BaylyBlog: Out of our minds, too...

What do Paulites and R2Kites have in common...

My dear wife says this post is only for readers who know what R2K is, have watched Ron Paul in a couple of the debates, and are familiar both with Woody Allen and Peggy Noonan's essay exposing him. Others would do well to skip it. PS: If you like Baylyblog and love Ron Paul, save yourself some grief and don't click through...

Joseph Maraachli and the state's usurpation of parental authority...

Joseph Maracchli was the subject of an intense right-to-life battle in Canada last spring. Sadly, a couple months ago he died at his parents’ home in Windsor, Ontario. He was 20 months old. Andrew Henry wrote about Joseph on Baylyblog back in March. You may review the details here.

The number of similar cases will explode in coming months and years and there are important lesssons Christian fathers and mothers should learn. God has given parents the natural affection and compassion for their own children that no doctor can truly have no matter how highly trained or respected he may be.

This is not to say that parents are incapable of being neglectful of their children, but it's the exception rather than the rule. God’s good gift to children is parents who are loving and tender toward them.

The ever-increasing power and authority of government in our lives can only produce bad fruit, and the belief that a well-paid and benevolent bureaucracy can make better decisions than parents is wicked...

Roe v. Wade's 39th anniversary: The Lord's throne is in Heaven...

(TB: On the occasion of the thirty-ninth anniversary of Roe v. Wade, I post this message. It would please me if you would take the time to read it. Thank you.)

I remain amazed that abortion could even become a political issue in a country with pretensions to being civilized. It is as if we were to debate the merits of legalizing cannibalism, with the liberal side chanting the slogan "Keep government out of the kitchen!"

There is no danger that the other side will ever be persuaded that it is wrong; there is, however, the very real danger that we will become discouraged, worn down, and inured to an evil that should always horrify and sicken us. The erosion of our consciences is surely part of the destructiveness of this abominable "procedure."   - Joe Sobran

The Lord'€™s Throne Is in Heaven

(For the choir director; a psalm of David.) In the LORD I take refuge; how can you say to my soul, "Flee as a bird to your mountain; for, behold, the wicked bend the bow, they make ready their arrow upon the string to shoot in darkness at the upright in heart. If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?" The LORD is in His holy temple; the LORD'€™S throne is in heaven; His eyes behold, His eyelids test the sons of men. The LORD tests the righteous and the wicked, and the one who loves violence His soul hates. Upon the wicked He will rain snares; fire and brimstone and burning wind will be the portion of their cup. For the LORD is righteous, He loves righteousness; the upright will behold His face. (Psalm 11:1-7)

Thirty one (now thirty-nine) years ago today, on January 22nd, 1973, the Supreme Court of these United States issued its infamous ruling, Roe v. Wade, in which the Court declared that a mother's intentional killing of her unborn child was a fundamental right guaranteed under our Constitution. Since that ruling, it has been a commonplace to observe that Roe v. Wade, the Court's repeal of the laws prohibiting abortion on the books of all fifty states, was simply the exercise of raw judicial power with a legal justification based upon a mist and a vapor--€”or as the Court itself might put it, emanations from penumbras.

Our Supreme Court: intentionally conniving at murder...

Since 1973, no one has made a name for himself defending Roe. v. Wade’s history, biology, ethics, logic, or justice; and only a few have been foolish enough to claim this ruling will stand the test of time...

Midwives, denominations, abortions, and my present political philosophy...

I don't write much about Indiana politics and government but it's caused me no small sadness to contemplate the term-limit-departure of our fiscally excellent governor a little over a year from now. Gov. Mitch Daniels will have completed his second term and will have to leave office.

If I am comforted in our loss of Mitch's magnificent fiscal leadership, my comfort comes from this: that his likely successor is a man, Representaive Mike Pence, who promises to govern with the same fiscal commitments while adding a theological framework to those commitments that promises to extend far beyond fiscal discipline, on to principles concerning many other areas of governance including the battlefields on which the destroyers of our nation and its states are focussing their revolution: sexuality, the Image of God in man, the origin and nature of sexuality and marriage decreed by our Creator in His Order of Creation, and so forth.

As you read through Daniels' penultimate State of the State Address delivered yesterday evening, you will gain a hint of why I respect him. He has been unflinching in disciplining the educationists of our state by a host of private initiatives that have finally brought competition into public education. True, he brags about over half of our state budget going to edcuation, and he seems to see higher education as an unqualified good. I disagree with both things as I disagreed with President Bush on similar matters. Mitch Daniels is not a wild-eyed enthusiast. He's a realist who really changed our state. Definitively. And reading, you'll see what difference it makes to each citizen of the state.

But there's something else I want to say, here.

Some thirty years ago, I was at the Presbyterian Church (USA) General Assembly to oppose their denominational abortion policy. My dear Mary Lee was pregnant and, since we were in the habit of having home births, I'd called the midwest representative of the PC(USA)'s self-funded independent medical insurance plan to ask if they'd cover the cost of our midwife? It was awkward. He hemmed and hawed and said he didn't know and would have to get back to me on it...

A parable...

To those Reformed men ever vigilant to protect our form of government from being harmed by the passage of code banning abortion across our nation, a parable... (TB)

Here we have the Hutu father sitting on his porch holding forth on the boundaries of his property and the limits of his legal powers and obligations as a group of neighbors use machetes to hack to shreds his own Hutu son and Tutsi daughter-in-law and their eight children (his grandchildren).

But of course, the bloodshed is out in the street just beyond his property line...

Neglecting the weightier provisions of the law...

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cummin, and have neglected the weightier provisions of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness; but these are the things you should have done without neglecting the others. (Matthew 23:23)

One commenter calls our attention to the blog of a writer of economic treatises popular within some Reformed circles who, in the linked blog post, makes the case that Federal laws against abortion are unconstitutional and that conservatives seeking federal action to protect the babies is the legal equivalent of liberals using the Constitution to declare baby-murder legal. Both sides abuse the Constitution for their own pet projects, this Theconomist argues.

(PLEASE NOTE: The paragraph above has been changed substantially in order to clarify that I meant for the words below to be more general than personal; but also that I did not intend them to be read as applying personally to the commenter, Scott, who provided the link to the other blog.)

Here's my own limited response. In the next day or so, though, we'll post another response written by a Presbyterian elder with significant appellate experience who currently serves as a civil magistrate in an high post of civil authority.

