Praying for the President

This post by Ligon Duncan out of Jackson, MS is worth noting.

A great summation of why we pray, what we pray for, and for whom.

An Imposing Argument

Who Said It … John Leo

John Leo is a columnist for U.S. News & World Report. His book, How the Russians Invented Baseball and Other Essays of Enlightenment, showcases his humor. He’s also written Two Steps Ahead of the Thought Police, a romp through the irrational world of political correctness, and Incorrect Thoughts, a thoughtful analysis of our wayward culture.

What He Said … An Imposing Argument

I’m struggling to understand the “don’t impose your values” argument. According to this popular belief, it’s wrong to vote your moral convictions unless everybody else already shares them. No-body ever explains exactly what constitutes an offense in voting one’s values, but the complaints appear to be aimed almost solely at conservative Christians, who are viewed as divisive when they try to “force their religious opinions on us.” But as UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh writes, “That’s what most lawmaking is—trying to turn one’s opinions on moral or pragmatic subjects into law.”

Those who think Christians should keep their moral views to themselves, it seems to me, are logically bound to deplore many praiseworthy causes, including the abolition movement, which was mostly evangelical churches courageously applying Christian ideas of equality to the entrenched institution of slavery. The slave owners, by the way, frequently used “don’t impose your values” arguments, contending that whether they owned blacks or not was nobody else’s business.

Is Satan Pro-Man

Whoa, when I read this the other day, it solidified into words what I have been considering lately about the ideologies of some and how it is ultimately only a benefit for a select few. (I tend to use my other blog to enumerate these).
John Piper says it best (esp. point 1, “Beware that not all philosophies and social movements that talk up man are really good for man.”):

“When the choice is between exalting God or exalting man, Satan is pro-man. When the choice is between exalting Satan or exalting man, Satan is pro-Satan. Here are the texts.

1. In Mark 8 Jesus told his disciples he must suffer. Peter rebuked Jesus! Jesus turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man” (Mark 8:33).

So what Satan was standing up for in the mouth of Peter was “the things of man.” He was very pro-man at that point. Beware that not all philosophies and social movements that talk up man are really good for man.

2. In John 8 Jesus said the devil “was a murderer from the beginning, and has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44).

A person lies and kills to get his way without concern for the good of others. Satan is a liar and murderer because he is totally self-centered. So he cares nothing for man (John 10:13), except where man’s prosperity can draw him away from God.

Is Satan pro-man? Yes, when it serves his God-belittling, self-exalting purposes. But in the process of standing with man he leads him to destruction. “

New years thoughts

The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul and a new nose; new feet, a new backbone, new ears, and new eyes. Unless a particular man made New Year resolutions, he would make no resolutions. Unless a man starts afresh about things, he will certainly do nothing effective. Unless a man starts on the strange assumption that he has never existed before, it is quite certain that he will never exist afterwards. Unless a man be born again, he shall by no means enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.

G. K. Chesterton

History and the study of Reality

I was watching the History channel last night. There was a series they created called the Seven Deadly Sins, portraying an early Christian’s synopsis of the sins of the Bible. As there is not a ’standard’ list anywhere in the Bible, the big 7 was capitalized upon by the Romanist system somewhere around 1000 AD. As the topic of the series put on by the History channel is not my purpose, I will speak little more of those sins. History, on the other hand is an important reference point for any thinking person, and this is where I wish to spend this post.

Simply put, there is not a wholly agreed upon ‘truth’ in the rendering of History, as each formulation of what has happened in the past is the result of some ‘mind’. When history is put onto paper, there must be some distillation of facts as an interpretive creation. When a person writes–anything that is written– there is, in essence, a memory that is made in a tangible form i.e. paper/ink, computer/screen, stone/chisel, etc. When I read a history narrative, whether scholarly or biased, or watch an entertaining show on the History channel (subsidiary of the Discovery channel, known Darwinists), I must remind myself that the resulting piece is some ‘thing’ that someone ‘made’, for a reason. As much as I or anyone else would like to believe that the essence of something that happened that was captured in writing, the fact is, like any moment that you or I live, is a moment that is inexorably beyond words. There could not be enough words used to capture some ‘time’ in history.

What is all this about? As much as some one writes a history of something for a purpose–whether to convince, to find solace or therapy, to memorialize, etc.– there is always a mind behind the writing. There is, by necessity, an interpretation of the facts of the Real.

There sits more proof why there must be a Person behind the whole of Reality. The existence of God is quite easy to believe, since the existence of Man is a given. We are, by nature, Biographers, and not Historians.

“There is properly no history, only biography.” Ralph Waldo Emerson