Tuesday, March 29, 2005

"Release for us Barabbas!"

Today (3/29/05), in an Associated Press story, the "Colorado Supreme Court threw out the death penalty for a convicted murderer [and kidnapper, and rapist] because jurors discussed verses from Scripture."[1] Why should we be surprised? The God of the Bible, Who's Word is the basis for all Law (both in actuality and historically in the US), has not only been abandoned by our legal system, but now cases are being thrown out and right convictions overturned because His Word is discussed among professing believer jurors.[2]

How fitting that on the heals of the Terri Schiavo case, where the innocent is being sentenced to death, that the murderer should be allowed to live. This sounds very similar to Jesus' trial before the Roman Governor, Pilate in Luke chapter 23, verses 14-25:
. . . I have found no guilt in this man regarding the charges which you make against Him. 15 "No, nor has Herod, for he sent Him back to us; and behold, nothing deserving death has been done by Him. 16 "Therefore I will punish Him and release Him." 17 [Now he was obliged to release to them at the feast one prisoner.] 18 But they cried out all together, saying, "Away with this man, and release for us Barabbas!" 19 (He was one who had been thrown into prison for an insurrection made in the city, and for murder.) 20 Pilate, wanting to release Jesus, addressed them again, 21 but they kept on calling out, saying, "Crucify, crucify Him!" 22 And he said to them the third time, "Why, what evil has this man done? I have found in Him no guilt demanding death; therefore I will punish Him and release Him." 23 But they were insistent, with loud voices asking that He be crucified. And their voices began to prevail. 24 And Pilate pronounced sentence that their demand be granted. 25 And he released the man they were asking for who had been thrown into prison for insurrection and murder, but he delivered Jesus to their will.
Only in this case it is the people who are insisting that the innocent [3] be set free (Terri Schiavo) and the murder (Robert Harlan) be put to death, but the governing bodies will not hear of it.

Notes:
[1] http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=621862
[2] This information was gathered while watching a ABC News interview with the juror who brought the Bible to the deliberations. She said that one of the jurors, who professed to be a Christian, felt that giving the death penalty would be a violation of the 6th Commandment: "You shall not murder" (Exodus 20:13). Certain Bible verses were discussed between believers to see what saith the Lord.
[3] By "innocent" I mean she has broken no civil law which is punishable by death. Whether or not she is innocent in God's eyes, that is, if she has been given the righteousness of Christ through faith, God only knows. "[F]or all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23) and "the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 6:23). "For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; 9 not as a result of works, so that no one may boast" (Ephesians 2:8,9).

Monday, March 28, 2005

The Voice of Homeschoolers in North Carolina Have Been Heard!

On 2/16/05 I posted an article originally written by Lee Duigon Oct. 1, 2003. His article was titled "A Quiet Threat to Homeschooling." Following is a small excerpt:
Children have a constitutional right to learn about beliefs and ways of life other than those of their parents, and the state has a duty to secure that right for them.

So argued Rob Reich, political science and education professor at Stanford University, at the 2001 convention of the American Political Science Association, reading from a paper entitled, Testing the Boundaries of Parental Authority over Education, the Case of Home Schooling.” He included the paper as a chapter in his 2002 book, Bridging Multiculturalism and Liberalism in Education.

. . .

In his writings, Reich proposes that homeschooling should be monitored by the state to ensure that parents teach their children beliefs and lifestyles that they may oppose —that parents may even believe to be evil.

Last week, the legislature in NC met to discuss moving the Division of Non-Public Education (DNPE) under the authority of the Department of Public Instruction (DPI). If approved, this action would, in effect, move homeschoolers under the authority of the public school system, a move that would bring homeschooling one step closer to being "monitored by the state to ensure that parents teach their children beliefs and lifestyles that they may oppose." However, thanks to an alert from the great people at North Carolinians for Home Education (NCHE), this threat may have been stopped (for now).

After hearing about the legislature's committee meeting, the NCHE sent an alert out to many homeschool "channels" asking homeschoolers to contact their Senators, Representatives, Governor Mike Easley, and Secretary of Administration Gwynn Swinson. And homeschoolers did! Apparently committee members received thousands of email messages and phone calls and as a result "there was no action on the proposal" and the Committee is willing "to re-examine this move in a different light." [1]

I personally sent an email to every committee member, the Govenor, and the Secretary of Administration. So far (as of 3/28/05) I have received a response from only Senator Brock. Here is his response via his Legislative Assistant:
Thank you for your email regarding the Department of Non-public Education. Your comments are very important to the Senator and he appreciates your correspondence. He wants you to know that he does agree with you and feels the DPNE and the DPI should remain separate. He will keep your thoughts close in mind as the General Assembly continues it's deliberations during the 2005-2006 Session. (Emphasis added.)
Many NC homeschoolers are already upset that we have to register with the State, keep attendance and immunization records and administer annual testing.[2] My personal opinion is that NO other restrictions or restraints should be tolerated.

