The Ultimate Sin by Rev. R.J. Rushdoony
California Farmer 242:8 (Apr. 19, 1975), p. 30.
Basic to the ultimate sin is the desire to reform others and to conform them to our ideas and hopes. Too often in our day this sin is proclaimed as a virtue.
What it means simply is that we try to play god and to change other people to suit ourselves. People who are having problems getting along with their family, their fellow workers, or their community very often are guilty of this sin, which means they are trying to play god.
You and I are not asked to change other people. Only God can do that. What we can do, by God’s grace, is to change ourselves to conform to His Word and calling. This means seeing the need to change in ourselves, rather than in others, and leaving the reformation of others to God through the ministry of His Word.
Today, of course, this is unpopular. The common idea of a noble person, statesman, or religious figure is of a man who, by legislation and police power, with tax funds works day and night to change others, never himself.
The ultimate sin is anti-Christianity to the core. It places the power to change men in the hands of man, not God. It gives to man the supposed right to control his fellow men in terms of his ideas of social and personal reform.
We have no right to ask people to conform to our will and ideas. We do have the responsibility to summon them to conform to God’s Word and calling. God Himself conforms us to the image of His Son (Rom. 8:29), and requires us through St. Paul to “be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God” (Rom. 12:2). By His sovereign grace, He makes us “conformable” unto the death of His Son (Phil. 3:10). So that we die to our self-righteousness and our ideas of reforming the world, and are instead alive to the righteousness of God in Christ, and are conformed to His Word.
The next time you hear a man propose to reform you, the state, the world, and everything in sight, look at him for what he is: the ultimate sinner, a would-be god, and a defiler of creation. And be careful, when you see such a man, that you do not spot him in your mirror.
Friday, June 29, 2007
Friday, June 22, 2007
Why do bad things happen to good people?
Why do bad things happen to good people? Well, that is probably the wrong question. Given the reality of the fallen world in which we live, given the manifestation of sin all around us, in us, and through us it would be more appropriate to ask why any good things happen to all of us bad people. The real philosophical problem for us to deal with is not the problem of pain but the problem of pleasure.” —John Gerstner
As we think about pain and suffering in the world inevitably we have to face our natural confusion between justice and fairness. This confusion crops up at every turn; it fuels our doubts, fears, sentiments, and passions; it muddles our theology and entangles our affections. Only the Gospel and disentangle this conundrum. —Florence Nightingale
Jesus always sees suffering as an opportunity for the power of God to be displayed in our lives. Do we? —Mike Card
As we think about pain and suffering in the world inevitably we have to face our natural confusion between justice and fairness. This confusion crops up at every turn; it fuels our doubts, fears, sentiments, and passions; it muddles our theology and entangles our affections. Only the Gospel and disentangle this conundrum. —Florence Nightingale
Jesus always sees suffering as an opportunity for the power of God to be displayed in our lives. Do we? —Mike Card
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Facing Reality Rightly
We are face to face with our destiny and we must meet it with a high and resolute courage. —Theodore Roosevelt
Saturday, June 16, 2007
Protection Against Men
Rev. R.J. Rushdoony
California Farmer 236:5 (March 4, 1972), p. 34.
People are indeed very often a problem to us. More than once, most of us have had some sad and costly experience with the foolishness and sin of men. We can add to that the fact that our own foolishness and sin is very often a problem to us.
As a result, many people have become unduly concerned about protecting themselves, their activities, their groups, clubs, churches, and communities from fools and knaves. Up to a point, such a concern is necessary, but carried to extremes, it is dangerous. There is no foolproof system for keeping such people out. As long as man is in any group, the potentiality for sin and folly is there. To be unduly concerned about protection can become a sin and folly.
The problem arose in the early church in between persecutions. Many members and pastors, faced with the threat of death from Rome, renounced Christ and His church. The churches split over this issue. Should such people be readmitted, or should the church strengthen its requirements in order to try to eliminate all such people?
Many churches took a strict stand and weeded out all problem people. These churches all perished. They had not eliminated problems, because, as long as one member remained, the potential for sin and folly was there.
Those churches which said that a profession of faith was all that could be required, and that sin and folly would have to be expected and dealt with by church discipline in terms of the Word of God, survived and prospered. They had expected perfection, not from man, but from God, and they concerned themselves more with serving Christ faithfully than with protecting themselves from men.
Both sides truly believed in Christ, and both were agreed on doctrine and Scripture. The question was something else, and the answer of action rather than protection gained God’s blessing.
We can never in this life protect ourselves fully against men, because we ourselves are men. Taking necessary protections against sin and folly is secondary. What we need most to do is to serve God with all our heart, mind, and being. St. Paul said, “Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Cor. 10:31). This is the priority, to serve God and to glorify Him.
Our concern should be to do our duty under God and to extend the claims of His Kingdom to every realm of life. The Lord is ultimately our surest defense and protection, and He will protect us most when we are most concerned about putting first things first.
“But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you” (Matt. 6:33).
California Farmer 236:5 (March 4, 1972), p. 34.
People are indeed very often a problem to us. More than once, most of us have had some sad and costly experience with the foolishness and sin of men. We can add to that the fact that our own foolishness and sin is very often a problem to us.
As a result, many people have become unduly concerned about protecting themselves, their activities, their groups, clubs, churches, and communities from fools and knaves. Up to a point, such a concern is necessary, but carried to extremes, it is dangerous. There is no foolproof system for keeping such people out. As long as man is in any group, the potentiality for sin and folly is there. To be unduly concerned about protection can become a sin and folly.
The problem arose in the early church in between persecutions. Many members and pastors, faced with the threat of death from Rome, renounced Christ and His church. The churches split over this issue. Should such people be readmitted, or should the church strengthen its requirements in order to try to eliminate all such people?
Many churches took a strict stand and weeded out all problem people. These churches all perished. They had not eliminated problems, because, as long as one member remained, the potential for sin and folly was there.
Those churches which said that a profession of faith was all that could be required, and that sin and folly would have to be expected and dealt with by church discipline in terms of the Word of God, survived and prospered. They had expected perfection, not from man, but from God, and they concerned themselves more with serving Christ faithfully than with protecting themselves from men.
Both sides truly believed in Christ, and both were agreed on doctrine and Scripture. The question was something else, and the answer of action rather than protection gained God’s blessing.
We can never in this life protect ourselves fully against men, because we ourselves are men. Taking necessary protections against sin and folly is secondary. What we need most to do is to serve God with all our heart, mind, and being. St. Paul said, “Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Cor. 10:31). This is the priority, to serve God and to glorify Him.
Our concern should be to do our duty under God and to extend the claims of His Kingdom to every realm of life. The Lord is ultimately our surest defense and protection, and He will protect us most when we are most concerned about putting first things first.
“But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you” (Matt. 6:33).
The Return to Barbarism
Rev. R.J. Rushdoony
CA Farmer 238:1 (Jan. 6, 1973), p. 19.
Her home is a lovely one, in a superior neighborhood. She prides herself on being a good parent, and she insists that her two teenage children bring in every kind of schoolmate, especially the ones who are regarded as socially unacceptable, more or less delinquent, and wild. As a good liberal, this woman holds that she can help people by being good to them.
Recently, she returned home to find her place burglarized. Police said the thieves obviously knew what was in the house and where to get it. Neighbors reported that some of the usual teenagers had been around the place, but the neighbors did not know that Mrs. B—— was gone.
The woman was not angry. In fact, she was more than a little thrilled and excited by it all. She was definitely not angry at whichever teenagers were guilty. Instead, she kept saying, What drove them to it? How terrible, she maintained, that our culture drives its greatest resource, youth, to such delinquency. We are all guilty, she held, and we must all somehow make it up to our underprivileged youth. If the thieves were caught, she would not prosecute. As each day passed, she developed a progressively more self-righteous glow over submitting to evil and then calling evil good.
The sad fact is that this is not an isolated case. I have run across three like situations recently. Worse than a thief is someone who justifies a thief and calls evil good. The teenage thieves took some valuable property. The woman struck at the moral foundations of society by denying personal responsibility.
To deny personal responsibility is to turn to paganism and barbarism. The savage witch doctor, in diagnosing a sick man’s problem, held that someone had cast an evil spell on him, and whomever he named was killed. In this country, the Iroquois Indians killed many innocent Indians whenever a medicine man accused some tribal member of causing the illness of another. When liberals and sociologists blame society and our culture instead of the individual, they are turning the clock back to barbarism.
Our politicians are doing the same. They tell us society is to blame, or the parents, or our supposedly animal past, and so on. The language is supposedly scientific, but the meaning is the old barbarism of the witch doctor, of the days when a father was put to death for the crime of his son, and a child for the crime of his father. Sometimes a city was sentenced to death for the offense of one or two citizens.
As against this, the Bible declares emphatically, as law for men and nations, “every man shall be put to death [that is, suffer punishment] for his own sin” (Deut. 24:16); “every one shall die for his own iniquity” (Jer. 31:30); “[t]he fathers shall not be put to death for the children, neither shall the children be put to death for the fathers” (Deut. 24:16). To deny personal responsibility is to turn to paganism and barbarism.
Mrs. B—— feels that she is very enlightened and progressive. In reality, she might as well run around naked with a piece of bone through her nose. Her thinking is on the level of the savages.
CA Farmer 238:1 (Jan. 6, 1973), p. 19.
Her home is a lovely one, in a superior neighborhood. She prides herself on being a good parent, and she insists that her two teenage children bring in every kind of schoolmate, especially the ones who are regarded as socially unacceptable, more or less delinquent, and wild. As a good liberal, this woman holds that she can help people by being good to them.
Recently, she returned home to find her place burglarized. Police said the thieves obviously knew what was in the house and where to get it. Neighbors reported that some of the usual teenagers had been around the place, but the neighbors did not know that Mrs. B—— was gone.
