Tag Archives: liberty

July 4, 2024 · 9:04 am

July Fourth Ramblings

From the time of the ancient scribes, there has always been those who use the guise of religion to seek to assert power over others and establish laws designed to enforce a “Biblical World-View”, whatever that means.

Some of this drive comes from a simple fear of people getting away with things that WE want to do but don’t dare.

Some of it comes from a fear that God is going to punish us if we don’t do the right things or pass the right laws.

Some of it comes from our natural religion (which the Bible calls “The Flesh”) that we can buy our way back into Eden by doing proper things, offering the right sacrifices, making better choices, and driving out the sinners.

Most of it comes from the lust of pride – that if we could get people to do things OUR way, we can secure our own future; even if this means we have to dominate sinners and force them to obey or face the wrath of the law. God wants righteousness, does he not?

So for over 2,000 years, zeal for God’s law has sent millions to mass graves. Inquisitions, wars, genocides, enslavements, exiles…

It is precisely why our country was founded. Religious wars always end in mass graves, injustice, and cruelty, in the name of God. Exiles fled. But no one had ever thought of having a country without an official religion – until they realized something. If they were going to have an official religion, who gets to decide what that religion will be?

There were Congregationalists, puritans, separatists, Anglicans, Roman Catholics, Quakers, Baptists, Reformed, Presbyterians, Jews, Atheists and Deists.

Who will choose where to worship, which religion to support, who will pastor…

Look at this this way…the recent law requiring the Bible to be taught in schools…

Who is going to teach it? Will the curriculum be Doug Wilson’s cult? Charismatic? Will the understanding be covenantal or dispensational? Will it be Baptist, Puritan, Reformed or Presbyterian?

If you say, “Well, we just want it taught as literature – the stories and such…

OK – which stories? Who edits them? Who interprets them? What will you say about Jephthah and Samson, and the Benjamite concubine?

If you think that Christians who think that this is a good idea will just get along and cooperate, then perhaps study early American History – Roger Williams, Anne Hutchinson, the women in Salem, or the Jesuit inquisitors – all who claim to seek a “Biblical world-view” and seek to serve the same Jesus.

The only way – the ONLY way – to politically stop bloodshed is by the enforcement of the First Amendment. The Supreme Court in the seventies did not “take God out of schools”, they stopped potential war over who writes the prayers in schools. Will they be Muslim prayers, Praying in tongues, Jewish prayers? Mother earth prayers?

And now, states that are seeking to “put God back in the schools” have done no such thing.

If Louisiana wanted to encourage behavior that pleased God, they would not have posted some archaic, ancient code that needs experts to interpret it (“If we aren’t allowed to kill, why do you support war? Why do you support capital punishment?) – see? Not as easy as you think.

To encourage ethical behavior, rather than political posturing, they would have posted age-appropriate and socially appropriate rules:

Don’t bully people. Honor your word. Be kind. Listen to your teacher when she is giving you instructions. Don’t call people names. Don’t betray your friends. Don’t spread rumors…

But the goal of the politicians was NOT to encourage ethical behavior. If that were indeed the case, they would not be championing the man who has openly and unabashedly broken every one of the commandments and boasts about it.

But I digress. The reason why I am very concerned about the religious right is that if they succeed, they will be undoing 250 years of American political thought. This political thought has given us many, many years of freedom – especially after the same rules were applied to women, minorities, native Americans and children.

If we embrace “justice for all” rather than “justice for some”, then we could truly be a beacon of liberty to the outcasts and the exiles.

But fear has caused us to regress. Millions are hell-bent on following power-hungry criminals over the brink. They believe that they will have special places in the new order, but the joy will only last until it is their turn under the guillotine. When you see Robespierre, ask him how it worked for him.

Because if there isn’t justice for all, there is only justice for none.

If a Muslim girl cannot attend a school without intimidation and bullying, then eventually no one will.

If the local Jewish community cannot worship in peace, then soon no one will.

If a black man does not have the liberty to carry a weapon without fear of being shot, then soon no one will have that liberty.

In other words, liberty only exists if it is liberty for all. And this liberty, the American Dream, is under attack. The Christian Right pretends that it is seeking to establish liberty and justice, but that is a smoke-screen. This is about power, domination, and control. They truly believe that only by passing “Biblical laws” – meaning, “those laws which I interpret as Biblical”, can we usher in a utopian age.

This was also the belief of the Inquisition, the French Revolution, Stalin, Lenin, Mao, Cromwell, Hildebrand, Pol Pot, and the despots of every age.

It can and does only end in slaughter, mass graves and gulags. There can be no other end.

To sum it up simply, righteousness does not come by the law. If it did, there would be no need for Christ.

