ACLU, Democrats and media blast Obama for forcing his religious views on us

OK, everyone knows the title is bogus.  The Left — including the religious Left — are determined to put the Onion out of business with their self-parodies.  They leave nothing for the rest of us!

Case in point: Why didn’t the usual suspects go wild when Barack “the church is not his thing” Obama flipped back to his pro-”same-sex marriage” position and blamed Jesus for it?  Presumably Obama’s Jesus was for it in 1996, then against it for 16 years, and then for it again now.  As the link below notes, “even when Obama changes his views, Jesus somehow comes around to agreeing with him.”

If this was just about Obama’s personal views, no one would have cared. But the Left cheered triumphantly, knowing that Obama has no intention to leave it to the States.  If the President changes religious views on infant baptism then it doesn’t generate big news, because everyone knows it won’t impact the populace.  But we all knew this had huge political ramifications.

It is the same kind of hypocrisy and short-term thinking that made the Left cheer when Obama refused to back the Defense of Marriage Act because it “might” not be defensible in court (uh, even though it had been successfully defended multiple times).  Hey guys, would you have applauded the same leadership if Bush had decided that Roe v. Wade couldn’t be defended?  Didn’t think so.  Therefore, please think 15 minutes into the future before validating such dangerous precedents.

The Ambivalent Theocrat makes some excellent points (hat tip: Pastor Timothy).

There are legitimate theological arguments on both sides of our political divide, but they are not equally well received. In America, it seems, one man’s moral teacher is another’s Torquemada — the difference is usually determined by party registration — and the returns on overt religiosity are mixed at best. As president, George W. Bush was repeatedly and pejoratively labeled “theocrat” for acknowledging his faith, and even the slightest intimation that his religious belief informed his political vantage point was perceived by the Left as symptomatic of an almost treasonous disrespect for the separation of church and state.

Bush talked less about his faith than most Presidents — including Clinton and Obama — but people had the feeling that Bush actually meant it.  (Fair and balanced reporting note: I must mention here that Bush’s “Muslims worship the same God as Christians” line was a superfluous political move and horrific theology.)

Throughout his political career, Barack Obama, too, has marshaled religious argument and imagery to his cause when politically expedient, but nary a whisper has followed his proclamations — even when his pastor of 20 years was exposed as an unreconstructed bigot. Obama’s appeals to religion and his claim to be “doing the Lord’s work” are cynical and mercurial enough to have pushed Michael Gerson amusingly to quip that, “even when Obama changes his views, Jesus somehow comes around to agreeing with him.”

. . .

There was no greater example of this than Obama’s 2007 speech at the general synod of the United Church of Christ. After admonishing the Christian Right for talking about religion and warning that faith leaders use the Bible to “exploit what divides us,” Obama proceeded to push for climate-change legislation on the basis that “the Bible tells us that when God created the earth, he entrusted us with the responsibility to take care of that earth.”

While still a senator in 2006, Barack Obama claimed that “not every mention of God in public is a breach to the wall of separation — context matters.” Perhaps so. But to judge from his record, it appears to be a context driven solely by political consideration.

It is ironic that the false teachers consider themselves to be generous and loving when they push their religious beliefs on others and ask the government to do what they think their god wants. You’d expect the ACLU to get litigious over that, but the ACLU and the rest of the Left just go after religious views they disagree with, which means the issue isn’t religion at all, but the disingenuous and hypocritical suppression of freedom of speech.

More importantly, Christians need to use better discernment when following any politician.  Just listen to these Jeremiah Wright clips about Obama and ask yourself if you should really look to the President for your religious views.

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Also see Audacity of a lie: timeline of Barack Obama’s false religious life .

Roundup

Bad Doctrine is a Cruel Taskmaster – The term doctrine sounds dry and boring to some people, but the Bible could not be more clear about the importance of sound doctrine.  The first link has a list of many bad things that happen when we believe false teachings. The best antidote is to read the Bible.  A lot.

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I’m a Reformed Christian at a Baptist church, and I approve of this joke via Pastor Timothy (at least I think it was a joke . . .).

The argument between Reformed Presbyterians and Reformed Baptist essentially boils down to the following statements:

BAPTIST: “You Presbyterians use too little water too early!”