The woman was not angry. In fact, she was more than a little thrilled and excited by it all. She was definitely not angry at whichever teenagers were guilty. Instead, she kept saying, What drove them to it? How terrible, she maintained, that our culture drives its greatest resource, youth, to such delinquency. We are all guilty, she held, and we must all somehow make it up to our underprivileged youth. If the thieves were caught, she would not prosecute. As each day passed, she developed a progressively more self-righteous glow over submitting to evil and then calling evil good.
The sad fact is that this is not an isolated case. I have run across three like situations recently. Worse than a thief is someone who justifies a thief and calls evil good. The teenage thieves took some valuable property. The woman struck at the moral foundations of society by denying personal responsibility.
To deny personal responsibility is to turn to paganism and barbarism. The savage witch doctor, in diagnosing a sick man’s problem, held that someone had cast an evil spell on him, and whomever he named was killed. In this country, the Iroquois Indians killed many innocent Indians whenever a medicine man accused some tribal member of causing the illness of another. When liberals and sociologists blame society and our culture instead of the individual, they are turning the clock back to barbarism.
Our politicians are doing the same. They tell us society is to blame, or the parents, or our supposedly animal past, and so on. The language is supposedly scientific, but the meaning is the old barbarism of the witch doctor, of the days when a father was put to death for the crime of his son, and a child for the crime of his father. Sometimes a city was sentenced to death for the offense of one or two citizens.
As against this, the Bible declares emphatically, as law for men and nations, “every man shall be put to death [that is, suffer punishment] for his own sin” (Deut. 24:16); “every one shall die for his own iniquity” (Jer. 31:30); “[t]he fathers shall not be put to death for the children, neither shall the children be put to death for the fathers” (Deut. 24:16). To deny personal responsibility is to turn to paganism and barbarism.
Mrs. B—— feels that she is very enlightened and progressive. In reality, she might as well run around naked with a piece of bone through her nose. Her thinking is on the level of the savages.
Sunday, June 10, 2007
Truth
Truth, with a capital "T", as Francis Schaeffer used to say, is a mystery in our day. We have been told for a long time that there is no such things as "absolute truth."
Is that affirmation "absolutely" true?
To deny the historicity of Genesis 1:1 is to deny the possibility of truth. The enemies of Christianity have know this for a long time. Too bad our friends have not.
Perhaps the statements that follow will help. I especially encourage you to read the essay entitled Nothing But the Truth by our Pastor Dr. George Grant.
for the Christ's Kingdom,
Perry
________________________________________________________
Truth: that long, clean, clear, simple, undeniable, unchallengeable, straight, and shining line, on one side of which is black and on the other of which is white. —William Faulkner
Opinion is a flitting thing But truth, outlasts the sun; If we cannot own them both, Possess the oldest one. — Emily Dickinson
Error lives but a day. Truth is eternal. — James Longstreet
Nothing But the Truth
by Dr. George Grant, Pastor at Parish Pres, Franklin, TN
Truth is both unchanging and universal and written on every man, woman, and child’s conscience. We never have to apologize for the truth. It is able to withstand every charge. It is able to bear up under every challenge. It is sufficient unto itself. In due course, it will prove its own value and veracity. The dumb certainties of experience will attest to its surety. As Shakespeare once quipped, “In the end the truth will out.”
The truth is not merely a moral construct. It is not a subjective application of some man-made ethical system. It is a reflection of the way things actually are. It is a part of the very warp and woof of reality. So, to veer away from the truth is to swerve into the realm of the fantastic. If we don’t live in light of the truth we are simply not being honest with ourselves and those around us. It is a dangerous form of denial. It is not too much to say therefore, that to deliberately and perpetually reject the truth is nothing short of a kind of insanity.
Truth is objective. It is consistent. It is balanced. It is both beautiful and practical. It is both good and helpful. It is accessible, knowable, and comprehendible. It is dependable, predictable, and unchangeable. Truth is believable—because it squares with the world as it is and with us as we are.
Knowing the truth—and living in accord with the truth—is not just sensible and sane, it is remarkably fruitful and productive. When men discover the truth it is as if the lights suddenly come on in their minds, hearts, and lives. Progress is made. Justice is served. Hope is satisfied. Trust is established. Love is confirmed. And freedom is safeguarded. Truth is just as surely a benefit to the scientist as it is to the philosopher. It is just as critical for a physician as it is for a husband. It is just as essential in the work of the artist as it is in the work of the lawyer.
In the midst of this poor fallen world where evil is pitted against love for the hearts, minds, and affections of all men everywhere, truth is an essential weapon in the arsenal of the good. Integrity, honor, and courage depend upon it. Indeed, apart from it, a civil society cannot long survive.
Men who deny the fact that there is any such thing as objective truth crop up in every generation. But, they are always in the minority—clamoring for attention on college campuses, on Hollywood back lots, or on late night talk shows. But their ideas seldom make it out of such enclaves into the real world. For most of us, the truth is rather obvious. At the very least, we are able to see the truth in hindsight.
Unfortunately, we don’t always live like it. The fact is we are not naturally inclined to affirm the truth even when we are perfectly well aware of that truth. On the contrary, our first impulse is generally to recoil from it. We try to avoid it. We try to ignore it. We try to side step it. Or we try to deny it. We might admire the truth, but rarely do we really want to hear it. We prefer a sugar-coated version of life, the universe, and everything. We are unabashedly partial to perspectives slanted in our favor.
That is why, throughout history, sages have been persecuted, statesmen have been rejected, and saints have been vilified. Think of all the great men and women across the ages who were rejected by their own people in their own day simply because the truth they told was unpopular. Old Testament prophets like Jeremiah were beaten, imprisoned, and sent into exile. Scientists like Galileo were silenced as dangerous heretics. Educators like Boethius were mocked as impractical mystics. Adventurers like Columbus were dismissed as idle dreamers.
During the past century or so we have been particularly rough on those who proclaimed the truth. Teddy Roosevelt was considered too volatile to hold high elective office. Winston Churchill was voted out of office after winning the Second World War. Booker T. Washington was dismissed as an ineffective compromiser.
The reason for this is simply that the truth can sometimes be uncomfortable. It can cut across the grain of our preferences and prejudices. It tells us of the way things have always been, they way they are now, and how they ought to be in days ahead. Thus, sometimes the truth can really hurt. Sometimes, in fact, it can be down right offensive.
Even when a perfect truth is offered perfectly by a perfect messenger, it can ruffle our feathers and raise our hackles. The renowned English preacher of the last generation, D. Martyn Lloyd Jones once remarked, “The great effect of our Lord's preaching was to make everybody feel condemned, and nobody likes that.”
On almost every page of the New Testament, we find Jesus offending someone. When He wasn't confronting the Scribes and the Pharisees, He was rebuking the promiscuous and the perverse. When He wasn't alienating the Saducees and the Herodians, He was reproving the tax-collectors and the prostitutes. He even had a knack for estranging His own disciples with His “hard sayings” and “dark parables.”
Jesus “meek and mild” was rarely meek or mild when it came to telling the truth. He pulled no punches. As philosopher and theologian Michael Bauman has commented, “At various times, and when the situation demanded, Jesus publicly denounced sinners as snakes, dogs, foxes, hypocrites, fouled tombs, and dirty dishes. He actually referred to one of His chief disciples as Satan. So that His hearers would not miss the point, He sometimes referred to the objects of his most intense ridicule both by name and by position, and often face to face. . . . Christ did not affirm sinners; He affirmed the repentant. Others He often addressed with the most withering invective. God incarnate did not avoid using words and tactics that His listeners found deeply offensive. He well understood that sometimes it is wrong to be nice.”
He was an equal opportunity offender. But His message was never intended to be popular; it was intended to be true. His was a message of Good News, not nice news. And that is simply not a popular notion. Not now. Not ever. Thus, “He came unto His own and His own received Him not.” (John 1:11).
None of us like to hear that we are wrong, that we have to make changes in our lives, that we have to adjust our way of thinking, or that we have to admit our faults. We are loathe to confess that are in need of repentance, forgiveness, or forbearance. And we persist in our pride even when we know the truth.
The truth demands something of us. It may or may not demand something of us as dramatic as what it demanded of the passengers of Flight 93. Though the truth ultimately sets us free, it does so at some cost.
Sometimes it is not so much our resistance to change that blinds us to the truth as it is our insistence on change. We moderns are enamored of progress. We live at a time when things shiny and new are prized far above things old and time-worn. For most of us, any truth confirmed by wisdom and experience across the ages is automatically suspect. We tend to look on such ancient and universal truths as little more than evidence of quirky primitivism or nostalgic sentimentalism. Such things are hardly more than the droning, monotonous succession of obsolete notions, anachronous ideals, and antiquarian habits—sound and fury, signifying nothing. As philosopher Richard Weaver has argued, “Since the time of Bacon the world has been running away from, rather than toward, first principles, so that, on the verbal level, we see fact substituted for truth.”
It is no less ludicrous to assert that something may have been true at ten minutes before the hour but cannot be at ten minutes after the hour than to assert that something may have been true ten centuries ago but cannot be ten centuries hence. If something is true, the hands of the clock are of little relevance.
In our pride, we think we know better than all those who went before us. According to Paul Johnson, this odd approach to denying long-held truths has actually been institutionalized as a part of the peculiar culture of modernity, “With the decline of clerical power in the nineteenth century, a new kind of mentor emerged to fill the vacuum and capture the ear of society. The secular intellectual might be deist, skeptic, or atheist. But he was just as ready as any pontiff or presbyter to tell mankind how to conduct its affairs.”
This new breed of prophet, priest, and king brought a tragic compulsion to his task of unmaking truth—and thereby remaking the world in which he lived, “He proclaimed from the start, a special devotion to the interests of humanity and an evangelical duty to advance them by his teaching. He brought to this self-appointed task a far more radical approach than his clerical predecessors. He felt himself bound by no corpus of revealed religion. The collective wisdom of the past, the legacy of tradition, the prescriptive codes of ancestral experience existed to be selectively followed or wholly rejected entirely as his own good sense might decide. For the first time in human history, and with growing confidence and audacity, men arose to assert that they could diagnose the ills of society and cure them with their own unaided intellects: more, that they could devise formulae whereby not merely the structure of society but the fundamental habits of human beings could be transformed for the better. Unlike their sacerdotal predecessors, they were not servants and interpreters of the gods but substitutes. Their hero was Prometheus, who stole celestial fire and brought it to earth.”