* * *

To argue that the federal government doing something to stop the wholesale slaughter of the nation's millions of defenseless infants is usurpation of powers is the sort of heartless rabbinical self-justification we should expect from those who tithe their mint and cummin. I've said over and over again that the Declaration of Independence was the basis for the mounting of our nation's revolution and the moral and legal context from which our Constitution was birthed and has any meaning or purpose yet today. The central purpose of our Constitution is the protection of the nation's citizens--not the protection of states' rights--and when that central purpose is defied or denied, the rest is straightening the deck chairs on the Titanic.

I've quoted the Declaration in this discussion. Its words are clear. If our federal civil magistrates' hands are tied in stopping the slaughter of our nation's fifty million wee ones...

Santorum and Paul on child slaughter...

Here's an e-mail I received from an esteemed friend. (TB)

* * *

Thought I'd pass on to you a couple videos of Santorum's and Paul's responses on the question of abortion. I recently posted these on Facebook, noting that a comparison of their answers pushes me towards Santorum, and away from Paul. 

Santorum's answer is excellent.

Paul's answer...

Feminism, homosexism, and veganism: The Grand Conspiracy

An appalling and horrible thing has happened in the land: the prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests rule on their own authority; and My people love it so! But what will you do at the end of it? (Jeremiah 5:30, 31)

You may want to dismiss it as looniness, but this assault against God's Order of Creation is rebellion against the God Who made us. It's not naive or misguided. It's evil. Attacks on God's Creation Order are all around us and we must recognize that each of them is a part of Satan's conspiracy to grease the descent to Hell.

Feminism is a Satanic conspiracy against God's Creation Order. God made Adam first, then Eve. Thus those who conspire to place woman in positions where she teaches and exercises authority over man are rebels against Almighty God. They are false prophets calling souls to Hell.

Homosexism is a Satanic conspiracy against God's Creation Order. God made Eve--not Steve--for Adam. Thus those who conspire to legalize sodomy and promote sodomitic unions are rebels against Almighty God. They are false prophets calling souls to Hell.

Veganism is a Satanic conspiracy against God's Creation Order. God created adam alone--both Adam and Eve--in His Own Image. He did not create animals in His Image. Thus those whose morality has descended to Veganism and the claim of personhood and legal standing for animals are rebels against Almighty God. They are false prophets calling souls to Hell.

Satan has conspired to paint each of these revolutions a pretty face. Feminism is a long-overdue correction of patriarchal oppression. Homsexism is a long overdue correction of homophobic oppression. Veganism is a long-overdue correction of speciest oppression.

Satan has also conspired to silence the Church of Jesus Christ... 

Soft and effeminate Christianity hides behind lofty and ethereal theology...

This is an excerpt from Horatius Bonar's God's Way of Holiness. Much here that is helpful to men and women of God. Read carefully, to the very end. It's packed with meat. Paragraphing is mine. (TB, w/thanks to Tim C. by way of Matt B.)

* * *

"The man who knows that he is risen with Christ, and has set his affection on things above, will be a just, trusty, ingenuous, unselfish, truthful man. He will “add to [his] faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge; and to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience; and to patience godliness; and to godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness charity” (2 Peter 1:5-7). He will seek not to be “barren nor unfruitful.” “Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report” (Phil 4:8), these he will think upon and do.

"For there is some danger of falling into a soft and effeminate Christianity, under the plea of a lofty and ethereal theology...

'Sodomite' is the most accurate, loving word (part I)...

Brimstone calls to mind the foul odors of the flesh, as Sacred Scripture itself confirms when it speaks of the rain of fire and brimstone poured by the Lord upon Sodom. He had decided to punish in it the crimes of the flesh, and the very type of punishment emphasized the shame of that crime, since brimstone exhales stench and fire burns. It was, therefore, just that the sodomites, burning with perverse desires that originated from the foul odor of flesh, should perish at the same time by fire and brimstone so that through this just chastisement they might realize the evil perpetrated under the impulse of a perverse desire.

                                                                 - Gregory the Great

A seminary professor who's been a lifelong friend wrote taking issue with my use of the word 'sodomy' to refer to same-sex carnal knowledge:

I find your use of the word 'sodomites' a bit inaccurate, because the sin of Sodom was not solely homosexuality, but also (maybe primarily) lack of concern for the poor.

Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. They were haughty and did detestable things before me. Therefore I did away with them as you have seen. (Ezekiel 16:49-50)

 In a similar way, Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding towns gave themselves up to sexual immorality and perversion. They serve as an example of those who suffer the punishment of eternal fire. (Jude 7)

I hear this objection frequently. One close friend told me several months ago that he thought my use of 'sodomy' and 'sodomites' made me look to our readers like I was a member of the lunatic fringe...

Christian courage...

As the Obama administration works to advance the wickedness of homosexuality around the world, the gay battle against God and His Word progresses at home. 

Into this battle this week stepped a thoughtful and talented young woman who attends Christ the Word's youth group. Asked to provide her thoughts on homosexuality for a views page in her high school newspaper she wrote:

"Hearing about an individual choosing the way of homosexuality is disappointing. They have given in to the temptation to sin. Am I afraid of the person because of this choice? No. Do I hate the person because they have chosen to give in to a sin? Of course not. Christians are called to love others, even our enemies. I would not love a person any less for the reason of a sin they are committing. Fact is, we all sin and have struggles of our own, whether they are big or tiny, and it makes no difference to God. What makes the difference is overcoming the sin.

Reeling in the years...

My Mary Lee is cleaning out old boxes and found this pic that ran in the Friday, October 13, 1972 issue of the Trib under the headline, "McGovern Tries for DuPage Converts." Presidential candidate George McGovern had just finished speaking in Edman Chapel to the Wheaton College student body, faculty, and aministration. Following his address, an admirer named Tim Bayly was in the small throng angling to shake his hand. Thought you all would get a kick out of it.

By the way, I think the horn-rimmed glasses wearing a man's face opposite me belong to my brother, David. (Joke.) And yes, I voted for McGovern and Carter. All the Baylys voted the Democratic ticket then. And yes, it's utterly disgusting. And yes, I shook his hand. I also wired Mother Teresa for sound. We had to find a place for the wireless mic in her sari and she was quite good-natured about it. These are my claims to fame.

Let me remind you of the two quotes that sum up my deepest political convictions in these United States, today:

Why sir, most schemes of political improvement are very laughable things. (Samuel Johnson)

Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me; fool me three times--I'm a Republican! (Joe Sobran)

Would I support our daughters enlisting in the military...

