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Wednesday, September 24, 2014
Pervert Jurist Concludes Rape Licences Not Beyond The Realm Of Legal Possibility
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Tuesday, September 23, 2014
Monday, September 22, 2014
A pastor mentioned that, during Puritan times, if someone in the congregation nodded off during the sermon, the somnolent could be whacked by a roving usher. The pastor joked that perhaps we should return to our heritage. If one is to hold to the sola scruiptura of rigorous Protestantism, in what passage is such a use of force called for? How about pastors introducing or suggesting ideas nowhere called for in the pages of the Bible being beaten with a rod?
Where does it say if you are committing a sin when Jesus returns that you will be punished for that throughout all of eternity if you otherwise embrace Christ as Lord and Savior? And why is that moment any different than at the moment of a traditional death? What if you see a car barreling towards you and the moment before you die you shout “HOLY SH-T”? Even Paul admitted that he did that which he did not want to do.
A pastor remarked that there is no greater service than Christian service. The pastor than limited Christian service to those instances where one directly shared the Gospel. But given that we are not solely spiritual beings, shouldn't service intending to meet these other needs if those are the specific fields one has been called to address as one's vocation also be considered Christian service? Do you really want a Christian fireman to be exegeting the Scriptures to you when he should be putting out your house fire? Wasn't one of Protestantism's initial goals to correct this kind of errant perspective that had crept into medieval Christianity?
Why Aren’t You Entitled To Know The Background Character Of A Potential Mate?
A pastor remarked that, in a dating relationship, it is not your business if the person is a virgin.
However, if a relationship begins to progress beyond the stages of merely going out casually, especially if the person claims to never have been married before, aren't you entitled to know more about this aspect of an individual's character?
Why shouldn't someone that has lived a morally chaste life be able to decide for themselves based on all of the available information if they are willing to settle for soiled goods? Jesus does indeed forgive.
However, His record really isn't all that impressive in preventing the spread of the AIDS virus or other related diseases.
Are we to also avoid questions about other important issues such as previous marital status or doctrinal preferences in ascertaining the suitability of a potential mate?
According to this logic, one is suppose to accept being saddled in a relationship with a Baptist that has been a total whore rather than a Catholic or a Holy Roller that has kept their pants on and their legs together. Interesting how a sense of forgiveness or whatever one wants to call it should be so blind and stupid regarding one particular sin but if one decides to marry someone that is honest about a divorce about the only thing you will be allowed to do in some of these hardline churches is to empty your wallet into the collection plate.
by Frederick Meekins
Sunday, September 21, 2014
Would Graham Have Preferred To Meander Down The Canterbury Trail?
A Harvard University Press biography of Billy Graham claims that, if the world's most famous Baptist had his life to live over again, he would consider becoming an evangelical Anglican.
Such a spiritual and ecclesiastical path would have a number of things to commend it.
Foremostly, to be baptized into such a church, one would not necessarily have to be dunked underwater.
Anglicans also accept sprinkling and pouring as appropriate modalities of this primary Christian rite.
To Baptists, it is immersion or nothing at all.
Though identifying as Protestant and distinct from Roman Catholicism, Anglicanism is not so hostile to the other form of Western Christianity so as to forsake that which it is still capable of teaching the believer despite the shortcomings that have taken root in that particular theological expression over the centuries.
Some Baptists, on the other hand, are energized by little more than just how much they can stick it in the eye of the Church of Rome.
by Frederick Meekins
Saturday, September 20, 2014
Friday, September 19, 2014
Thursday, September 18, 2014
Phil Robertson of Duck Dynasty has enunciated more than his dislike of homosexuals. He has also made known his disapproval of fat kids, city dwellers, men that like cats, and females not married by the age of 15. In one episode, his wife insinuated that it is inappropriate for unmarried couples to hold hands. Wonder if they will make similarly doctrinaire statements regarding their granddaughter shaking her backside in a skimpy outfit on national TV. Or, as “Christian leaders”, do they get the customary exemption from the standards we non-celebrities are expected to adhere to.
Rape Victim Arrested For Refusing To Thank Muslim For Treating Her Like A Whore
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Wednesday, September 17, 2014
Analysts Rush To Defense Of NFL Player Accused Of Child Abuse
Charles Barkley insists that the beating of children by athletes should be overlooked because that form of discipline is a “Southern Black thing”.
Will he be suspended from his broadcasting duties like the correspondent that simply asked why Janay Rice would deliberately marry a known domestic abuser?
Will Black media personalities insisting that the beating of their youth by parents is just the way things are done down South insist that Paula Deen's fortune be restored because what she said in the privacy of her own home to her husband that resulted in no bodily injury is just the way things were done down South?
Since it was the way things use to be done, are those applauding the beating of a four year old to the point of bodily injury going to also tell us that it's also appropriate to deny children wholesome affection such as hugs or that to lavish attention and resources on one child to the point of neglecting other less desirable children in a family for no legitimate reason is acceptable.
Those kinds of things use to go on as well.
According to former Chicago Bears coach Mike Ditka, the propriety of a parental action such as a beating is to be determined by the pile of money or status that accrues to the recipient of such tactilely intensive correction.
If Adrian Peterson has approximately seven children by near as many women none of which he is married to, there has obviously been some kind of shortcoming or breakdown in the parental process somewhere.
Adrian Peterson's methods of discipline are being justified or overlooked on the grounds that that was the way things were always done.
Peterson is estimated to have fathered seven children.
He refuses to disclose the answer to this question himself definitively.
Nor does it sound like he is married to any of the mothers.
In those heralded golden days of yore invoked to justify the bruising of a four year old, didn't you usually get married before procreating that prodigiously?