As a result, this motley band of social engineers marshaled little more than their wits in their attempts at annulling old truths and thus reinventing humankind—a task no less arduous and no less fantastic than trying to annul gravity and reinvent the wheel. The result was predictably deleterious. Ultimately the self-appointed prophets, priests, and kings had their vaunted ideals dashed against the hard reality of history. The sad experience of the twentieth century—two devastating world wars, unnumbered holocausts and genocides, the fierce tyrannies of communism’s evil empire, and the embarrassing foibles of liberalism’s welfare state—ultimately exposed their high flying dreams as the noisome eccentricities that they are.
Despite history’s stern rebuke though, there are still a few die-hard devotees of this ever-hopeful worldview at work in our society. Their cant is rather ragged and shop-worn but their influence has not yet altogether disappeared. According to historian William Gairdner they are intent on making one last ditch effort to usher in their man-made utopia of man-made truths, “The legions of well-intentioned but smug, educated elites have agreed in advance to reject thousands of years of inherited wisdom, values, habit, custom, and insight and replace this heritage with their official utopian vision of the perfect society. They are the progressives, and they can be found in every political party. Trained as scientific, or logical rationalists, these social utopians haughtily treat all social or moral traditions and conventions as arbitrary, rather than as venerable repositories of indispensable social, family, and religious values. They despise natural authority, especially of a local or family variety, and they want to replace it with a sufficiently homogenous state power to bring about their coercive social dreamland. So with a government wage or grant in one hand and a policy whip in the other, they set about forcibly aligning individuals and customs with their dangerously narrow vision, then clamor after ever greater funding and ever more progressive legislation for the education or socialization of the people.”
But many of the wisest of men and women of our day were never fooled by this Tower of Babel-like effort. They recognized that a comprehension of the truth is a foundation upon which all genuine advancement must be built—that it is in fact, the prerequisite to all real progress. As G. K. Chesterton quipped, “Weak things must boast of being new, like so many new German philosophies. But strong things can boast of being old. Strong things can boast of being moribund.”
Unhampered and unfettered truth is the only ground upon which honest, open, and free relationships may be built—whether in families and communities or among societies and nations. Wisdom, as it has been expressed through all the ages has always welcomed the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
In order to advance the cause of life and liberty in these dark and difficult days, we will have to recover what we have lost at the hands of the prophets, priests, and kings of modernity—we must learn the lessons of history. But we will also have to overcome our aversion to the truth when it makes us uncomfortable or when it offends us.
Truth can stand the debate test. Poke it. Probe it. Explore it. Expose it. Turn it upside down. Turn it inside out. Put it under the microscope. Place it under the harshest of conditions. The truth will endure. It will always show itself to be true. On that we can surely and safely rely.
The American experiment in liberty was rooted in that kind of confidence. And if the experiment is to continue in the days ahead—benefiting our children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren—then we must take care to follow in their footsteps.
There is no need for us to attempt to reinvent the wheel. The battle for truth has been fought again and again and again. Successfully. We need not cast about for direction. We need not grope in the dark for strategies, programs, and agendas. We need not manufacture new ideas, new priorities, or new tactics. We already have a tested and proven formula for victory. We already have a winning legacy. We simply need to reclaim it. We simply need to recover what is rightfully ours. Whatever the cost, we need only to rely upon the truth.
The infamous skeptic Friedrich Nietzsche once confessed, “We all fear truth.” Why would he say that? Because, as the great Spanish author asserted, “Truth may be stretched but it cannot be broken, and always gets above falsehood, as oil does above water.” And that is a fearsome thing to doubters. On the other hand, it is a great relief to all the rest of us. After all, it is the truth that will ultimately set us free.
Is that affirmation "absolutely" true?
To deny the historicity of Genesis 1:1 is to deny the possibility of truth. The enemies of Christianity have know this for a long time. Too bad our friends have not.
Perhaps the statements that follow will help. I especially encourage you to read the essay entitled Nothing But the Truth by our Pastor Dr. George Grant.
for the Christ's Kingdom,
Perry
________________________________________________________
Truth: that long, clean, clear, simple, undeniable, unchallengeable, straight, and shining line, on one side of which is black and on the other of which is white. —William Faulkner
Opinion is a flitting thing But truth, outlasts the sun; If we cannot own them both, Possess the oldest one. — Emily Dickinson
Error lives but a day. Truth is eternal. — James Longstreet
Nothing But the Truth
by Dr. George Grant, Pastor at Parish Pres, Franklin, TN
Truth is both unchanging and universal and written on every man, woman, and child’s conscience. We never have to apologize for the truth. It is able to withstand every charge. It is able to bear up under every challenge. It is sufficient unto itself. In due course, it will prove its own value and veracity. The dumb certainties of experience will attest to its surety. As Shakespeare once quipped, “In the end the truth will out.”
The truth is not merely a moral construct. It is not a subjective application of some man-made ethical system. It is a reflection of the way things actually are. It is a part of the very warp and woof of reality. So, to veer away from the truth is to swerve into the realm of the fantastic. If we don’t live in light of the truth we are simply not being honest with ourselves and those around us. It is a dangerous form of denial. It is not too much to say therefore, that to deliberately and perpetually reject the truth is nothing short of a kind of insanity.
Truth is objective. It is consistent. It is balanced. It is both beautiful and practical. It is both good and helpful. It is accessible, knowable, and comprehendible. It is dependable, predictable, and unchangeable. Truth is believable—because it squares with the world as it is and with us as we are.
Knowing the truth—and living in accord with the truth—is not just sensible and sane, it is remarkably fruitful and productive. When men discover the truth it is as if the lights suddenly come on in their minds, hearts, and lives. Progress is made. Justice is served. Hope is satisfied. Trust is established. Love is confirmed. And freedom is safeguarded. Truth is just as surely a benefit to the scientist as it is to the philosopher. It is just as critical for a physician as it is for a husband. It is just as essential in the work of the artist as it is in the work of the lawyer.
In the midst of this poor fallen world where evil is pitted against love for the hearts, minds, and affections of all men everywhere, truth is an essential weapon in the arsenal of the good. Integrity, honor, and courage depend upon it. Indeed, apart from it, a civil society cannot long survive.
Men who deny the fact that there is any such thing as objective truth crop up in every generation. But, they are always in the minority—clamoring for attention on college campuses, on Hollywood back lots, or on late night talk shows. But their ideas seldom make it out of such enclaves into the real world. For most of us, the truth is rather obvious. At the very least, we are able to see the truth in hindsight.
Unfortunately, we don’t always live like it. The fact is we are not naturally inclined to affirm the truth even when we are perfectly well aware of that truth. On the contrary, our first impulse is generally to recoil from it. We try to avoid it. We try to ignore it. We try to side step it. Or we try to deny it. We might admire the truth, but rarely do we really want to hear it. We prefer a sugar-coated version of life, the universe, and everything. We are unabashedly partial to perspectives slanted in our favor.
That is why, throughout history, sages have been persecuted, statesmen have been rejected, and saints have been vilified. Think of all the great men and women across the ages who were rejected by their own people in their own day simply because the truth they told was unpopular. Old Testament prophets like Jeremiah were beaten, imprisoned, and sent into exile. Scientists like Galileo were silenced as dangerous heretics. Educators like Boethius were mocked as impractical mystics. Adventurers like Columbus were dismissed as idle dreamers.
During the past century or so we have been particularly rough on those who proclaimed the truth. Teddy Roosevelt was considered too volatile to hold high elective office. Winston Churchill was voted out of office after winning the Second World War. Booker T. Washington was dismissed as an ineffective compromiser.
The reason for this is simply that the truth can sometimes be uncomfortable. It can cut across the grain of our preferences and prejudices. It tells us of the way things have always been, they way they are now, and how they ought to be in days ahead. Thus, sometimes the truth can really hurt. Sometimes, in fact, it can be down right offensive.
Even when a perfect truth is offered perfectly by a perfect messenger, it can ruffle our feathers and raise our hackles. The renowned English preacher of the last generation, D. Martyn Lloyd Jones once remarked, “The great effect of our Lord's preaching was to make everybody feel condemned, and nobody likes that.”
On almost every page of the New Testament, we find Jesus offending someone. When He wasn't confronting the Scribes and the Pharisees, He was rebuking the promiscuous and the perverse. When He wasn't alienating the Saducees and the Herodians, He was reproving the tax-collectors and the prostitutes. He even had a knack for estranging His own disciples with His “hard sayings” and “dark parables.”
Jesus “meek and mild” was rarely meek or mild when it came to telling the truth. He pulled no punches. As philosopher and theologian Michael Bauman has commented, “At various times, and when the situation demanded, Jesus publicly denounced sinners as snakes, dogs, foxes, hypocrites, fouled tombs, and dirty dishes. He actually referred to one of His chief disciples as Satan. So that His hearers would not miss the point, He sometimes referred to the objects of his most intense ridicule both by name and by position, and often face to face. . . . Christ did not affirm sinners; He affirmed the repentant. Others He often addressed with the most withering invective. God incarnate did not avoid using words and tactics that His listeners found deeply offensive. He well understood that sometimes it is wrong to be nice.”
He was an equal opportunity offender. But His message was never intended to be popular; it was intended to be true. His was a message of Good News, not nice news. And that is simply not a popular notion. Not now. Not ever. Thus, “He came unto His own and His own received Him not.” (John 1:11).
None of us like to hear that we are wrong, that we have to make changes in our lives, that we have to adjust our way of thinking, or that we have to admit our faults. We are loathe to confess that are in need of repentance, forgiveness, or forbearance. And we persist in our pride even when we know the truth.
