It is a rare instance when I almost entirely agree with anything in the Big Culture-Big Media outlet The Atlantic. But recently they published this….

America’s Gambling Addiction Is Metastasizing:

“When life feels this precarious, it’s only natural to roll the dice on just about everything.” //

“The chief benefit is that there’s a lot of money to be made, for governments and businesses both. The primary cost is that many unlucky and vulnerable people are destroyed.

“American society has (now) accepted that trade-off—big money now for social crisis later—on any number of fronts: in its banking sector, in its housing markets, in its health-care industry. The rise of gambling is simply one example of our boundless desire for risk.” //

So why not gamble your money? It appears to be the only way you can actually accrue wealth. In a country whose institutions are actively destroying your money — and corruptly working with others to steal it.

The only flaw in the article? Its apparent attack on short-term bank loans to poor people.

Marche doesn’t specifically mention the utter corruption of the 2008 housing crisis, but it fits right in with the theme he’s developed.

That crisis was caused by Big Government and Big Banks colluding to steal money out of the home mortgage market by throwing trillions of dollars at poor people everyone knew couldn’t pay it back. //

Ninja loans are another name for NINA which stands for no income, no assets….”

This was Big Banks gambling trillions of dollars — of our money — on nigh guaranteed losers, with Big Government rigging the system — so the Big Banks’ wins were guaranteed, and its losses outsourced to US.

Big Banks paid themselves obscene fees on each awful loan they made. Until it destroyed the home mortgage market — and with it the global economy.

At which point Big Government left US to die — and gave the Big Banks trillions of our dollars. Which the Big Banks immediately used to give themselves huge bonuses as reward for royally screwing US.

The lesson that should have been gleaned from this mess is: If poor people with bad credit want to borrow money, the loan terms should reflect the risk posed.

Which this article bizarrely criticizes:

“…(C)redit lines with 23 percent APR….”

These are actually short-term loan rates. If you’re poor and out of money on Tuesday — they’ll loan you money until payday Friday.

It’s a credit line for poor people. Unlike the idiotic housing crisis loans – these have an interest rate that accurately reflects the risk of lending to poor people. It’s the marketplace — accurately reflecting the marketplace.

These loans — and the people who take them — have NOTHING AT ALL to do with our society’s descent into a gambling ethos culture.

These people aren’t borrowing this money to bet the ponies. They are borrowing it to fix their car so they can keep getting to work.

These loans are lifelines for the people who take them. And they are often the only lifelines they are offered. //

jeffs
an hour ago
Americans’ greater acceptance of — and penchant for
Fill in the blank with any moral degradation from divorce to abortion to shacking up to slothfulness to the alphabet soup agenda, et. al.

Breitbart was correct but forgot culture is downstream of faith and religion; the Christian faith. Churches, pastors, denominations are ultimately to blame for our current judgment. God has handed us over to our vices which will consume us.

This is why there is no political answer to the problems plaguing our Nation.

The sixth report from the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is alarming—but not surprising.

The panel’s first assessment of scientific research on climate change in 1990 found that burning fossil fuels substantially increases the atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases—including carbon dioxide, methane, chlorofluorocarbons, and nitrous oxide—causing a rise in the global mean temperature and warming up the world’s oceans.

“Consequent changes,” the first report said, “may have a significant impact on society.” //

Policy makers, scientists, and concerned citizens who pick up the final version of the report might be surprised by one thing, though: It is dedicated to an evangelical Christian who said the root problem of climate change is sin.

“Looking after the Earth is a God-given responsibility,” John Houghton once wrote. “Not to look after the Earth is a sin.”

Houghton, who died of complications related to COVID-19 in 2020 at the age of 88, was the chief editor of the first three IPCC reports and an early, influential leader calling for action on climate change.

His concerns about greenhouse gases, rising temperature averages, dying coral reefs, blistering heat waves, and increasingly extreme weather were informed by his training at as atmospheric physicist and his commitment to science. They also come out of his evangelical understanding of God, the biblical accounts of humanity’s relationship to creation, and what it means for a Christian to follow Christ. //

As Houghton saw it, some religions teach that the Earth and the material world are evil. But the Bible teaches that creation is good, and depicts humans as gardeners divinely commissioned to cultivate and care for the world.

“We are more often exploiters and spoilers rather than gardeners,” Houghton wrote. “Some Christians have misinterpreted the ‘dominion’ given to humans in Genesis 1.26 as an excuse for unbridled exploitation. However, the Genesis chapters, as do other parts of scripture, insist that human rule over creation is to be exercised under God, the ultimate ruler of creation, with the sort of care exemplified by this picture of humans as ‘gardeners.’”

