure that a big part of this frothing at the mouth because of BP’s “inability” to plug a hole is because of the liberal bias in the media.  Seeing a chance to do to “big oil” what was done to “big tobacco” in the 90’s, the media has latched on to this disaster like a Rottweiler on a T-bone and refuses to let go.  This may just be me, but when a news outlet delivers a report on concerns of the deterioration of mental health due to the oil slick, it would seem that the story has pretty much run its course… “Woe is me; I suffer from depression because of the inky-blackness that was once my beach!”  However, the pot must be stirred because the journalists want to see BP punished for this disaster… just like they continue to do with the Arizona immigration law (which is a topic for another day).  I would offer a slightly different approach, let’s get the darn spill cleaned up before we start talking about lawsuits and “punishing” BP for an industrial accident that may or may not have been their fault.  That being said let us consider a few things:

• BP is already being punished!

All that oil that is washing up on shore in the Gulf?  That is BP’s money evaporating out of their investment in a rickety oil well that was way off the shore of the US.  Add to this the horrendous public opinion eating into their customer base and the billions they are going to have to spend in the cleanup for this leak, and I dare say that BP is learning a very valuable lesson… let the buyer beware.  Seeing as how the company is already being brutally humbled, why must we push for execution as well?

• All actions have consequences.

It is well documented that our illustrious President is sick and tired of hearing about the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico… hence the exclamation, “Plug the **** hole!”  However, in the tireless push amongst the left for “green energy” and “breaking America’s oil addiction”, this disaster just won’t go away.  BP seems to be running out of options to get the hole plugged, the government doesn’t have the expertise (or the money… or the legal right, for that matter) to fix it, and the media won’t stop talking about it.  However, the more reports that come out about the “apocalyptic” disaster that is the oil spill without bona fide White House statements decrying the evil skullduggery of BP, the more passive it is making the President look.  On the one hand, you don’t want to be seen playing golf while the “greatest ecological disaster of our time” is happening.  On the other, it’s been over two months… geeze!  Based on the government’s aversion to putting in more than two months of work at a time without a vacation, it seems the media that carried Obama into office may be actively ushering him out of it.  At least we can hope, right?

• At least someone is being honest about it…

In our culture, we praise those who can say the “right” things… whether or not those people mean anything that leaks from their face.  The guy who has been in the most hot water during the last two months has been the CEO of BP—Tony Hayward.  While the stress no-doubt has something to do with the looseness of his mouth, at least this guy is saying what he really thinks.  Yeah, it wasn’t smart to say that your company’s little oil bomb was a “little spill… in a very big ocean.”  Yeah, it wasn’t smart to say that you can’t wait for this thing to be over either because you want to get on with your life too.  But at least you meant it.  I don’t think for a minute that anyone in the Federal Government actually cares about the lives that have legitimately been affected by this spill (as opposed to those who claim psychological trauma from the sight of loose oil)… actually, strike that… they care inasmuch as it affects their votes and the amount of aid money that goes to their state.  Obama cares about the oil spill because it makes him look bad in front of his public.  The senators and congressmen care because if they don’t they will lose their voters.  Just like social security, healthcare reform and Medicaid, all of the posturing is to gain political capital.

• We’ve been here before…

Anyone with much of a memory may recall the Exxon Valdez crash in Prince William Sound…  Anyone notice that Prince William Sound isn’t a lifeless ghost of a harbor?  Better still, how about Mount St. Helens?  If you want something really freaky, the Exxon Valdez spill resulted in $527 million in damages (thank you, Wikipedia)… the Mount St. Helens explosion caused about $1.1 billion ($2.74 billion in 2007 dollars).  The area around Mount St. Helens is nearly recovered.  The Prince William Sound is recovering.  This is not the end of the Gulf of Mexico either.  Everybody take a deep breath and relax… it may take time, but this too shall pass.

While I’m never one to argue with people taking responsibility for their actions, I take serious issue with the government taking the “punishment” shtick too far.  Should we punish further a company that had to ply their trade in an area that they can’t fix problems in because of our laws?  Should we allow the government to punish people or corporations who didn’t do anything illegal?  Do we really need to take opportunity to kick a corporation while it is down?  I don’t think so.  British Petroleum is not Enron.  British Petroleum is not Lehman Brothers or Bernie Madoff.  Treating BP like they are?  It just isn’t right.

Adam

PS- my apologies for such a long post, but I didn’t have the heart to carve it up…

Sure, if an animal is endangered, let’s agree not to kill it for a while.  However, where is the rationale when a farmer in Colorado can’t build a cabin on his mountainside property because of a single endangered owl that lives somewhere on the mountains?  Sure, let’s try to cut our emissions of industrial gasses.  However, we cannot do so in a way that makes it impossible to attain to wealth for the impoverished… that is injustice.  While there are many talking points that can be had, I want to talk about the theological specifics of what is going on.

Firstly, most of the hardcore environmentalists (think Sierra Club, World Wildlife Foundation, Greenpeace, etc.) seem to have this idea that the world would be better off if humanity just wasn’t here.  While this idea has some minimal amount of merit (if we hadn’t been here, we wouldn’t have sinned), it is a dangerous philosophy.  As I discussed a little bit in my recent series on Genesis 1-3, humanity is the crowning achievement of creation—not because we were last, but because we are the only thing made in God’s image.  Pursuant to this, creation was put in subjection to man’s leadership.  What that means is that creation was put here for mankind.  If we believe this, we will have a natural understanding of needing to care for the environment due to the necessity of our need for a habitat and the burden of leadership.  In a framework such as the environmentalists have created, however, mankind lives at the mercy of nature rather than being the steward of it.  This inversion of order by the environmentalist leads to many moral inequities.

