Remonstrance

I’ve got other issues besides the “Old Dawg” problem.

Look at what I did last week at CT:

They say  a picture is worth 1,000 words, but just in case here’s the 1,000 words (10-minute version of the teaching)…
by all means, feel free to comment and let me know if I lost my mind or not…

Rage Virus

The teaching concerns the following passage:

Therefore encourage one another and build up one another, just as you also are doing. 1 Thess. 5:11

And they had a contageous love:

Indeed, you already show your love for all the believers throughout Macedonia.  Even so, dear brothers and sisters, we urge you to love them even more.  1 Thessalonians 4:10

In the 1950s Norman Vincent Peale first championed “the Power of Positive Thinking” as the equivalent of biblical of “faith”, and he was a phenomenal hit. Unfortunately, he also contributed to the widespread misconception that blibcal faith is a “positive outlook” which transcends reality–the idea being that reality is a product of our outlook.

Then Robert Schuler built the Crystal Cathedral with “the Power of Possibility Thinking” and took over Peale’s crown as the king of positive thoughts.

Now Joel Olstein is the great apostle of positive thoughts, and people love it.

But just when it seems “Positive Possibility Thinking” might be a winner, suddenly this headline:

Man commits suicide at Crystal Cathedral altar

Now wait…that’s not supposed to happen in the Crystal Cathedral. And here’s the story:

The unidentified man walked up three steps to the altar area, knelt before a gold cross and put the gun to his head, said John Charles, director of public relations for the church.

Oops!

Bummer.

• Does this fill the Crystal Cathedral with negative vibes?
• Will the Sunday service be more negative?
• Was the suicidal guy using “Possibility Thinking”?

Interesting conundrums.

And ironically, at the time:

“We were talking actually about the suicide prevention hotline that we have here at our church and telling [the tourists] it’s opens 24 hours, seven days a week, and then just then, I heard this pop.”

Well, one thing’s for sure: a fact-based faith is better than thought-based faith (positive or negative). “Facts is facts” people say, and for good reason.

So “Them’s the facts” in this case.

Ed. note: this lays a foundation for understanding the difference between immaturity and maturity, between immature and mature love.

“The best expression of the aesthetic existence comes down to saying that it lies in the moment” – KIERKEGAARD, S., L’Equilibrie, p. 207.

The here-and-now is a big deal in the postmodern mind, by necessity, since personal experience is the final measure of truth, and hence reality. This undoubtedly explains the mass appeal and rapid dissemination of this world view in American culture, so absorbed we are in the here-and-now. Industries thrive on the fixation with immediacy: fast foods, convenience stores, fast cars and so forth. Everything depends on the moment, and it’s an presumed moral imperative: “Carpe diem!” as the Latin poet said long ago.** It’s an understandable fixation if death means the end of it all, as Paul says:

If there is no resurrection, “Let’s feast and drink, for tomorrow we die!” 1 Corinthians 15:32 (NLT)

What’s wrong with here-and-now anyway? Didn’t Jesus Christ extol it?

“So don’t worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring its own worries. Today’s trouble is enough for today.” Matthew 6:34 (NLT)

The problem with here-and-now postmodern living is its naked immaturity. When Christ says “don’t worry about tomorrow,” he’s talking specifically about useless anxiety. The postmodernist, however, dumps all meaning and existence into the here-and-now.

“Everything good is instinct – and consequently easy and free.” – Nietzsche

Nietzsche fits into the American psyche well, although he was German, and although writing more than 100 years ago, modern Americans would love this articulation of lower-brainstem life:

“The use of reason to control instincts is a fatal flaw. Nietzsche calls this decadent.” – Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky and Nietzsche

They say Nietzsche went insane from an STD, but it was probably well underway by that time. To label self-control as “decadent” is a stretch. Nietzsche is a Christian-hater, of course, so his rants are often geared to shock the traditional church.

More than 100 years ago Dostoevsky also captured the future American revulsion with the biblical world view:

“If one has grasped the blasphemousness of such a rebellion against life as has, in Christian morality, become virtually sacrosanct, one has fortunately therewith grasped something else as well; the uselessness, illusoriness, absurdity, falsity of such a rebellion.” – Dostoevsky

The “rebellion” label is well-deserved and worn with pride, especially by those New Testament characters like Christ and Paul, and they were also called absurd, useless and liars by the elitists of their time. Dostoevsky’s slander fits the traditional Kosmos mold from long ago, but his amorality also typifies the postmodern Kosmos today. This here-and-now lifestyle spans the existence of man. It is so ancient its foundational tenants are recorded in the first book ever written in the Bible, around 4,000 years ago:

If you sin, how does that affect God? Even if you sin again and again, what effect will it have on him? If you are good, is this some great gift to him? What could you possibly give him? Job 35:6-7 (NLT)

Therein lies the true cause for the grapes of wrath*: human indifference towards God. Once God is eliminated by whatever means, the road opens for moral drift and, ultimately, the fixation with here-and-now. Some do it by feigning God’s indifference the way all manmade religions do, either by setting him aloof and transcendent as in Job 35, or casting Him as a non-person in the tradition of eastern speculation. Others deny God’s existence altogether, as with modernists. Still others revile His world view, as with the above proto-postmodernists. The result is the same: only I am concerned with my here-and-now, and there my concern must and will lie.

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* Grapes of Wrath: the title of John Steinbeck famous 1939 novel, which he lifted from Julia Ward Howe’s famous 1861 Battle Hymn of the Republic, which in turn was lifted from the Bible: “So the angel swung his sickle over the earth and loaded the grapes into the great winepress of God’s wrath.” Revelation 14:19(NLT) Additional references: Kierkegaard’s Aesthetic Realm of Existence, Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky and Nietzsche.