Houghton began to reach out to evangelical leaders to talk to them about the coming ecological crisis. He was influential in convincing Richard Cizik, John Stott, and Rick Warren to make climate change a priority and talk about it as a spiritual problem. //

According to Malcolm, who is now preparing for ministry in the Church of England and writing a doctoral dissertation on theology and climate grief, Houghton thought it was it was impossible to convince people to protect something they didn’t love. He wanted Christians to learn to love their environment and let climate change science move them to repentance.

“Our desire to be gods drives a great deal of the destruction around us,” she said. “There is something in the work of climate science that reveals the consequence of our sin, troubles those in power, and calls for us to sit with that, but also be aware that an alternative is possible—an alternative to our sin.”

Houghton didn’t live to see the release of the sixth IPCC report or to promote it to evangelical Christians. But the scientific assessment dedicated to his memory echoes a core theme of Houghton’s life’s work: Now is the time, it says, to turn from the path of destruction.

Q:

The Mormon church claims to be the true church and yet there have been billions of people that have become Christian in the last 2,000 years based on what Jesus Christ did on that cross.

The Apostle Paul put it this way at 1 Corinthians 15:1-4, "Now I make known to you, brethren, the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received, in which also you stand, vs2, BY WHICH YOU ARE SAVED if you hold fast the word which I preached to you, unless you have believed in vain, vs3, For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, vs4, and that He was buried and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures."

So why do we need "Another Testament of Jesus Christ" when the first testament, i.e the Bible, (specifically the New Testament) has proven sufficient to save one's soul?

In fact, Jude 3 says, "Beloved while I was making every effort to write you about our common salvation, I felt the necessity to write to you appealing that you contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints/holy ones."

Jude is urging Christians to struggle to defend the Faith. The Greek word "Epagonizesthai" comes from the fierce competition of the athletic field. Believers must fight with all their strength to preserve "the faith" which was handed down to them. "Hapax" means "once for all." The gospel is fixed, not to be revised or have somebody else with another "gospel/testament" show up.(Galatians 1:8-9).

A:

Mormonism teaches that salvation comes through Jesus Christ, like any Christian faith.

A:

What does Mormonism have to offer in regards to salvation that Jesus Christ had not already accomplished?

In some sense, nothing. The atonement of Jesus Christ is what saves us. Faith in Jesus Christ is what saves us. The scriptures, however many they may be, can only lead us to Christ but never save. An illiterate person can be saved. But in this sense you have to question what any denomination has to offer, or what the visible church had to offer that made it a good idea to establish one in the New Testament. Or even what 98% of the Bible "has to offer".

However, Jesus has also said that we need to be baptized (John 3:5). In his time, he gave his apostles authority to baptize in his name. Without this authority, a baptism is just going through the motions. We believe this authority was lost early in the church history and restored by angels who conferred this authority to Joseph Smith. So in that sense, the true church should have authority to perform ordinances that Christ described as necessary for salvation.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints claims to be a restoration of the original church Christ founded. Literally the church of Jesus Christ. Whatever it was that having a church in the first place offered, is what "Mormonism offers".

Music is one of the greatest things man creates. A single song can define a generation, influence billions, establish worldviews, activate emotions, and create unforgettable memories. It’s one of the most powerful forces on Earth and one of the biggest things we have in common with angels in terms of activities.

Christian artists should be very attentive to what kind of effect their music is having, but if I had to guess, many were seeing two things; cheering and energetic kids dancing and singing their songs, and their bank accounts filling up. Many pushed forward believing they were on the right track, most with good intentions.

They weren’t. //

As I said earlier, music has a powerful impact on those who hear it. People took in the Hillsong-esque lyrics about how “nothing compares to your embrace” and “your love is relentless” with all the lights and sounds and performances, and then…felt nothing later. These aren’t songs that you can necessarily carry into your daily life. The display plays well at the moment, but it’s hard to lean on them when you’re facing down the darkness.

