Naming His Grace
Saturday, September 28, 2024
Once Again: Listening to Scripture While Wolves Are Howling
Friday, August 16, 2024
Telling a Crooked Story: A Continuing Review of Shepherds for Sale
In a time of
deepening trouble, division, lies, unfaithfulness, power grabs—that may become
worse, the Church of Jesus Christ, her people, are called not only to love one another
but to also lift up each other in prayer and thankfulness—they are also called
to uphold righteousness and truth. Love “does not rejoice in unrighteousness,
but rejoices with the truth (I Cor. 13:6).
I am reading
Megan Basham’s new book, Shepherds for Sale: How Evangelical Leaders traded
the Truth for a Leftist Agenda. My intention was to write a review of it,
but after seeing how complex that would be for me, with a great deal of
research, I have decided to write several posts on it. This first one will be
on chapter 3. “Hijacking the Pro-Life Movement.” I will return to the earlier
chapters in future posts.
In her usual
method, Basham begins with a tale of someone she admires, and the lady is
certainly admirable in her work for the Lord. But then she goes on to contrast
that person with others she defames. And while we read the personal stories of
those she admires we read few personal details about those Basham attacks.
Basham
chooses Karen Swallow Prior as the first pro-life person she feels sold out to
the leftist agenda—and yes, Prior is very pro-life. Prior, who is a professor
and author, has spent a good deal of time as a member of the pro-life movement.
In a New York Times column, after Roe was defeated, Prior wrote:
“Roe stripped from the prenatal child the
right to continue to live and grow, safe and free from intentional harm. If you
believe, as I do, that abortion unjustly ends the life of a being that is fully
human, a life that exists independently of the will of the mother, is
self-organizing and unique, developing yet complete in itself, then you will
understand Roe not as a ruling that liberates but as one that dehumanizes,
first the fetus, then the rest of us.” Opinion | The End of Roe, From a
Pro-Lifer’s Perspective - The New York Times (nytimes.com)
She also
wrote this:
I joined the movement decades ago. My friends and co-laborers
in the movement across the political spectrum have over the years established
and worked in pregnancy help centers. We have opened our rooms and homes to
women who needed them. We have educated them about prevention, alternatives,
resources, employment, schooling and empowerment. We have offered help at
doctors’ offices and abortion clinics. We have held baby showers, attended
weddings, kindergarten graduations and legislative sessions. We have cried with
those who regretted their choices, and we have cried with those who didn’t (but
cried anyway). We have marched and protested.
Basham did
not include any of these quotes in her book, instead she found some quotes that
made it seem like Prior was more interested in the “pro-abortion narrative.”
Basham quoted
this: “Legalized elective abortion was the consolation prize given to women in
1973 for the centuries of inequality and oppression that stemmed from their sin
of not being men.”
And then Basham
skipped almost a page of Prior’s writing to put this: “it does take a village
to become who we are. Thankfully, America’s romance with radical autonomy and
rugged individualism is cooling. Roe gave our nation some of the most
liberal abortion laws in the industrialized world and
a high rate of abortion compared with that of many other industrialized
countries, in no small part because of our individualist cultural and economic
ethos.”
Basham skipped
further to put this: “We can do better than asking women (and men) to choose
between their children and themselves.”
Basham quoted
only these paragraphs so she could write this:
Prior’s framing –that pregnancy forces women to ‘choose between
their children and themselves’—sounded disconcertingly close to the
pro-abortion narrative that babies are a fundamental obstacle to female
fulfillment. It legitimized the erroneous and self-focused worldview that career
achievement and material wealth provide women more satisfaction than starting a
family.
But no. Not
only is it not “framing’ it doesn’t sound like that. Basham can attempt to get
by with her insinuation because she has left out Prior’s amazing words about
life for the unborn baby and her work within the pro-life community.
Basham
complains that Prior states that Christians need to now step up and add to the
work of helping those who are in need and pregnant, which includes government
programs. Pulling Beth Moore, the excellent Bible teacher for women, and her
discussion with Prior about the needs for Christian helps, into her complaint,
Basham writes as though they know nothing about the many pro-life Centers in
the United States, and this is perhaps why she did not quote Prior’s words
about working in Pregnancy Centers.
Basham has
made or tried to make Prior seem to be a radical feminist. She is not and it is
all lies.
Basham then
mentions Mika Edmondson, a pastor who sometimes writes for the Gospel Coalition.
