Thursday, September 24, 2009

This Will Take Some Time

OK

Since I have had some feedback on the subject of God's will I will undertake to clarify what I think about it and how it relates to human freedom. I will do this through a series of questions because that is how I think best. I have already spoken to some of you about this and your questions will appear first. For everyone else I should be able to cover this subject in oh... say 100 blogs so it been nice knowing you (sounds of chutes popping as people jump ship). OK now I have the room to myself.

The first response I got was on my assertion that God had willed evil to take place place and that there was nothing man could do about it. This really is my position and I will try to explain why as briefly as possible here.

First off God is sovereign, and not over most things but over everything. Even the bad stuff which means that God has to allow any and all things which occur to occur, and if He did not then they either would not happen or God's sovereignty is an illusion. God is not interacting with time and doing the best He can, but is rather overruling all of history according to His will and His purpose and no purpose of His can be frustrated; 2Ch 20:6, Jer 49:19, 50:44. That means that all and everything which occurs does so according to God's will without exception.

God never is the cause of evil.

Depends on what you mean by cause. If you mean that God does not tempt men to evil nor to sin but rather that God wills that all should repent and come to salvation, I agree. But if you mean that evil happens to the absolute exclusion of God's will and desires then I disagree. Isaiah 45:7 unflinchingly declares that it is God who brings calamity. Of course one would say that the Lord is speaking of judgment, but this calamity is still in accordance with God's will and purpose. And God does not always send calamity in the form of judgment.

Job experiences a level of suffering beyond what most anyone would ever suffer and God not only does not do so in judgment, but God does not tell Job why He has done so. There is nothing in the book of Job to indicate that Satan acted apart from God's allowing him to torture Job, and there is no reason therefore to concoct an excuse for God's having done so.

Joseph is sold into slavery by his brothers and then is falsely accused of attempted rape and then is imprisoned unjustly only to be rescued in time because he is God's man to affect the saving of his Father's family. God absolutely willed that this calamity would fall on Joseph, and the Bible makes that abundantly clear when Joseph tells his brothers that, "You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good." Gen 50: 20.

If Scripture is not embarrassed then neither will I be.

Last, and greatest, is the Crucifixion. The Scripture makes it abundantly clear that it is God who crushes Jesus on Golgotha. It is the Lord's pleasure to bruise Him and to affect our healing with His wounds. (Isaiah 53) There is nothing in Scripture to lead us to believe that anything beyond the will and expectation of God happened on Golgotha, in fact it is in the famous prayer of Gethsemane in which Jesus acknowledges that it is God's will that He be crushed. To say otherwise makes the Cross the greatest cosmic flub in history and sets aside God's ruling power in any fashion. After all, if God is not capable of keeping Christ from the nails and whips of the executioner then neither should we trust in Him. But the Scripture is absolutely clear that this calamity was according to God's purpose and we have no reason to think otherwise. Clearly this is the greatest act of sin and human wickedness ever done, and the Scripture unblushingly tells us that it was done according to God's will and God's plan.

So clearly God allows, purposes and wills evil according to His own counsel, but He does not cause evil. That is a different thing altogether. God has never caused anyone to sin, if He did He would not be God but the Devil. And neither has God ever tempted anyone to sin, same reason.

God allows evil, God ordains evil. When God placed man in the Garden He knew man would fall and He let it happen. Had God not allowed it to happen it would not have happened. Therefore God ordained it to happen and inescapably it happened according to His will. But God did not cause the Fall. It was not God but the serpent who tempted Eve. It was not God who led Eve to sin but her own will. Clearly God did not desire that they would sin seeing as how He had told them to not eat of the Tree, and yet He knew they would fall and did not prevent it. If God is sovereign then it must have been according to His own purposes and will. If it were not so then God would not be sovereign.

But it is different to say that we allow something to happen and we cause something to happen. I could say to my kids that I am going to the store in five minutes and if they have their room picked up and shoes on they can go. If at the end of that five minutes they are still playing in the land of blocks everywhere having done neither of the things which I asked. I leave them with their mother even though they are mad at me, and will probably cry. I give them specific instructions about the conditions by which they may go to the store. I really want them to obey me and I want to take them to the store. They don't obey me and they don't go. Is it under my authority to force them to clean their room or even clean it for them? Yes. Will I? Not a chance. Have I done them wrong by allowing them to disobey me? No. Did I cause the disobedience? No. So if my children choose to disobey me they do so out of their own volition completely apart from my will, and my not helping them does no violence to them and neither does it make me a bad dad when I don't take them.