Several days ago under the post of the Majority Report of the PCA's Ad Interim Study Committee on Women in the Military (AISCOWIM), I'd been asked whether I would support our daughters enlisting in a non-combatant position in our U.S. Armed Forces, today? Here are the questions, along with my response. (TB)

Question from Sue: Tim, Could you answer a question about women in the military that I don't think is addressed in your/your committee's report? What is your position about women serving in military in non-combat roles...

What about women in combat...

Here is the Majority Report of the Presbyterian Church in America General Assembly's Ad Interim Study Committee on Women in the Military whose recommendations were adopted by General Assembly in 2002. Being this report's principal author, naturally I commend this document to our readers. If biblical Christians today studied this report and by faith embraced its doctrine of Creation Order sexuality, it would be a significant step toward the restoration of the unity of the Church. Too, these United States would again have salty salt and lighty light in the public debate raging over the meaning and purpose of sexuality. (TB)

* * *

MAN’S DUTY TO PROTECT WOMAN

We, the undersigned, endorse the Consensus Report, while realizing that Report lacks unity on the crucial matter of whether the recommendations it contains constitute the church’s wise counsel or a Christian’s scriptural duty. Believing that this is a matter of scriptural duty, we have joined together in writing this report to the end that we might set forth with confidence and clarity the full counsel—both New and Old Testaments—of the Word of God concerning this matter. Our report attempts to summarize three areas of evidence, as follows:

First, God the Father wages war in defense of Israel, His Bride; Christ our Savior fights to the Death defending His Bride, the Church; the Holy Spirit calls men as officers to guard and protect His Bride; the duty to protect the Garden of Eden and the warning not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was given by God to Adam; husbands protect their wives, not wives their husbands. Thus we are taught the binding nature of man’s duty to guard and protect his home and wife.

Second, woman is the weaker sex and part of her weakness is the vulnerability attendant to her greatest privilege—that God has made her the “Mother of all the living.” Men are to guard and protect her as she carries in her womb, gives birth to, and nurses her children.

Third, we are to renounce every thought and action which tends towards a diminishment of sexual differentiation since God made it and called it “good.” [E.g. Scripture’s injunctions concerning women exercising authority over men (1 Timothy 2), women or men wearing clothing of the opposite sex (Deuteronomy 22:5), sodomy (Leviticus 20:15-16), etc.] Rather than a stingy attitude which minimizes sexuality’s implications, we ought to rejoice in this, His blessing.

It is our conviction that these areas, taken together, provide a clear and compelling scriptural rationale for declaring our church’s principled opposition to women serving in military combat positions.

When a man loves a woman, he will lay down his life to defend her, just as Christ loved His Bride and gave Himself up for Her. Men have proudly fulfilled this duty from time immemorial, demonstrating what A. A. Hodge in his commentary on the Westminster Confession of Faith referred to as the law of nature, common to all nations, that is “unchanged” to this present day. Dying for their wives, regenerate and unregenerate men have done “by nature (the) things required by the law.”[1]

Hodge divides the Old Testament law into four categories...

Rev. Coffin's views on Church and state...

ByFaith Online points its readers to a recent interview of Rev. David Coffin in the Washingon Examiner in which David says that when churches become involved in politics, "It's a kind of apostasy." (You can find the interview here.)

It should be noted that the man who advocates a strict separation of Church and state in this interview is the same man who told my brother Tim, during the 2002 General Assembly debate, that the PCA should not oppose women serving as combatants in the U.S. Armed Forces.

So here's a minister of the Word of God pedantically parsing his Biblical obligations in such a way that he can justify turning an official blind eye to one of the most depraved aspects of our culture's destruction of women--almost as bad as urging them to kill unborn babies in their wombs.

To lodge his Uriah Heapish kowtowing to our culture's attack on motherhood in the Westminster Standards is ludicrous. Has David read Reformed history--any at all? And if so, can he be serious? The Westminster Divines agreeing with him that the Church should be silent about men commanding women to take up arms as combatants in the defense of their country? 

But worse, David claims God's approval of this ridiculous two-kingdom novelty, a claim worthy of condemnation by every shepherd of God's flock. Unfortunately, few will take him on. And that's where we find the PCA--lurching between Tim Keller's feminism and David Coffin's pedantry.

(DB)

 

A sermon from a dying man to dying men...

Is Holiness Possible Today (With a Warning from Esau)

Along with a number of other dear brothers (Ron Scates, Gary LeTourneau, Jim DeCamp, Terry Schlossberg, Ben and John Sheldon), my friend Rev. Marty Radcliffe continues to languish in the heretical PC(USA). Pray for him. Marty was a godly encouragment to me in the work of the ministry back in the early eighties when we both were ordained and served within the PC(USA)'s John Knox Presbytery up in Wisconsin.

Marty just commented under the post, "Death of an eighteen-year-old brother...," that he'd recently listened again to my Dad's final sermon given from the pulpit of College Church in Wheaton a few weeks before he died. After Dad's death, I had three-hundred cassettes of this sermon duplicated and sent them out to many friends.

This is the sort of preaching almost completely absent from the PCA and other conservative Reformed circles today. And it's tragic. Out of fear of being labelled a "pietist" by godless hypocrites who persecute those pursuing the sanctification without which no man will see God...

Fungus, yeast, and children...

National Geographic breathlessly announces: "Even after centuries of effort, some 86 percent of Earth's species have yet to be fully described, according to new study that predicts our planet is home to 8.7 million species. That means scientists have cataloged less than 15 percent of species now alive—and current extinction rates mean many unknown organisms will wink out of existence before they can be recorded."

So let me get this straight...

Perspectivalism and the sectarian political advocacy of R2K ecclesiastics...

It's glorious how God leads intellectuals to shout their blindness. Things the simplest plowboy sees clearly are obscured by the intellectual's highly nuanced mists and vapors, so the plowboy is left to his centuries-old occupation of making fun of them. He's not anti-intellectual--he's anti-intellectuals.

Plowboys aren't envious of the intellectual's degrees or salary or light teaching load or clean soft hands and time alone with books. And it's certainly not that the plowboy is careless with reason, logic, history, and right and wrong. He's as careful with his tax forms as any making-of-books man, and much more sophisticated.