In a moment when you’re down low, today’s Christian music has no “Flood” songs to empathize with you and speak to your pain. Instead, you have a woman wearing a sundress, sun hat, and also a scarf for some reason, repeating the words “you’re the air I breath” ad nauseum. //

Nobody wants to be real here. The mainstream Christian entertainment industry is too busy playing it safe to produce anything that might damage its status quo, and what’s more, anger a Christian establishment too unwilling (read afraid) to allow people to ask very real questions about faith, darkness, and the wars we have to fight on a daily basis against a world trying to strip us of our reliance on God. //

God is important to both the individual and society, and we need to understand our emotions about Him and our place with Him, and good music will be able to talk to us about that over and over again in ways our mind and souls can understand. If we, and especially the youth, are constantly served substanceless Christian music, then the impression it will give is that Christianity has no substance.

I know differently. The relationship I’ve had with God and Christ has been a grounding force in my life. I’ve been through the highs and the lows with faith, and I’ve been fortunate to encounter what I have in the arts to help me ground myself there. The thing is, I can’t help but wonder what my faith would look like if I was subjected to the church culture of today with all its lights and sounds and performances that seem more made to make money than make a difference, tell a story, or resonate with emotion.

The church is likely going to beat this dead horse for a while and people will continue to leave the church and lose faith. At some point, something has to break and a change has to happen.

Christians can survive without good Christian cinema, but it absolutely needs good Christian music. The sooner this collapse of the modern Christian trend happens, the better.

The map to good Christian storytelling started with Christ, then Tolkien and Lewis modernized it. We know how to do it, but we just don’t, and I think the reason is that Christians are too afraid that they’ll be judged by other Christians for it.

And you know what? They’re right.

Like Kanye West said in his debut Christian album, Christians would be the first ones to judge him and make him feel alone for releasing a Christian album in his own manner, and not follow the color-by-numbers methods of making it safe and sterile.

Any filmmaker looking to create a Christian film is going to be destroyed by Christians. If it can’t be shown to a church congregation on Sunday, then it would be hailed as a perversion of the word and deem it unsafe for public consumption.

Here’s the brutal truth. The Bible isn’t safe for work. //

These stories can be told with good cinematography, solid acting, good writing, and in a way that lends more to realism and dynamism without resorting to stripping the film of context, indication, and even scenes that would, frankly, make the rating of the film drift into the “R” category. It would be a far more honest telling and that honesty would glue the viewer and get them interested for more. Does it add shock value? Sure, but the Bible is pretty shocking. It wouldn’t be shocking for shock’s sake, it would be there to help drive home the stakes and feel of the story home.

These stories will never be heard by the mainstream if we’re only making films that play it safe and never take chances. We have to ditch this idea that we’re going to charm the masses with wholesomeness and family-friendly entertainment. We’re not. //

Let’s not be afraid to make something worth watching and break away from the “church” method of making films. Let’s Martin Luther Christian media.

They recount the story of Amy Medina, an American missionary in Tanzania, whose husband was teaching a class on developing a biblical worldview. Somehow, the subject of tattoos arose, and the class reacted so negatively to the idea of a Christian getting a tattoo that the missionary asked: “Which would bother you more: if your pastor got a tattoo, or if he committed adultery?” The class was unanimous. The tattoo would be more disturbing! //

In this case, as the conversation progressed, the missionary acknowledged that the Scriptures explicitly forbid both tattoos and adultery (Lev. 19:28; Deut. 5:18). The majority of American Bible-readers believe the tattoo prohibition to be irrelevant today, but the Tanzanians believe both commands are binding, and surprisingly, the tattoo represents something even worse than adultery. Muehlhoff and Langer explain the students’ mindset:

“Tattoos are associated with witchcraft and evil spirits. A tattoo, regardless of personal intentions, is a mark of ownership placed on your body that either confirms the influence of a witch doctor or an evil spirit over your life, or at the very least implies or invites such influence. Adultery is wrong, but surely even Americans think it is worse for a pastor to publicly identify with an evil spirit.” (69) //

Beginning with common ground helps us find greater clarity on where the real disagreement lies. One area presents itself quickly: the principles we use in applying biblical commands across historical and cultural contexts, as well as the difference between the covenants. As the discussion unfolds, it becomes clear that the debate isn’t over the authority of Scripture, but how we interpret this Old Testament command.

A second takeaway is the emphasis the students give to spiritual warfare. Faithfulness to one’s spouse is a moral mandate, for sure, and to break one’s covenantal vows is to fail morally. The tattoo, however (at least in this culture), is a public sign of allegiance to a witch doctor, evil spirit, or something supernatural. The Americans may object that we shouldn’t read African cultural concerns into every tattoo, while the Tanzanians may object that Americans too often underestimate or neglect the dynamics of spiritual warfare. (This cross-cultural discussion of how much or how little we should emphasize the powers and principalities is a subject I devoted several columns to last year.)