PRESBYTERIANS: “You Baptists use too much water too late!”

There, now you have it.

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The war on women of color?  Union leader smashes pinata with picture of Nikki Haley on it.  Would the media reaction have differed if the union person was a Tea Partier and the pinata had a picture of a Democrat who was a minority?

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I assume this quote is about the cessation of some spiritual gifts, an argument I haven’t researched much.  But he makes a good point about the false teachers.

If signs and wonders did still exist, do you think they would be given to people with bad theology? You think God would give Benny Hinn the power to do miracles to authenticate really bad theology? If those gifts existed, they would belong to the purest, most faithful, sound teachers of the word of God to authenticate their teaching–not to hair-brained people who spew out whatever comes into their head.  – John MacArthur

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The Perils of Polygamy — Polygamy is bad for men, women, children and society in general.  But do the pro-”same-sex marriage” folks advocate for polygamy with the same passion and reasoning that they do for their pet cause, or are they shameless, bigoted haters?  Seems to me that the case for polygamy, as flawed as it is, is superior to the one for “same-sex marriage.”  After all, polygamous marriages involve a man and a woman, which can produce children and provide a mother and father to them — albeit in a far less desirable way than traditional marriage.

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CNN Urges Normal Couples to Emulate Homosexuals’ Promiscuity – That’s impossible!  They must be taking things out of context, right?  Nope.

According to “eminent marriage therapist” John Gottman,

“Straight couples may have a lot to learn from gay and lesbian relationships.”

For example,

“A number of my gay clients prefer to be sexually open but emotionally monogamous,” says sex and relationship therapist Joe Kort. “They can have lovers on the side and not have it be a threat to the relationship.”

It’s a type of male coupledom that sex columnist Dan Savage has famously termed “monogamish” …

I’m going to ignore that advice.

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Obama 2004 Campaign Flashback: Bush Deficit Is An “Enormous Problem” – yep.

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Fashion show at church – worse than it sounds.

Most pastors are probably not terribly concerned about the fashion statement they make from the pulpit … certainly not enough to start a web site devoted to the topic. But Ed Young, senior pastor of Fellowship Church, a mega-church in the Dallas-Fort Worth area is not most pastors. In February of this year, he launched Pastor Fashion, which is devoted to exploring how “the men and women of God [can] set the standard for the rest of the world in fashion as well as faith.”

. . .

Yikes. One might be concerned that Young is too focused on outward appearances … and they would probably be right. On this point, he told ABC News: “You need to make the cover as good as possible so people will read the book.” . . .

“We should be at the forefront of fashion,” he told ABC News. “I think we have the ultimate message and should dress up with the times.” Staying up on the trends of the times sounds like quite a luxury … not something God actually expects of his followers. Perhaps the fact that people frequently notice Young’s hip clothes and consult him for fashion advice should serve as a warning to focus less on external appearances, rather than more.

This is one more reason I’m glad I moved to Reformed theology. I don’t have to waste a single moment worried that if I don’t have just the right shirt on that someone won’t get saved.

Years ago I used to catch Young’s father on the radio and he seemed pretty sound.  If his father isn’t embarrassed about his son, then he should be embarrassed about not being embarrassed.

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Another boomerang for Obama – Guess who got the most private-equity money in 2008? – So if he is too critical of Romney & Bain he looks more like a hypocrite and risks losing their donations this time.

Several point Calvinists?

Some Christians go into full freak-out mode when the term Calvinism* even comes up.  While some have done a very careful study to arrive at their opposition to the 5 points of Calvinism, much of what I come across falls into the straw-man category.  That is, they don’t have a proper understanding of what they are criticizing.  I’m not going to address the merits of the view here, and I ask that commenters do the same (if you really must say something, feel free to link to your favorite defense of your view).  I view this issue as important but not worth dividing over.

My point here is simply that many non-Calvinists often talk like Calvinists.

If you read the newspaper — or even look carefully in the mirror — you should agree with the doctrine of total depravity.  That doesn’t mean that we’re as depraved as we could be in all aspects of our lives, just that we were conceived as sinners and our words, thoughts and deeds always fall short of the glory of God.  That should make you at least a 1 pt. Calvinist.