Notes:
[1] http://nche.com/alert.html
[2] http://www.doa.state.nc.us/dnpe/hhh103.htm

Wednesday, March 23, 2005

Terri Schiavo

As you've noticed, I've been silent on the Terri Schiavo case. I think there are a lot of Christian articles and blogs around that cover it pretty well so I did not have much to add until now.

This will not be earth shattering, but it gets back to basic biblical principles:

This past Sunday, I dropped into the middle of a conversation among some of the men in our church. The conversation covered many different topics, but revolved around one basic principle: do you believe in situational (relative) ethics or do you believe that morals are absolute? Being that all morals are a religious and based on one's view of law and ultimate authority, I of course am a moral absolutist. I do not believe that God and His laws are relative. There is absolute truth and it is found in God's Law/Word. God will never put us into a situation where we have no choice,but to sin. There is always an obedient way out. Because we are fallen sinners, we may not always see the righteous way out, but it is always there. The Holy Spirit, through our reading and studying God's Word and through prayer, will reveal the way of righteousness to us over time (I am not speaking of extra-biblical revelation).

When talking about Terri Schiavo and similar situations (I believe abortion falls into the same general category) one can not make arguments of the "quality of life" or " 'health' of the mother" (in the case of abortion) type. Once you do, you open the flood gates of relativism; it is a very slippery slope. These are the same types of arguments that the Natzi's used in justifying the mass murder of the mentally retarded, Blacks, and Jews. Who defines "quality of life? Who defines "health?" By what standard are these loose terms defined? Dan Horn, a good friend of mine, pointed out on Sunday that the only question one should ask in these situation is "is this person alive?" If the answer is "yes," then you have you answer to what should be done - everything possible!

One objection raised to this question is that, "Yes, someone in Terri's state is alive, but only because a machine is keeping her alive unnaturally." But what does one mean when they say "natural?" There is a underlying belief in this statement that science is somehow outside of and opposed to God, a thought that God and science are two mutually exclusive entities battling it out to see who will win. In truth, science is God's creation and therefore is under his sovereignty and rule. Just like everything else in life, man can choose to use God's creation for His glory by using His Law as our standard or man can choose to make himself his own standard, which always leads to using God's creation for evil. Terri is still alive because God has chosen to let her live. All the medicine and science and collective medical expertise in the world can not lengthen a life for even a second if God's appointed time has come.

Gary DeMarr, in this article, makes an appropriate connection between Terri Schiavo's case and King Solomon when he faced a similar dilemma as two harlots claimed to be the mother of a child (1 Kings 3:16–28).

Monday, March 21, 2005

Freedom and the Law (Part 2):
The Root of the Delusion

[You can find Freedom and the Law (Part 1) here.]

The root of the humanist delusion is simple to find, simple to uncover. The delusion is rooted in the thought that man is fundamentally good. Even a cursory study of history proves this wrong. After all, were not Adolf Hitler and Saddam Hussein simply doing what ever they wanted without any limitations whatsoever?

Humanism Defined
The basic beliefs of Humanists are summarized as follows:

  1. Man is not natively depraved.
  2. The end of life is life itself, the good life on earth instead of the beatific life after death.
  3. Man is capable, guided solely by the light of reason and experience, of perfecting the good life on earth.
  4. The first and essential condition of the good life on earth is the freeing of men’s minds from the bonds of ignorance and superstition, and of their bodies from the arbitrary oppression of the constituted social authorities.
Carl Becker, The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth-Centry Philosophers (Yale, 1932), p. 102.[i]

To a Humanist, “To speak of something as ‘supernatural’ is therefore to imply that it is imaginary, and belief in powerful imaginary entities is known as superstition.”[ii]

These ideas are founded in the Enlightenment’s humanistic rationalism, naturalism and the fictitious theory of evolution which is being pumped into our public (State) school children (a theory, by the way, which takes more faith to believe in than God’s Word). “Enlightenment thinking operated on the premise that there was no supernatural in a purely naturalistic world. Truth, ethics, and law was to be determined by man’s reason; theistic reasoning was an imposition on man’s freedom.”[iii] A simplistic rendition of the theory goes something like this: Given the fact of evolution, a creator does not exist. Therefore man is the highest form of life. He has evolved from the primordial slime into his current form and will continue to evolve into higher life forms. The only thing holding him back is the bondage of a primitive society still holding on to a now useless creation of man: religion and its ridiculous moral codes.

