The "new thing," God is doing: what is it?

Too often in discussions and statements about the ordination of LGBT people, the idea that God ‘is’ doing something new is suggested. The idea is that such ordination is God’s new thing. This also is used when someone is speaking about the marriage of same gender couples.

Recently Michael Adee of More Light Presbyterians gave an interview to the Bay Area Reporter. The article, New policy puts Presbyterians on path to equality, written by Chuck Colbert, included two troubling statements by Adee. One is his statement that "What the Presbyterian Church is saying with the policy change now in effect," … "is that LGBT people are morally and spiritually equal to heterosexuals. We are not better or worse – just the same."

Adee’s other statement is, “As the prophet Isaiah has said, 'God is doing a new thing in our midst' and these LGBT leaders will be a blessing to our church and world."

First, the truth is that both heterosexuals and homosexuals are sinners; they certainly are the same in their need for forgiveness, reconciliation with God and transformation. And only the redemption bought on the cross by Jesus makes a difference. But salvation is a gift that includes the desire to repent. As the author of 1 John states:

This is the message we have heard from him and announce to you, that God is Light and in him there is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with him and we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth; but if we walk in the Light as he Himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar and his word is not in us. (1 John 1:5-10)

Further into the text, John reminds his readers that if they sin they have an “Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.” The difference between is repentance, forgiveness and transformation. Sinners, all of us, greedy, idolaters, gossips, homosexuals and thieves, fornicators and adulterers, drunkards and swindlers—the list goes on—are changed into new creations at the foot of the cross. The sinners, who are the same, are made children of God in Jesus Christ.

Paul includes them, the redeemed sinners, using a trinitarian formula, in his first letter to the Corinthians:

Such were some of you, but you were washed, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God. (1 Cor. 6:11)

The redemption of Jesus Christ leads to the other problematic statement used by Adee and others, that God is doing a new thing. In this particular case Adee has referenced it to Isaiah.

Of the three passages in Isaiah that speak of a new thing, two, 42:9 & 48:6, refer to God’s ability to speak words about the future that are known only to him. He knows what no other so called gods know. His words are the true words.

Isaiah 43:16 also speaks of something new, “Behold, I will do something new, now it will spring forth; will you not be aware of it? I will even make a roadway in the wilderness, rivers in the deserts.” This is God’s promise of a new deliverance from captivity. This is deliverance from a captivity that was caused by the sin of the people, the Babylonian captivity of Israel. It is different than their deliverance from the Egypt. But God’s newness extends to a greater deliverance which still holds promise of redemption from a captivity caused by sin.

The wording “new thing” is full of meaning and promise when connected to the central idea of “the Servant of the Lord,” found in chapters 38 through 55.
J. Alec Motyer, in his Tyndale commentary, focuses on the term, “the Servant of the Lord” in these chapters. He explains that Israel or a remnant of Israel as the servant is an incomplete image of the Servant of the Lord. He writes:

If we …insist in understanding the Songs [Servant Songs of Isaiah] within an integrated development, the Servant is distinguished in turn from the errant and spiritually numb nation (42:18-25) and from the spiritually committed and expected remnant (51:1-52:120, leaving a majestic individual to occupy our gaze (52:13) as he dies bearing the sins of others (53:4-9) and lives to administer the salvation he has won for them (53:10-12.)

Motyer later connects the work of the Servant of the Lord with the new thing, “In the sequence of Isaiah’s thought from 41:1 onwards, the former things are the events linked with the irresistible conqueror [Cyprus stirred by the Lord to conqueror](41:1-4, 24-27) and the new things are the now-foretold work of the Servant [the Lord of the Church, Jesus Christ](42:1-4).”

So all that is pronounced new in Isaiah belongs to, rests on and is, Jesus Christ, the promised redeemer. The new thing that God has done and will do is exalt his eternal Son Jesus Christ, who redeems his people from their sin.