No, it's not that the plowboy is stupid and thinks stupid is good. Rather, it's that he's got his feet planted squarely on the ground while the intellectual is up in the mists and vapors forgetting that he's made of dust and to dust he will return. The intellectual speaks from on high while the plowboy speaks from soil and manure. The Christian sizing both up may be able to grasp that the plowboy's perspective makes all the difference for his grasp of truth and his growth in righteousness.

Applications of these fundamental truths are everywhere.

R2K intellectuals are a special interest group hounding the nation's citizenry about their pet policy issue. They're a PAC whose primary work is not on K Street and in the halls of congress, but out across the land. They publish and yell and chivy and curdle and yap at and hector and dog their fellow citizens with their political dogma, and they do it in the Name of God citing His Word and Church as their authorities...

"Blessed is the nation whose god is the Lord..."

It is lawful for Christians to accept and execute the office of a magistrate (in which) they ought especially to maintain piety, justice, and peace, according to the wholesome laws of each commonwealth...

Civil magistrates may not assume to themselves the administration of the Word and sacraments; or the power of the keys of the kingdom of heaven; or, in the least, interfere in matters of faith. Yet, as nursing fathers, it is the duty of civil magistrates to protect the church of our common Lord…

- Westminster Confession of Faith 23.2,3

But it often happens that the magistrate is negligent, nay, sometimes himself requires to be chastised; as was the case with the Emperor Theodosius. Moreover, the same thing may be said regarding the whole ministry of the word. Now, therefore, according to that view, let pastors cease to censure manifest iniquities, let them cease to chide, accuse, and rebuke. For there are Christian magistrates who ought to correct these things by the laws and the sword. But as the magistrate ought to purge the Church of offences by corporal punishment and coercion, so the minister ought, in his turn, to assist the magistrate in diminishing the number of offenders. Thus they ought to combine their efforts, the one being not an impediment but a help to the other.

- John Calvin, Institutes; 4:11:3

Observing radical two kingdom men in their atomistic machinations of this and that, only precisely there but absolutely not then or now, leads me to say that one of their gravest problems is that man is, by nature, given to worship. He was made for this.

If he will not bow to his Creator, he won't stop bowing; instead, he'll bow to idols. Scripture says "Blessed is the nation whose god is the Lord," and the understood alternative is not the enlightened nation that has adopted an official no-god-at-all called "separation of church and state." If a nation does not have God as their god, they are in thrall to demons. And their subjection is not only as individuals, but corporately as families, cities, states, and nation.

There is the nation whose god is the Lord and there is the nation whose god is an idol of demons--those are the only two possibilities. Man was made to worship. He can't help himself.

Thus while R2K men are scurrying around trying to shore up the separation of church and state that they hope will provide us a few more years of peace, our presidents--both Democrats and Republicans--never stop constructing the temples and altars of Molech. And this is only to cite one example, albeit the bloodiest and most pathetic one...

The deafening silence...

This piece, "The Deafening Silence" by Nathan Ed Schumacher, demonstrates that the silence of Emergent and R2K men in the face of the wickedness and oppression in our public square is of the same fabric. Fear of man is a principle that knows no boundaries. (TB)

You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden. - Matthew 5:14

He that is not with me is against me. - Matthew 12:30

Qui non improbat, approbat [He who does not disapprove, approves]

Causae ecclesiae publicus causis aequiparantur [The cause of the church is a public cause]

-Maxims of Law

When Obama started his latest war in Libya, I wasn’t surprised – but I did start looking for some reaction from those in official senior positions of Christian leadership...

Wicked perverts parade their shame...

When true history is written, yesterday will not be recorded as the day when gays and lesbians finally were released from the oppression of many centuries of laws enforcing heterosexual marriage, but the day when wicked perverts paraded their shame and were fetid by Babylon's best and brightest...

Mass graves being dug in Sudan, but no response from US or UN...

Scott is a missionary to the brand new country of South Sudan. My son-in-law, Ben Crum, with his wife, Michal, and our daughter, Hannah, worked under Scott at an orphanage in South Africa several years ago. Since then, Scott's turned his attention to the Sudanese and I commend him to you for your support. He's a member of a PCA church in Asheville, but serves under the Reformed Presbyterian mission agency.

If you read international news, you know Sudan has been the center of much oppression and state-sanctioned murder for years, now. The slaughter was directed by the Muslims in the north against the animists and Christians who predominate in the south. With the secession of the south and the creation of South Sudan, international human rights organizations hoped to be able to turn their attention elsewhere. Sadly, though, large tensions remain--particularly what will happen with the oil-rich Abyei region which hasn't yet held a required referendum on which nation to join.

Scott just sent an e-mail asking his friends and supporters for help exposing atrocities being committed now a couple hundred miles north of him in Sudan. He attached the report below outlining mass graves being dug...

Not to worry, Congresswoman Bachmann's resigned membership in her WELS church...

The Wisconisn Evangelical Lutheran Synod sees the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod and raises them one. Or maybe ten.

In my former home of Pardeeville, Wisconsin, the WELS congregation was the dominant religious presence in town. When they called a new pastor, Mary Lee and I decided to invite him with his wife and children over for dinner. After a cordial introduction, we sat down at the table and I turned to him and said, "I've heard lots of things through the years, but let me ask you directly: do you pray, do I pray, or do we not pray at all?"

He answered, "You go ahead and pray and we'll sit by," and immediately his good wife turned to their children and said, "We're going to pray; fold your hands and close your eyes." God bless her.

We had a pleasant evening. During the conversation the WELS pastor told us his grandmothers was a godly Baptist and that he didn't pray with her, either...

Impeach the judges...

The substance of this post is the text of a recent e-mail discussion I was copied on between two friends of Baylyblog--one a prof and the other an attorney employed as a civil magistrate. Note particularly this statement in the first half of the discussion: "our biggest worry is of a corrupt government whose police violate our civil rights."

There's no doubt this should be the greatest concern of believers, today.

Christians consistently have failed to recognize that every accretion of power and authority to the civil magistrate comes at the expense of the authority and freedom of the mediating institutions of the Church and family, not simply the freedom of the individual. Typically, political conservatives worry only about individual liberty, but the freedom to obey Scripture and exercise authority in the Christian home and Church is under sustained attack, also, and is every bit as serious a usurpation of authority as our loss of individual freedom.

God has ordained authority in the households of the home and Church, and the denial of freedom to those institutions to govern themselves according to Scripture is growing year by year and is a central part of the decline of the West we have experienced. Yet sadly, there has been almost no warning given by our church and home fathers.