It seems to me that the first confession of a Christian should be “Righteousness could not come by the law. I plead for mercy.”

To then turn around and insist that righteousness will come by the law if my people enforce it with enough force, to me that seems the pinnacle of foolishness and irrationality.

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June 6, 2023 · 4:36 pm

Losing your very self

Thoughts over dinner:

The NIV translates this familiar passage like this:
24 For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it. 25 What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit their very self? Lk 9:24–25.

This is more accurate to the Hebrew way of thinking. They knew, of course, about the immaterial part of our essence, but the word in Hebrew translated “soul” means our very self, our personhood, our whole being. In Greek, that word is “psyche” (used in Matthew 16); in Luke, the apostle simple says, “loses himself”.

I think that is what Jesus was getting at.

As the disciples would be heading into the world and preaching the gospel, there will always be the temptation to speak what everyone expects them to speak.

To speak the truth often meant being cast out of your community, your synagogue, your guild. You lost your family, your friends, your church, your livelihood. And so many, like the parents of the man born blind (John 9) didn’t speak at all because they were afraid.

But the consequence is this: eventually you lose yourself.

I had lost myself. But then I stopped being afraid and began to speak. And I lost friends, family, my culture, my denomination. But I found myself.

And it is wonderful. The Lord has lifted me out of a miry pit and set me on firm ground. The Lord took me out of a narrow place and set me in a wide place.

So now I am me. In a wide place, on firm ground, I can leap; I can dance. I can praise. I can be myself.

In the mud and the narrowness, everyone is afraid of losing their place and they can’t even imagine life outside the mud. They have their things and everything stays the same, but they lose themselves.

It is far better to have yourself and God created you, even if that means the loss of everything else.

Anything or anyone that insists that you stay captive in the narrow, mire-filled pit, isn’t worth holding on to anyway.

Save yourself by being brave enough to risk losing everything to find yourself. It is worth it. And Jesus walks with you there, in the wide pastures, by the still waters. And those still in the mud will be sure that you are doing something wrong, because they are so afraid of finding themselves that they don’t dare ask to be set free.

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February 22, 2023 · 2:23 pm

So much to do….

So much to do….

The legacy of Charles Finney – who taught salvation by moral fortitude, the unofficial religion of America. It is the religion of Ben Franklin and Ralph Waldo Emerson and the McGuffey readers, and it is deadly.

So now when we think of Christianity, we sigh and say, So much to do, so much to keep track of, so much, so much…

Do I shop there, or not. If I shop there I might be accidentally putting money in the wrong pocket.

Is it OK to watch this show? Is it OK to listen to this kind of music? Is there a list somewhere of what music is OK and what music might lead me astray?

If I am a woman, is it OK for me to get a job? Can I speak to a man and keep myself pure? Is it OK to go to dinner with friends?

If I am a man, is it OK to take a woman to the hospital? Is it OK to speak to her? Can I have a conversation with her and still be pure?

How should we raise our kids? Should we home-school? Private School? Charter?

Who should I ask? Should I read this blog or that blog? Can I ask a celebrity preacher to tell me what to wear, where to shop, what to read, what to listen to?

How much am I supposed to desire God? Do I desire him enough? What if I die and miss the mark? What if I am caught in an R rated movie when Jesus comes again.

I’m depressed trying to figure it all out. Should I see a therapist? Should I take a pill? Should I just talk to my pastor and have him pray for me? What if I do it wrong?

What if I make the wrong choices and am not masculine enough? What if I am not feminine enough? What if I die wearing the wrong color shirt or writing a poem?

I read the other day that worry was a sin. I wondered if I worried too much. Then I worried about it. That made me worry about worry, which made me anxious. And then a preacher shouted that anxiety was a sin. So I worried about that.

Worry, anxiety, depression, sin, trouble…

So many shouty people. So many ready to pounce and condemn. So much contempt for the outsiders.

What if they find out what I’m really like and throw me out? What if they already did, I just don’t know about it?

Stop. Rest.

This is why God gave us a Sabbath. That we might rest in him and know that he is the LORD God, and he alone sanctifies his people.

Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you shall be saved.

And rest.

The Jewish sabbath gives way to the everlasting Sabbath, where we learn to rest at the foot of the cross, and meet him outside the city, with the other outcasts. It is a good company. It is the company of those who learned to grieve this dying world and its lusts. So that we might gain Christ, and attain the resurrection of the dead.

Sing praises to our Redeemer and leave Finney’s legacy in the grave where it belongs. it is the old man. Crucify it with Christ and live.

Learn to walk in newness of life, and live!

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March 2, 2020 · 9:43 am

Enslaved to the opinions of men

Yesterday, in my sermon, I brought up this text.