The problem with Humanistic mantras like the one which is the focus of this article is that when the rubber hits the road, those who pontificate such nonsense are really only talking about themselves and the same “rights” which they hold so dear are never extended to others (such as murders and rapists). The reason for this is because deep down they know that there are such things as right and wrong (good and evil), but they do not what to admit to it until their “rights” are infringed upon.

The current state of Humanism can also be called “Liberal Rationalism.” Phillip Johnson, in his book Reason in the Balance, has an amazingly insightful breakdown of the modern humanistic position:
In the philosophical sense in which I employ the term, liberalism refers not to a position about the level of government spending or to the desirability of change, but to the secular legacy of philos­ophers such as Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, David Hume, Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill. Its essence lies in a respect for the autonomy of the individual. Because liberalism starts with the individual, the most characteristic liberal political doctrines are the social contract as the foundation of legitimate government and individual rights as the basis of liberty. Contemporary liberals will speak enthusiastically of natural rights, but they tend to reject the concept of natural laws, in the sense of obligations that are supe­rior to those created by governments. Obligations in contempo­rary liberalism come not from nature, and certainly not from God, but from society, and they are clearly legitimate only to the extent that individuals have in some sense consented to be bound by them. Rights, on the other hand, are founded directly on our assumed status as autonomous beings.

Although the initial founders of liberalism were theists, the dominant contemporary form of liberal rationalism incorporates the naturalistic doctrine that God is unreal, a product of the hu­man imagination. The famous "death of God" is simply the mod­ernist certainty that naturalism is true and that human beings must therefore create their own standards rather than take them from some divine revelation. We cannot look to anything higher than ourselves, because there is nothing higher, at least until we encoun­ter superior beings from other planets. That means we have to start with human society (socialism) or with the individual (liber­alism) as the unit that is fundamentally real.[iv]

The problem with basing all standards on one’s own thoughts and inclinations is that individualistic, autonomous standards will always tend “to become progressively more relativistic and even permissive.”[v] Humanism is simply man attempting to make himself into his own god. As each individual, autonomous god becomes increasingly relativistic and permissive, the fullest expression of one’s godhood are repeated acts of guiltless, gratuitous, unmotivated evil.
Guillaume Apollunaire (1880-1918), called by Shattuck "the pressario of the avant-garde," was a champion of the gratuitous act, "l'acte gratuit," as the means to human freedom. Uncaused wickedness was for him (as for the Marquis de Sade and others) a liberation, because uncaused wickedness manifests a purely disinterested act, unmotivated evil. Because such an act is performed only to satisfy a totally personal whim, it becomes a free, uncaused, and therefore divine, act. In that act the perpetrator becomes a god. Because the act has no external reference, and no relationship to the situation, to gain or loss, to good and evil, it is ostensibly a pure act, a free act, or an infallible act or word.[vi]
True Humanism, when it brought to its natural and undeniable conclusion, is man trying to be god, desiring to what ever he wishes. But that is not man’s prerogative; it belongs only to the one true God, the God of the Bible:

But our God is in the heavens; He does whatever He pleases” (Psalms 115:3).

All of this provides excellent support the Christian world and life view, that man is basically evil, and therefore, in need of a Savior:
  • Gen. 6:5 “Then the LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.”
  • Ps. 14:3 & Ps. 53:3 “They have all turned aside, together they have become corrupt; There is no one who does good, not even one.”
  • Isa 64:6 “For all of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy garment; and all of us wither like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.”
  • Rom 3:23 “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”
(Part 3: What is Freedom? Coming soon)

[i] Colin Brown, Philosophy & the Christian Faith (IVP, 1968), p. 227.
[ii] Phillip E. Johnson, Reason in the Balance: The Case Against Naturalism in Science, Law & Education (IVP, 1995), p. 38.
[iii] Mark R. Rushdoony, “The Grace of Law,” Chalcedon Report (The Chalcedon Foundation, February 2003 Issue)
[iv] Phillip E. Johnson, Reason in the Balance: The Case Against Naturalism in Science, Law & Education (IVP, 1995), p. 40-41.
[v] Ibid., P. 41.
[vi] Rousas John Rushdoony, Infallibility: An Inescapable Concept (Vallecito, CA, Ross House Books) 1978, p.34-35