A third area of disagreement arises from the difference between living in a guilt/innocence culture versus an honor/shame culture. That’s the primary reason the students believed the tattoo was a greater scandal than the adultery. “Guilt before the law as opposed to shame before the community is valued differently in the two cultures,” Muehlhoff and Langer write (71). //

“The conviction spectrum does not eliminate disagreements but rather locates and clarifies our disagreements. The goal is that appreciating the common ground lays a foundation for respecting differing convictions. This opens the door to further conversation and hopefully to respectful compromises along the lines which Paul suggests when he exhorts those who are stronger in faith not to flaunt their freedom and those who are weaker in faith not to judge their brothers.” (72)

In Hong Kong right now, Jimmy Lai is sacrificing all — his fortune and possibly his life — for his God, his fellow man, and for freedom. //

“The Communists,” he told Economic Strategy Institute President Clyde Berkowitz, “think they can buy and or intimidate everyone off, create their own reality, and write their own history. Effectively, they assume the role of God. They are kind of a religion or an anti-religion.”

‘They have initiation into the party as a kind of baptism. They have self-criticism as a kind of confession of sins, re-education as a kind of penance, and elevation to hero of the party as a kind of sainthood. And, of course, at least Mao [Zedong] has a kind of everlasting life as a photo smiling down on Tiananmen Square and as an embalmed corpse in a casket in the square.’

‘But the party and its members do not have souls. In fact, they are dead men walking, because the truth is not in them.’

“Life,” he told the Catholic Napa Institute in an October interview, “is more than just bread; life has a greater meaning.” //

We know that the martyrs and saints suffered and for their courage on earth are saved. We might hope and pray to have their courage if ever put to the test, but until we are we never truly know if we will — so many don’t. We know that suffering has a purpose, that it sharpens and tests our characters, and that it should be offered up to God, but have you ever tried? It can be done, but it is very, very difficult to lift up your heart while your body and mind drag you back down to the temporal things torturing them.

“Here is my body, take it!” the Venerable Archbishop Fulton Sheen preached on Good Friday, 1979. “Here is my soul, my will, my energy, my strength, my poverty, my wealth — all that I have. It is yours, take it! Consecrate it! Offer it! Offer it to the Heavenly Father with yourself, in order that he, looking down on this great sacrifice, may see only you, his beloved Son, in whom he is well pleased. Transmute the poor bread of my life into your life; thrill the wine of my wasted life into your divine Spirit; unite my broken heart with your Heart; change my cross into a crucifix.”

“If you believe in the Lord,” Lai told the Napa Institute, “if you believe that all suffering has a reason, and the Lord is suffering with me, it will definitely define the person I am becoming so I am at peace with it.”

“I am what I am. I am what I believe. I cannot change it. And if I can’t change it, I have to accept my fate with praise.”

But how many actually do? How many American leaders, how many corporate businessmen, do just that? How many executives at Disney and Nike, the NBA and Blizzard Entertainment, in Apple and Hollywood do just that? Maybe no other alive. //

In Western universities and board rooms, souls are cheap. But Lai’s is not. “What separates Jimmy Lai,” a friend in corporate consulting wrote me, “from many of this era’s modern-day princes is that he deeply cares about something beyond his own money, power and status.”

“This is just living my life,” he told the BBC this spring, sitting in his mansion in northern Hong Kong. “But if I’m in jail I’m living my life meaningfully.”

“But you must fear some things,” reporter Danny Vincent asked. “For your family, for Hong Kong, for your loved ones.”

“Yes,” he replied, shuddering, his lip quivering and tears suddenly in his eyes. “You’re right. I do have fear.”

As with courage, sacrifice, and pain, it’s easy to say we have what it will take. Going to church on Sunday or giving what amounts to a rounding error to some social justice cause is fine, but is it enough? Is it remotely enough? How many of our Western elites know in their hearts that if they died in their sleep tonight, no one could say they gave it all for God?

So a lot of media accounts weren’t wrong, they just got it half right. Jimmy Lai, a man born in poverty, who became a billionaire, who became a Christian, who became a Catholic, who became a freedom fighter, might die this time, next time, or the time after that, imprisoned and penniless. But when he is weighed and measured, he will not be found wanting. And for that, when Jimmy Lai dies he will die a very wealthy man indeed.