In fact Southern Baptist Professor Albert Mohler praises Edmondson for an
article he wrote for the Gospel Coalition, Is
Black Lives Matter the New Civil Rights Movement? Mohler’s article is on
the Coalition’s site also, Ugly
Stain, Beautiful Hope: My Response to Mika Edmondson.
Edmondson is
a black pastor in the Presbyterian Church of America, a conservative Reformed
church, and he fervently advocates for social justice. I believe this might
have created a problem for Basham. She quotes from his X (Twitter)feed. She
writes “…Mika Edmondson sounded downright apologetic [writing after the end of
Roe] suggesting like Prior, that outlawing abortion would only be morally legitimate
if accompanied by an expanded welfare state.” (First one needs to say that is
not at all what Prior said.)
This is what
Basham quoted from Edmondson:
Now that roe is overturned, I pray that we will provide the access
to healthcare childcare, living wages, education and job opportunities that
well support the lives people in desperate situations.
I have to
add that Basham likened that to Lincoln with the Emancipation Proclamation promising
the freed slaves a mandatory minimum wage and scholarship program. The historical truth is they were offered something
they wanted badly although it was soon taken away from them. For a very
interesting story about this read, The
Truth Behind ’40 Acres and a Mule’, written by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Basham added
other tweets that Edmondson made that sounded too socially left to her. But she
did not use these quotes, perhaps she could not understand them:
For many, the constant news coverage, countless articles, and
heated debates about Roe v. Wade dredges up the painful memories of some of the
very worst moments of their lives. May the Lord comfort you with his grace and
healing during this hard season.
And:
National discussions about
abortion often press us to choose whose rights to speak up for: the rights of
vulnerable unborn babies *OR* the rights of vulnerable mothers. But Christ
calls us beyond this false dichotomy. In Christ’s grace, nobody’s rights &
dignity are expendable.
Next Basham
goes after Dr. Russell Moore new editor of Christianity Today and her
biggest complaint is that he did not write anything about the ending of Roe for
many weeks, and that he refused to call President Trump a pro-life president but
mentioned that one of the judges that concurred with the decision was appointed
by Bush. Moore is pro-life, that is not
in doubt. This pro-life chapter is very political.
The final person I will write about, but not the last
Basham wrote about in this chapter, is Pastor Tim Keller. His views about
abortion includes the understanding that there are several ways abortion could
be at least lessened in the United States.
Basham quotes his tweet:
Here are two Biblical MORAL norms: 1) It is a sin to worship
idols or any God other than the true God & 2) do not murder. If you ask
evangelicals if we should be forbidden by law to worship any other God than the
God of the Bible—they’d say ‘no.’
We allow that terrible sin to be
legal. But if you ask them if Americans should be forbidden by law to abort a
baby, they'd say ‘yes.’ Now why make the first sin legal and NEVER talk about
it and the second sin illegal and a main moral/political talking point?
The Bible tells us that idolatry, abortion, and ignoring the
the poor are all grievous sins. But it doesn’t tell us exactly HOW we are to
apply these norms to a pluralistic democracy. … I know abortion is a sin, but the
Bible doesn’t tell me the best political policy to decrease or end abortion in
this country, nor which political or legal policies are most effective to that
end.
While Basham
does leave out some of the first part of the tweet which doesn’t matter. Keller
is simply making a point that the Bible does tell us what is sin, but doesn’t
always tell us how to solve them when they become political problems. But
Basham does leave out the last part of the tweet which matters because she is
angry that Keller is not promoting Trump as president. In that last part he
writes:
The current political parties will say that their policy most
aligns morally with the Bible, but we are allowed to debate that and so our
churches should not have disunity over debatable political differences! It is
also why I have never publicly or privately told Christians who they should
vote for. I have also never told anyone they should vote Democrat or
Republican. Depending on the policy we can find more or less alignment with
Biblical morals. I believe all Christians should be active in politics, but it
is unwise to identify Christianity with any particular party.
This is the bigger problem with at least this chapter on abortion. Basham has two goals, to make it seem like the people she is writing about have leftist leanings and that those in the Church should be voting for Trump. Basham doesn’t seem to realize that much of what she sees as woke or leftist is simply a desire to follow the beatitudes of Jesus and all of the moral teachings found in the New Testament. All of these Christians she is aiming at, are faithful followers of Jesus and committed to Him because of His great gift of salvation.
Saturday, July 27, 2024
Do we, Christian, have a choice?