Check it out!

For the past 600 years God pulled off a Hidden Advent in China, according to a new religion called The Church of the Almight God and it’s now available on the Web.

Ok, it is a hideously ugly Web site, but it does come with a million new words from God! You gotta love the Web – each week you can get the latest available translation delivered in English – straight from the original Chinese language! For Chinese language scholars, the original writings in the native tongue appear side-by-side with the English (the translators acknowledge their imperfections, thankfully, because the English is horrendous).  Here’s something we should research: is it a million new Chinese words or English words?

So what’s God’s new million words called? “The Voice From the Throne.”  Ominous! This time God provided a Forward to the new book! (But then he left out the dedication page!) Another convenience: The Voice comes in articles, not books like the last time.

Here’s what The Voice says to humanity – put this on the refrigerator, it makes a great memory verse:

No matter what, you should not intentionally contradict the word while you clearly know it is the truth.

The Voice is so strict – no intentional contradictions, “No matter what!” (What will Randy Campbell do now?)

Ok, so here’s something amazing – in the Chinese Advent, God either lost or forgot his name, because now it’s just “God” – but not Jesus Christ, according to The Voice:

This is a duty for all who are waiting for the return of Jesus on white clouds. We should remove the scales from our spiritual eyes and not become entrapped by those words that mount the clouds and ride the mist. You should carefully consider the actual work of God, and examine the practical aspect of God. Don’t always forget yourselves and drift on all day long, always expecting that the Lord Jesus, sitting on a certain white cloud in heaven, suddenly descends to be among you to receive you who have never known him, nor seen him, nor known how to obey his will. You had better think about something realistic!

Having refuted those “words that mount the clouds” about Jesus, The Voice says the Hidden Advent is “the practical aspect of God” – which means that someone or something has been moving around in China for the past 600 years – yet without any outward appearance!

Therefore, with respect to whether or not it is the flesh that God’s Word has become, the key rests with his substance (work, word, nature, and many other aspects), but not with his outward appearance.

“The key” is flesh without “outward appearance.” Ingeniously irrefutable! This explains why there’s no pictures! Bogus Bummer! I so wanted to see if the Hidden Advent looks like a hippie or not…

Ah, not to worry, The Voice says later, because the Hidden Advent does have flesh after all!

If the flesh does not possess the substance of God, then he will certainly not be the Word of God that has become flesh. There is no doubt about this point.

That clears up the doubt! (But where’s the pictures!?) If this all sounds confusing, here’s why:

Millions of voices are calling out to you, but it is hard to arouse your heart and your spirit.

I swear, The Voice has been to my house when it’s filled with Kyle’s teenage friends!

It’s really quite impossible to fathom the Hidden Chinese Advent because it’s a real mess, The Voice explains:

We should all be aware that people who are of flesh have all been corrupted by Satan.

An apt description of the Hidden Chinese Advent, wouldn’t you agree?

(PS: Don’t I get some stars for this?)

(In response to Jake’s original Blog click link for details…)

I think your teacher didn’t know about this fact, as Joseph explains to his brothers:

²⁰ “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring about this present result, to preserve many people alive.  Genesis 50:20 (NASB)

How could your professor think “God has caused evil to happen” when Joesph clearly says “you (my brothers) meant evil against me” ? Of course, you don’t even need Gen.50:20 to know who kidnapped Joseph and sold him into slavery – just read the story.

It seems strange to ascribe evil to God simply because He was merciful enough to turn evil into a good outcome, as He did with Joseph.  If I rescue someone from a kidnapper, turn a tragedy into victory, how can I possibly get blamed for the tragedy? What a whacky world! The rescuer is the tormentor?

The same warped thinking twists Rom.8:28 into a claim that God causes evil just because he promises to bring about good? One thing for certain Rom.8:28 does not say: “God causes all things.” That would severely abbreviate the verse.  Rather, it says “…causes all thing to work together for good…” Clearly it’s a promise of deliverance, but somehow it got twisted into the opposite: a dark, foreboding God who causes evil. Even more bizarre, if the verse indeed claims that God causes evil, then the conditional clause in the verse is very uninviting: “God causes evil…only for those who love God!” I, for one, would be sure not to love God, lest He cause me evil!

Your professor is so confident that Judas held absolute power over the crucifixion of Christ – I just don’t get it.  It means God is so weak that He “required the evil of Judas” to accomplish His will? Consider how spineless and impotent God is who waits at the mercy of this feeble Judas, a man who flip-flopped in his convictions to betray Christ — and hung himself? Such a bewildering view of God I think requires a scriptural citation to support his claim that Judas was God’s only possible opportunity to trigger the crucifixion. But the opposite is true: Christ was surrounded by enemies and the threat of arrest quite apart from Judas.  All the Jewish authorities were united and energetically scouring Jerusalem, looking for Jesus to arrest him, and only someone unfamiliar with the historical record (or ignoring it) would think arrest was impossible without the collaboration of Judas.  It’s ironic your teacher concluded Christ was “stupid” in view of his high esteem of Judas!

Nonetheless, it can be fairly said the God “causes evil” indirectly because He did authorize Sovereign Free Will. The same is true every time a married couple brings new life into the world, knowing this baby will some day become an adult and make Sovereign, Free Will choices.  If my son Kyle turns out to be a serial killer, it can be said that Dar and I indirectly but ultimately caused it – however, we would not be responsible for such a beast (if he becomes one) since he exercised his own Soveriegn Will.

PS: I think it’s obvious that I really enjoyed your article…

Current mood: Cool