The State is our Savior-Protector/Provider and the more dependent the State renders her citizens, the more those citizens will place their faith in the god of the state rather than their own personal gods. And so we arrive at the place where America's most popular gods, whether Mormon, Roman Catholic, or Protestant, pose no particular threat to the state's bipartisan and unilateral commitment to destroy any person or institution blocking the path to her glorious dominion...

The Declaration of Independence...

Some years ago I was reading the Times on the Fourth of July and noticed they'd reproduced a full-page copy of the Declaration of Independence. So I read it and couldn't stop thinking of the terrible oppression we tolerate and live under now as good, submissive citizens while patting ourselves on the back for ending "taxation without representation" and that pecualiar institution of slavery. Between a quarter and a third of our nation's unborn children have their blood shed by wicked men, today; our government approves of this bloodshed; and we Christians are at ease in Zion.

Read the Declaration of Independence and compare the oppression then with the government we have today. Men are not what they used to be. And I'm not just referring to that small group of Reformed men who have made a principle of having their religion an entirely private affair.

May God have mercy on us. (TB)

* * *

THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them...

WORLD enters the Promised Land...

Father Bill Mouser submitted this excellent comment under the post, WORLD's schtick.... Reading the original post may be necessary to understand this comment. (TB)

Do not defile yourselves by any of these things; for by all these the nations which I am casting out before you have become defiled. For the land has become defiled, therefore I have brought its punishment upon it, so the land has spewed out its inhabitants. (Leviticus 18:24, 25)

Imagine for a moment Joshua facing Israel as it's perched on the east side of the Jordan river, addressing that nation this way:

"For the longest time I’ve struggled to put my finger on just what I believe about homosexuality. Or, for that matter, about incest. Or, for crying out loud, Moloch worship. Forty years ago, after all that sturm und drang at the foot of Sinai, I think I would have come down pretty solid on the line of “absolutely not.”

"But, I’m not sure I can say that anymore. Wait a minute: It isn’t that I think homosexuality, or incest, or Moloch worship, or anything else Moses wrote in Leviticus 18, is OK and is something YHWH overlooks or agrees with. But it is that I’m understanding a little better that what is commanded of us Jews is simply not the same as what we should expect from those who inhabit the land YHWH has given to us...

Slate judges "soft patriarchalism" an "uneasy compromise"...

This Slate piece working to understand how Michele Bachmann's presidential candidacy can be harmonized with Christian sexuality is another proof of what Jesus said, that "the sons of this age are more shrewd in relation to their own kind than the sons of light" (Luke 16:8). Slate turns to the "influential" Council on BIblical Manhood and Womanhood to do the parsing for them and here is their description of CBMW's position:

...the civic sphere is distinct from home and church and governed by different rules, (CBMW reasoned), and if the Bible didn't explicitly "prohibit [women] from exercising leadership in secular political fields," neither would they.

Slate points out that CBMW's "compromise was an uneasy one" quoting the New York Times which labelled the compromise "soft patriarchalism."

It's hard to tell what, exactly, the notion of wifely submission means in marriages where the wife in question has a high-powered career outside of the home. Last year's New York Times Magazine piece on female evangelical leaders described these unions as enacting a "soft patriarchalism."

Here's a principle I've learned in living for God. If you think you can negotiate with the Devil...

Super Bowl hero David Tyree is not ashamed...

[From Tyree's video opposing sodomite marriage] I'm not political, I approach more from an angle of prayer. As much as people are going to voice their opinions and make those pushes in a negative direction, I feel like athletes, believers or people who are very strong toward marriage, especially in places of position need to really take this opportunity to voice it. Marriage is one of those things that is the backbone of society. So if you redefine it, it changes the way we educate our children, it changes the perception of what is good, what is right, what is just.

[Tyree twittered] People of faith ... direct some prayers my way. Got darts comin from every direction. Blessed are those persecuted for His name's sake.

The ethics professor at the Presbyterian Church in America's Covenant Theological Seminary told Christianity Today that he opposed sodomy laws. I wrote him a letter expressing my concern over his efforts to legalize sodomy and Covenant's president at the time, Bryan Chapell, wrote to reassure me that his professor was not going soft on homosexuality. Duly noted.

Now, the battle has moved on to sodomite marriage and "marriage equality" is all the rage...

Calvin on a father passing his kingdom to his son...

It is a matter of such great importance for noble and wise princes to be set over the world by God. ...But so that such an extraordinary blessing of God might not be lost through the death of one man, as usually often happens, the succession of his son was added to preserve the situation for a long time, for he would continue and establish the order admirably set up under the father’s auspices.

Sometimes it does indeed happen that sons are not only unlike their fathers, but that when they have gained power...they allow themselves just as much freedom to violate the father’s laws, as if they were eagerly attacking the greatest of enemies. But God has generously provided for the kingdom of Denmark in this respect, that you are a most outstanding king, with the heroic stamp of your father’s nature, educated in his most virtuous discipline, having embraced the way of life delivered by him from hand to hand, as the saying goes, and think of nothing else but following in his footsteps.

However you have not only been chosen to be his successor to assume the office left vacant by his death, but also both adopted by his living and distinguished judgment, and given by the providence of God as an aide, on whose shoulders part of the burden may lie.

And I do not doubt that among the principle gifts of God...

The economics of feminism...

Sooner or later every faithful pastor joins the resistance movement engaged in mortal combat with the Feminist Reich. At long last, the shepherd finds it impossible to live seated in the heavenlies far above the screams and bloody carcasses rotting in our public squares and churches. Hell and destruction get to be too much for him, so he puts on his armor, grabs the Sword of the Spirit, and marches out to destroy the Devils of Hell whose mouths are dripping the blood of the sheep. War is finally declared and the shepherd marches out in defense of his flock!

As he enters the battle, though, it dawns on him that economics is one of the key battlefields. Yet he's never learned a thing about economics...

Red and yellow, black and white...

A father of the fatherless and a judge for the widows, Is God in His holy habitation. - Psalms 68:5

If Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world, what judgment of His wrath must He be preparing in the face of the wholesale slaughter of our little ones? And what does it say about our love for Him that we claim to be His adopted sons, yet are unconcerned for these little ones He loves? Has He not told us He is a Father to the fatherless?

These little ones' blood flows day by day in your own city--just down the block from your church office and almost kitty-corner to the Kroger where you do your grocery shopping. When you're driving your car filled with much-loved children on your way to home school co-op, little babies are being ripped apart inside the brick wall of that building on your left three buildings back from the stop light.