Tuesday, July 23, 2024
Is Donald Trump God's David? The false prophecies of Julie Green
Wednesday, June 19, 2024
Christian Zionism, Not Really & the Awfulness of Oct 7th, Yes Really
Recently at
one of the meetings of the women’s groups at my church I asked them to pray for
me because I was becoming depressed reading all the stories of what had
happened to some of the people in Israel. I felt I needed to read and listen to
better understand so that I could write out of factual empathy. And I admit I
wrote some out of anger. I sometimes went to bed weeping. I have placed a video
at the end of this which will hopefully allow you to see and understand why the
Presbyterian USA’s seminar is a travesty.
The
Presbyterian Church USA is sponsoring a video seminar about what they call
Christian Zionism. It is not totally about Christian Zionism which is only
mentioned a few times, but is about simply Zionism and the wish that the Jewish
state did not exist. Some familiar groups and people are a part of it: The
Israel/Palestine Mission Network of the PCUSA, World Mission’s Middle East and
Europe office, the Presbyterian Peacemaking Program, Office of Public Witness,
Rev. Munther Isaac and a Rabbi from the Reconstruction Jewish Group.
I thought
about attempting to write on all speakers but that is a long posting and basically
they are all saying the same thing. There
are some parts I want to address. They do recommend the booklet produced by the
Israel/Palestine Mission Network, Zionism Unsettled, a horribly
antisemitic work. In past years when I was in the Presbyterian Church USA I
wrote about this book at Telling
stories that hurt and destroy: A review of Zionism Unsettled.
The authors
of the booklet state and use various other antisemite’s statements to slander
Zionism. They state that the Israelites who reside in Israel have no connection
to ancient Israel an antisemite trope used by the vilest of antisemites. They
fail to explain that five Arab nations started the 1948 war. After writing of how respectful Muslims are they
state of Zionism ““Zionism, however, has not reciprocated this respect for all
peoples. Instead says Abu Sway, Zionism is by nature a system of discrimination
and exclusion.” They defame God and Holy Scriptures by stating, “Zionism
has succeeded in reanimating the nationalist tradition within Judaism. Its
inspiration has been drawn not from the profound thoughts of the Hebrew
Scriptures, but from those portions that betray a narrow and exclusive concept
of a tribal god.” As I have pointed out in my earlier posting that is not only
antisemitic but gnostic.
In the first
video of the seminar Munther Isaac does speak at first of Christian Zionism but
uses political terms putting aside the religious views. Using progressive
definitions Isaac speaks of Israel as a state as “a settler colonial entity. He
also speaks of the Oct.7th massacre as being separated by Western
press from its context. He seemingly believes that Hamas was justified in their
actions of rape, killing, mutilations and burning Jewish people alive while at
the same time denouncing the just war theory. There is a lot of confusion in
his statements.
I have
listened to most of the first two videos, there is supposedly a third but I
have not yet seen it. I want to end this posting by using a new documentary
recently placed on YouTube. It is Screams Before Silence directed by Anat
Stalinsky. I am doing this after listening to Isaac attempt to justify what
happened on Oct. 7th, and after understanding all the years the
PCUSA and the Israel/Palestine Mission Network maligned and attacked Israel as
well as American Jews. There is no justification for what happened. Adults, not
children, need to know what really happened—although for some this will be
impossible to watch.
Friday, June 14, 2024
The Haman Effect: MAGA Looking Forward to Hanging Enemies
God’s people are not called to focus on vengeance, the hanging of enemies, but rather their calling is to honor and serve the Lord Jesus Christ.
[1]
“ GOD WINS, 45
RETURNS, HAMAN EFFECT, to be "SEEN ON TV"! Julie Green, Bo Polny -
YouTube.
Thursday, May 16, 2024
Religionless Christianity: God’s Answer to Evil: A Review
A Review
By Viola Larson
Religionless Christianity: God’s
Answer to Evil
by Eric Metaxas
Many years ago,
working toward a BA in Religious Studies and one in Philosophy I took an
excellent class on the history of religion in America. The teacher a Jewish
lady would put an outline on the board with the different items we would be discussing
for the day. One class, she wrote Bonhoeffer’s name under the “God is Dead” theologians.
Having already worked on a paper that looked at Bonhoeffer’s term “Religionless
Christianity, I asked her to please not categorize Bonhoeffer that way. She
kindly erased his name.