Well the same is true of God. God may allow us to sin, know we will sin and not prevent us from sinning, but in so doing He has done us no wrong. However the difference between me and God is that He is totally sovereign over the state of my kids room (which is proof positive that He wills disaster) as well as everything else. So when we sin He is sovereign over that and is working out history according to His will which includes my sin.

Ah, but sin is not God's will but man's.

True, God does not cause us to sin and God gave us free will.

And...

I fail to see why this supposed to be some sort of great argument for God's role in the existence of evil. It goes something like this. Man has free will and can therefore choose to not obey God and therefore it is not God's will that man sins.

Wow so many things wrong with this one.

First off is that at the most shallow level it could almost be true. But that is like saying the ocean is big and blue. Even if i is true it is not helpful if you are trying to find Venice Beach.

Second is that if God gave men free will and is not responsible at least in a secondary manner for the wickedness that men do then we can only draw one of two conclusions; one God had no idea what would happen when He gave men free will or two God in giving man free will surrendered His right to rule over His Creation.

If God gave men free will not knowing that they would sin then clearly God is not omniscient. How could God know everything and not know that? So if we are going to assert that God does in fact know everything perfectly then we must also assert in the giving of free will to men that God knew man would fall and therefore man's fall is according to God's will.

Or if God knew that man would fall and did His best to prevent it it but just couldn't the Rabbi Kushner is right and God is doing His best and we need to forgive Him for being a doddering old fart. After all, if God could not prevent man from sinning because man has free will then man is god now and god is irrelevant. What is the purpose for prophesy in such an idea? If God cannot overrule man's will then all man need do concerning the Second Coming, the end of sin and God's eternal rule in His Kingdom is say, "No we like it this way and choose to not have this whole Revelation thing come down," and God will be forced to smack His open palm to His forehead and yell, "Oh man! I had no idea it would come to this! I would never have written the Book if I had known they would say no! WHO TOLD THEM THEY COULD SAY NO!!!!"

No! It does not work. If we are to trust in God that He will keep His word we must first trust that He has the power to perform His word. We cannot say God is sovereign over everything excepting man's will excepting prophesy which is a special exemption. That is absurdity.

God is sovereign.

God did will man would have volition.

God did know man would fall when He did this.

God did not compel men to fall.

God did not prevent man's fall, and thus inescapably allowed it.

Therefore God knew evil would come into His Creation as a direct result of His creating.

Therefore God is responsible, even if secondarily, for the evil in the world.

This is not heresy, it is the ordination of a sovereign God over all things.

But how could God have allowed these things to happen and still be good?

I don't know. But the Bible gives us a hint, and it God's glory.

It is late and I am going to bed, I will pick this up tomorrow.

God Bless.

Sunday, September 20, 2009

Church - - - - - - - - - - State

...and ne'er the twain shall meet.

There are a lot of folks who are fond of yelling about the lack of Christianity in America and get loud about our Christian foundations. And since I am a perpetual smart alec I feel obligated to comment about this.

First off the predominate religion of the shapers of the Declaration of Independence was not Christianity, they were deists. They believed in a very Aristotelian understanding of God which was a sort of Cosmic Watchmaker who put the universe in place, established laws to govern it, wound the watch and jumped ship. This is not the Christian understanding of God which declares that God rules over His Creation nanosecond by nanosecond and there has never been a single instance in which God has even blinked, but rather that He has personally overseen all and everything which has ever happened. To say that God rules His Creation by means of natural law is to declare that this natural law is on par in power with the One who created it. In other words, God personally would have created an impersonal god to govern in His stead while He naps and catches some rays on Alpha Centari.

Problem!

God cannot create God. To say that He could would mean that He, a self existent eternal being would have created a contingent (since it is created) all powerful (except for its ability to exist) personal (excepting that whole impersonal force thingy) force which does everything He does except show up. And... ya know be God.

Ridiculous.

Of course there are many who think that any idea of god is ridiculous, but I am not arguing for the existence of God here but rather in what sort of god did the Founders believe. And the Declaration gives us a great clue, and it is found in the notion of natural law.

"We hold these truths to be self evident that all men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights..."