Remember? Your God is a Father to the fatherless.

India's child murders are sex-specific. So many of her little girls have been killed that for every 1,000 boys under age six, there are only 916 girls. Most of them are cut apart while in their mother's womb. Some make it to birth, though, and are starved to death. Little baby girls with toothpicks for arms and everyone knows why...

Holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord...

Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord: Looking diligently lest any man fail of the grace of God... (Hebrews 12:14,15 KJV)

By way of Wes White, here's a post from someone who's been thought to be a standard-bearer for confessionalism's ridicule of the pursuit of holiness in which he states clearly that there is no necessary conflict between doctrine and piety. But rather that, historically, those who have written and affirmed the Reformed confessions have been at the forefront of the pursuit of holiness. Thank you, Michael Horton, for this post which may do some much-needed work among us.

 

Pascal on the Radical Two-Kingdom (R2K) error...

Speaking of excellent summaries of aberrant movements within the Church, Darryl Hart has outdone himself with this one. If you read nothing else critiquing the Radical Two-Kingdom error, it's sufficient to read this and drop it. That's assuming at some point you've read any historic Church father or historic confession or catechism on God's Moral Law. Here's Son Joseph's comment:

(These men) are just casuists. I've thought that again and again. (They're) in fine form, claiming that states can't sin...; and that since states can't sin, individuals can't sin if they are pursuing anything in the political arena, including the legalization of prostitution.

Pascal refuted them adequately in the Provincial Letters. I've included a quote from Letter 7 below, which highlights how...

Blah blah blah blah blah I blah blah would blah blah blah definitely say blah blah blah blah blah...

Once again, we have that paragon among unreforming preachers asked about his take on sex--this time homosexual marriage.

Lauren Green of FoxNews did the interview March 28, 2011, as part of the Justice Event hosted by Redeemer's Hope for New York, Diaconate, and Grace & Race ministries. The place was packed, bases were loaded, bottom of the ninth, the pitch floated in waist high...

From Dark Ages, Galileo speaks of literal interpretation of Scripture...

(Tim) It's central to our chronological conceit to reassure ourselves the Middle Ages were the Dark Ages crammed full of religious bloodshed, religious oppression of scientific progress, and the Plague. So we've all learned the lesson to keep church and state separate to the end that we won't have as many wars or as many people die in those wars.

Doing well are we? Paganism is the state religion almost everywhere and more people were sacrificed on the altars of paganism's idols (Communism, Zionism, Feminism, etc.) this past century than ever died from all the religious wars of the Medieval world combined.

But what of science? Our modern morality play smugly assures us the Enlightenment busted truth loose from the religious ignoramuses who had oppressed the great minds across many centuries. Finally we know it's not wrong to take the Pill, unborn babies aren't persons and can't feel the knives, the iPhone is cool, washing hands saves lives, you can make babies in the lab, you can end the war by blowing up the women and children of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and Earth isn't the center of the Universe.

"Poor Galileo! If only he'd lived today when every man finally knows religion has nothing to say to the state or the high priests of Science. The Bible's true when it talks about spiritual things--not political or sexual or scientific things. It's no history book or textbook on cosmology. It tells you how to feel--not what to think. Poor Galileo! He had it right and the church tried to shut him up. Stupid ignorant church. Stupid Dark Ages...

R2K says sermons on abortion are like Martin Luther King's "glorified leftist political screeds"...

(Tim) Following links to Baylyblog, I found this on a radical two-kingdom blog and place it here as another indication of the nature of this error and the motivations of those who hold it. The R2K blogger is addressing two questions asked by an R2K opponent. The second question ends like this: "...why are (R2K) folks so upset when people like the Bayly brothers preach sermons on highly politicized topics like abortion?"

Here's the R2K man's answer...

Rep. Peggy Welch refuses to vote in support of school reform and pro-life bills...

(Tim) Many of us at ClearNote Church have cast our votes for Representative Peggy Welch. Speaking personally, I have myself. These past few weeks, Rep. Welch has utterly failed the children of the state of Indiana.

Mrs. David Welch has been saying she's refusing to show up at the Statehouse in Indy because of her commitment to our children's education. In pol speech this means she's against Governor Daniels' reform of government schools. Governor Daniels wants the state to allow poor parents to use vouchers to escape bad school systems, but Rep. Welch and her fellow Democrats are always against school reform. Democrats get into office most consistenly through the votes of public school teachers and other government employees.

But what about our children? Rep. Welch tells us she cares for our children but she's utterly failed them, recently--and not only by opposing the reform of government schools.

While Representative Welch has been refusing to go to work at the Statehouse, House Bill 1205 seeking to take money away from our state's largest baby-slaughterer, Planned Parenthood, failed for lack of a quorom. This was Representative Welch's doing. The bill had made it out of committee and was ready for passage, but Representative Welch and her fellow Democrats cared more about opposing the Governor's reform of government schools than...

Would I vote for Governor Daniels if he runs...

"Across my lifetime I've been voting for men who claimed to be anti-abortion but after taking office did nothing to oppose the slaughter. I'm tired of it. I don't want to be lied to any more. Daniels isn't lying to me."

(Tim) Readers will remember my basic rule about voting: I won't vote for a county dog-catcher who isn't pro-life.

That said, if I were to make an exception, it might be for our Governor Mitch Daniels. A few months ago I got a call from an Iowa man long involved in Iowa politics asking my thoughts on Daniels for president? A couple friends work in the Daniels administration and since that conversation I've been thinking about a potential Daniels candidacy quite a lot. Here's a piece from the Wall Street Journal that has it about right...

Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels believes he faces a taller challenge as he ponders a White House run: Could voters warm to his message that the country is doomed unless it slashes its debt and radically revamps the popular Social Security and Medicare programs?

In any other year, a campaign platform that gloomy would render a politician toxic. Today, with concerns over the nation's fiscal health on the rise, the Indiana Republican's wonkish bravado is making some think he is a good fit for the moment.

If the time is indeed right for Mr. Daniels's get-tough message, the angry budget standoffs in states such as Wisconsin, Ohio and New Jersey are also shining a new light on his credentials as a messenger. Mr. Daniels rescinded collective-bargaining rights for state employees six years ago—long before Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker caused a firestorm by putting the same issue on the table.