The last time such a serious moral and theological divide separated Southern Baptist churches, a massive and successful 10-year campaign to retake the convention was launched.

In the absence of the divine, humanity has always looked to somewhat more tangible (but no less complex and just beyond our grasp) targets for our faith. In the case of an increasingly secular United States, the Democrats (and, to a lesser extent depending on the circumstances, Republicans) put all of their faith in the government, expect its power to flow to them in a more grotesque and symbiotic way than the woman who sought healing from Christ. And, while Jesus was given the power to help and heal the people of God, government is given power and uses it to feed and grow itself.

The result is a behemoth that constantly requires feeding and that no one in office seems to have the bravery to deny. The legislative branch surrenders its power to the executive, and the executive branch surrenders its power to bureaucracies, which exist solely to give themselves purpose and become accountable to no one. //

Rather than putting their faith in the divine and seeking a greater, eternal reward, they wish to put all their faith in government and hope that its power will save everyone. That, however, is an insane proposition that ignores all the times giving all the power to government not only didn’t work but actually made things worse. The very idea that government can solve all of our problems is anathema to the foundations of the country, drafted by men who saw exactly what a government with all the power and no accountability could do.

Now, this can’t be all on the Democrats, as there are Republicans who really and truly think that if we just grow government their way instead of the Democrats’ way, we actually can make the country a better place. But growing government is still feeding a beast. Unlike God and Jesus, government does not reward the power your put into it by rewarding you with its own. Government takes the power you give it and only uses it to feed itself and grow bigger. //

Jmied01
3 hours ago edited
I think this explains the rift in America; half the country believes in God as their salvation and authority and half of the country doesn’t. So they have to replace him with another higher being, and they look to government, and I can’t think of any outlook on life more depressing.

I often struggle to think what makes people look at Joe Biden or Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton the way that a Maddow or a Stelter or any other dem sycophant does, but it’s pretty simple when you understand that humans crave leadership and a power higher than them, and without a god there is no higher power than their pathetic government.

Actually, I think a fair and dispassionate reading of this article and the rest of Ms. Schumann’s work would say she is selfish (her irrational fears take precedence overall). If being opposed to the Constitution and our traditions qualifies one as unpatriotic, then bingo.

She and her experience are the focal point of everything she writes about…like, for instance, the book from which this essay was extracted. She is demanding that others give up something to make her feel better, while she gives up nothing. Her definition of “compromise” seems to be “how much of your stuff am I going to take.”

Her rhetorical question is just stupid. The only way me giving up my guns saves a life is if you are accusing me of being a murderer-in-waiting. One might, with equal justice, demand, “If buying a gun meant saving a life (this is much, much more likely scenario than hers), would you do it?”

Her denigrating the faith of others because they don’t share her unreasoning fears is the action of someone who is actually using God as nothing more than a debate tactic. //

Then we have this, which seems theologically ignorant as well as manipulative and selfish:

If you know and love Jesus and are going to spend eternity in Heaven with him, why does the idea of not having guns anymore scare you so much?

When we recite the Lord’s Prayer, we say “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” There are no guns in heaven. When I pray this prayer, I ask that God would help me bring some of his kingdom to earth. I pray that, in the same way, there would be no gun violence here on Earth, just as there is no gun violence in heaven.

One hardly knows what to do with this. There is no food in Heaven, so why do you care about it here? And yet, one of the Christian Corporal Works of Mercy is feeding the hungry. There is no marriage in Heaven (Matthew 22:30), but it is a significant religious rite on Earth. //

What Ms. Schumann loses track of, along with a crap-ton of other things, is that the gun is nothing more than a value-free tool. It is much like a hammer or a wheel, or a screwdriver. What you do with the tool makes the difference. Murder was forbidden long before the invention of gunpowder. In Schumann’s view, owning a gun means that you, by definition, place gun ownership above being a Christian.

I don’t come from whatever religious tradition that spawned Ms. Schumann. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states in very strong terms that protecting others from harm is part of the Golden Rule. That extends to the use of deadly force if there is no other way. //

In Exodus, we are told we can kill a home invader at night. In Nehemiah, we are told to fight to defend our families. In Esther, Jews take up arms against an unjust ruler (sort of the main purpose of the Second Amendment). Jesus frequently uses the metaphor of a shepherd protecting his flock from thieves and robbers. Because a shepherd killed marauding animals (see David and his sling), one can assume He is not talking about hugging it out.

