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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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| 9/11 Eight Years In |
We have been living in a new world these last years. Well not that the world itself has actually changed much since nine eleven, but it has been that long since we were suddenly and violently awakened to the truth of just how fragile the freedom we had been taking for granted really is.
I listen to the university crowd chatter about how this could have happened, and every opinion is as liberalized as the next - it was all our fault apparently. We were too arrogant, too prosperous, and too intolerant. We were too interested in sticking our noses where they shouldn't be; and of course, the solution is always and ever, that we should somehow embrace that which brought us to such calamity eight years ago.
It is as if these people have never studied scripture. Didn't some (ridiculously naive) Israelites also imagine that they could make things better by turning to the gods of the nations that were bringing such calamity upon them?
It is seems that the knee-jerk, sophomoric solution to aggression is to avoid it at -all- costs (and by "-all- costs" I mean we should bend over backwards to accommodate pretty much anything as long as at the end of the day we can avoid bloodshed) But our forefathers believed that some things were so precious, that they were worth dying for. How quickly those, whose livers are lillied as a matter of course, are to cry, "peace, peace!" when there is no peace. These know that peace comes when you are no longer an offence to others, but imagine that what makes us offensive is our politics.
To say it more succinctly, they have a rather immature (perhaps naive is a better word...? Um, no. I going to have to stick with immature) hope, in that they presume this calamity has befallen us because of what we are doing politically, when in fact it has come upon us because of what we are doing morally.
Every freedom this nation presently enjoys was purchased with the blood of those who secured it for us in times past. Yet hasn't every single freedom been used to increase our wickedness? We go so far as to regard iniquity as our God given right, and more than this, we go so far as to start calling our wickedness... righteousness.
Don't believe it? Try saying publicly that homosexuality is wicked. Immediately you will be condemned as a bigot. Our culture has decided in the last fifty years, that homosexuality is okay, and that anyone who says otherwise is small minded, bigoted, and pretty much driven by blind hate and/or fear. Clearly, says our "new" culture, the greatest virtue is that we all get along, and in order for everyone to get along, we must respect everyone and the choices they make. Whatever consenting adults people want to do in the privacy of openly in public is fine as long as it doesn't (physically) hurt anyone who hasn't consented to being hurt. You see, freedom has come to mean that there is no objective moral standard. We are free to set subjective (and therefore temporal) moral standards, which, while constantly in flux, only and ever spiral into both greater and greater license, and greater outrage at having that standard challenged.
Now I am not picking on the "gay community". It is certainly right to warn those whom God will judge that by their iniquity that they stand condemned before God (according to the scriptures). This isn't a matter of some fringe "interpretation" of scripture, but rather an appeal to an unambiguous teaching that requires no interpretation. That is, I when I write these things, I am merely saying what scripture says and offering no interpretation or commentary on the matter. That is what a messenger does - they give the message, they don't interpret it for the hearer.
Let me then say, with warm concern, that -all- sinners stand condemned before God. The gay community is not especially condemned because their particular sins are more condemnable than others - they are condemned for the same reason anyone is condemned - because they reject God's rule in their life. What makes the gay community stand out is the fact that our culture has (in one generation) legitimized what scripture calls an abomination, and in doing so it has drawn a line between an objective moral standard on the one hand, and a subjective one on the other.
To explain that, consider polygamy. Why can't three or four consenting adults marry one another? Already our culture is ripe for this argument. I mean, if everyone in the group is equally consenting - who are we to judge them? What gives us the right to govern how they conduct themselves in their personal affairs? We should redefine marriage (again), to allow people the freedom to do whatever they want so long as everyone consents and it doesn't hurt anyone else...right?
The problem with a subjective moral standard is that it is not a standard, but an approximation based on suppositions which themselves are in flux. If we propose that homosexuality is fine as long as no one gets hurt and everyone consents - we are thereafter free to apply the same "moral" conditions to other things - hence (historically) polygamy is usually next in line when a culture is in moral decline (or ascension, depending upon your perspective I suppose).