An Excellent Book

I recently picked up a book by Stephen K. McDowell, President and co-founder of the Providence Foundation. The book is entitled, Building Godly Nations: Lessons from the Bible and America's Christian History. What I've read of the book is excellent and very well written. I did not even get past the second page of the first chapter when I called my family together and read to them the following excerpt:

Purpose of salvation in Christ
The complete purpose of salvation in Christ cannot be understood unless we understand the original purpose of man. Salvation goes beyond getting man to heaven. It includes restoring man to his original position. Christ brought to man the restoration of the convenant he had with God, of the glory he had from God, and of the dominion mandate. Jesus also brought His kingdom rule and reign to all creation. He proclaimed and demonstrated the gospel of the Kingdom (that is, the government, righteousness, truth, and peace of God in all areas of life).

His atoning work also reversed the curse due to the fall of man. The curse affects individuals through death, sickness, bondage, etc., and in turn also affects all spheres of life. Christ brought redemption to individuals, but also institutions and all spheres of life (including law, government, education, arts, business). Redemption is as broad as the sweep of sin.

God's desire, as Jesus taught us to pray, is for His kingdom to come and his will to be done on earth as it is in heaven. We have been redeemed for a purpose. In Christ we have been restored to sonship and are now in position to obey both the Cultural and the Evangelistic Mandates. With respect to the Cultural Mandate, God has restored us to stewardship. Through Christ we are called back to God's original purpose--to live in His image and to "be fruitful and increase in number, fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over ... every living creature that moves on the ground" (Gen. 1:28). We have been restored to serving God as his vice-regent over the earth.

...

Redeeming the earth
The Cultural Mandate calls us to use all our resources to express His image and likeness on the earth. Fulfilling this mandate requires us to discover truth through science, apply truth through technology, interpret truth though humanities, implement truth through commerce and social action, transmit truth through education and arts, and preserve truth through government and law.
I have not finished the book, but I expect to be only more thrilled with the book as I approach its completion.

Friday, March 11, 2005

Freedom and the Law (Part 1):
Introduction

I recently read one of the most irresponsible statements man has ever uttered:

“In a truly Free Country anybody could do what ever they damned well wanted to do with out any form of limitations whatsoever!”

This statement does nothing less than exalt man to the status of a god and then condemns him to the worse kind of bondage and misery – It is the mantra of Humanism.

This is not a new sentiment however. It is as old as man himself. It has been Satan’s strategy from the very beginning, a strategy which encourages man to ignore the infallible Word of God, and to become his own authority and source for truth. This is what Eve did in the Garden of Eden when she no longer accepted God’s word as truth and decided to determine good and evil for herself (Gen. 3:1-6). It is this kind of corrupt thinking that leads man to make statements like the mantra above. When man ignores God, he begins to believe that he can “have a meaningful and proper understanding of reality apart from God’s revelation,” which is unsustainable and unsupportable.1 Why is it unsustainable and unsupportable? Read the words of Paul to the philosophers at Areopagus in Athens, Greece:

"The God who made the world and all things in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands; 25 nor is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all people life and breath and all things; 26 and He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation, 27 that they would seek God, if perhaps they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; 28 for in Him we live and move and exist." (NASB, Acts 17:24-28a)
Whether individual or nation, "we live and move and exit" in Him and he created us to seek Him.

It does not take much to show this mantra as what it is, foolishness. It only takes one pedophile to molest one of the mantra’s author’s children to send his worldview into a tailspin. It only takes one rapist to attack his wife or daughter, to show how ridicules this statement truly is. It only takes one person to decide to murder the author of the above statement to completely shatter his delusion.

The Land of Boobies
According to Noah Webster’s 1828 American Dictionary of the English Language, the word “booby” has the following meanings: “a dunce or idiot,” “a buffoon,” “a stupid fellow,” “one void of wisdom, or intellect.”

