The specific problem with Obama’s ideals, and hence their appeal to a wide range of people, is their focus on the philosophical view that the individual, and his or her rights and pleasure, is the pinnacle of importance.

This philosophy colors every aspect of what we know commonly as Liberalism however it isn’t all that new for one needs not look very hard into history to find the selfish “it’s all about me” attitude permeating history and streathcing as far back as Genesis 3.

Is it any wonder, then that Obama and his camp speaks so much about the individual and so little about objective good (which presupposes that the individual isn’t of primary importance)? Is it any wonder why we hear the R word (responsibility) so little and the E word (entitlement) so much?

The only thing that befuddles me is why people would think that such a philosophy could be compatable with Jesus’s teachings. Do people really not pay that much attention to ideas and the consequences they have?

My friend’s initial question was whether I thought Obama to be the anti-Christ. While I wouldn’t start painting horns on his head just yet, I will maintain that his current philosophy (which, as his conduct suggests is subject to change according to his audience) is against Christ (hence anti-Christ in the sense of 1 John 2:18, 1 John 2:22, 1 John 4:3, 2 John 1:7) and the ideals he stood, and consequently died, for.

BTW: This underlying philosophy is also why the overwhelming majority of liberals tend to not give as much to charity or actually lift a finger to help others in any real sense (other than superficial hand-outs).

My response to this is as follows (minus the formalities) and I invite anyone out there who still believes I’ve mis-characterized the teachings and history of Mohammad to respond to me.

Dear [Muslim friend],

Thanks for taking the time to write me and address this issue of Mohammad’s moral purity with me.

The fact is that I have studied Mohammad, his life, and his teachings very closely so that my comments which you read, were not made out of ignorance but rather in full view of the facts. Particularly the historical facts which clearly show that Islam since it’s inception violence and war have been actively promoted by it’s founder (Mohammad) and gleefully embraced by the majority of his followers.

This stands in stark contrast with the other prophets Mohammad is supposed to have come from who unanimously preached that the people should trust God and uphold the standard of righteousness found in the Torah which often involved repentance (by both prophets as well as the people) for not having followed the law as they ought.

Mohammad, and his followers’ actions actually run in direct contrast to these teachings. The best evidence of this is seen by “Muhammed and islam which never used sword and violence except against those who fought him first or those who prevented him from conveying his meesage to people”. How is it that the majority of the early followers of Jesus, indeed Jesus himself in accordance with Isiah 53:7, NEVER fought back and instead willingly laid down their lives because of the message they preached trusting that God would be powerful enough to raise up other messengers to preach the message of peace, love, and forgiveness without violating the message by their own actions?

The bottom line is that while both Islam and Christianity both claim (at least on the surface) to be religions of peace, only one has a leader and founder who lived by that message without contradictions or bloodshed.

The truth is that Islam does not preach a message of peace and forgiveness in the same vein as the rest of the prophets in the Tanakh and Gospels, but a message of peace “as long as you…” punctuated by bloodshed and the sword if those conditions aren’t met. In that respect Mohammad and his followers who do take jihad to mean a literal struggle against the infidel which they are to kill wherever they meet are consistently living according to their message which is “submit to me, or else.”

I know you would like to believe that Mohammad’s preaching and actions were peaceful and noble but history, indeed your own words, show that they are anything but. This is why I implore you to consider Jesus’s words that “those who live by the sword will die by the sword” and, instead, take a long hard look at the hope both of them offer after this life and whether you can trust that hope.

This lesson, published by Lifeway, was full of what the reader should and shouldn’t do. Complete with a psudo-ethics question framing the lesson but the appaling part is how the lesson completely missed the central teaching of the text that Saul simply didn’t trust God or his prophet and, instead, decided to take matters into his own hands and in doing so shows why he was not chosen to carry the seed of the Messiah.

Lessons like these are all too common in churches today and it saddens me to see so many people feeding off what amounts to theological popcorn rather than searching for pure spiritual milk (for the babes) in full view of those eating meat (for the more mature).

I believe this is because we have very few people who are concerned with actual growth in Christ which is charactarized by careful study. I believe most people in the modern Church in America are more concerned with simply maintaining the status quo, filling seats in pews with warm (tithing) bodies, rather than digging into the text and gnawing on the marrow of theology.

In short, I believe we, the Church in America, simply don’t think that learning is important and would rather focus on quaint moral sermons that call us to merely do something (get busy for Jesus) rather than teach us about God for the sake of teaching us about God (what a novel concept).

I’d be willing to bet that the Sunday school lesson my mother is about to suffer through tomorrow is all too common across most Churches and happens far more often than we would care to know. I’d like to be wrong, but the dirth of Biblical knowledge and understanding seems to indicate that I’m not.

Donnald Miller recently wrote an article in which he addresses the two hardest issues for an Obama supporter to come to grips with and still claim to be a Christian, abortion and gay marriage.

Both concepts are clearly condemned in Scripture and both come with a host of demonic imagry surrounding them so that we will have no questions about the deplorableness of either action. In fact, to my knowledge no one has seriously tried to defend either of these issues on theological grounds, actually both canidates have openly declaired that they find both of these issues to be “unfortunate” and are for reducing abortion on one hand and merely upholding civil unions on the other as opposed to redefining the Biblical and historical definition (in fact, the defining charistic of what marriage is).