Surely our griefs he himself bore, and our sorrows he carried; yet we ourselves esteemed him stricken of God, and afflicted. But he was pierced through for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the chastening for our well-being fell on upon him, and by his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; but the Lord caused the iniquities of us al to fall on him. (Isaiah 53:4-6)

In California honoring sinful behavior is now mandated in text books

“The Church confesses that … She has found no strong and effective answer to the contempt for chastity and to the proclamation of sexual libertinism. … She has failed to proclaim with sufficient emphasis that our bodies belong to the Body of Christ.”Dietrich Bonhoeffer

The Governor of California, Jerry Brown, signed into law today, July 14, a bill requiring that the contributions of LGBT people be added to text books in California. CNN’s news article, “California governor signs bill requiring schools to teach gay history,” starts:

“Democratic California Gov. Jerry Brown said Thursday he had signed a bill that will require public schools in the state to teach students about the contributions of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americas.

The bill, believed to be the first of its kind in the nation, will also require teachers to provide instruction on the role of people with disabilities.

I had already written on this before Brown signed the bill. School curriculum in California: honoring sexual orientation! There isn’t much more to say. I stated in that posting that legislators are trying to “make the point that people who are gay or lesbian are capable of doing great and good things.” And I also stated that “of course they are. We all, sinners everyone, are capable of doing great and good things.

But should we be honored in a child’s school textbook because we are sinners or because we have contributed some good to society?”

Our nation is desperately in need of prayer as is the PCUSA. All of us are in need of prayer. The video I am posting I mean for all the orthodox in the PCUSA who are feeling humbled before their circumstances:

The third Durban Conference on racism-anti-Semitic?

In the past I have written about two United Nations’ Durban conferences on racism and their anti-Semitic agenda.[1] Now a third conference is occurring in September in New York. A friend sent me a link to an excellent video about the coming conference. Please watch. It is short, for this you do not need a cup of coffee unless you want one.




One posting is A debate about the Holocaust by a UN sponsored Conference another is UPDATE on the Durban Review Conference. The United States won't be there! The very first posting was my introduction- so very long ago- to Belhar- A Badly Flawed Document For Study

A warning of things to come, but a promise

In May of this year, 2011, I wrote a posting entitled, “Sacramento Presbytery, Synod of the Pacific and trust-Update.” It was about an attempt by the Evangelicals in Sacramento Presbytery, via a motion, to give Roseville Presbyterian Church and Fair Oaks Presbyterian Church back the money the Synod of the Pacific had extracted from them for their property. In that posting I included a letter sent to the Presbytery by the Synod in an attempt to influence the Presbytery’s vote.

They did influence it. The letter, as I pointed out, had several errors in it, and yes some of it was a lie. During the debate about whether it could be read or not, (There was to be no debate after it was read),one of my friends stated that it was in error and a lie.

I learned Sunday morning that a complaint had been filed against him with the statement that he was not furthering the peace, unity and purity of the Church. The investigative committee has acquitted him, but the fact that an honest statement cannot be made on the floor of the Presbytery without such a complaint being filed is troubling. If one reads the posting I originally wrote it is certain that the letter was not truthful. And to allow untruth to be used against honest debate about a matter as important as Christian reconciliation between brothers and sisters is appalling.

This is all deeply troubling because when one mixes antinomian teaching (some sins are okay) with bureaucratic mismanagement (for instance the Synod’s letter) the mix is lethal. What I mean by that is that now, since it is supposedly okay to ordain those involved in unrepentant same gender sex, unrepentant sexual activity outside the bounds of marriage and unrepentant adultery, a different slant on morality may engulf much of our leadership.

Given that many in leadership are involved in the push to lower ordination standards their moral sensibilities on sexuality will spill over into other areas of ethics. If morality is based on what is now called new light, or the new thing the Spirit is doing, rather than what the Church universal has upheld for almost two thousand years, it will certainly affect the whole of ethics. The idea of ‘new light’ means not just new interpretation, but rather an understanding that the Holy Spirit is re-interpreting; so even spirituality gets into the mix of new ethical thinking.

But it is a spirit that is totally immanent; wedded to human experience, in fact, guided by human experience. Looking at a new liturgy offered by More Light Presbyterians celebrating the elimination of the fidelity and chastity clause in the Presbyterian Book of Order one sees the problem. One line in “Liturgy for 10-A Celebrations on July 10, 2011” is “We support each person’s journey of integrating spirituality and sexuality which leads to wholeness.”[1] The mix is deadly.