The clue is found in this statement. The notion of "certain unalienable rights" is foreign to Biblical Christianity. The notion that man has the right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" and that this right is certain, that is inviolable, is found nowhere in Scripture. In fact the Bible promises that if in our pursuing of happiness we offend God He will deprive us of liberty and life. It also affirms that our existence, freedom and happiness depend on God's beneficence toward us and our willingness to depend on Him and follow after Him. The Gospels tell us that we will not have happiness in life but suffering and Paul admonishes us to accept the happiness of freedom found only in slavery to Christ. The persistent admonition of the Bible is that man is fallen and rotten to his core enslaved to sin and selfishness and incapable of pleasing God, and in fact in attempting to please himself is bound to displease God and thus work toward the undoing of the very happiness toward which he is supposedly working.

Also the very idea that these rights cannot be set aside (unalienable) is to say that no one (and yes that includes God) can deprive us of these rights and therefore the rights are part of natural law which as we have already seen would be equal to if not in fact above the Creator from a deist perspective.

I have no doubt that a great many of the signatories of the Declaration and Constitution were Christians, but the notion that they were all Christians and these documents are Christian in their origin and orientation is manifestly false. There are some who will say that "Creator" is proof enough of their beliefs, but Muslims, Hindus, Wiccans, Jews and a wide assortment of others all affirm the existence of a Creator and yet are all distinctly non-Christian.

In fact the Constitution makes no mention of God at all. It is an utterly secular document.

So what is the big stink?

The First Amendment.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Jefferson (again a deist) sought two things in this amendment concerning religion; to prohibit the establishment of a State church/religion and to protect the Church from the State.

First remember that these men had roots in Europe which had seen war over religion for seven odd centuries by this time beginning with the Crusades and then the more insidious wars which saw the rise of such things as the Inquisition (what a show...) and outright wars following the Reformation. England had seen repeated persecutions of people due to the wild swings in Monarchical Religious preference. Be it Henry VIII and the Catholics. Mary and the... well, everyone not a Catholic. Good Queen Bess was great as long as you weren't a Scottish Reformed believer. Cromwell practically made killing Irish Catholics a national sport.

The point is that Jefferson firmly believed that the only way to protect the rights of the individual citizen from the State concerning religion was to restrict the State's power to establish a church and thus to give that church state power. Again see the Inquisition (here we go...)

Jefferson also understood that even if the Federal Government did not declare a State church/religion it could still create laws which so restricted the practice of religion that it would do so de facto. Therefore he included the clause concerning laws "which restrict the free practice thereof." In so doing he prevented the writing of a law outlawing say the Liturgy of the Mass. Such a law would not serve to create a State church but would so restrict the practice of Roman Catholicism that it would essentially outlaw it. Such would also be true of a law banning praying to the east, venerating Joseph Smith and reading the Bible.

The purpose of the first amendment is to separate the Church from the State even if it does not explicitly say so. The reason why is to protect the Church from the State. And that is in all of our best interests.

Just ask your Iranian neighbor who can never go home again because he is Christian or Baha'i.

However, (nod to R. C. Sproul here) to separate the Church from the State does not mean to separate the State from God. And when the Church calls on the State to repent and return to the Creator who ordained it to be, the Church is not assuming the role of State but is rather explicitly acting as the Church should. And anytime the State fails to protect life, the poor, the fatherless, the widow and yes even the sojourner the State has failed in its mandate from God and in so doing has failed to be, not the Church, but the State.

And we should all be concerned about that.

Just a thought

God Bless

Friday, September 18, 2009

Gay Marriage

A quick word of clarification, I am not in favor of gay marriage. Before the hateful comments flow in I feel I should explain.

Marriage is a creation ordinance given by God to humanity and therefore we are in no position to redefine what it is.

However! The govt does not have the right to issue contracts to hetero couples and not gay couples strictly because of sexual orientation. This is blatant discrimination and must be stopped.

If DOMA is allowed to stand then contracts written in any state would then be subject to re-ratification in any other state including marriage. It clearly is a violation of the constitutional mandate that states recognize each others legally binding agreements without it there is no federal government at all but a loose confederation of sovereign states.

The govt grants special rights to married couples concerning taxation, property, privacy, etc. even going so far that a will need not be written if a surviving spouse is willing to claim the property of the deceased. All of these rights are granted under a binding contract issued by the govt which has nothing whatever to do with the marriage ceremony itself.