Eric Metaxas has written a follow up book to
his Letter to the American Church. Metaxas in his new book, Religionless Christianity,
uses a term Dietrich Bonhoeffer used in letters he wrote from prison.
Bonhoeffer was attempting to write about the only way modern humanity would
embrace God. Metaxas compares the term to what he calls “Mere Christianity,” a
term C.S. Lewis used to express the Christianity that all orthodox Christians
agree to. But Metaxas redefines the meaning of both “Religionless Christianity”
and “Mere Christianity.” This review will explain the meaning of both and look
at some of the members of the Confessing Church that Metaxas uses to advise the
Church in these troubling times.
Metaxas rightly states of Bonhoeffer’s phrase,
“… So many decades, much of what he wrote—especially his use of the phrase
religionless Christianity—was utterly misunderstood. Many earnestly believed
that in the last two years of his life, Bonhoeffer had skittered away from a
genuine biblical faith into somekind of agnostic ethical humanism.”[1] But Metaxas' explanation of religionless
Christianity holds neither biblical truthfulness nor the richness of Bonhoeffer’s
meaning.
Metaxas sets
up a false effigy, a scarecrow of most of the American Church. If he were
writing about the progressive church, those who deny the deity of Christ, or
his atonement or bodily resurrection, he could then point to the skepticism
those churches are involved in, but he is looking a different direction. He is
accusing those Christians who refuse his mixture of supposed evil alongside the
real evil of being false Christians. Metaxas in explaining what “woke” culture
or cancel culture is posits the idea that not seeing the 2020 election as
stolen is the same as accepting gay marriage, and believing that the COVID
vaccine is helpful is the same as not believing the Bible is the Word of God. He
is making a political mess out of the truths of Christianity. [2]
Metaxas defines
“mere Christianity” as a cold impersonal, works oriented faith, a dead faith
and even satanic. And yet insists on works that mesh with his political views, quoting
James’s truth that faith without works is dead. [3]
But mere
Christianity simply speaks to those biblical truths that all Christians agree
to such as the deity of Jesus’ and His bodily resurrection. And truthfully, active
Christianity, loving God, loving neighbor and even loving enemies are a part of
mere Christianity. The faith that Jesus calls us to has a great deal to do with
caring for the needy, caring for the stranger, loving each other and being
faithful to our Lord. And yes, despite what Metaxas thinks, (He faults
Christians who question if we are living in the last days), looking for the
coming of Jesus, perhaps tomorrow, perhaps in a thousand years, Is mere
Christianity. It might be many years but we are always looking and longing.
In his
letters Bonhoeffer enlarges and focuses on a Lutheran and biblical truth with
his reference to religionless Christianity. That is the theology of the cross
in contrast to the theology of glory. There
are several passages in his Letters that speak of his thoughts on this issue
but I believe that a poem he included is his best explanation:
Men go to
God when they are sore bestead
Pray to Him
for succour, for his peace, for bread
For mercy,
for them sick, sinning or dead;
All men do
so, Christian and unbelieving.
Men go to
God when He is sore bestead,
Find him
poor and scorned, without shelter or bread,
Whelmed
under weight of the wicked, the weak, the dead;
Christians
stand by God in his hour of grieving.
God goes to
every man when sore bestead,
Feeds body
and spirit with his bread;
For
Christians, pagans alike he hangs dead,
And both
alike forgiving.[4]
Bonhoeffer was
attempting to put Christ at the center of faith, rather than being at the edge
becoming only the answer to questions that had not yet been answered by
progressive culture. He saw Christ’s suffering on the cross as the place where
modern humanity could meet God and truly it is always so. A bruised reed he
will not break, and a dimly burning wick he will not extinguish (Isaiah 42:
3a). The graciousness of Christ, his suffering mercy is religionless
Christianity rather than any political stance.
Metaxas
tends to use his subjects, characters, in a demeaning way to make his points. He
has a whole chapter on Marin Niemöller
entitled “The Cautionary Tale of Martin Niemöller.” He, although noting that Niemöller
was a good man, uses his story to warn Christians. He writes:
As tempted as we are to thank that we would have behaved like
Bonhoeffer, it is infinitely more likely that we would have behaved like Niemöller,
who was a genuinely good man and a deeply committed Christian but who nonetheless
misread the situation fatally.
But no, Niemöller, who at first did think that Hitler might be
a good leader for Germany did not read the situation fatally but was in error.
But that quickly changed and Metaxas does not tell the story with much integrity.
