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 - Endorsed - Indifferent - Contested
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| The Nashville Statement
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Name:Daniel
Home: Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
About Me: I used to believe that evolution was reasonable, that homosexuality was genetic, and that people became Christians because they couldn't deal with the 'reality' that this life was all there was. I used to believe, that if there was a heaven - I could get there by being good - and I used to think I was more or less a good person. I was wrong on all counts. One day I finally had my eyes opened and I saw that I was not going to go to heaven, but that I was certainly going to suffer the wrath of God for all my sin. I saw myself as a treasonous rebel at heart - I hated God for creating me just to send me to Hell - and I was wretched beyond my own comprehension. Into this spiritual vacuum Jesus Christ came and he opened my understanding - delivering me from God's wrath into God's grace. I was "saved" as an adult, and now my life is hid in Christ. I am by no means sinless, but by God's grace I am a repenting believer - a born again Christian.
My complete profile...
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Daniel's posts are almost always pastoral and God centered. I appreciate and am challenged by them frequently. He has a great sense of humor as well.
- Marc Heinrich
His posts are either funny or challenging. He is very friendly and nice.
- Rose Cole
[He has] good posts, both the serious like this one, and the humorous like yesterday. [He is] the reason that I have restrained myself from making Canadian jokes in my posts.
- C-Train
This post contains nothing that is of any use to me. What were you thinking? Anyway, it's probably the best I've read all day.
- David Kjos
Daniel, nicely done and much more original than Frank the Turk.
- Jonathan Moorhead
There are some people who are smart, deep, or funny. There are not very many people that are all 3. Daniel is one of those people. His opinion, insight and humor have kept me coming back to his blog since I first visited earlier this year.
- Carla Rolfe
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| Murders and Murderers. |
By now you know that some abortion doctor was murdered in Kansas.
Just so you know where stand, I regard abortion as one of the most heinous and gruesome forms of murder on this planet, but that doesn't make it okay to kill a doctor who performs abortions.
I have wondered for a few days now how I, as Christian, should feel about this whole thing. I mean, here is a guy who performed third trimester abortions - you know, where they gruesomely chop up the baby as the mother is giving birth to it? They do that, you know, because if they let the child be born whole it may well live to be a "live birth" and if that happened, the child would become a person and be granted human rights (such as the right to life) under the law.
Third trimester abortions make the war atrocities of the likes of Josef Mengele look tame by comparison. Yet some people are employed in our culture to mutilate babies "almost born babies" on a daily basis - and they are convinced that in doing so they are providing a needed public service. About 80% of these kinds of abortions, are elective - that is, the choice to kill this child is entirely arbitrary, no one is in danger, the mother simply doesn't want the inconvenience now that the stretch marks have come...
Allow me a moment to fight back to mounting urge to vomit.
So if you ask me what I think: I think what this doctor did on a daily basis was monstrous, but that doesn't make me happy that some kook murdered him. Murdering a murderer isn't an act of justice, it is an act of murder, and there is no justifying it.
The problem in Wichita was not that some doctor was butchering babies, deplorable as that was. The problem wasn't even the abundance of clients willing to have their unborn children cut to pieces as they were born in order to secure a more convenient existence for their mothers, despicable as that may be.
No, the problem is sin, and the solution is Christ, not murder.
Now having said that I (sadly) have to qualify it. I don't mean that the solution is to show up at the door of the abortion clinic with a bus load of angry "Christians" bent on violently intervening on behalf of the unborn. That isn't the way to save souls, nor is it the way to save lives. That isn't to say that one cannot camp out on the door step hoping to offer light and alternatives to those who have gone so far as the come to this, the eleventh hour - sure, do that if you're inclined - offer hope, light, love, and genuine alternatives, do it with all your heart - but listen, while you might have a victory now and again, this is not the place where the real battle needs to be fought.
Let's turn our attention to the real battle field with a simple question: How many people have you led to Christ this year? How many disciples have you made in the years you have been a Christian?
Did you ever hear the saying, everyone complains about the weather, but no one does anything about it? It means, don't open your mouth to complain about a problem that it is within your power to fix - if you never use that power to fix it.
I am saying that the solution is to start doing the work of an evangelist. Do you really want to stop abortion? You can't. Christ can. Do you really want to stop gunmen from shooting people? You can't - Christ can. When you explain the truths of scripture to people, explain who Christ is and what he has done - guess what? Some of them will become Chrsitians, and fewer of them will hire people to kill their babies.
Listen: I know some of you reading are more concerned with trying to be sinless Christians than anything else. You want to make sure you come to all the meetings, read all the books, sing all the songs, and pray all the time - but you are so afraid of sharing your faith that you tell yourself it isn't all that important.
It may be that you don't understand why your generation is morally falling apart at the seams, but I will tell you. It's because people like you are not fighting the "good fight".
When I say the good fight, by the way, I am not talking about the one where you get all frustrated that the world doesn't work the way you want it to, so you take matters into your own murderous hands, that isn't the good fight - that's acting and thinking like a worldling!