The truth demands something of us. It may or may not demand something of us as dramatic as what it demanded of the passengers of Flight 93. Though the truth ultimately sets us free, it does so at some cost.
Sometimes it is not so much our resistance to change that blinds us to the truth as it is our insistence on change. We moderns are enamored of progress. We live at a time when things shiny and new are prized far above things old and time-worn. For most of us, any truth confirmed by wisdom and experience across the ages is automatically suspect. We tend to look on such ancient and universal truths as little more than evidence of quirky primitivism or nostalgic sentimentalism. Such things are hardly more than the droning, monotonous succession of obsolete notions, anachronous ideals, and antiquarian habits—sound and fury, signifying nothing. As philosopher Richard Weaver has argued, “Since the time of Bacon the world has been running away from, rather than toward, first principles, so that, on the verbal level, we see fact substituted for truth.”
It is no less ludicrous to assert that something may have been true at ten minutes before the hour but cannot be at ten minutes after the hour than to assert that something may have been true ten centuries ago but cannot be ten centuries hence. If something is true, the hands of the clock are of little relevance.
In our pride, we think we know better than all those who went before us. According to Paul Johnson, this odd approach to denying long-held truths has actually been institutionalized as a part of the peculiar culture of modernity, “With the decline of clerical power in the nineteenth century, a new kind of mentor emerged to fill the vacuum and capture the ear of society. The secular intellectual might be deist, skeptic, or atheist. But he was just as ready as any pontiff or presbyter to tell mankind how to conduct its affairs.”
This new breed of prophet, priest, and king brought a tragic compulsion to his task of unmaking truth—and thereby remaking the world in which he lived, “He proclaimed from the start, a special devotion to the interests of humanity and an evangelical duty to advance them by his teaching. He brought to this self-appointed task a far more radical approach than his clerical predecessors. He felt himself bound by no corpus of revealed religion. The collective wisdom of the past, the legacy of tradition, the prescriptive codes of ancestral experience existed to be selectively followed or wholly rejected entirely as his own good sense might decide. For the first time in human history, and with growing confidence and audacity, men arose to assert that they could diagnose the ills of society and cure them with their own unaided intellects: more, that they could devise formulae whereby not merely the structure of society but the fundamental habits of human beings could be transformed for the better. Unlike their sacerdotal predecessors, they were not servants and interpreters of the gods but substitutes. Their hero was Prometheus, who stole celestial fire and brought it to earth.”
As a result, this motley band of social engineers marshaled little more than their wits in their attempts at annulling old truths and thus reinventing humankind—a task no less arduous and no less fantastic than trying to annul gravity and reinvent the wheel. The result was predictably deleterious. Ultimately the self-appointed prophets, priests, and kings had their vaunted ideals dashed against the hard reality of history. The sad experience of the twentieth century—two devastating world wars, unnumbered holocausts and genocides, the fierce tyrannies of communism’s evil empire, and the embarrassing foibles of liberalism’s welfare state—ultimately exposed their high flying dreams as the noisome eccentricities that they are.
Despite history’s stern rebuke though, there are still a few die-hard devotees of this ever-hopeful worldview at work in our society. Their cant is rather ragged and shop-worn but their influence has not yet altogether disappeared. According to historian William Gairdner they are intent on making one last ditch effort to usher in their man-made utopia of man-made truths, “The legions of well-intentioned but smug, educated elites have agreed in advance to reject thousands of years of inherited wisdom, values, habit, custom, and insight and replace this heritage with their official utopian vision of the perfect society. They are the progressives, and they can be found in every political party. Trained as scientific, or logical rationalists, these social utopians haughtily treat all social or moral traditions and conventions as arbitrary, rather than as venerable repositories of indispensable social, family, and religious values. They despise natural authority, especially of a local or family variety, and they want to replace it with a sufficiently homogenous state power to bring about their coercive social dreamland. So with a government wage or grant in one hand and a policy whip in the other, they set about forcibly aligning individuals and customs with their dangerously narrow vision, then clamor after ever greater funding and ever more progressive legislation for the education or socialization of the people.”
But many of the wisest of men and women of our day were never fooled by this Tower of Babel-like effort. They recognized that a comprehension of the truth is a foundation upon which all genuine advancement must be built—that it is in fact, the prerequisite to all real progress. As G. K. Chesterton quipped, “Weak things must boast of being new, like so many new German philosophies. But strong things can boast of being old. Strong things can boast of being moribund.”
Unhampered and unfettered truth is the only ground upon which honest, open, and free relationships may be built—whether in families and communities or among societies and nations. Wisdom, as it has been expressed through all the ages has always welcomed the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
In order to advance the cause of life and liberty in these dark and difficult days, we will have to recover what we have lost at the hands of the prophets, priests, and kings of modernity—we must learn the lessons of history. But we will also have to overcome our aversion to the truth when it makes us uncomfortable or when it offends us.
Truth can stand the debate test. Poke it. Probe it. Explore it. Expose it. Turn it upside down. Turn it inside out. Put it under the microscope. Place it under the harshest of conditions. The truth will endure. It will always show itself to be true. On that we can surely and safely rely.
The American experiment in liberty was rooted in that kind of confidence. And if the experiment is to continue in the days ahead—benefiting our children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren—then we must take care to follow in their footsteps.
There is no need for us to attempt to reinvent the wheel. The battle for truth has been fought again and again and again. Successfully. We need not cast about for direction. We need not grope in the dark for strategies, programs, and agendas. We need not manufacture new ideas, new priorities, or new tactics. We already have a tested and proven formula for victory. We already have a winning legacy. We simply need to reclaim it. We simply need to recover what is rightfully ours. Whatever the cost, we need only to rely upon the truth.
The infamous skeptic Friedrich Nietzsche once confessed, “We all fear truth.” Why would he say that? Because, as the great Spanish author asserted, “Truth may be stretched but it cannot be broken, and always gets above falsehood, as oil does above water.” And that is a fearsome thing to doubters. On the other hand, it is a great relief to all the rest of us. After all, it is the truth that will ultimately set us free.
Friday, June 08, 2007
You can't win if you won't run
One of my all time favorite stories and movies is Chariots of Fire. If you haven't seen it, get it. Also get the movie titled "Rudy." It's another keeper.
In Chariots of Fire the athletic nemesis of the hero has an exchange with his girl friend that goes like this: "I won't run if I can't win," Harold Abrahams tells his girlfriend. She replies, "You can't win if you won't run."
Right!
The sooner our children learn this lesson, along with wisdom and maturity, the better for them. Few will run. Many will whine, covet, and complain about those who do.
Someone wrote (or said) long ago (or so it seems) that it is better to aim for the stars and miss than aim for the dirt and hit it every time.
One of my heroes, Teddy Roosevelt, once said this: "There were all kinds of things of which I was afraid at first, ranging from grizzly bears to 'mean' horses and gunfighters; but acting as if I was not afraid I gradually ceased to be afraid. Most men have the same experience if they choose.They will first learn to bear" themselves well in trials which they anticipate and which they school themselves in advance to meet. After a while the habit will grow on them, and they will behave well in sudden and unexpected emergencies which come upon them unawares."
You can't win if you won't run! If you run, even in the face of fear, you may win.
Well said.
In Chariots of Fire the athletic nemesis of the hero has an exchange with his girl friend that goes like this: "I won't run if I can't win," Harold Abrahams tells his girlfriend. She replies, "You can't win if you won't run."
Right!
The sooner our children learn this lesson, along with wisdom and maturity, the better for them. Few will run. Many will whine, covet, and complain about those who do.
Someone wrote (or said) long ago (or so it seems) that it is better to aim for the stars and miss than aim for the dirt and hit it every time.
One of my heroes, Teddy Roosevelt, once said this: "There were all kinds of things of which I was afraid at first, ranging from grizzly bears to 'mean' horses and gunfighters; but acting as if I was not afraid I gradually ceased to be afraid. Most men have the same experience if they choose.They will first learn to bear" themselves well in trials which they anticipate and which they school themselves in advance to meet. After a while the habit will grow on them, and they will behave well in sudden and unexpected emergencies which come upon them unawares."
You can't win if you won't run! If you run, even in the face of fear, you may win.
Well said.
Thursday, June 07, 2007
An Open Letter to Dr. James Dobson
My question is this: will we have an answer form Dr. Dobson?
Perry
Open Letter to Dr. James Dobson,
Signers include:
- Brian Rohrbough, president, Colorado Right to Life
- Rev. Tom Euteneuer, president, Human Life International
- Flip Benham, director, Operation Rescue / O.S.A.
- Judie Brown, president, American Life League
Dr. Dobson, we the undersigned grieve at your celebration of one of the most barbaric opinions ever issued by an American court. We plead with you to correct your misrepresentation of the Gonzales v. Carhart Supreme Court ruling. You have led many people to trust in Jesus Christ, so it is with love and great sadness that we admonish you.
You wrote at Family.org that you applaud the "pro-life Justices" nominated to the court by our pro-life presidents. Focus on the Family stated, "the Supreme Court has affirmed the value of human life." But actually, these Justices concur optimistically on page 30 that, "The medical profession [abortionists] may find different and less shocking methods to abort the fetus..." It is false for Focus on the Family to claim this ruling has any concern for the child; the Justices' real concern is to improve the public-relations image of the abortionist (please see SupremeCourtUS.gov for the ruling itself, and see our excerpts here).
The Justices you called "pro-life" did not "affirm" the life of the unborn but upheld a mere "regulatory" law "under the Commerce Clause" (p. 36). These Justices you misrepresent as "pro-life" actually suggest other ways for abortionists to kill the fully intact, late-term child to comply with their regulation, such as "an injection that kills the fetus" (p. 34). Dr. Dobson, imagine the horror yet to come now that our greatest Christian leaders are willing to call good evil, and evil good. Throughout the ruling, Justices Kennedy, Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, and Alito concur that both the partial-birth abortion (PBA) ban, and their ruling, allow the abortionist to deliver a late-term baby all the way up to the navel and then kill him (especially pp. 17-26). To actually violate this regulation (p. 17) "requires the fetus to be delivered ‘until... any part of the fetal trunk past the navel is outside the body of the mother'" as in a standard breech (feet-first) abortion.