13 And when you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions,
14 having canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us and which was hostile to us; and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross.
15 When He had disarmed the rulers and authorities, He made a public display of them, having triumphed over them through Him.
16 Therefore let no one act as your judge in regard to food or drink or in respect to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath day–
17 things which are a mere shadow of what is to come; but the substance belongs to Christ.
(Col 2:13-17)

You can listen to the sermon for the main thrust of this text, but the basic idea is that when Christ died on the cross, he removed the curse that was on me. He drank the cup of the wrath of God to the fullest, so that now I am clean, innocent, pure, and an adopted firstborn son of God. This is who you are, whether you are rich or poor, male or female, bond or free. You are the heir of all things in Christ.

The devil thrives on accusation. You aren’t good enough, pretty enough, masculine enough, strong enough.

You would be acceptable to people and worthy of their affection if only you had one more thing….

And so many of us have spent our lifetime trying to gain the approval of men by trying to add just one more thing. Maybe if I learned to like sports. Maybe if I hung out more at men’s clubs. Maybe if I wore the right kind of clothes.

And as we get older, we add to that list of things to do to add just one more thing. It is a powerful motivator. We fear, more than anything, to be rejected by our peers.

If I don’t do ashes, people will shame me. If I DO ashes people will shame me. If I don’t wear the right clothes to church, people will shame me. What are the right clothes? Should I wear a suit? A tie?

Is this dress plain enough? Too plain? Should I wear a hat? What if I accidently call the fellowship meal a “potluck” and the world stops spinning and everyone stares at me?

What if I am caught talking to the wrong sort of person?

If you have been to church, you know what I am talking about. It is the devil’s greatest weapon. You aren’t good enough. You need something else to yourself acceptable.

But you won’t ever find that “just one more thing” because it doesn’t exist. It is just designed by Satan to keep you in bondage.

If you are in Christ, though – every sin and every shame and every failure has already been nailed to his cross and has been put to death in the sight of God. It is finished.

So not only has Satan’s weapon been taken away, but YOU have been set free.

So what does that mean?

Here is what struck me when I was thinking through this passage.

From now on, I will continue to fight against sin. But I will try everything in my power to quit living in fear of men. I have too much to do to spend a moment doing a poll with imaginary people in my head to determine what I should wear, what I should listen to, what I should read, what I should like.

Yes, I will strive to love my neighbor, and be kind to all that God brings in my path, but I will do so out of thankfulness to the One who died for me, not out of the fear of the opinions of men. And that makes all the difference.

The fact is, as my pa would have said, you would quit thinking about what people thought about you if you realized how little they did.

If you are looking to the human race for your acceptance, you’ve got a long ways to go. Most everyone in the human race is busy with their own issues to deal with yours as well.

So live for the one who died for you. Serve God without terror of rejection because you are already accepted in the beloved. You are actually complete in Christ right now, and there is nothing left to add. Flee from anyone who says, “but there is just one more thing….”

It is finished. So don’t live in the sight of men anymore. Honor God, serve the Lord, be kind to all, do good as the Lord has done good to you.

But remember that the world rejected Christ and they will reject you. So for the rest, dance to your own tune.

Love God, and do as you will – as Augustine said.

Wear that shirt if you like it. Listen to the music that you like to listen to. Celebrate Christmas or Ash Wednesday however you want to. Do Easter. Don’t do Easter. Hunt eggs with the kids. Don’t hunt eggs with the kids. Wear a suit to church. Don’t wear a suit to church.

Wear that hat; don’t wear that hat. Call it a potluck or a fellowship dinner.

Just do it for the glory of God, and not in the sight of men. Be without guile and dissimilation. If you are at dinner with friends, if you want a beer, order one. If you don’t and just want water, order one. If you want an appletini with an extra umbrella then order that. Quit letting people shame you by what you want to drink, for crying out loud. give thanks to God and all things are pure.

Love God, and love your neighbor. Be kind to all. But don’t let the opinions of men put you into bondage for a moment.

Human beings will accept you or reject you. Jesus didn’t put too much stock in it, for he knew what was in the heart of man (John 2:24).

Love God, and do what pleases you, for you are complete in Christ.

(For those who are always nervous that someone might get away with sin if we are too antinomian, if you truly love God, you will keep his commandments. That isn’t what I’m talking about. Now tend to your own heart, and leave God’s people in peace).

And also, I am thinking of taking up knitting. It seems to me that it would relax me greatly and help me to be patient with others in long meetings.

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February 7, 2019 · 11:20 am

Liberty

Stand fast therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free, and do not be entangled again with a yoke of bondage. (Gal 5:1)

Let these words sink down into your soul. Grapple them to your heart, bind them as frontlets before your eyes.