Perhaps we should hold off a bit before lavishing this reprobate with father of the year accolades as some in certain conservative circles seem eager to bestow upon him.
By Frederick Meekins
Tuesday, September 16, 2014
Southern Baptist Missions President Applauds Family Neglect In God's Name
In a sermon titled “The Gospel Demands Sacrifice” posted at YouTube, President of the Southern Baptist International Missions Board Daniel Platt emphasized the Gospel requirement that our love for Christ should surpass even what we have for family.
As an example, Pastor Platt praised John Bunyan who was tossed into prison for refusing to stop preaching when ordered to by Anglican authorities despite the hardship endured by his family in general and his blind child in particular.
The Christian should not deny Christ.
However, Bunyan was initially imprisoned for preaching without a license.
Whether we agree with that or not is a secondary matter.
Often in a fallen world, the situations are so bad that the individual is forced to prioritize from a list of less than ideal options.
From the Wikipedia entry on John Bunyan, one gets the impression authorities were not initially inclined to imprison Bunyan until he blurted out that he'd be out preaching again the next day.
That causes one to ponder was it necessarily Christ that Bunyan was infatuated with or the adrenaline rush one can get from a good fight.
I Timothy 5:8 admonishes that those that do not take care of their own family are worse than an infidel.
The same ones praising John Bunyan for in their minds putting Christ in a proper place above the needs of his family would turn around and heap condemnation upon others for not taking care of the Bunyan urchins.
However, shouldn't taking care of the spiritual and physical needs of these children have been the foremost life's mission of the Bunyan parents?
Why couldn't have Bunyan been as an upstanding Christian example ministering to the needs of his ailing child and instead return to spreading the Gospel to others behind the back of authorities at a later time?
Jesus did indeed counsel that the believer's love of family should look like hate in comparison to that for Him.
However, the most profound expression of devotion to Christ may be in loving our family members in those times we feel like loving them the least or get distracted by a cause we deem much more exciting than the mundane duties of this world.
By Frederick Meekins
Monday, September 15, 2014
Halloween Sermon Exposes Minister's Desire For Religious Dictatorship
In part one of a sermon series titled “Halloween: A Biblical Critique Of James Jordin & American Vision”, Brian Schwertly of the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America did not argue against the autumnal celebration on the traditional grounds that the celebration was pagan per say.
Rather he argued against it from the standpoint of the Reformed belief against the impropriety of man authorizing holy days not found in Scripture.
In this homily, he seemed to praise and certainly did not criticize Scottish authorities at the time of the Reformation that forbade under penalty of law those celebrating such commemorations after Presbyterianism became that nation's established church.
However, if man does not have the authority to compel extra-biblical holy days, on what grounds does one then forbid an individual from incorporating these practices as part of their individual devotion after they have been informed that observation of the day is not necessarily a requirement?
For does not Romans 14:5-6 seem to indicate that these sorts of matters are more in the realm of individual conscience?
In a sermon against Halloween, Presbyterian Brian Schwertly described a prank he use to engage in during that particular time of year where he would light a bag of, in his words, “poop” on fire and leave it on someone's porch.
Instead of remorsefully recounting this story in a tone of repentance, he actually laughed about it.
If Halloween really is as evil as the hardline Fundamentalists make it out to be, wouldn't that be the equivalent of fondly recalling before the congregation how Buffy down at the gentleman's club would twirl as she was giving him a lap dance?
Wouldn't an ultalegalist such as himself consider a person exhibiting such glee in the House of God insufficiently contrite?
Yes, he should be classified as an ultralegalist as he insinuated at another point in the sermon series that Roman Catholics and Arminians should be denied citizenship in the idealized Christian Reconstructionist regime.
In the sermon “Halloween: A Biblical Critique Of James Jordin & American Vision, Part 2”, Brian Schwertly examined the argument that Christian participation in Halloween is valid and legitimate as a way of ridiculing the power of Satan.
Schwertly contends that such a perspective is inappropriate in light of Jude 1:9 in which it is suggested that even the mightiest of angels are cautious about underestimating the Old Deluder.
However, it has been suggested that often conceptualizing of evil in a literary or narrative form similar to a fairy tale can assist the young in placing these kinds of fears and terrors in a proper perspective.
Why can't the symbology of Halloween play a similar kind of role?
But more importantly, perhaps the argument about justifying Halloween as a way of minimizing Satan's influence through good old fashioned ridicule came about as a result of the need in some of the more rigorous wings of Evangelicalism to always find itself in an “on position” in terms of some grand outreach effort or engaged in some never-ending confrontation.
Can't a kid just go out for a night dressed in costume to collect some candy without it being as if the Apocalypse was looming or the fate of the world hanging in the balance?
By Frederick Meekins
It is often requested during opening prayers at many churches that those gathered in the House of God be there solely for God alone rather than out of a sense of tradition or because of friends. But is it really an either/or proposition? For the most part, is it not good or at least a potential good that these days that the person is there at all? Why can't those things such as tradition or friendship which God created for good be used to draw someone to the Lord?
In an exposition on the verses from Romans 14 teaching that two Christians can hold differing convictions on a matter and still each be within the will of God, it was insisted that it is still the prerogative of the pastor to expound their particular interpretation given the nature of the homiletical act. And it is the prerogative of the average believer if they feel so called to use social media to analyze and critique such oratorical pronouncements.
It is said that some have a conviction against attending movie theaters because of the inappropriate “laying on of hands” that at times takes place in such establishments. Don't some refrain from attending certain kinds of churches (and sometimes even all churches altogether) for the exact same reason?
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