No matter how you come down on guns, we should be able to agree that murder is wrong, that self-defense is a right, that defending the helpless is an obligation, and that gun regulation is a secular policy argument and not theology.

A pastor who endorses claims of racial 'systemic injustice,' Ed Litton, has been elected president of the largest U.S. Protestant denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention.

The church is more concerned with answering to God than a Twitter mob. In my opinion, this is the church caving to politics, not politics caving to the church. To be sure, when it comes to deciding how a Catholic should act, modern sentiment shouldn’t play a part. At some point, that sentiment will pass, but God will still be there, unchanging, and looking not too pleased about the whole ordeal.

This doesn’t just apply to the Catholic church either. This applies to every church.

A church should be welcoming everyone it can through its doors. Unbelievers should be able to find seats and hear what Christ has to say. Gays and lesbians should be able to hear the gospel and realize that they do have a choice. If they don’t, they don’t, but at least they’ll be showing up and hearing the actual gospel.

God’s word isn’t going to make everyone happy, and not everyone is going to want to follow Christ based on personal opinion. In the end, they’ll either say to God “thy will be done,” or God will say to them “thy will be done.” But let either of these people let them hear the word first honestly. Giving the young a false idea of God or the church will only breed resentment down the line as they find out they were lied to in order to get them in the doors so the church would seem more popular.

The church needs to remember who it is, and more importantly who it answers to.

The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA) is hosting dinners to express appreciation for the brave men and women in law enforcement. Yet after the BGEA’s president, Franklin Graham, invited police in Seattle, Wash., to attend one of the free dinners at a four-star hotel, the Seattle Police Department (SPD) issued a condemnation of Graham and his organization due to their support for biblical Christianity. Leftists and antifa in Seattle have demonized police, but it seems evangelical Christians are the lowest of the low — even the police want nothing to do with them.

Earlier this month, SPD Chief Adrian Diaz revoked a department-wide email invitation to the BGEA’s Seattle-area law enforcement appreciation dinner on May 11, citing concerns about alienating “our community’s LGBTQ members.”

“An internal email was shared this week informing SPD employees of a free appreciation dinner hosted by the Rev. Franklin Graham. Based on Graham’s history and affiliations, the email has raised concerns that the SPD may not be committed to the equity of our community’s LGBTQ members,” Diaz shared in a message on the police blotter. //

As Al Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, put it, “You cancel a dinner by one of the most famous Christian organizations in all of American history in the name of diversity and inclusivity. That only works by the way if you take the definition of those words and turn those definitions on their head.”

People in left-leaning cities like Seattle may regard police as the dregs of society, a systemically racist institution. Yet even the police are too good for those horrific evangelical Christians.

Today is Easter, the holiest day on the Christian calendar, how we remember that Jesus died for our sins and then rose again to eternal life.

But today, of all days, Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA), the newly elected senator from Georgia and an ordained minister for many years, tweeted out something that shocked a lot of people.

The meaning of Easter is more transcendent than the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Whether you are Christian or not, through a commitment to helping others we are able to save ourselves.”

Now of course nothing is more transcendent on Easter or in Christianity than the resurrection. Christians believe it is only because Jesus died and rose to save us from our sins that we are in fact saved. Pretty much the whole point of Easter. //

Some tried to argue that Warnock was talking about doing good works. But the problem with the comment wasn’t about the importance of good works, but failure to seemingly understand the fundamental necessity of the dying and rising of Jesus for the salvation, that one does not “save” oneself.

“This is what the heresy of liberation theology does—reduces the significance of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, to self-salvific moralism and thereby making ourselves God,” radio host Darrell B. Harrison, who works at John MacArthur’s Grace Community Church in Los Angeles, said. We can see that’s exactly where some of the defenders of Warnock were going in their arguments.

Apparently, at some point Warnock realized that the tweet was earning a backlash and deleted it

Contemporary megachurch-style worship is a self-worshiping, self-referential, nearly auto-erotic pursuit. //

Reader Heidi, in a comment on my post 8 Reasons the Worship Industry Is Killing Worship, frames the problem exceptionally well:

I think the phrase masturbatory worship is very apropos. There is often a lack of community, of recognition or responsiveness to the others present; and a strong prioritization of my personal experience and preference–indeed, a genuine selfishness– in worship rather than the give-and-take that belongs within the communion of saints, the Body of Christ. Christianity is relational–us with God in Christ; us with others, united in Christ. The minimally interactive, highly sensual nature of modern praise worship is not relational in the same way; and in a way, intentionally so–relationships are hard work.