You are complete in Christ. You are a dearly loved child of God. The curse of the law said, “Do this and live”. But that ensnared you in an endless cycle of attempting keeping up with a standard that you had already broken. How can you love God with your whole heart when God is angry with you because of your sins.

In the law, you can only approach God as a judge; never as a father.

But Christ fulfilled that law perfectly in your place. The curse of the law was placed upon him and he died instead of you.

And now you are set free. Set free.

Not to fulfill your lusts and to walk in hatred and enmity, but set free to love God and love your neighbor. You can now love freely without fear. You can walk in the commandments of God, which are good and give life and freedom of conscience. And when your conscience is free through the gospel you are free indeed.

So why are we so eager to be ensnared again in the endless cycle of “Do this and live”? Why do we spend thousands on books and conferences to tell us all the ways that we disappoint God, that we don’t measure up, that we have failed?

Why do we allow the celebrity preachers tell us that our clothes are too feminine or our voices are too high? Why do we allow the elite to tell us to “quit acting gay” whatever on earth that means? Does it mean that I am not supposed to like poetry and art? Does it mean that the schoolyard bullies were right and I am somehow not a man because I don’t play sports and don’t like hunting and can’t imagine sitting through an entire baseball game, much less playing one?

Why do we allow someone we have never met put us again in bondage by telling us how to submit to our husbands more, be more feminine, be meeker, be better, do more…? And then we pay them for it??

Does this make any sense to you?

God gave us Ten Commandments, and he added no more. As Christians we seek to please God. So here is what is pleasing to God. Love him and love your neighbor. And please quit paying celebrities to tell you how to be more manly, more feminine, more submissive, a better leader, what to eat, what to wear, what businesses to shop at, what businesses to avoid, what music to listen to, what books to read.

Why did we allow someone we never met convince us to never, ever allow our kids to read Harry Potter? Why did we allow someone we never met, who was never ordained and not married tell us to not allow our kids to date? Why did we allow an organization that spent hours and hours watching pornography so they could tell us how bad it is teach us about “family values”?

Does this make any sense to you?

Stand fast in the liberty by which Christ has made you free.

If you like beer, buy one. If you want to wear a flowered pink shirt because you like the colors, wear it. If you like romantic movies and tear up at the end of Babe when the farmer says, “That’ll do, pig”, then by all means to so and don’t let some half-baked, self-promoting pseudo-guru continue to plague you with guilt because he has rolled his crystal ball and decided that you weren’t manly enough, or feminine enough, or submissive enough, or a good enough leader. (I need a deep breath after that sentence.)

Aren’t you tired of it? Aren’t you tired of the never ending line of rich, popular preachers continually adding more and more to the commandments of God?

Instead of continually searching your heart to see if you desire God enough, look at Christ and what he has given you. Instead of continually searching your wardrobe to make sure you clothes are manly enough, look at Christ, the Son of man and the son of God, and live boldly. Instead of searching the blogs to see if you are a submissive enough wife, simply look to Christ and live.

Stand fast in the life and liberty that he purchased for you with his precious blood.

Every time a new commandment is invented, we sell a little more of our liberty for a mess of pottage. It is the mentality of the slave. Quit making the bricks for Pharaoh. Quit giving these guys clicks. Quit going to their conferences and quit buying their books.

Stand fast in the liberty by which Christ has made you free.

Look that transgender fellow in the eye and stop being afraid. Take your gay friend to lunch and stop being afraid. Love your wife boldly and quit fearing the opinions of people that you won’t ever meet.

As for me, I will continue to listen to Barbra Streisand and Lady Gaga, if I want to. And Pink Floyd and Queen when I want to, because sin isn’t something you catch off of a record. You might catch me listening to Gorecki or Passenger depending on my mood, but I certainly don’t check the opinion of some blowhard before I decide what kind of music I like. This is what liberty is.

If you look at my library, you will find Calvin and Berkhof, Stephen King and Nora Roberts. And I won’t ask your opinion before I buy a book I like. Because sin isn’t something you catch from reading the wrong books – otherwise Christ would not have died. If we could have been saved from our sins by proper censorship, we would not have needed Christ to die for our sins.

I will wear my sparkly paisley shirt and my lavender tie, and wear my stripey socks and use soap that makes me smell nice just because I want to, and I am created in God’s image and have no problem reflecting his beauty and strength and wisdom.

I will continue to moisturize because I like how my face feels when it isn’t all dried out and I just don’t give a fig anymore if some testosterone-challenged, knuckle-dragging, schoolyard bully thinks I’m effeminate or not. My wife likes me just the way I am and she’s the one who has to live with me.

And more importantly, God calls me his child. He has put my sins far, far away from me and calls me to live in liberty for his glory, and not according to the doctrines and commandments of men.

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