I’ve previously asked, Ever notice how Arminians sometimes act and pray like Calvinists?, where I noted that they do so when it comes to evangelism and salvation.  If you talk about evangelism they are quick to say it is all up to God, and they’ll pray for God to change people’s hearts.  It is a humble sentiment, but it doesn’t seem to fit in with their Arminian theology.  I wonder if it is an excuse to avoid the hard and risky work of evangelism?  They don’t seem to want God to “woo” people, they seem to want him to really change them — forever.  Either way, it sure seems to hint at irresistible grace.

Many non-Calvinists hold to the perseverance of the saints, or the belief that you can’t lose your salvation — aka ”once saved, always saved (OSAS),” or as I like to call it, “once really saved, always saved.”

Critics of OSAS often point to Hebrews 6:4-6 to defend their view that we can lose our salvation:

For it is impossible, in the case of those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, and have shared in the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come, and then have fallen away, to restore them again to repentance, since they are crucifying once again the Son of God to their own harm and holding him up to contempt.

It is an admittedly complex passage.  But if it means that you can lose your salvation then it would also mean you can’t get it back. There would be no hope for backsliders, which is not something that the “you can lose your salvation” group typically believes.

So quite a few people seem to be at least several point Calvinists.

* I prefer the term Reformed Theology over Calvinism, but I am going with the latter here as more people are familiar with it.

The first rule of holes: When you are in one, stop digging

We will all make bad arguments at some point.  What we do at that stage is very important.  Do we stand corrected, or do we dig in our heels out of pride?  One bad argument can undermine ten good ones, so it is important for us to be correctable.  Not just for our own intellectual honesty, but for our witness as Christians.

As I emphasize when teaching how and why to read Bible verses in context, I have made many mistakes over the years.  When I realized I had misunderstood Philippians 4:13 or Jeremiah 29:11, for example, I had a choice.  I could keep using the wrong interpretations of these verses, or I could change and use the right ones.

An atheism site had a somewhat useful flowchart about rational debating. (Although they conflated debating and discussion — one can be so thoroughly versed on a topic that they can’t reasonable envision something would change his mind and still debate or discuss something).

Interestingly, while they obviously meant this to imply that Christians don’t follow these rules — and I concede that many do not — I have found atheists to break many of these repeatedly. That is especially true on item 2 about moving on to new arguments once you’ve been shown to have used an inaccurate data point. You can refute their arguments in detail and they just move to the next item in their Big Book O’ Atheist Sound Bites. That’s when you know it is pearl holding / dust shaking time.

I also find that they think they don’t need to offer evidence.  They just point to the views of their monopolistic leaders and assume that is adequate.  Science has been wrong for hundreds or even thousands of years at a stretch, so just because their dear leaders insist something is true doesn’t mean the facts support them.

I find this with false or “saved and confused” Christians as well.  For example, no matter how many times you point out how fallacious it is to say, “Jesus never said anything about homosexual behavior / abortion,” they still repeat that tired sound bite, along with many other pro-gay theology arguments.  It is a bad sign when people can’t be corrected.

It is a good thing to change your views when confronted with valid reasons to do so.  People often stereotype Christians as being close minded, but to be a Christian means that at some point in time one had to admit he was completely wrong about God and the universe and then changed his mind.  I wasn’t feeling unpopular enough as a mere Christian, so after years of investigation I switched to Reformed theology.  We won’t debate that on this thread and my switch doesn’t make me right, I just point it out to note that I had every reason to stay on the other side but was ultimately persuaded to change because I kept an open mind.

So don’t let your pride get in the way of rational discussions and defending the faith!  If you get stumped, don’t say something false.  Just say I don’t know, but I’ll find out, then go do some research and get back to the person.  In the mean time, feel free to shift the discussion back to what you do know — namely that Jesus lived, died and rose again and saved your soul — and encourage them to read the Bible.  Then let God’s word do what He promised it would.