Obviously when one masturbates, the chief end is the pursuit of ones own pleasure. Likewise, the contemporary worship movement, with its jettisoning of biblical, historic, liturgical elements of worship in favor of commercial pop music, has drawn an understanding of worship that is little more than a personal pursuit of pleasure through emotion and self-actualization. “Worship sets” of jesusy power ballads, aimed at carrying the individual away from the corporate body on waves of emotional euphoria, have replaced true worship, in which God is present with us in Word and Sacrament.

Chaplain Mike of the fabulous Internet Monk blog talks about such masturbatory worship this way:

It is designed to be “an experience” for me, not a thoughtful expression of obeisance to God.

It does not enable me to consider my duty to respond to God in daily life, but rather fools me into thinking this wave of emotion I’m feeling is the proper response to God. //

The masturbatory worship they hold dear is merely a narcissistic journey to nowhere, one in which we are left crowning our own individual selves as lord of all. We’ve already been told that we are like sheep, each one wandering its own way. The church’s historic liturgy presents us corporately with the solution. Masturbatory worship proclaims a subjective gospel, a situational Christian ethic, and a selfish mission.

Chaplain Mike again:

Commercialized, formulaic, self-centered “worship” is as far from what that word is supposed to signify as possible.

Where are the pastors, artists, and wise leaders who will move us toward maturity? Who will get us to stop playing with ourselves and grow up so that we can truly love God and our neighbors?

Joseph Bottum has proffered the thesis that the decline of the mainline is the central story of the past fifty years in America. Mainline Protestantism had, until recently, played a central role in shaping the moral framework of American society; its decline has left a vacuum which has been filled by religious-like forces. Those forces are not directly related to any branch of Christendom and are not necessarily oriented to a supernatural destiny. Rather, Wokeness seeks religious meaning in immanent realities; it locates the sacred within this world. This constitutes it, according to the recent study by Steven D. Smith, as a form of neopaganism. //

https://www.amazon.com/Anxious-Age-Post-Protestant-Spirit-America/dp/0385518811

Wokeness is thus neopagan. Its adherents are not mere disenchanted, logical positivists, but rather passionate believers who have found deep meaning, existential assurance, moral superiority, and self-transcendent purpose by opposing dark, mystical forces which wage war on modern society. The sacred are the innocent victims of pernicious social forces and salvation consists in demonstrating one’s own innocence and purity by awakening to these realities, feeling moral indignation, and opposing them—largely through the mechanisms mentioned above of denouncing, shaming, and scapegoating others who are “complicit” in the various purported systems of oppression. Conciliation is not really in sight and a tenuous unity is secured by shared indignation at transgressors in this Manichaean vision which cleanly identifies good and evil along group lines. Mere humans are envisioned as the source of evil and thus these humans constitute the proper scapegoats to appease societal wrath and bring about social harmony. //

ConclusionIn a world which was shaped by a Protestantism that, up until recently, provided a unifying moral framework for our nation, Wokeness fills a void and has a certain appeal to Protestants themselves and their fellow citizens. As Tom Holland has persuasively argued, we cannot shake Christian categories and conceptions in the West, but their meanings can shift. Wokeness meets a religious need by mimicking a Protestantism that our society has largely left behind. The religious energy and concern is narrowed to this-worldly realities, and thus can be identified as neopagan.

In her work as Bishop of Indianapolis, the Rt. Rev. Jennifer Baskerville-Burrows brings her expertise in architecture and historic preservation to bear. For her, the pandemic has forced questions shrinking congregations have long avoided. And that is a good thing. //

The pandemic is an amplifier and accelerator, and it’s going to amplify and accelerate some of the trends that are troubling. But it can also amplify and accelerate some good things, so let’s try to get more in the driver’s seat on this.

Not all of the congregations are going to make it through this pandemic in the way that they were before. And that’s ultimately a hopeful thing for the church.

Because we’re finally asking the questions, “What is this congregation for? What is the building for now that we’re not in it?”

… I’d rather have a small diocese in terms of numbers of congregations that are really clear about who they are, why they exist, what their call to walk with Christ is about and what their building can do to help support that mission than to have 48 churches half of which don’t know why they’re there and their building is just empty most of the week.

https://faithandleadership.com/jennifer-baskerville-burrows-congregations-should-see-their-buildings-assets-not-albatrosses

And yet, “be careful what you pray for, you might get it!” portrays a Heavenly Father who waits up in heaven for a Gotchya! moment. Every prayer request put before Him is a “teachable moment,” every prayer for strength an opportunity to test your mettle, every prayer for patience an opportunity to run His children through the grinder of difficulty and frustration in the name of “growing” patience in His followers.