He insists that Niemöller was alone in a meeting with Hitler. But the meeting
began with several members of what would become the Confessing Church. Metaxas
attempts to picture Niemöller as giving in to Hitler’s rages, writing that he told
Hitler “We are all enthusiastic about the Third Reich.” But this was from a
later document signed by several Confessing pastors. Hubert G. Locke as editor
of Martin Niemöller’s letters from Moabit Prison writes in his Introduction:
On January 24, 1934, Niemöller joined a delegation of church
leaders to protest some of the degrees of the Reich bishop, a meeting
characterized by “heated” exchanges between Niemöller and Hitler; Niemöller told Hitler that church leaders had a God
given responsibility toward the German people.[5]
Karl Barth stated of Niemöller: I think of him as the embodiment of ‘Barmen … Pastor Niemöller in the Dahlem congregation was and is exemplary for the “Church Struggle.”[6]
The strange outlook of Metaxas is that he is using Bonhoeffer to warn today’s Church against what he considers evil while missing the glaring truth that Bonhoeffer and the Confessing Church members were warning the Church of their time against a man and system that is not unlike the man and his cohorts he is promoting. Not only promoting but insisting that those Christians who refuse to vote for ex-president Trump are not following God.
Hitler is a ghostly shadow of what Trump is and could become. Trump despises the weak and disabled. He sees Jesus as being part of a positive Christianity rather than the suffering savior who died for his sins. He seeks no forgiveness. He maligns women in the worst kinds of ways. He calls those who disagree with him communist, fascist, and even vermin. He adores authoritarian leaders. He believes that all of those seeking safety in America will damage our blood. He calls for vengeance against his perceived enemies and is friends with those who hope to both imprison and hang enemies.
Trump’s followers including Metaxas, not unlike the German Christians he is writing about malign and exclude those who wish to honor Jesus rather than Trump.
Yes, there is a mandate for the Church to hold on to the biblical purity of marriage: intimacy after marriage and that between one woman and one man. And the Church is pro-life or it is not the Church. But the Church is also the messenger of God’s mercy because of the death and resurrection of Jesus. It is the messenger of forgiveness for sinners, not the unrepentant. The Church is called not to political activism, the promoting of presidents but lifting up Jesus as Savior and Lord.
[1] For
an excellent explanation of some of Bonhoeffer’s difficult statements see, Worldly
Preaching: Lectures on Homiletics: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, editor Clyde E Fant
(New York: Crossroad 1991).
[2] Eric
Metaxas, Religionless Christianity: God’s Answer to Evil, (New York: Regnery
Faith 2024) 85.
[3] I
have written Martin Luther’s response to the question of works in my article Eric
Metaxas' Letter to the American Church and the Rest of the Story
“Faith, however, is a divine work to us that changes
us and makes us to be born anew of God, John 1[12-13]. It kills the old Adam
and makes us altogether different men, in heart and spirit and mind and powers;
it brings with it the Holy Spirit. O, it is a living, busy active, mighty
thing, this faith. It is impossible for it not to be doing good works
incessantly. It does not ask whether good works are to be done, but before the
question is asked, it has already done them, and is constantly doing them. Whoever
does not do such works, however, is an unbeliever. He gropes and looks around
for faith and good works, but knows neither what faith is nor what good works
are. Yet he talks and talks, with many words, about faith and good works.
Faith is a living, daring confidence in God’s
grace, so sure and certain that the believer would stake his life on it a
thousand times. This knowledge and confidence of God’s grace makes men glad and
bold and happy in dealing with God and all creatures. And this is the work that
the Holy Spirit performs in faith Because of it, without compulsion, a
person is ready and glad to do good to everyone, to serve everyone, to suffer
everything, out of love and praise to God, who has shown him this grace. Thus
it is impossible to separate works from faith, quite as impossible as to
separate heat and light from fire. [LW 35:370-71]”
[4] Detrich
Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers From Prison, editor, Eberhard Bethge, reprint
(New York, Collier Books 1971) 348-349.
[5] Exile
in the Fatherland: Martin Niemöller’s Letters From Moabit Prison, editor Hubert
G. Locke, (William B. Eerdman’s publishing Company: Grand Rapids 1986) 8.
[6] Barmen
is the confession that the Confessing Church drew up in their battle against
Hitler, the Nazis and the German Christians, The Church Struggle was against
all three. Arthur C. Cochrane, The Church’s Confession Under Hitler, (Philadelphia:
Westminster Press 1961) 110.