So several shifts are occurring: Not only can we look back to the pagan proclivity in parts of our denomination to do away with unwanted children but now the general push toward accepting sexual deviancy is affecting all else causing further sins of greed, manipulation and lies.

Deviant sexuality and the sacrifice of children for the good of society are pagan values and just as they brought God’s judgment on ancient Israel, so they will bring God’s judgment on a denomination. (Rev 2:20-23).

The answer for the orthodox, whether leaving or staying, is to guard our own hearts while submitting to the Lord of the Church. We may move from the denomination but we cannot remove ourselves from the culture which is both shaping and killing the denomination. Jesus told the orthodox of Thyatira to “hold fast” until he comes. And that admonition is for all the faithful through all time. As Leon Morris notes holding fast means, “take a firm grip on” … “the sum total of Christian doctrine, and hope and privilege.” That privilege is the promise of the gift of the bright morning star. Jesus is that star.

1. The same line is in a confession of sin at The institute for Welcoming Resources. In that particular resource is the line, “We insist that our way and view are the only ones. At our best, we remember: There are many paths to the sacred. The spiritual paths of GLBT persons are among them.”

Celebrating without the cross

What man among you, if he has a hundred sheep and has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the open pasture and go after the one which is lost until he finds? When he finds it, he lays it on his shoulders rejoicing. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and his neighbors, saying to them ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost!’ I tell you that in the same way, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance (Luke 15: 4-7).

When she [the woman who lost a coin] has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with me for I have found the coin which I had lost!’ In the same way, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents (Luke 15: 9-10).

Trice Gibbons, co-moderator of More Light Presbyterians, is quoted in an article, ‘Presbyterians celebrate landmark day,” stating of the July 10th possibility[1] that LGBTQ persons can be ordained, "As a seminarian, I feel like the angels are celebrating!" She has also stated, according to the news release, “We now have a policy that helps us to love God who is the author and creator of all of us--including lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people." All kinds of aberrant theology is being used with these two statements. But more importantly the wondrous work of salvation offered by the Lord of the church is being misapplied.

There are at least four errors:

1. God & angels rejoice over repentant sinners, not over those who refuse to repent.
2. We love God by obeying his word not by policy making that is unbiblical.
3. God’s creation was created good but because of the fall of humanity we are all born with a sin nature. One of the symptoms of our sin nature is deviant sexuality.
4. While God is the creator of all, the fallen need reconciliation to their creator, that is why Christ befriended sinners. Like the good shepherd he seeks the lost bringing them home on his shoulders.

Jesus welcomed and ate with sinners. He did that because he wishes to bring the sinner home, not because he wishes to bless their sin. On the cross Jesus Christ carried all of us with our sin on his shoulders. He suffered and died for the sinner. With Bonhoeffer we must say over and over this is not cheap grace. Instead it is the one who is both God and human on the cross dying in agony, for us. This is such a wonder that Peter wrote that the angels long to look into the wonder. (1 Peter 1:12)

In view of the suffering, death and redemption of Jesus we are called out of our sin into a righteousness that belongs to Jesus. Once again Peter explains:

… and he himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness; for by his wounds you were healed. For you were continually straying like sheep, but now you have returned to the Shepherd and Guardian of your souls. (2: 24-25)

In what is referred to as the lost parables of Luke, (that is they are about the lost) the wandering sheep and the lost coin and the wayward son are likened to those who because of their repentance are celebrated in heaven. But one important point should be noted. It is after or as they are found by God that they repent. Those two things, being found and repenting go together, they cannot be separated. As we are picked up, welcomed, put on the shoulders of God and carried home, we repent.

If we refuse to repent or acknowledge our sin there is a big question mark hanging over us. (1 John 1:5-9)And heaven is not rejoicing nor should the Church of Christ. A celebration without the saving, transforming resurrection power of Jesus Christ is not a celebration, it is instead a travesty. It is a failure to understand both the word of God and the saving work of Jesus Christ. It is a mockery of the cross of Jesus.