Marriage is a Church institution and therefore is not subject to oversight of govt enforcement as to who the Church does or does not allow to get married. Separation of Church and State cuts both ways.

So what to do.

The Church should divorce itself from the govt, give back its perks granted to it for marriage and, Heaven forbid, make the couples seeking marriage draw up the legally binding contracts concerning property etc. However the tax is perk would probably vanish forever.

This would untangle the knot because then if states chose to issue these contracts to homosexual couples then no marriage ceremony of any sort would be needed. The legal grounds on which these cases are being pursued would vanish because then any couple wishing to enter such a contract could without being discriminated against because of Church conventions. And the Church could grant marriage to whomever it saw fit as a Church institution without being subject to lawsuit because those who were refused marriage would not suffer loss.

I realize that this is very simplistic but I think a solution to the problem would look something like this.

Just Thinking.

God Bless.

I May be a Bad American

I remember well the first time I realized I could no longer be a Christian and a Republican, although to be fair I was never much of a Republican as I am fairly sure that votes for Perot, Clinton and Gore disqualify me or some such... that is let's just say I haven't been getting a lot of love from the RNC lately.

So anyway, I was driving home and listening to Sean Hannity (yeah I know but remember I was trying to be a Republican and it took daily indoctrination to make me pay attention so get over it) and he was defending the notion of re-upping the Patriot Act. His quote was, "This law was written to keep you safe from the people who are trying to kill you and your children."

OK, before I go any further you should know something about me. I am a dissident through and through when it comes to the government. I don't think the government can do anything right. Any organization that pays $12 for a Tylenol (medicare) and ten grand for a screw driver is totally incompetent, and that organization does not have the power to protect anyone from anything except for its own power base from the citizens of this country. My TXDL says that I live on a street that does not exist because a) govt clerks can't type and b) govt workers can't figure out how to proof read so I now carry a little reminder with me everywhere I go that the govt is incompetent, and all I have to do is flash my ID to prove it.

So anyway, Hannity was talking about a law which protects me and my children. Now I realize that there is a possibility that someone will read this and see nothing wrong with that statement so time out for a logic lesson.

Prop 1 Murder is wrong
Prop 2 Murder is illegal
Prop 3 Murder happens all the time everywhere
Therefore: The prohibition of murder does not prevent murder
Therefore: A law prohibiting murder does not protect us from being murdered.

So then what is the purpose of the law prohibiting murder? To make it possible to prosecute those who have committed murder. That is, a law does not exist to prevent an action but rather to give the govt enforcement power when certain events happen. This is what was wrong with the Patriot Act. The people panicked and congress rushed through a poorly written law that was meant to legalize the policing of thoughts which may possibly could if sort of iffy iffy iffy lead to terrorism. That is a bad law.

(Funny but true! When the big brew ha ha was going about gay marriage and a bunch of states were amending their constitutions to make it illegal to let gay folks get married, Texas passed an amendment making it illegal to issue contracts of any sort at all unless approved by the state. Such would normally be scary but remember, these people are led by Rick Perry and can'tproof read.)

So anyway, Hannity's basic idea (law prevents bad things from happening) was flawed surprise and second off his notion that it is the govt's job to protect us was just really weird to me.

Here's the thing, I am a Christian. More to the point I am a Calvinist. I believe God is sovereign over all things including poor wardrobe decisions, bad paint joibs on beater cars with big wheels, puppies being run over by said cars, little kids getting cancer, hurricanes hitting coastal cities (well OK that may just be the law of averages catching up) and yes, God is sovereign over crazy people flying airplanes into buildings. If He hadn't willed it to be so it would not have happened. The reasons I think are REALLY long and I may get to them in later posts, but just accept for now that I do in fact believe this. It is therefore also true that if God should will that someone plants a nuke in the house next door and blows me, my wife, my kids and about 100,000 of my closest friends into Kingdom come then there is nothing, I repeat nothing that the Law can do about it. As in... ya know... nothing. Zilch. Zip. Nada.

To that end the only thing which will keep our country safe is the sovereign will of God that we would be safe, and a man who does (though not a lot) talk about his faith and equates that faith to being a "Good American" then I guess would say I am out on that.

Unless of course being a good American means something else entirely from carrying the mail for any political party at all.

Just thinking.

God Bless.