You "thank God for this victory that affirms the value of human life," but this vulgar ruling actually instructs on how to perform just another form of partial-birth abortion, just not "past the navel." And you celebrate this even though it affirms causing "the fetus to tear apart" (p. 4). The Justices build upon the late-term abortion procedure called dilation and evacuation, which this ruling repeatedly upholds as remaining legal, stating (p. 21) that "D&E will often involve a physician pulling a ‘substantial portion' of a still living fetus, say, an arm or leg, into the [birth canal] prior to the death of the fetus." Then for the purpose of this current opinion, Kennedy, Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, and Alito, regarding a still living unborn child, ruled that (p. 22) "the removal of a small portion [‘say, an arm or leg'] of the fetus is not prohibited" and that's after the baby is pulled outside the mother as far as to his bellybutton (p. 22).
False Claims from Focus
Dr. Dobson, you mislead Christians claiming this ruling will "protect children." The court granted no authority to save the life of even a single child. You wrongly assert that this ruling finds, "no constitutional right to slay a healthy, nearly born baby by stabbing it in the back of the head and vacuuming out its brains, all without even anesthetizing the child." In truth, the "pro-life Justices" indicate repeatedly the abortionist can still do exactly that. The ruling even permits a textbook partial-birth abortion, if for example the mother is over "dilate[d]" (p. 24) and the baby, by "inadvertence," is delivered up to the neck as in typical PBA. Then the abortionist can kill him by "intact D&E" (p. 24), i.e., by partial-birth abortion, exactly in the cruel manner you have just described. An abortionist only needs to maintain that his original "intent" was to deliver the baby up to the navel before killing him. "If a living fetus is delivered past the critical point [the bellybutton] by accident or inadvertence [and then killed] no crime has occurred" (p. 18).
Some of us learned that Focus on the Family staff was falsely informing supporters that this PBA ban has outlawed abortions in the third trimester, so we recorded our own call to 800-A-FAMILY, and posted online that call with Susan from your correspondence department. She told us that with this PBA ruling, "The U.S. Supreme Court made it illegal for women to have an abortion in the last trimester." Online at KGOV.com, we also document other pro-life media outlets misrepresenting this vicious ruling. Following your example, many national ministries have spent years using the PBA ban to motivate financial donations, all the while misrepresenting the legal effect of the ban. Today millions of Christians, including your own staff, have been deceived. As a member of the Evangelical Council For Financial Accountability, Focus on the Family commits to adhere to the ECFA's Seven Standards of Responsible Stewardship, which require at "7.1 Truthfulness in Communication: All representations of fact... must be current, complete, and accurate. There must be no material... exaggerations of fact or use of misleading... communication which would tend to create a false impression or misunderstanding." Yet the court explicitly stated the PBA ban "does not on its face impose a substantial obstacle" to "late-term" abortion (p. 26). And since this ban cannot prevent a single abortion, of course, it imposes no obstacle, and neither does it "protect children" (your words) or ban "abortion in the last trimester" (words offered by some of your staff).
As the founder of Focus on the Family, you are responsible for the truth of your organization's statements. The truth is, there is nothing new with this ruling that is good, no precedent, no defense of life, only brutality and death.
More Wicked than Roe
Some pro-life leaders even admitted this ban would not save lives but that it would "keep the issue in the news," as your V.P. of Public Policy Tom Minnery has said. Others misrepresent excerpts from the ruling that sound encouraging, e.g., "The government may... show its profound respect for the life within the woman" (p. 27). The Justices reprint this lip-service from the Casey ruling of 15 years earlier, but they show no such respect.
This wicked ruling trivializes the dreadful account of killing a child whose arms and legs are wiggling outside the mother, callously comparing our revulsion to our reaction to any medical procedure, like being squeamish over getting stitches. The Justices quote (pp. 8-9) a sympathetic nurse and then an abortionist. "The baby's little fingers were clasping... his little feet were kicking. Then the doctor stuck the scissors in the back of his head... the baby's arms jerked out..." Then from the abortionist: "For the staff to have to deal with a fetus that has ‘some viability to it, some movement of limbs, [is] always a difficult situation.'" And with grave wickedness, the "pro-life Justices" observe (p. 29): "some doctors may prefer not to disclose precise details of the means that will be used... Any number of patients facing imminent surgical procedures would prefer not to hear all details, lest the usual anxiety... become the more intense. This is likely the case with the abortion procedures here in issue."
Dr. Dobson, the court, including Roberts and Alito, trivializes the grotesque particulars of causing "the fetus to tear apart" (p. 4) by comparing that to getting queasy by talk of incisions, and you "applaud the court." You should be appalled.
Focus on the Family and many ministries celebrate this wicked ruling to justify the fifteen years of wasted effort. Pro-lifers gave tens of millions of dollars to the movement responding to countless fundraising pleas that mention the PBA ban. A major pro-life fundraising firm told Colorado Right To Life's V.P. Leslie Hanks, "The PBA script gets the best results."
America has killed twenty million children during this long distraction, all in pursuit of a ban that from the beginning Never Had The Authority To Prevent Even A Single Abortion. Dr. Dobson, you and these other leaders needed to warn Christians of all this, but instead you joined together in calling evil good. Please stop foisting onto the church the falsehood that this gruesome ruling will "protect children." This decision, to use your word, is more "Naziesque" than the PBA it regulates.
This wicked ruling does not even prohibit aborting partially born children. It is not a ban, but a partial-birth abortion manual. These "pro-life Justices" give instructions on what can be called Navel Birth Abortion, only a four-inch variation from a textbook PBA. Steps from the ruling:
1) The abortionist may partially deliver the unborn child all the way to the bellybutton, but not "past the navel."
2) Then "a leg might be ripped off," etc. to "kill the fetus."
3) Or alternatively, "find... less shocking methods to abort..."
What a mockery of the goodwill of rank-and-file pro-lifers.
Dr. Dobson, in celebrating this evil ruling, you used the word "brutally" regarding PBA. The ruling itself speaks of brutality, but in the exact opposite sense that you used it. The Justices raise the likelihood that with this ruling, the fetus faces greater brutality. On page 30, the Justices note the objection "that the standard D&E is in some respects as brutal, if not more, than the intact D&E [PBA]." That is, standard late-term D&E abortion appears to be more cruel than PBA. And the Justices do not rebut that claim. Their interest is not to protect children, but to promote the "integrity and ethics" (p. 27) of late-term abortion. The concern of these "pro-life Justices" has nothing to do with the brutality against the child, but with improving "the public's perception" (p. 30) of late-term abortion. Focus on the Family should not hide this truth.
Incrementalism is fine; compromised incrementalism violates God's enduring command, Do not murder. When you compromise on this fundamental law, you undermine the pro-life goal of re-establishing the personhood of the child, and you cannot possibly foresee all the negative consequences. And now these kids will suffer more horrifically with this ruling than before, as we congratulate ourselves.
The court ruling you rejoice over, Dr. Dobson, results in the legal preference for "reasonable alternative procedures" (p. 33) for killing "late-term" children. These reasonable alternatives include "a leg might be ripped off the fetus," "friction causes the fetus to tear apart," "evacuating the fetus piece by piece continues," "10 to 15 passes with the forceps," "ripping it apart," "dismemberment" (pp. 4-6). And you "applaud the court." We rebuke you.
Beyond the children, your praise helps destroy the souls of these wicked Justices who no doubt take comfort in the approval of Christian leaders. You help them feel safe as they violate God's enduring command, Do not murder; and then with hubris, they demand that abortionists follow their new regulation of how to murder a child. We expect such evil from humanists. But for a Christian leader to give this false sense of security to judges and officials at all levels of government is an affront to the holiness of God. They do not fear for their souls, but how is it that you do not warn them? How have you arrived at this place?
For more than a quarter century, the pro-life movement with your support, has adopted moral relativism and legal positivism, obsessing on process and overlooking fundamental justice. You mourned a missed cloture vote in the Senate (FOTF, May 2005, "Gang of 14"), but celebrate an evil ruling that affirms "ripping... apart" children. Gonzales v. Carhart unequivocally affirms the "killing" of children as long as you follow its guidelines, and the pro-life movement cheers, for the ends now justify the means, and right and wrong have become negotiable. God did not design the Body of Christ to follow lawyers, talk show hosts, or anyone who puts politics ahead of righteousness. We want to follow your lead, Dr. Dobson, but not in the direction you now head. We want to follow the standard in the pledge you made before hundreds of thousands at the Rally for Life in Washington D.C. in 1990, to never support any effort that will intentionally "kill one innocent baby."
When you call these judges "pro-life," you dangerously redefine what that means. Far from asserting the personhood of the unborn, these Justices have only undermined the child's God-given right to life, and re-use their old anti-life phrase, "the fetus that may become a child" (p. 15). And the majority opinion is pleased that Congress did not use the term child, but fetus. In concurring, these Justices note that the Nebraska ban that was struck down described, "a living unborn child" and Congress responded to the court in "material ways" including that it "adopts the phrase ‘delivers a living fetus,' ...instead of ‘delivering... a living unborn child'" (p. 21).
Groups Celebrating this Evil Ruling
National Right to Life: "applauds... ruling"
Christian Coalition: "commends the five justices"
Family Research Council: "Court no longer endorses... killing of innocent, partially-born babies"
Priests for Life: "applauds the ruling"
Concerned Women for America: "justice was served"
Founder, Beverly LaHaye: "victory on behalf of innocent human life"
President Wendy Wright: "Court... protect[s] babies from painful abortion"
American Family Association: "reason has prevailed"
U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops: "welcomes [the] decision"
D. James Kennedy's ministries: "enormously good news... for unborn children"
Jay Sekulow and the ACLJ: "happy to report... a significant victory"
Christian Law Association: "Court considered the welfare of the unborn child"
Americans United for Life: "praises ruling"
Focus on the Family: "We thank God for this victory that affirms the value of human life."