These do not seem like the actions of a heavenly Father to me, but those of a Heavenly Drill Sergeant. Who would dare ask a drill sergeant for a favor, lest he require fifty extra push-ups? //

Scripture instead describes a God who wants us to pray without fear. For everything and anything. To pray even when the prayers are ridiculous. Thomas wouldn’t believe eyewitness accounts of men he’d spent the previous three years with, men he surely trusted, and yet, Jesus granted Thomas’s desire, //

Do note that Jesus did not make Peter swim himself to shore in order to teach him perseverance or to teach him that walking on the water isn’t so important, really, and he should desire more holy and less ridiculous things. He just rescued him. Immediately. //

The Bible also abounds with accounts of those whom God made comfortable, with more than they needed. There was food left over after Jesus fed the multitude. (Mark 6:30-43) The widow who fed Elijah had food for many days after she fed the prophet. (1 Kings 17:7-16) Jesus made Thomas emotionally comfortable, (if you’ll forgive the modern idiom) even in his doubt. When Jesus called the disciples, he didn’t just give them enough fish, he gave them so many their nets started to break. (Luke 5:1-11) And when the wine ran out at the wedding at Cana? Jesus didn’t just turn the water into wine, he turned it into good wine. (John 2:10). Even Job, who is surely our best example of suffering and want save Christ himself, was restored two-fold at the end of his trial. (Job 42:7-16) //

If anything, this car is teaching me to hope again, to receive God’s good material gifts without fear that they will be snatched away in order to teach me a lesson. To ask my dear Father in Heaven just as I asked my dear earthly father when I was small. To understand that God sometimes grants abundance, and when he does, it’s because He is good, not because I am.

Anyone with a rudimentary understanding of Christianity knows that it is not “extreme” to spread the Gospel. One can’t say the same for those who single out Jews as being bestowed with the uniquely “evil” ability to hypnotize the world or to buy off Christians with their “Benjamins.”

Apologists for Rep. Ilhan Omar, for Hamas, for the Holocaust-denying Iranian terror regime that targets Jews around the world whether they are Israelis or not—those who dishonestly single out the Jewish state as a cancerous presence on the world while ignoring others—are, at best, functionally anti-Semitic. “Anti-Zionism,” not belief in the Trinity, is the predominant justification for violence against Jews around the world.

Yes, I understand that many evangelicals support Israel, in part, because they believe it is necessary for the fulfillment of end-times prophecy. Since I do not share their theology, I am completely unbothered by this position. Indeed, I strongly prefer their support to the antagonism of progressives who want to see Israel destroyed for far more nefarious reasons.

Those about to fire off emails with refresher courses on the history of European Jewry, please save your efforts. For more than a century now, attacks on Jews have predominantly emanated from secular fascists and leftists, Arab nationalists, and Islamists—not Christians spreading the good word.

A Christian can believe that homosexuality is wrong and that the lifestyle should not be engaged in. They can also love anyone who is LGBT as they would love anyone else. The rejection isn’t of the person, it’s of the action. As Pratt said, we are commanded by Christ to love one another. While Christ makes it clear that we’re not to engage in sinful behaviors ourselves, loving the person while rejecting the sin can happen simultaneously.

We, as Christians, do not make the sin and the person the same entity. They are separate things. A person may choose to reject his sin and ask Christ to take it from him. When Christ does, the entire person isn’t scrapped.

This makes Christians a rather friendly group who rejects the idea of hatred of an individual based on their sins. Christians reject homosexuality in the same way they reject thievery, lying, and adultery. At some point, everyone sins, and everyone, if asked, is forgiven. The vast majority of Christians still have homosexual friends while not condoning or participating in the lifestyle.

The hard-left doesn’t seem to have this ability to disagree or reject a lifestyle while still maintaining a friendship or loving the person while not participating in the idea they oppose. To them, being a Christian is intolerable and thus must not only be rejected, but anyone who is one must be canceled.

No idea can thrive but theirs. So they let their hatreds and intolerances run wild. They make false claims about individuals or institutions, accuse of their opponents of pure evil, and destroy the lives of whoever they can if they keep to it. Even if they don’t just being friendly with someone who believes in Christianity may get you canceled as well.

The real bigots here aren’t the Christians…it’s the hard left.