[1] It is yet to be seen if this truly allows for the ordination of unrepentant sinners, after all neither the Bible or the Book of Confessions allows for such ordination.

School curriculum in California: honoring sexual orientation!

I kept trying to write this article in a funny way. As though it could be comical? That way no one would think I was a bigot. But it just isn’t funny. It is sad.

Today a bill was passed in California, SB48, “that would make the state the first requiring public schools to include the contributions of gays and lesbians in social studies curriculum.” Judy Lin of the Associated Press in an article, “Landmark gay history bill goes to Calif. Governor,” wrote, “SB48 would require, as soon as the 2013-2014 school year, the California Board of Education and local school districts to adopt textbooks and other teaching materials that cover the contributions and roles of sexual minorities.”

It is important to point out that I have no objection to having children reading about contributions that “sexual minorities” have made when they are seen as individuals and not as a sexual minority meaning LGBTQ people. But as a Christian, when I read that my government intends to lift up sexual sin as something worth emulating I am very troubled. And who will stand for righteousness as a model to my state? Not my denomination the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).

If Jerry Brown, the Governor, signs this bill, children in my state will be led to believe that Friedrich von Steuben is great because he was gay rather than because he was one of “George Washington's military advisers.” Or that “Von Steuben” who “is credited with being one of the fathers of the Continental Army and teaching essential military drills,” is important because of his sexual orientation.

Of course that is not what legislators are trying to do; they wish to make the point that people who are gay or lesbian are capable of doing great and good things. Of course they are. We all, sinners everyone, are capable of doing great and good things.

But should we be honored in a child’s school textbook because we are sinners or because we have contributed some good to society?

But then that is the problem. Our morals have changed. Our society’s and our denomination’s morals have changed. And we Christians and in particular we mainline Christians, have a hard road ahead. And when morality gets twisted around strange things happen. We can argue forever that sexual orientation is not the same as race or gender but the world will not hear and neither will our denominational leadership.

However, the Lord of the Church is not absent from our dilemma, he has been aware of the future from eternity. He calls his people to faith, prayer, compassion and hope in him. He also calls his church, the people within a denomination who submit to his Lordship, to be a place of safety, a place of help and hope.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort who comforts us in all our affliction so that we will be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For just as the sufferings of Christ are ours in abundance, so also our comfort is abundant through Christ.(1 Cor. 1:3-5)”

Meanderings about home on the fourth of July

America is full of personal stories of journeys toward the place where we feel safe or at home. None of the stories are without hardship. None of the stories exist in an Edenic setting where we fail to touch others with our own evil or they touch us with theirs. My childhood was partly spent traveling between Missouri and California as my mother and father sought for their own personal place-a place they never found.

In the end what they really wanted, in their dreams, was to live in the Ozarks and spend their time fishing and reading Zane Grey westerns. They would have surrounded themselves with family and friends, with stories and jokes, with dancing and hand holding. But it was not to be.

My littlest sister, Elizabeth, who said goodbye to one parent when she was nine and to the other when she was eleven, wrote a poem about her loss, “Trying to Remember.” I love the last verse because it speaks to a whole line of people who were always facing the West with wind in their faces and hope in their heart and mind.

We take what we can—a bright shell
Filled with sand, a witness to tell
our children’s children of bone knit
within a landscape of parched men
and flowered women bending into a wind
made, in the dusk, by your spreading spirit.

But back to home and the way to Eden. There is no return but something better—a place, forever with the eternal God who because of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ nestles us into an eternal home and an eternal peace. Funny we dance our ways through the byways of too many worldly disappointments seeking such a place. And in the end if we receive the King of the universe, we find, as C.S. Lewis said, “many pleasant inns” here, and a home overflowing with the love of our Lord.

I started writing this with the intention of honoring Americans who in one way or another have helped to hand down a nation which so far has given the world a picture of what freedom means. And as I said at the beginning, there is never a perfect journey, not even that of a nation. And prayer must be made that her journey will turn neither ugly or sordid.

So in an attempt to cover all of my meandering, a song and video put together by Beanscot.