These follow your lead, Dr. Dobson as you "thank God for this victory that affirms the value of human life."
Knowing right from wrong, and telling the truth is vital always, but even more so when the lives of children hang in the balance. Yet, for many years you have misled the Body of Christ about the ban, and now about the ruling itself.
Leaders Condemning this Evil Ruling
Ambassador Alan Keyes, RenewAmerica
Judie Brown, American Life League
Flip Benham, Operation Rescue / O.S.A.
Prof. Charles Rice, Notre Dame Law School
John Archibold, founding board member, Nat'l Right to Life, AUL
Jim Rudd, Covenant News
John Lofton, The American View
Brian Martin, TheologyWeb.com
Eric Guttormson, TheologyOnline.com
Dr. Patrick Johnston, ProLifePhysicians.org
Chuck Baldwin, Crossroad Baptist Church
Steve Curtis, LifeCommercials.com
Ken & Jo Scott, ProLife Colorado
Gino Geraci, Calvary Chapel South Denver
Rev. Tom Euteneuer, Human Life International
Brian Rohrbough , Colorado Right To Life
(Email CRTL to add your ministry to this list of those condemning the ruling.)
Moral Relativism
Dr. Dobson, you have become a moral relativist and a legal positivist, along with virtually all the "pro-life" conservative judges put in office over the last quarter century. Justice Antonin Scalia said on Feb. 4, 2002 at a Pew Forum, "I will strike down Roe v. Wade, but I will also strike down a law that is the opposite of Roe v. Wade. ... One [side] wants no state to be able to prohibit abortion and the other one wants every state to have to prohibit abortion, and they're both wrong..." All Christians should grieve at this. No state, no subdivision of government whatsoever, has the authority to set up extermination camps, or abortion clinics. This wicked legal principle is not pro-life, it is pro-choice, by process. Dr. Dobson, you have joined Scalia and other heroes of the pro-life community, rejecting God's enduring command, Do Not Murder, as the most fundamental and inviolable of all legal principles, preferring instead relativism based upon ever-changing "precedent."
On February 24, 2006, you wrote in response to these concerns that were posted at KGOV .com, and it grieves us to even repeat this, but you actually defended decisions of judges who rule to kill the innocent, as long as they bow to process. In 2000, federal judge Samuel Alito struck down New Jersey's partial-birth abortion ban and voted to keep PBA legal (Planned Parenthood vs. NJ), and you commended him for that ruling because he was merely following "the long-established principle" of "precedent." But there is an older legal precedent, Thou shall not murder, and when judges violate that standard, and do so on "principle," then the nation has become lawless. After World War II, the Allies convicted German judges whose defense for ruling to kill the innocent was that they had followed precedent and the law. But moral relativism and legal positivism are no defense. And setting aside God's prohibition of murder is humanism. Over the years Dr. Dobson, you have slid to where you now advocate the legal theory of the defendants at Nuremberg .
On June 29, 2005 some of us in person gave a presentation to your V.P. Tom Minnery and your judicial analysts, warning emphatically against legal positivism and the misrepresentations of the PBA ban. Two years ago in this same newspaper some of us published an open letter to you and we produced a DVD, Focus on the Strategy, to warn about legal positivism. And we were heartened that in 2006, you produced the excellent Truth Project in which Dr. Del Tackett, president of the Focus on the Family Institute, also warned specifically of legal positivism, cautioning that when "legal truth is based on the decision of the state," we have thrown off God's principles of justice as a foundation. But you have not heeded even your own ministry's warning. Our pro-life Christian leaders have turned the wicked humanist values of moral relativism and legal positivism into the greatest obligation of government, and so you defend rulings that uphold killing the innocent because you are a legal positivist. Many conservative lawyers grew up with an inclination toward Judeo-Christian morality and absolutes. They could have developed into defenders of life, but instead, now as judges they attack the only legal defense of the unborn, which is not based upon moral relativism, but upon personhood and the God-given right to life.
Online at Family.org you wrote, "President George W. Bush, the most pro-life President in United States history - has acted to protect children from the barbarity of partial birth abortion. I applaud the President for nominating two pro-life Justices to [the] Court..." Dr. Dobson, you have perverted what it means to be pro-life. And you misled your supporters when you wrote, "We applaud the Court for joining President Bush and Congress in declaring that a civilized society must not condone such compassionless and hideous acts against human beings." They did no such thing. And unless you repent, our Christian leaders may launch another 15-year destructive fundraiser, again undermining the personhood of the child, while twenty million more die.
Partial-birth abortion was one of the quickest ways to kill the baby, but it was also the most difficult to witness and contemplate, for the abortionist's staff, for the politician, and for society. Other more hideous late-term techniques are now legally preferred, although less visibly blatant, compared to a child killed once he is mostly outside his mother. This ban pushes the crime of late-term abortion back into the darkness of the womb, where it can lurk out of the public consciousness.
We ask you and your staff at Focus on the Family and all readers to do three things.
1) Please take up the standard from your famous 1990 pledge and withhold support from any effort that would intentionally "kill one innocent baby."
2) Learn to recognize and then oppose moral relativism in law, called legal positivism.
3) Please go to Colorado RightToLife.org and sign their pledge titled:
40 Years / 50 Million Dead / One Commitment to never compromise on God's enduring command, Do not murder.
"There is a way that seems right to a man," warns Proverbs 14:12, "but its end is the way of death." Please repent, Dr. Dobson.
Signed,
- Brian Rohrbough, president, Colorado Right to Life
- Rev. Tom Euteneuer, president, Human Life International
- Flip Benham, director, Operation Rescue / Operation Save America
- Bob Enyart, pastor, Denver Bible Church
- Judie Brown, president, American Life League
Perry
Open Letter to Dr. James Dobson,
Signers include:
- Brian Rohrbough, president, Colorado Right to Life
- Rev. Tom Euteneuer, president, Human Life International
- Flip Benham, director, Operation Rescue / O.S.A.
- Judie Brown, president, American Life League
Dr. Dobson, we the undersigned grieve at your celebration of one of the most barbaric opinions ever issued by an American court. We plead with you to correct your misrepresentation of the Gonzales v. Carhart Supreme Court ruling. You have led many people to trust in Jesus Christ, so it is with love and great sadness that we admonish you.
You wrote at Family.org that you applaud the "pro-life Justices" nominated to the court by our pro-life presidents. Focus on the Family stated, "the Supreme Court has affirmed the value of human life." But actually, these Justices concur optimistically on page 30 that, "The medical profession [abortionists] may find different and less shocking methods to abort the fetus..." It is false for Focus on the Family to claim this ruling has any concern for the child; the Justices' real concern is to improve the public-relations image of the abortionist (please see SupremeCourtUS.gov for the ruling itself, and see our excerpts here).
The Justices you called "pro-life" did not "affirm" the life of the unborn but upheld a mere "regulatory" law "under the Commerce Clause" (p. 36). These Justices you misrepresent as "pro-life" actually suggest other ways for abortionists to kill the fully intact, late-term child to comply with their regulation, such as "an injection that kills the fetus" (p. 34). Dr. Dobson, imagine the horror yet to come now that our greatest Christian leaders are willing to call good evil, and evil good. Throughout the ruling, Justices Kennedy, Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, and Alito concur that both the partial-birth abortion (PBA) ban, and their ruling, allow the abortionist to deliver a late-term baby all the way up to the navel and then kill him (especially pp. 17-26). To actually violate this regulation (p. 17) "requires the fetus to be delivered ‘until... any part of the fetal trunk past the navel is outside the body of the mother'" as in a standard breech (feet-first) abortion.
You "thank God for this victory that affirms the value of human life," but this vulgar ruling actually instructs on how to perform just another form of partial-birth abortion, just not "past the navel." And you celebrate this even though it affirms causing "the fetus to tear apart" (p. 4). The Justices build upon the late-term abortion procedure called dilation and evacuation, which this ruling repeatedly upholds as remaining legal, stating (p. 21) that "D&E will often involve a physician pulling a ‘substantial portion' of a still living fetus, say, an arm or leg, into the [birth canal] prior to the death of the fetus." Then for the purpose of this current opinion, Kennedy, Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, and Alito, regarding a still living unborn child, ruled that (p. 22) "the removal of a small portion [‘say, an arm or leg'] of the fetus is not prohibited" and that's after the baby is pulled outside the mother as far as to his bellybutton (p. 22).
False Claims from Focus
Dr. Dobson, you mislead Christians claiming this ruling will "protect children." The court granted no authority to save the life of even a single child. You wrongly assert that this ruling finds, "no constitutional right to slay a healthy, nearly born baby by stabbing it in the back of the head and vacuuming out its brains, all without even anesthetizing the child." In truth, the "pro-life Justices" indicate repeatedly the abortionist can still do exactly that. The ruling even permits a textbook partial-birth abortion, if for example the mother is over "dilate[d]" (p. 24) and the baby, by "inadvertence," is delivered up to the neck as in typical PBA. Then the abortionist can kill him by "intact D&E" (p. 24), i.e., by partial-birth abortion, exactly in the cruel manner you have just described. An abortionist only needs to maintain that his original "intent" was to deliver the baby up to the navel before killing him. "If a living fetus is delivered past the critical point [the bellybutton] by accident or inadvertence [and then killed] no crime has occurred" (p. 18).
Some of us learned that Focus on the Family staff was falsely informing supporters that this PBA ban has outlawed abortions in the third trimester, so we recorded our own call to 800-A-FAMILY, and posted online that call with Susan from your correspondence department. She told us that with this PBA ruling, "The U.S. Supreme Court made it illegal for women to have an abortion in the last trimester." Online at KGOV.com, we also document other pro-life media outlets misrepresenting this vicious ruling. Following your example, many national ministries have spent years using the PBA ban to motivate financial donations, all the while misrepresenting the legal effect of the ban. Today millions of Christians, including your own staff, have been deceived. As a member of the Evangelical Council For Financial Accountability, Focus on the Family commits to adhere to the ECFA's Seven Standards of Responsible Stewardship, which require at "7.1 Truthfulness in Communication: All representations of fact... must be current, complete, and accurate. There must be no material... exaggerations of fact or use of misleading... communication which would tend to create a false impression or misunderstanding." Yet the court explicitly stated the PBA ban "does not on its face impose a substantial obstacle" to "late-term" abortion (p. 26). And since this ban cannot prevent a single abortion, of course, it imposes no obstacle, and neither does it "protect children" (your words) or ban "abortion in the last trimester" (words offered by some of your staff).