If you are familiar with the original story of Pinocchio (not Disney’s version) by Carlo Collodi, you will remember that the “Land of Boobies” was the place where Pinocchio and his friend Candlewick, a confirmed rogue, joined multitudes of other disobedient and lazy boys to live a life without rules or authority where they can spend their days in “play and amusement from morning till night.”2 In other words, to quote the mantra above, Pinocchio went to live in a land where “anybody could do what ever they damned well wanted to do with out any form of limitations whatsoever.” If we followed the same path, we would transform our once great Country from the “Land of the Free” to the “Land of the Idiots” and its people would, like Pinocchio, all turn into proverbial asses. For when “these poor deluded boys, from continual play and no study had become so many little donkeys, he [the little man who brought them there] took possession of them with great delight and satisfaction, and carried them off to the fairs and markets to be sold.”3 This is exactly what Satan wishes to do to those who dream of creating the same “utopia.”

[Part two: The Root of the Delusion]

1 Dr. Greg L. Bahnsen, Always Ready, p. 96.
2 Carlo Collodi, Pinocchio, p. 166.
3 Ibid., p. 187.

Thursday, March 03, 2005

A Loaf of Bread, The Epcot Center, and R. J. Rushdoony

My wife is becoming very good at making homemade, whole grain and yeast-free sourdough breads. I love the way the house is filled with the aroma of fresh baked bread and I love the taste of warm bread slathered in REAL butter. All in all, it's a beautiful thing.

Now you might be wondering how on earth I can find a relationship between a loaf of bread, Disney's Epcot Center, and R. J. Rushdoony, but here it is:

As I was musing on my wife's new found abilities to make bread, I was wondering why the whole process brought me so much joy. And it came down to basically one thing: this is one more link which has been broken between our family and the false science that is killing Americans. I am not against large companies. I am not against science (I have a BS degree in Computer Science and my skills are in information technology). I believe in entrepreneurship and in free enterprise. But the ends do not justify the means.

Both my wife and I were raised on mostly processed food. This is not a slap in the face to our mothers, it is just fact. Several years ago, there was a faith in science. A faith that science and technology would always gives better lives and correct all evils. It was believed that if science approved of it, it must be good. I believe we are now coming to the end of an age of putting our faith in science.

I remember going to Disney's Epcot Center when I was a kid. One of the sections of Epcot (I do not remember where) was full of future-looking technology. It was full of hands-on scientific exhibits. Well last month my in-laws very generously paid for both of their children's families to spend a week with them at Disney World. It was a great time for a family reunion and for the grandparents to show how much they loved their 8 grandchildren. As you can imagine I hoped my children would have at least as much fun as I did playing with all the exhibits at Epcot as I did when I was a kid.

...As far as I was able to discern, whatever that exhibit was, it is completely gone.

The only hands-on exhibits left were old IBM laptop and desktop computers and a few computer games that kids can play at home on their own systems (some of the computer stations did not even work). Oh yeah, there was also a fire safety exhibit and one about saving trees. It really was quite sad and rather disappointing. Why the change?

I understand that as an adult I have a different perspective on things, but I believe the change is due to the fact that there is no longer any excitement about what the future holds. People are realizing that science and technology will not save us, in spite of all the promises from scientists claiming that all of man's diseases would be cured by now. Instead we are finding just the opposite.

Yesterday, I was listening to the last tape of R. J. Rushdooy's A Christian Survey of World History series. The title of the lecture is "The 20th Century: The Intellectual-Scientific Elite." Keep in mind that this lecture was given in the year 1971 (I may be off a year or two either way), but he spoke on this exact topic - man's failed attempt to save himself through science. It was a very interesting lecture and series, I highly recomend it.

Much of the food that is sold in stores today can not be really considered food at all. It is a mixture of various chemicals, super heated, and shaped and formed into a food look-a-like substance. It is a creation of science. It is man's attempt to produce a better food than God. And what has been the result? Cancer, diabetes, obesity and heart disease rates are higher than ever before in our history. Our scientifically processed animal matter is killing us by the thousands. The lab rats (us) are dieing - the experiment has failed (by the way, the humanistic "scientific elite" do see people as expendable lab rats - don't believe me? Just study the history of Communist Russia and Germany.). It is no wonder that much of the world will not accept food aid from the USA. All of our corn and grain has been genetically modified. We produce sterile fruits and vegetables that take a great deal of resources to produce because they can not reproduce themselves - they are a violation of God's natural order. But hey, we don't have to worry about seeds in our grapes - glad we got that one fixed!

Which brings me back to my wife's lovely, natural, truly whole grain, healthy bread, free from hydrogenated and trans fats, free from pesticides, free from man made vitamins, and free from all the other nasty things injected into our food.

Like I said, "it's a beautiful thing."