Roundup

Jeff Bezos’s Top 10 Leadership Lessons – some excellent tips from the leader of Amazon.  I love their customer focus.  When companies fold it is usually because they lose that.  Samples:

2.“Obsess over customers.” 
Early on Bezos brought an empty chair into meetings so lieutenants would be forced to think about the crucial participant who wasn’t in the room: the customer. Now that ­surrogate’s role is played by specially trained employees, dubbed “Customer Experience Bar Raisers.” When they frown, vice ­presidents tremble.

3. “We are willing to be misunderstood for long periods of time.”
Many of Amazon’s expansions look like money-losing distractions at first. That sometimes sends the company’s stock price skidding and evokes analysts’ scorn. Bezos shrugs. If the new initiatives make strategic sense to him, a five-to-seven-year financial payoff is okay.

5. “Determine what your customers need, and work backwards.”

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New study finds that repeat abortions greatly increase the risk of breast cancer – This should be front page news, but the mainstream media loves abortion too much to tell you this.  And note the irony of the Komen Foundation being blasted and losing millions in donations for wanting to stop their minor donations to Planned Parenthood.

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From the combo category of “We want to put the Onion out of business with our self-parodies and  we want a diversity of opinions, so shut up” category, see Australian doctor forced off of diversity panel for opposing same-sex marriage.  Yes, a diversity panel.  But “same-sex marriage” won’t impact you at all, right?

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And another from the category of, “How does ‘same-sex marriage’ hurt you?” — Military chaplains to be forced to officiate these fake weddings even if it violate their consciences.

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Obama wasn’t born in Kenya, but there are a couple key takeaways from his publishers claim 1991 biography claiming he was:

1. He was willing to lie about it and never correct the record.

2. The media was too busy digging through Sarah Palin’s trash in 2008 to find this.

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Great response from the Susan B. Anthony group to the Democrats’ desperate “war on women” meme.  If you don’t agree with the Left you can’t be a woman.

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The Myth of Gay Rights ‘Tolerance’ – Great summary by Stacy McCain.  I see this all the time.  Read it all.

Any conservative who has ever tried to have a rational discussion about what progressives call “marriage equality” understands the problem: The very fact of your opposition to this radical policy becomes the basis for attacks on your motives and character.

Never mind that you are defending 5,000 years of civilization, while your antagonist is a deranged fanatic demanding that a fundamental social institution be altered (some would say, abolished) to conform to a theoretical abstraction of “equality.”

No, it is you — standing on the side of settled custom and common sense — who will inevitably be accused of “hate” you do not feel and diagnosed as suffering from an irrational “phobia.”

The fact that your accuser (volunteering also as an amateur psychologist) is demonstrably a fool, unfit to judge the morality and mental health of others, ought to serve as adequate evidence that any “debate” is a futile waste of time and effort. One might as well debate heroin with a junkie as to debate gay rights with Andrew Sullivan or Dan Savage.

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Via Audacity of a lie: timeline of Barack Obama’s false religious life, Pastor D.L. Foster has a very long list of Obama’s deceptions.  Should we be surprised when he came from under Jeremiah Wright and a denomination that lets race-baiting Chuck “Jesus is not the only way” Currie speak for it?

Here’s the intro.  Be sure to read it all.

On May 9th, after some of  his top gay political donors threatened to withdraw support, Barack Obama had an epiphany.  He would frame his support for marriage perversion as a religious decision.  It was just another deceptive move in a long string of deceptive religious tactics that have heaped more chaos on American soil than at any other time in recent history.  The dutiful media followed him every step of the way, ensuring that he was seen as a pious man, guided by prayer and faith.   Yet, GCM Watch has been on the vanguard, constantly warning the church that the man many hailed as some sort of  savior, was a foreshadow of a darker one yet to be revealed. This is our timeline of events.

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How’s that pandering going to work now? – Roxanne points out the ever-growing entitlement state is doomed to crumble.  Read it all.

Let’s say that you want to buy votes by giving $100 in benefits to a minority of the population – say, 10% of it.  The other 90% of the population would have to pay about $11 each for this.  Double the recipients, and each payer must cough up $25.  (At this point, the payers may start to realise that they are not on the ever-growing list of recipients, and that they are paying more than a nominal amount of money.)  Change this to giving 50% of the population a $100 benefit, and the other half of the people have to shell out $100 each.