As the founder of Focus on the Family, you are responsible for the truth of your organization's statements. The truth is, there is nothing new with this ruling that is good, no precedent, no defense of life, only brutality and death.
More Wicked than Roe
Some pro-life leaders even admitted this ban would not save lives but that it would "keep the issue in the news," as your V.P. of Public Policy Tom Minnery has said. Others misrepresent excerpts from the ruling that sound encouraging, e.g., "The government may... show its profound respect for the life within the woman" (p. 27). The Justices reprint this lip-service from the Casey ruling of 15 years earlier, but they show no such respect.
This wicked ruling trivializes the dreadful account of killing a child whose arms and legs are wiggling outside the mother, callously comparing our revulsion to our reaction to any medical procedure, like being squeamish over getting stitches. The Justices quote (pp. 8-9) a sympathetic nurse and then an abortionist. "The baby's little fingers were clasping... his little feet were kicking. Then the doctor stuck the scissors in the back of his head... the baby's arms jerked out..." Then from the abortionist: "For the staff to have to deal with a fetus that has ‘some viability to it, some movement of limbs, [is] always a difficult situation.'" And with grave wickedness, the "pro-life Justices" observe (p. 29): "some doctors may prefer not to disclose precise details of the means that will be used... Any number of patients facing imminent surgical procedures would prefer not to hear all details, lest the usual anxiety... become the more intense. This is likely the case with the abortion procedures here in issue."
Dr. Dobson, the court, including Roberts and Alito, trivializes the grotesque particulars of causing "the fetus to tear apart" (p. 4) by comparing that to getting queasy by talk of incisions, and you "applaud the court." You should be appalled.
Focus on the Family and many ministries celebrate this wicked ruling to justify the fifteen years of wasted effort. Pro-lifers gave tens of millions of dollars to the movement responding to countless fundraising pleas that mention the PBA ban. A major pro-life fundraising firm told Colorado Right To Life's V.P. Leslie Hanks, "The PBA script gets the best results."
America has killed twenty million children during this long distraction, all in pursuit of a ban that from the beginning Never Had The Authority To Prevent Even A Single Abortion. Dr. Dobson, you and these other leaders needed to warn Christians of all this, but instead you joined together in calling evil good. Please stop foisting onto the church the falsehood that this gruesome ruling will "protect children." This decision, to use your word, is more "Naziesque" than the PBA it regulates.
This wicked ruling does not even prohibit aborting partially born children. It is not a ban, but a partial-birth abortion manual. These "pro-life Justices" give instructions on what can be called Navel Birth Abortion, only a four-inch variation from a textbook PBA. Steps from the ruling:
1) The abortionist may partially deliver the unborn child all the way to the bellybutton, but not "past the navel."
2) Then "a leg might be ripped off," etc. to "kill the fetus."
3) Or alternatively, "find... less shocking methods to abort..."
What a mockery of the goodwill of rank-and-file pro-lifers.
Dr. Dobson, in celebrating this evil ruling, you used the word "brutally" regarding PBA. The ruling itself speaks of brutality, but in the exact opposite sense that you used it. The Justices raise the likelihood that with this ruling, the fetus faces greater brutality. On page 30, the Justices note the objection "that the standard D&E is in some respects as brutal, if not more, than the intact D&E [PBA]." That is, standard late-term D&E abortion appears to be more cruel than PBA. And the Justices do not rebut that claim. Their interest is not to protect children, but to promote the "integrity and ethics" (p. 27) of late-term abortion. The concern of these "pro-life Justices" has nothing to do with the brutality against the child, but with improving "the public's perception" (p. 30) of late-term abortion. Focus on the Family should not hide this truth.
Incrementalism is fine; compromised incrementalism violates God's enduring command, Do not murder. When you compromise on this fundamental law, you undermine the pro-life goal of re-establishing the personhood of the child, and you cannot possibly foresee all the negative consequences. And now these kids will suffer more horrifically with this ruling than before, as we congratulate ourselves.
The court ruling you rejoice over, Dr. Dobson, results in the legal preference for "reasonable alternative procedures" (p. 33) for killing "late-term" children. These reasonable alternatives include "a leg might be ripped off the fetus," "friction causes the fetus to tear apart," "evacuating the fetus piece by piece continues," "10 to 15 passes with the forceps," "ripping it apart," "dismemberment" (pp. 4-6). And you "applaud the court." We rebuke you.
Beyond the children, your praise helps destroy the souls of these wicked Justices who no doubt take comfort in the approval of Christian leaders. You help them feel safe as they violate God's enduring command, Do not murder; and then with hubris, they demand that abortionists follow their new regulation of how to murder a child. We expect such evil from humanists. But for a Christian leader to give this false sense of security to judges and officials at all levels of government is an affront to the holiness of God. They do not fear for their souls, but how is it that you do not warn them? How have you arrived at this place?
For more than a quarter century, the pro-life movement with your support, has adopted moral relativism and legal positivism, obsessing on process and overlooking fundamental justice. You mourned a missed cloture vote in the Senate (FOTF, May 2005, "Gang of 14"), but celebrate an evil ruling that affirms "ripping... apart" children. Gonzales v. Carhart unequivocally affirms the "killing" of children as long as you follow its guidelines, and the pro-life movement cheers, for the ends now justify the means, and right and wrong have become negotiable. God did not design the Body of Christ to follow lawyers, talk show hosts, or anyone who puts politics ahead of righteousness. We want to follow your lead, Dr. Dobson, but not in the direction you now head. We want to follow the standard in the pledge you made before hundreds of thousands at the Rally for Life in Washington D.C. in 1990, to never support any effort that will intentionally "kill one innocent baby."
When you call these judges "pro-life," you dangerously redefine what that means. Far from asserting the personhood of the unborn, these Justices have only undermined the child's God-given right to life, and re-use their old anti-life phrase, "the fetus that may become a child" (p. 15). And the majority opinion is pleased that Congress did not use the term child, but fetus. In concurring, these Justices note that the Nebraska ban that was struck down described, "a living unborn child" and Congress responded to the court in "material ways" including that it "adopts the phrase ‘delivers a living fetus,' ...instead of ‘delivering... a living unborn child'" (p. 21).
Groups Celebrating this Evil Ruling
National Right to Life: "applauds... ruling"
Christian Coalition: "commends the five justices"
Family Research Council: "Court no longer endorses... killing of innocent, partially-born babies"
Priests for Life: "applauds the ruling"
Concerned Women for America: "justice was served"
Founder, Beverly LaHaye: "victory on behalf of innocent human life"
President Wendy Wright: "Court... protect[s] babies from painful abortion"
American Family Association: "reason has prevailed"
U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops: "welcomes [the] decision"
D. James Kennedy's ministries: "enormously good news... for unborn children"
Jay Sekulow and the ACLJ: "happy to report... a significant victory"
Christian Law Association: "Court considered the welfare of the unborn child"
Americans United for Life: "praises ruling"
Focus on the Family: "We thank God for this victory that affirms the value of human life."
These follow your lead, Dr. Dobson as you "thank God for this victory that affirms the value of human life."
Knowing right from wrong, and telling the truth is vital always, but even more so when the lives of children hang in the balance. Yet, for many years you have misled the Body of Christ about the ban, and now about the ruling itself.
Leaders Condemning this Evil Ruling
Ambassador Alan Keyes, RenewAmerica
Judie Brown, American Life League
Flip Benham, Operation Rescue / O.S.A.
Prof. Charles Rice, Notre Dame Law School
John Archibold, founding board member, Nat'l Right to Life, AUL
Jim Rudd, Covenant News
John Lofton, The American View
Brian Martin, TheologyWeb.com
Eric Guttormson, TheologyOnline.com
Dr. Patrick Johnston, ProLifePhysicians.org
Chuck Baldwin, Crossroad Baptist Church
Steve Curtis, LifeCommercials.com
Ken & Jo Scott, ProLife Colorado
Gino Geraci, Calvary Chapel South Denver
Rev. Tom Euteneuer, Human Life International
Brian Rohrbough , Colorado Right To Life
(Email CRTL to add your ministry to this list of those condemning the ruling.)
Moral Relativism
Dr. Dobson, you have become a moral relativist and a legal positivist, along with virtually all the "pro-life" conservative judges put in office over the last quarter century. Justice Antonin Scalia said on Feb. 4, 2002 at a Pew Forum, "I will strike down Roe v. Wade, but I will also strike down a law that is the opposite of Roe v. Wade. ... One [side] wants no state to be able to prohibit abortion and the other one wants every state to have to prohibit abortion, and they're both wrong..." All Christians should grieve at this. No state, no subdivision of government whatsoever, has the authority to set up extermination camps, or abortion clinics. This wicked legal principle is not pro-life, it is pro-choice, by process. Dr. Dobson, you have joined Scalia and other heroes of the pro-life community, rejecting God's enduring command, Do Not Murder, as the most fundamental and inviolable of all legal principles, preferring instead relativism based upon ever-changing "precedent."
On February 24, 2006, you wrote in response to these concerns that were posted at KGOV .com, and it grieves us to even repeat this, but you actually defended decisions of judges who rule to kill the innocent, as long as they bow to process. In 2000, federal judge Samuel Alito struck down New Jersey's partial-birth abortion ban and voted to keep PBA legal (Planned Parenthood vs. NJ), and you commended him for that ruling because he was merely following "the long-established principle" of "precedent." But there is an older legal precedent, Thou shall not murder, and when judges violate that standard, and do so on "principle," then the nation has become lawless. After World War II, the Allies convicted German judges whose defense for ruling to kill the innocent was that they had followed precedent and the law. But moral relativism and legal positivism are no defense. And setting aside God's prohibition of murder is humanism. Over the years Dr. Dobson, you have slid to where you now advocate the legal theory of the defendants at Nuremberg .