So when I mention that committing a homosexual act is a sin, I am not saying that therefore I, as a Christian, must (or do) hate people who are homosexuals. God forbid! Ever person I know, Christian or otherwise is a sinner, and homosexuals are no less or more sinful than anyone else. I don't live in some bubble where I try to avoid gay people or treat them like they are especially immoral lepers - to single out one sin and respond to it like that would be hypocritical (at best). Yet in the same way that I believe murder is not merely wrong, but evil, and in the same way I believe that deceit is not merely bad but evil - and in the same way I think that stealing is not merely a character flaw, but evil - in that same way I believe that every homosexual act is an act of sinful rebellion against God's explicit command, and against the implicit design of creation - and is not merely immoral, but entirely evil. Lying is evil, all sin is evil, and to call it less than that would be to say that I am wishy-washy in what I believe.
The last time I checked I was allowed to have a biblically informed opinion, notwithstanding, the moment anyone says anything about homosexuality, they are typically chastised by some liberal champion of iniquity who, through immersing themselves in the culture and moral standards of this present age, have already taken what scripture calls evil, and not only excuse it, but go so far as to call it good. These immediately come out of the wood work to tear an angry strip out of instruct you on what a hateful bigot you are how we don't think like that any more.
Yet if we stop and consider how pornography has become our mainstream entertainment, on how vulgarity is now a relative thing (what is offensive to you, is fine with me), and how every criminal act is now to be understood as having been perpetrated by someone who was only committing a crime because our culture had somehow failed him. I think it is safe to say, though not lightly, the truth of the matter is that we as a culture have used and continue to use, our hard won freedoms to pursue every foul thing under the sun, and that without check.
So I ask the skeptical reader to consider for one moment, the possibility that what is making this nation so detestable to certain other nations is not our politics, nor our foreign interests, though we cannot paint an image without these colours in the palette, rather consider that what makes us so detestable is our own moral decay. Those nations that hate our nation enough to act on their hatred do so for ideological reasons. If you are a believer and reading this - consider that morally speaking, even those nations who follow false gods, and are entirely bereft of the gospel and its light - are never-the-less not so morally corrupt as our nation has become. They are not so blind to the seducing cancer that pollutes us, and they rightly recoil from it in disgust. America is not called the "Great Stalin" as though someone hated our politics - America is called the great Satan by nations who are less corrupt because America has used her freedom to shamelessly give herself wholeheartedly to her sins - and the world has noticed.
Today we remember as the day this nation was momentarily kicked out of its slumber, and forced to examine what it has become. Today many will remember the loss of loved ones, and today many will just go on like it was any other day, but I have been watching these last few years, and if ever a nation was struggling to define itself, it has been in these last few years. I have to say, with all frankness, I don't like where its going, but I am not surprised by it either.
America must repent, and it must begin in the house of God. If we who belong to the Lord refuse to surrender daily the control of our lives to Him, what hope is there for those outside the body? Listen: scripture describes it as our reasonable service to offer up our lives in this way. Do you really think God is going to answer a prayer to save this nation if the one praying it daily rejects God's rule in their own life? A call to holy living is a call to enrichment, not only in your own lives, but in the lives of everyone in this nation. It is high time some of you awaken out of your daily slumber.Labels: 9/11, encouragement |
posted by Daniel @
5:34 AM
 
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| 2 Comments: |
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Excellent thoughts.
"America must repent, and it must begin in the house of God."
Let's see. I am an American. I'm not Nepali, nor Russian. That says where God sovereignly placed me.
I am a Christian. I am a privleged sinner, who has received forgiveness of all my sin, and by God's mercy adopted into His holy community, the Church.
I have a difficult time keeping my love for America, and my love for the Gospel seperate.
America is not the Church. But what it is America? Compared to China, how does God look at these nations?
Do my thoughts make sense Daniel?
And thanks for such an excellent post on such a day as this.
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Excellent thoughts.
"America must repent, and it must begin in the house of God."
Let's see. I am an American. I'm not Nepali, nor Russian. That says where God sovereignly placed me.
I am a Christian. I am a privleged sinner, who has received forgiveness of all my sin, and by God's mercy adopted into His holy community, the Church.
I have a difficult time keeping my love for America, and my love for the Gospel seperate.
America is not the Church. But what it is America? Compared to China, how does God look at these nations?
Do my thoughts make sense Daniel?
And thanks for such an excellent post on such a day as this.