Mr. Daniels also cut spending, trimmed the state work force to its smallest in decades, and turned a yawning deficit into a surplus, with only scattered outbursts of popular anger along the way.

He has emerged from all this with high marks from voters, and a profile that sets him apart from the other Republicans mulling a possible 2012 run. An array of conservatives, including former Vice President Dick Cheney and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, would like to see him enter the 2012 race.

He's the only potential candidate "who sees the stark perils and will offer real detailed proposals," Mr. Bush said last week in praising Mr. Daniels before a Florida business group. Republican Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey on Thursday heaped almost identical praise on his Indiana counterpart.

So would I vote for Governor Daniels if he ran?

Daniels' commitments concerning what he calls "the social issues" are clear and firm...

President himself declares Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional...

(Tim) Our President and his Attorney General have finally decided openly to oppose the Defense of Marriage Act passed by Congress. Congress says its constitutional but the President says it isn't. The New York Times reports the President has determined that...

Another manly hero for our time...

(Tim, w/thanks to many) Joel Northrup wrestles for Linn-Mar High School in Marion, Iowa. Wrestling's big in Iowa--something like football in Massilon, Ohio--and Joel had done very well, making it to state. But lightning struck.

Joel drew Cassy Herkelman as an opponent and decided to forfeit. He released this statement explaining his decision:

I have a tremendous amount of respect for Cassy and Megan (Black, the tournament’s other female entrant) and their accomplishments. However, wrestling is a combat sport and it can get violent at times. As a matter of conscience and my faith, I do not believe that it is appropriate for a boy to engage a girl in this manner. It is unfortunate that I have been placed in a situation not seen in most of the high school sports in Iowa.

Is anyone surprised a young man who's retained some modicum of sexual modesty today is a homeschooler? Is anyone surprised the secularists consider this...

"Making a famine where abundance lies..."

From fairest creatures we desire increase,
That thereby beauty's rose might never die,
But as the riper should by time decease,
His tender heir might bear his memory:
But thou contracted to thine own bright eyes,
Feed'st thy light's flame with self-substantial fuel,
Making a famine where abundance lies,
Thy self thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel:
Thou that art now the world's fresh ornament,
And only herald to the gaudy spring,
Within thine own bud buriest thy content,
And, tender churl, mak'st waste in niggarding:
   Pity the world, or else this glutton be,
   To eat the world's due, by the grave and thee.

                    -Sonnet I, Shakespeare

I've got nothing to say, but it's OK...

(Tim, w/thanks) Readers will remember the Rev. Dr. Brian Lee of the CRC conservative split-off denomination, the United Reformed Church, wrote Baylyblog objecting (see comments) to our identifying him with that small group of Reformed men caught up in the Radical Two-Kingdom (R2K) error. One of many objections to our post was this:

You call me an "R2K pastor," and I admit that I don't know what that means in your blog lexicon. I do subscribe to a two kingdoms view, but you don't reference any of my views on that matter to justify this title. I am happy to have you engage with my views, but I don't see how throwing around this label without any justification is constructive to the cause of truth.

Here's more justification. And by the way, as you read Brian's piece, keep in mind that Pastor Lee wrote this sitting in the heart of Washington D.C., and that the parishioners he desires and works to get are our civil magistrates...

Bibleland: the cost of inerrancy's victory...

(David) Tim's and my father, Joe Bayly, used to say (in private and only to family members) that the price of inerrancy's doctrinal defeat of liberalism in the battle for the Bible of the 60s and 70s was the loss of the authority of God's Word.

Today I'm as firmly convinced that Dad was right as I am that the Word is without error. It is inerrant, but the battle to prove inerrancy transformed the Word from the roaring lion of Amos into a patient needing the care of experts, from public glory and present power into the private realm of reflection. 

Evangelical scholars were happy to come to the Word's defense. They put the Word under their microscopes in the search for vaccines against liberalism. Scholarly reputations were forged. And preachers all too willingly deferred--they were the students of these scholars, how could they tread confidently where their masters trod mincingly?

The result is a post-Reformation Protestant Church in which scholars and preachers illuminate the Word and usher people into the glories of the Word rather than preach the Word as a lamp for the illumination of glorious earthly paths. (If you doubt this, just take any of the most-recommended modern commentaries from an Evangelical or Reformed background and compare it to Calvin's commentary on the same book. Calvin respects and applies the Word while modern commentators explain, justify and generally try to support the Word.)

Thus, the modern Evangelical/Reformed world which is Bible rich but Spirit poor. The Word has become a walled garden, a magical mystery tour Christians enter into--BibleLand--rather than a map, a guide, a light for real life.

Wise as serpents, harmless as doves...

For a man named Demetrius, a silversmith, who made silver shrines of Artemis, was bringing no little business to the craftsmen; these he gathered together with the workmen of similar trades, and said, “Men, you know that our prosperity depends upon this business. You see and hear that not only in Ephesus, but in almost all of Asia, this Paul has persuaded and turned away a considerable number of people, saying that gods made with hands are no gods at all. Not only is there danger that this trade of ours fall into disrepute, but also that the temple of the great goddess Artemis be regarded as worthless and that she whom all of Asia and the world worship will even be dethroned from her magnificence.” When they heard this and were filled with rage, they began crying out, saying, “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!” (Acts 19:24-28).

(Tim) The newly inaugurated governor of Alabama, Robert Bentley, said this inside a Christian church from that church's pulpit during a worship service: "Anybody here today who has not accepted Jesus Christ as their Savior, I'm telling you, you're not my brother and you're not my sister, and I want to be your brother." 

ABC reports:

A spokesman for the Anti Defamation League said the governor's comments were "stunning" and "distressing" and were tantamount to proselytizing.

"It is stunning to me that he'd make those remarks. It's distressing because of the suggestion that he feels that people who aren't Christian are not entitled to love and respect. On the day that he is sworn in as governor, he's sending a statement to the public saying if you're not Christian you can't be with me. From our point of view that is proselytizing for Christianity and coming very close to a violation of the First Amendment."

Let me keep reminding us that the much-ballyhooed separation of church and state that lulls a certain type of naive Christian man to sleep is a figment of our imagination and this becomes more clear each day. What was meant by freedom of religion by those who wrote and adopted our U.S. Constitution was freedom to acknowledge and worship the Only True God according to the leading of our own consciences. It was never meant to allow Islam or the fools of evolution who say there is no God the same protection as Christians. This is a simple historical fact and is avoided at all costs by those who live in a dream world and desperately want to believe secularism is a tolerant religion.