On June 29, 2005 some of us in person gave a presentation to your V.P. Tom Minnery and your judicial analysts, warning emphatically against legal positivism and the misrepresentations of the PBA ban. Two years ago in this same newspaper some of us published an open letter to you and we produced a DVD, Focus on the Strategy, to warn about legal positivism. And we were heartened that in 2006, you produced the excellent Truth Project in which Dr. Del Tackett, president of the Focus on the Family Institute, also warned specifically of legal positivism, cautioning that when "legal truth is based on the decision of the state," we have thrown off God's principles of justice as a foundation. But you have not heeded even your own ministry's warning. Our pro-life Christian leaders have turned the wicked humanist values of moral relativism and legal positivism into the greatest obligation of government, and so you defend rulings that uphold killing the innocent because you are a legal positivist. Many conservative lawyers grew up with an inclination toward Judeo-Christian morality and absolutes. They could have developed into defenders of life, but instead, now as judges they attack the only legal defense of the unborn, which is not based upon moral relativism, but upon personhood and the God-given right to life.
Online at Family.org you wrote, "President George W. Bush, the most pro-life President in United States history - has acted to protect children from the barbarity of partial birth abortion. I applaud the President for nominating two pro-life Justices to [the] Court..." Dr. Dobson, you have perverted what it means to be pro-life. And you misled your supporters when you wrote, "We applaud the Court for joining President Bush and Congress in declaring that a civilized society must not condone such compassionless and hideous acts against human beings." They did no such thing. And unless you repent, our Christian leaders may launch another 15-year destructive fundraiser, again undermining the personhood of the child, while twenty million more die.
Partial-birth abortion was one of the quickest ways to kill the baby, but it was also the most difficult to witness and contemplate, for the abortionist's staff, for the politician, and for society. Other more hideous late-term techniques are now legally preferred, although less visibly blatant, compared to a child killed once he is mostly outside his mother. This ban pushes the crime of late-term abortion back into the darkness of the womb, where it can lurk out of the public consciousness.
We ask you and your staff at Focus on the Family and all readers to do three things.
1) Please take up the standard from your famous 1990 pledge and withhold support from any effort that would intentionally "kill one innocent baby."
2) Learn to recognize and then oppose moral relativism in law, called legal positivism.
3) Please go to Colorado RightToLife.org and sign their pledge titled:
40 Years / 50 Million Dead / One Commitment to never compromise on God's enduring command, Do not murder.
"There is a way that seems right to a man," warns Proverbs 14:12, "but its end is the way of death." Please repent, Dr. Dobson.
Signed,
- Brian Rohrbough, president, Colorado Right to Life
- Rev. Tom Euteneuer, president, Human Life International
- Flip Benham, director, Operation Rescue / Operation Save America
- Bob Enyart, pastor, Denver Bible Church
- Judie Brown, president, American Life League
Friday, June 01, 2007
In God We Trust
by Rev. R.J. Rushdoony
California Farmer 240:8 (Apr. 20, 1974), p. 22.
The men of our times have no right to complain of the developing problems and crises of our world. When men trust in civil government rather than in God, they will always get more statist power in their lives and less of God’s power. When men trust in controls rather than freedom, they will get more controls unto slavery and less freedom.
What men trust in becomes the power over their lives, and the god a man worships is known by what a man trusts. Our coins still read, “In God we trust,” but men address their hopes and prayers to the national and state capitols and then wonder why God abandons them.
St. Paul declared, “Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap” (Gal. 6:7). Harvest time is approaching for our age.
Men have sown unbelief, debt-living, a trust in what civil government can do for them rather than faith in God. They have looked to politicians for salvation rather than to Jesus Christ, and they have paid their taxes to the state and neglected their tithes to the Lord. They have given their children everything except godly nurture, and they have been rich to themselves and poor to God. Now, as they begin to see the harvest developing, they ask blindly, “Where did I go wrong?”
They want a harvest of blessings they never sowed for, and they want a Sabbath peace and rest they have always defiled, and they wonder at the results because they are blinded by their sins.
The house without foundations is destined to collapse in the storms of history, whereas the life built upon the rock of ages, Jesus Christ, will emerge secure and strong.
Look to your foundations. What is your life founded on? Where is your trust? Your life depends on it.
California Farmer 240:8 (Apr. 20, 1974), p. 22.
The men of our times have no right to complain of the developing problems and crises of our world. When men trust in civil government rather than in God, they will always get more statist power in their lives and less of God’s power. When men trust in controls rather than freedom, they will get more controls unto slavery and less freedom.
What men trust in becomes the power over their lives, and the god a man worships is known by what a man trusts. Our coins still read, “In God we trust,” but men address their hopes and prayers to the national and state capitols and then wonder why God abandons them.
St. Paul declared, “Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap” (Gal. 6:7). Harvest time is approaching for our age.
Men have sown unbelief, debt-living, a trust in what civil government can do for them rather than faith in God. They have looked to politicians for salvation rather than to Jesus Christ, and they have paid their taxes to the state and neglected their tithes to the Lord. They have given their children everything except godly nurture, and they have been rich to themselves and poor to God. Now, as they begin to see the harvest developing, they ask blindly, “Where did I go wrong?”
They want a harvest of blessings they never sowed for, and they want a Sabbath peace and rest they have always defiled, and they wonder at the results because they are blinded by their sins.
The house without foundations is destined to collapse in the storms of history, whereas the life built upon the rock of ages, Jesus Christ, will emerge secure and strong.
Look to your foundations. What is your life founded on? Where is your trust? Your life depends on it.
Is God an Insurance Agent?
by Rev. R.J. Rushdoony
California Farmer 242:7 (Apr. 5, 1975), p. 34.
I believe my insurance agent when he talks about insurance. He is competent, helpful, and accurate. But I do not believe in my insurance agent. When he talks economics, religion, or almost any other subject other than insurance, I can only shake my head with dismay at his departure from the faith of his fathers.
Many church members treat God as an insurance agent. They believe Him when He talks about Heaven and hell, death and salvation, and other such things, but they do not believe in Him. Moreover they do not believe Him when He talks about Himself, His sovereignty, justice and predestination, His requirement of the death penalty, of faithfulness, and much more.
They will calmly tell you that they are Bible-believing Christians, and that it is not necessary to believe in predestination and like things. In fact, earlier this year, when I was a guest invited to speak for four Sunday evenings at a church which prides itself on being true to the Bible, I was “asked” not to return after the second Sunday because I mentioned capital punishment favorably. We are under grace and love, I was told, not under law.
Indeed, I said, we are dead to the law as a death penalty against us, a handwriting of ordinances indicting us, but it is we, the old man in us, who are dead, not the law. Jesus Christ declared, “[I]t is easier for heaven and earth to pass, than one tittle of the law to fail” (Luke 16:17).
The mistake people make is to treat God like an insurance agent. I can pick and choose what I want from my agent. I cannot pick and choose with the Lord. I cannot buy life insurance or fire insurance from Him. He will not sell it. Anyone who thinks he can pick and choose from what God has to offer, to believe or not to believe, does not believe in God. They simply believe God on certain insurance concerns and matters. They have confused insurance with grace and mercy with lawlessness.
I only need my insurance agent when it suits me. At all other times, I want no part of him. I cannot deal so with God. I do not buy Him or His protection. He has bought me with the price of His only begotten Son, and I am totally His. I cannot use Him at my convenience, but He requires me to be used at His every word. He does not need to hear me, but in His grace He does. I must, however, hear and obey Him, because it is I who am His agent, not He mine.
To treat God as an insurance agent is to despise Him and to deny Him. The Lord can only be approached and known as God.
California Farmer 242:7 (Apr. 5, 1975), p. 34.
I believe my insurance agent when he talks about insurance. He is competent, helpful, and accurate. But I do not believe in my insurance agent. When he talks economics, religion, or almost any other subject other than insurance, I can only shake my head with dismay at his departure from the faith of his fathers.
Many church members treat God as an insurance agent. They believe Him when He talks about Heaven and hell, death and salvation, and other such things, but they do not believe in Him. Moreover they do not believe Him when He talks about Himself, His sovereignty, justice and predestination, His requirement of the death penalty, of faithfulness, and much more.
They will calmly tell you that they are Bible-believing Christians, and that it is not necessary to believe in predestination and like things. In fact, earlier this year, when I was a guest invited to speak for four Sunday evenings at a church which prides itself on being true to the Bible, I was “asked” not to return after the second Sunday because I mentioned capital punishment favorably. We are under grace and love, I was told, not under law.
Indeed, I said, we are dead to the law as a death penalty against us, a handwriting of ordinances indicting us, but it is we, the old man in us, who are dead, not the law. Jesus Christ declared, “[I]t is easier for heaven and earth to pass, than one tittle of the law to fail” (Luke 16:17).
The mistake people make is to treat God like an insurance agent. I can pick and choose what I want from my agent. I cannot pick and choose with the Lord. I cannot buy life insurance or fire insurance from Him. He will not sell it. Anyone who thinks he can pick and choose from what God has to offer, to believe or not to believe, does not believe in God. They simply believe God on certain insurance concerns and matters. They have confused insurance with grace and mercy with lawlessness.
I only need my insurance agent when it suits me. At all other times, I want no part of him. I cannot deal so with God. I do not buy Him or His protection. He has bought me with the price of His only begotten Son, and I am totally His. I cannot use Him at my convenience, but He requires me to be used at His every word. He does not need to hear me, but in His grace He does. I must, however, hear and obey Him, because it is I who am His agent, not He mine.
To treat God as an insurance agent is to despise Him and to deny Him. The Lord can only be approached and known as God.
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