Generally, Asians and whites out-earn their Hispanic and African-American counterparts.  Welfare, S-CHIP, food stamps, Section 8 housing, reduced tuition, and other goodies are disproportionately used by those minority groups.  This is not likely to change any time soon: marriage rates predict the earning power of the couple and the success of the children, and minorities are much less likely to marry before childbirth than are white and Asian communities. (Ergo, the chances of the socio-economic statues of minorities changing over the next few decades is approximately equal to the chance that John Lennon is living with Elvis Presley in a suburb of Des Moines.)

In the next few decades, we’ll have an ever-expanding class of people who think that entitlements are their right, combined with a shrinking class of potential payers. The Democrats will either have to make the tough choice to not sell out whites, or the American economy will collapse.

The relative composition of minority groups would not be a problem if minority groups were to act the same way as whites and Asians.  Absent a massive cultural shift, however, it is unlikely to happen, and doubly so when the Democrats believe that there is an unlimited amount of money from which to pander to minorities for votes – votes that are especially easy to buy when those groups are told that things like marriage, education, and effort do not matter.

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Great ad by the RNC — if they run these regularly, Obama will lose.  If the media would have covered this in 2008 he would have lost then.

Hearing God’s voice

How to hear God’s voice 100% of the time does a good job of refuting what I call ”sloppy God talk,” which is sadly pervasive in the broader church.

2 Timothy 3:17 drives the point home by stating that through the written word of God the man of God is equipped for EVERY good work. There are no good works that God would have you do that would require you to rely on anything other than His word to make you complete and fully equipped for the task.

The Bible is sufficient to make you complete and fully equipped for every good work.

You don’t need whispers.

You don’t need dreams.

You don’t need visions.

You don’t need trances.

You don’t need a glory cloud.

You don’t need to figure out how to ‘experience God’.

You don’t need contemplative mysticism.

All you need is the written word of God. The Bible is sufficient to make you complete and fully equipped for every good work and because every word of scripture is God breathed, you can know with confidence that you’re hearing the voice of God.

You may be asking yourself if it could truly be that simple.

Yes, it really is that simple!

If you want to hear from God, read the Bible. If you want to hear from him audibly, read the Bible out loud.

When we talk to God it is prayer. When God talks to us it is prophecy, and the burden of proof is on the person who claimed that God gave him a message outside the Bible.

This is good news!  God might give you an additional revelation, but He is not obligated to and it is very uncommon.  I see people getting into all sorts of mischief and bad theology when they focus on getting individualized revelation.  They also damage the faith of newer believers who may unnecessarily question their salvation because they aren’t “hearing” from God like these other Christians are.

I was glad that our church had a sermon series on this.  It used some of the same source materials as I did for Decision making and the will of God.

There is no Bible 2.0.  Just focus on the original.  There are no important spiritual truths that aren’t in the Bible.  When you get all 31,173 verses down and are bored with what God originally revealed, then feel free to ask him for more.

In other words, God told me to tell you to be very careful when claiming to speak for him.

When the survey says, “X% of the people left the church because of _______” . . .

. . . just reply as follows: “No, the real reason X% of the people left the church is because they weren’t Christians.”  (Kudos to Pastor Timothy for pointing that out on the Yeah, it is worth it post.)  And I am talking about leaving the church, not a church.

Lots of surveys come out insisting that people are leaving the church over this or that, so the church needs to change.  I disagree.  If people leave the church for good then they weren’t true believers.  It doesn’t follow that you would love the real Jesus and hate his bride.

Oh, they may have claimed to be Christians but if they leave the church permanently then 1 John 2:19 applies:

They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out, that it might become plain that they all are not of us.

Churches should think carefully about everything they do and seek to be as biblical as possible.  But they should not cater to what the world thinks they should be and market themselves to non-believers based on what the non-believers want.  That just shows how little confidence some churches have in God and the transforming power of his word.  The moment you think you need gimmicks, special music or any type of manipulation then you have gone off track.

2 Corinthians 4:1-6 explains this well:

Therefore, having this ministry by the mercy of God, we do not lose heart. But we have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways. We refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God’s word, but by the open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God. And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled only to those who are perishing. In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,”has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.