This lack of a theological debate on the inherent moral vacuiousness of these issues should speak volumes to anyone who is more comitted to Christ and the Way he came to teach us (which, by the way, is far more than mere social humanatraianism) than a socialist liberal (read: all about the individual) agenda.

This is far more than a partisan, democrats will vote for democrats and republicans for republicans. This is about truth, this is about right and wrong. I submit that the person who votes for and activly supports Obama’s bid for presidency while claiming to be a comitted and consistant follower of Jesus is either not being honest about their comittment to Him or they are ignorant of the wealth of Jewish history and Scripture that points squarely against the self-centered, anti-life, religiously pluralistic message that Obama’s campaign is built on.

By that I mean where have real, rough and tumble, men willing to fight and die for their beliefs gone in our churches?

One of the saddest things I’ve noticed in most churches is a woeful lack of men willing and able to take a stand and fight.

Sadly, new Christians are more willing to fight for the truth than their jaded counterparts and I believe this has to do with the feminization of the modern Church brought about by the corresponding feminization of the culture we live in.

What is even more sad is that those new Christians quickly learn that “good Christian men” sit down, shut up and merely give their time, money, and energy to their local Church. “Good Christian men” don’t get riled up unless that is what the worship service calls for (a la Promise Keepers), and GCM definitely don’t confront anyone.

God forbid we make waves. God forbid we actually make a difference in the world around us.

God, save us from our pitiful representation of you. Help us be more like men than boys and actually start living like men and stop being pacifistic pansies like most of the men around us.

BTW: Here is a great lecture on the topic if anyone is interested.

PATNA, India (Reuters) - A rich 80-year-old Indian widow has spent thousands of dollars on a feast for 100,000 people in the hope it would please the gods and open the doors of heaven for her, local officials

 

Because of this I want to dedicate a series of posts to identifying a few of these philosophies which are running amuck in most churches and in the lives of most Christians and, once identified, how to combat these philosophies through well-placed questions.

The core of this philosophy is that God directly causes every event that happens. This is vastly different than the Biblical notion that God is sovereign over all of creation but He is not the only one active in his creation creating history.

One of the easiest ways to spot this deterministic attitude (which is more in line with the Greek fates or Islam’s Allah, but also has a representation in the naturalistic worldview as “genetic”) is when people make comments like “well, I suppose it was just meant to be”, “everything happens for a reason”, or “it’s in his/her genes”.

The fallicy of this view is seen most clearly in 1 Corinthians 15 wherein we are told that the last enemy to be defeated is death. Consequently death was the first result of the fall so it is rather odd when people claim that 

The easiest way to combat the ingrained philosophy of determinism in people is to draw their attention back to the fact that God gave Adam and Eve, and indeed all of us, the ability to choose (within limits) our own courses in history and that without this disctionction, there is nothing seperating God from the sin and evil present in the world around us.

Ultimately, this deterministic philosophy is attributable to laziness as it takes real effort to judge and evaluate what is right and wrong and work accordingly to make the world a better place by fighting the effects of the fall.

As I’ve been studying, I’ve recently abandoned several philosophical presuppositions which will definatly produce a noticable change in my writing style and positions from now on. Most notably, I no longer hold to the notion that God directly determins everything that happens in the world or that we are somehow predestined to choose Christ by some sort of puppettering act of God (known traditionally as Calvinism).

This doesn’t mean my core beliefs in the inerrancy of Scripture or the God, or his son, of whom the Scriptures speak, has changed but I felt it nesicary that before I continue writing too many new posts I clairify that since I don’t intend on rewording or removing any of the previous content here to match my new positions.

Think of it as me allowing you to watch me grow spiritually as I continue to study and test what I place my hope and faith in as I expect all those I come into contact to do as well. 

Now I know many people would say “it was a funeral” according to Romans 6:4, but the death I dreaded went far beyond the death of the “old man”, it punctured the very essence of who I was and still am.

You see, I love intellectual inquiry. I like perusing wisdom, questioning and exploring and generally learning as much as I can about as many things as I can.

However the primary message I kept getting from most of the Church was a bunch of tasteless pre-chewed morsels which ultimatly lead to becoming a brain-dead mindless adherent of an essentially blind faith riddled with an endless string of dos and donts (which seemed more numerous than the dos).

I fought long and hard against this notion of blind faith and recently came to grips with the completely unbiblical nature found in most Churches (and indeed, among most Christians) that intellectual inquiry into the Christian faith is a hinderance at worst and an academic niche at best. Jesus himself spoke mostly with questions designed to stimulate the minds of those listening. Most of the apostles argued and debated. God Himself even told us in Deuteronomy 8:3 that “man shall not live on bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord”.

So if you are starving or have come to the conclusion that the depth of learning about Christ ended with the Cross, I implore you to dig a little deeper. Perhaps you’ve bought into the lie that biblical faith can be manufactured by our own feelings rather than mined with great labor through diligent study and reflection.

Learning is a life-long endeavor and when you come to the realization that the same joy of studying your favorite subject such as mathematics, biology, or chemistry can also be applied to the infinite Creator, you’ll understand why Psalms 34:8 tells us to “taste and see that the Lord is good”.

One of the most essential questions for any person, and indeed especially for any disciple of Christ is; What are you chewing on? Does it have any substance past your own personal feelings or is there true meat there that can also serve to nourish others?

Perhaps the old adage is true; You are what you eat.