No the good fight is just a metaphor for ministering to your generation the plain truths about Jesus Christ. If you don't like the things you see in the world that's FANTASTIC! Because that means you see have eyes to see how your culture is enslaved to sin. Now that you see it, you must implement the solution that opened your eyes, for if you are a Christian it is because someone shared the truth with you one day, and God opened your eyes to see it. When you see that the real problem is sin, then you will see that the only solution is Christ, and that you are in a unique position in the world, because you are in possession of the solution to the problem.
Ya know, some Christians sit around waiting for a mystical impression to pressure them into real Christian ministry (i.e. sharing their faith with others and making disciples). They don't understand that God gives you eyes to see, so that you can use them to make informed decisions about your conduct on earth - like giving you talents of Gold, God expects you to invest what your eyes see wisely. Use the certainty that sin is the problem, and that Christ is the only solution to motivate your sorry behind into impacting your generation.
Don't wait for the holy SHAZAM! It ain't coming. God has already made you a light in a very dark place, now that you see the darkness is real, and you know it needs light - don't waste the light you have been given by putting it under a basket. Look: you weren't given light so that you could scrutinize how dark the darkness really is and offer up opinions about it. Good gravy! You have light? Let it shine in the darkness - that is, do not withhold what you know from those around you.
Gracious me, you don't have to go on a door to door crusade, getting in people's faces - all you need to do is make a conscious effort to stop hiding what you know.
We will not change the face of our culture through politics or religious omphaloskepsis, in fact we shouldn't even try. What we can do however, is what we were called to do - be light and salt. If you don't know how to do that, find a Christian who does and hang out with them until you get it.Labels: abortion, light and salt |
posted by Daniel @
2:51 PM
 
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| 3 Comments: |
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That's a "boiling the pot down to the bottom" kind of a post. Well done.
"religious omphaloskepsis?"
I can't even pronounce that one.
I'm fairly active for in discussing abortion with others. It's such an evil thing, as you described here, but most avoid seeing it close up.
I was arguing abortion with someone, and I had a very well done and informative video I use from time to time, and suggested he watch it. He said he would rather not, and intended to never watch such things.
I said, "Why not?"
Silence.
Before all this though we had an understanding of the good news of Jesus Christ for sinners like us.
I really think abortion can be such an eye opener. I remember a young girl in my church picking up a Right to Life tract, that had a photo of an aborted child. She said, "What is that?"
We told her, and she was astounded. I have known girls who have had abortions, and it's never nice. It stinks. And these doctors make millions of $$$. Why doesn't anyone ever talk about the money being made?!
Just needed a quick vent.
"The Gospel" is the POWER for a sinner to be saved; and so have their dead spirits quickened, and their callous hearts made tender.
Their are corpses walking all about, and we need to give them Christ the living Word.
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Don, if you put the accent here: omphaloSKEPsis, it is easy to say. I find abortion is one topic that I cannot discuss without passion. It took about ten tries to write this post, I kid you not.
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Abortion seems to me as an intense spiritual battle ground.
I remember going to picket my local abortion clinic, and while I'm standing there with a sign that said, "Abortion kills babies", many cars would drive by and honk their horns, and give some very crude gestures. Others would honk and give a thumbs up.
A man walked by me, and he was a few steps past me when he stopped, and he turned. He was an older man, and he said,"Do you really believe that?"
I looked at my sign, and then looked up at the man, and said, "Yes. Don't you?"
He went absolutely ballistic. With foul language in great anger he said that he wished that they would kill all of them, every one of them.
I'm saying, "Wow mister."
There seems to me to be a lot more spiritual wickedness to be wrestled with in this circumstance of sharing the Gospel, and speaking up for the slaughter of innocent babies.
And there are such extremes as well. From partial birth, which sucks brains out of a child, and even infanticide, to the murder of abortionists.
I am like you Daniel when it comes to this topic. I become passionate, even angry.
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That's a "boiling the pot down to the bottom" kind of a post. Well done.
"religious omphaloskepsis?"
I can't even pronounce that one.
I'm fairly active for in discussing abortion with others. It's such an evil thing, as you described here, but most avoid seeing it close up.
I was arguing abortion with someone, and I had a very well done and informative video I use from time to time, and suggested he watch it. He said he would rather not, and intended to never watch such things.
I said, "Why not?"
Silence.
Before all this though we had an understanding of the good news of Jesus Christ for sinners like us.
I really think abortion can be such an eye opener. I remember a young girl in my church picking up a Right to Life tract, that had a photo of an aborted child. She said, "What is that?"
We told her, and she was astounded. I have known girls who have had abortions, and it's never nice. It stinks. And these doctors make millions of $$$. Why doesn't anyone ever talk about the money being made?!
Just needed a quick vent.
"The Gospel" is the POWER for a sinner to be saved; and so have their dead spirits quickened, and their callous hearts made tender.
Their are corpses walking all about, and we need to give them Christ the living Word.