Consider—if humanity is nothing more than an unsustainable drain on natural resources, he should be eradicated for the sake of the other living beings on this planet.  Under such a mindset, population controls such as euthanasia, compulsory abortion and, in the ultra extreme, cannibalism are not only morally acceptable, but are also moral necessities.  While I don’t think many members of the Sierra Club would actually advocate the shooting of orphans and the homeless (though it wouldn’t surprise me), Euthanasia, forced abortions and assisted suicide seem to be very popular amongst the hardcore environmentalism crowd.  Want to know where you can see the beginning of the slope into these thought patterns?  Answer: the global warming panic.

Ask yourself this… of everything that they could decide was wrong with industrialization, why did they decide the vilest and, coincidentally, the easiest to measure pollutant was CO₂?  Shouldn’t it hit us as odd that the biggest pollutant and most egregious thing being done to the environment by industry according to Al Gore and the world’s federal governments is emitting the very gas that humans breathe?  The answer is that modern environmentalism is motivated not by a Christocentric responsibility for leadership, but rather by a divinization of nature itself.  In a world where transgressing the law of God is applauded as breaking traditionalism, transgression against the will of nature is sneered upon as heathenish anathema.  “You still drive that car?”  “What do you mean you still use incandescent bulbs?!”  “Of course solar energy should be mandatory for powering your home!”

Every time you hear someone blaming global warming on humanity, you should realize that the implication is that the world we be just fine if it weren’t for the dumb humans screwing the planet.  This thought pattern is revealed by people saying that the hurricanes, typhoons and droughts are nature’s revenge on the human race.  “Katrina was the fault of the humanity!”  They really think the world would be better without humanity here.  This is the spirit of Antichrist attacking the image of God, just like Satan is doing day and night before the throne of God. (Rev 12:10)  If anything, this is the same war that has been fought since the Garden of Eden.  With Satan wanting to be like God (Is 14:12-15) and then seeing those made in God’s image at creation, the war has been on between the offspring of the woman and the offspring of the serpent (Gen 3:15) ever since.  Just as it was God’s desire for humanity that drove Jesus to the Cross, it is the loathing of humanity that drives Satan to see humanity destroyed, culminating with the ascendency and reign of the Antichrist.

For Christians who find themselves involved with groups that espouse this kind of worldview, I have a very simple bit of advice; global warming cannot be the end of humanity.  How do I know?  I’ve read my Bible.  Not only is the environment going to be completely renovated by Jesus during the millennial kingdom, but I already know how the world is going to end.  Rather than being tossed to and fro by the whims of science (which was all atwitter about global cooling a mere 30 years ago), try getting into the Bible.  Activism could learn a thing or two from the Bible about what is really worth freaking out about.

Adam

Consider then, if the woman was created as an equal partner for Adam in the joint task of taking dominion of the planet (as discussed in post four), the same must be said of the church.  To be sure, I am not claiming that I am individually divine (to do so is heresy), and I do not mean the church in the sense of the Gentilic monolith that is hewn from the stone of Constantinian religion.  What I am saying is that the church– the corpus of believers in Jesus– has been given a place of equal partnership with the fullness of the Godhead in the person of Christ, unto the transformation of the globe prior to the coming of the Father at the end of the millennium.  This is the glory of intercession: that we who have been made Christ’s brethren and bride should have the ability to move the heart of God to action that we are powerless to affect of our own accord.

If we are to believe that Eve is to be completely subservient to Adam’s whims or flights of fancy (as many would believe and use to justify the exclusion of women from leadership in the church), then Christianity must of necessity become little more than an exercise in “Theistic Fatalism”.  In such thinking, we are to be entirely subject to the whims of an immovable, testosterone-laden dictator, and let us all hope that He chooses to act in our best interest.  While we give mental assent to the fact that God is good and trustworthy, I can’t think of a single mindset that could be more hazardous to that belief.  While this shift away from thoughtless subservience in no way challenges the soverignty of God, it gives place to the “who knows” in Joel 2:14.  While we cannot know the mind of God (as if He were to be interrogated and evaluated), we have the power to influence it (Gen 18:16-33).  This is because of our place as the Bride of Christ.  Oh, what grace has been given to us who deserve so little to have been trusted with so much!  God would have been fully justified with extinguishing our little candle of a sun after the fall, and not only did he leave us the light to sustain our existence, as if that weren’t enough, He has redeemed us to Himself and glorified us to the position of His partner, friend and spouse!  What manner of love, indeed……

Thus the glorification of the marriage relationship in Genesis 2 is to serve as the glory of the church in light of the coming storm.  As the man and woman are united as one in the bond of marriage, so we also have been united to God through the shed blood and ensuing resurrection of Jesus Christ.  When Christ returns to Jerusalem dripping with the blood of the degenerate, it is the fury of a husband who has come to fight for the honor of his wife.  This is part of the hope for martyrdom.  Not only does the life of the witness stand as a testiment to the truth of the message, but by fulfilling their lust with the blood of such a messanger, the earth stores up wrath for itself in the day of the Lord’s vengeance.  The force and dignity given to the marriage relationship in Gensis 1-3 should be the glory with which the church views its relationship with God.  If this happens, I dare say it would revolutionize the way we view all other forms of doctrine.

I’m sure that I will revisit this topic at a later date as I continue into the fourth year of the Forerunner Justice Program, but that is al that I have to say about Genesis 1-3 for right now.  Thanks for sticking around to read my collected thoughts.

Adam