Exactly like the ancient Roman Empire, America's laws and civil magistrates and the schools they force us to fund are supremely religious and utterly intolerant. The religion is secularism and it's committed to outlawing true Christian faith. Those Christians who think they will be allowed to practice Biblical faith under secular civil magistrates are blind to the reality of their own lives as well as the lives being prepared for their children and grandchildren...

R.C. Sproul Sr. on abortion: "Pastors don't want to touch (it)..."

R.C. Sproul Discusses the Issue of Abortion from Ligonier on Vimeo.

(Tim) As it happened, when R.C. Jr. commented here on Baylyblog earlier today commending Dan Phillips' excellent piece on marriage over at Pyromaniacs, that very minute I was finishing a partial transcription of this video he and his Dad did on the occasion of Ligonier reissuing R.C. Sr.'s book, Abortion: A Rational Look at An Emotional Issue. In this interview, R.C. Sr. says this is the one book out of the seventy or so he's written that had the shortest shelf life of them all. When the book was first issued twenty years ago, he couldn't give them away. Good Reformed men didn't want to read what he had to say about abortion.

Here are a few summaries and excerpts from the interview...

"Both mother and her child were going to recover..."

(Tim, w/thanks to David G.) Here's a news item about a Minnesota man charged yesterday with first-degree premeditated attempted murder of an unborn child and third-degree assault of the unborn child's mother. Police arrived at the victim's house at 3:19 AM and reported that the accused murderer, Rory Northrup, had been kicking and punching his victim through the walls of his mother's abdomen in an effort to kill him in the womb.

This stuff happens all the time, yet Christians think the rule of law prevails in these United States. What about Rwanda during the genocide? Did the rule of law prevail there while Hutus, at the order of the civil magistrates, hacked nearly a million Tutsis to death with machetes?

The rule of law in America today is the Russian roulette of babies waiting to find out which petal their mother will stop on: "She wants me, she wants me not, she wants me..."

R2K Man: "I'm not saying... something like abortion should be always and absolutely avoided in the pulpit..."

(Tim) Another blog has now had over 500 comments made in an ongoing discussion with a couple R2K men and I am here pulling out a few excerpts for my own response. (I haven't been taking part in the other discussion so I didn't think it fair to jump in at this late date.)

These comments below are, I think, representative of what we've read by R2K men here on Baylyblog in months past. Put together, I think they're quite instructive. Readers who would like to check the context of these quotes can click through to the original discussion linked above.

* * *

>>R2K MAN TO DAVID GRAY: "David Gray, pc-2k by definition doesn’t have a secret handshake or an official stance on abortion. But if you’re asking what this pc-2ker’s views are I am morally and politically opposed to abortion. But I’m just as opposed to those who make their own convictions on a particular issue a litmus test for orthodoxy, as in “those who don’t care like I care don’t really care and are unfaithful.” Tim and David Bayly on line two for you."

Here we have one of the canards R2K men repeat endlessly. My brother David and I have never said or even hinted that men who don't do what we do to end abortion are unfaithful. I have never indicated I myself am faithful in this area, nor would I ever do so. I know few pastors or elders I'd hold out as models of care for the least of these.

>>R2K MAN TO ONE OF HIS CORRESPONDENTS: "I’m not saying that pulpits have to stay away from abortion absolutely. What I am saying is that, to the extent that abortion is a highly politicized issue in 2011 America, Reformed pulpits should be much more conservative and cautious in what they say about it. ...Pulpits should be reserved for Christ and him crucified."

It's good to know R2K men are willing for pastors to apply God's Moral Law to the slaughter of the unborn. We'd be in quite a quandary if they demanded we "stay away from abortion absolutely."

>>R2K MAN TO TURRETINFAN: "...your notion that the church should preach Christ PLUS politics..."

Another R2K canard. No one has said pastors "should preach Christ PLUS politics...." But of course, since abortion is politicized, to preach and apply the Sixth Commandment to the lives of our parishioners is, according to R2K men, to "preach Christ PLUS politics." But that's their statement; not ours...

The complementarian hermeneutic: Adam and Eve/Adam and Steve...

(Tim, w/thanks to Joseph) If you'd like to see into the future of churches that market themselves as Evangelical or hip and Reformed, this article gives a clear picture of how it will fall out next with sodomy. First we threw out God's Order of Creation concerning patriarchy and next we're going to throw out God's Order of Creation concerning heterosexuality. But the work will be hidden behind the high moral ground of past church reforms in slavery and male dominance, and the wreckers will be chattering on about love.

If we could deny the application of Adam first, then Eve, to anyone other than Christians, and only among Christians to tie-breaking votes at home, men preaching Sunday mornings, and women having voice but no vote in our elders meetings, the next step is only logical: we'll deny that God creating Eve (rather than Steve) for Adam bars practicing sodomites from church membership and we'll think it's progressive to refer to heterosexual marriage as "God's ideal" while approving monogamous sodomite unions as a worthy second-best. Outside the Christian home and Church, we'll seek to repeal laws against sodomy because, like patriarchy, heterosexuality is a private Christian truth.

Trimming God's Word and authority is a coherent strategy that moves on to the next project and giving away territory to Satan never causes him to be less aggressive on his next mission. Every last bit of territory we concede will serve him well as the staging ground for his next attack on God's Order of Creation.

Some complementarians have written about the inevitability of the feminist hermeneutic giving birth to the homosexualist hermeneutic. By this they only mean that the complete denial of Adam's headship over Eve will also result in the complete denial of God's gift of Eve to Adam and His limiting of sex to monogamous heterosexual marriage. They're right, as far as they go. But they fail to see the inevitability, also, of their own minimalistic complementarian hermeneutic giving birth to an equally minimalistic heterosexualist hermeneutic...

Check it out...

(Tim) Just a note to direct readers to this ongoing discussion some may find helpful.

"If you think of it like a person, you're going to make yourself depressed..."

(Tim, w/thanks to Mark) This is what the New York Times can carry on its editorial page while most of the hip and feckless preachers of Reformia are mute--in the safe privacy of our pulpits, even! "Dead babies? Who? Where? When? I don't see any. Lord, when have I seen you unwanted?"

American's love/hate relationship with unborn babies is heart-wrenching. Read this oped piece. You simply must. It's about the most accurate snapshot of abortion in America you could ever get in three short minutes. Then think what your pastor hasn't writen and at your next session meeting ask him why not?