John Calvin would have been a great blogger; he almost certainly would have received 500 hits a day on his posts. If you have ever read his sermons and writings, you would notice that he had a penchant for stirring up controversy. And as they say, "Controversy sells -- it is the well of all good stories and high ratings." John knew how to find fault with everyone and everything; and he didn't mind saying so. The writer William Bouwsma in his book on "Calvin", said that the critical nature of Calvin was formed from a 'nervous moralism', I think that is a perfect description of the anxious soul: "Calvin could hear God saying, 'It is necessary that I be obeyed, in everything and by everyone, or I shall renounce you.'" Could you imagine hearing those exact words from God? Absolutely terrifying and dreadful. I wonder if that same dread still drives the people who believe it to be their responsibility to change the world? As a result of Calvin's belief, he did all he could to teach and persuade others: "If everyone would try to repress vices and inequities and if, when there is evil, everyone tried to avoid it, God would certainly bless that response and we would have a desirable order among ourselves." He warned his followers that "every sin threatened both the individual and community." And what is the practical result? Bouwsma writes, "The search for and denunciation of wickedness is a universal obligation." He took this mandate quite seriously, so no one was safe under his watching eye. No sinful behavior, no evil thought, and no person could hide. If you think I am harsh and divisive on my blog posts, just listen to a quick list of the things that he would often rail against and try to legislate against in his town of Geneva. I will only provide a short list of 13 vices because it is the traditional naughty number (And you will quickly see why no one really liked hanging out with him): 1) SELF-LOVE: this problem drives all wickedness, it is "when we aspire to tower above the rest and haughtily and savagely abuse everyone else." Makes sense, I can agree with that. "Good start Calvin." 2) WEALTH: "Wealth leads to pride, pomp, scorn of God, cruelty, frauds, and everything of the kind; and then it brings bodily delights and pleasures, so that man is wholly brutalized." Occupy Wall-Street are pikers compared to him! "Go get em' Calvin, spread the wealth!" 3) SEX: "Only relations controlled by marriage are permissible to human beings." I am pretty sure (99.4% certain) Calvin considered marriage a union between only a man and a woman...but I could be wrong? "Get lost Calvin, keep your pure hands out of my business!" 4) MALE YOUTHFUL FOOLISHNESS: "Drunkenness was a shameful abuse of God's gift and their youthful desires make young men especially ebullient...easily angered...and rush at things more boldly and rashly!" The NFL would be wise if they listened to John on this point. "Go get em' Calvin, stop the barbaric men, the power hungry scourge of the earth!" 5) FEMALE LASCIVIOUSNESS: "Too often silly women tempt men with their own lawless desires...there are too many examples of how men, otherwise inclined to behave virtuously, have been debauched and turned from the right way by women" Uh oh....John, you better be careful on this point. I got lambasted last week for bringing this up. "Get lost Calvin, don't blame the victim!" 6) FEMININE WEAKNESSES: "Even though women are chargeable with many vices...above all they are enflamed with a mad eagerness for fine clothes." John, you are digging a deep hole here. (Snicker, snicker) "Get lost Calvin, you have to stay up with the recent trends!" 7) GOSSIP & LOQUACITY (talkativeness): I won't tell you who John thinks does most of this. But he says, "Talkativeness is a disease that makes it impossible to keep secrets, a vice that 'old age' makes worse." John, you are picking on my grandma now! "Get lost Calvin, you are getting too nosy and too nitpickety!"
8) KINGS & PRINCES: "Blinded by pride and presumption, inebriated by good fortune, rejecting all restraint, they all are in a precise sense 'tyrants!'" This one John, will get good press every time, bring down the man. "Go get em' Calvin, fight for the little guy!" 9) MAGISTRATES & CIVIL SERVANTS: These overlords are 'panderers, buffoons, and flatterers.' "They are so inflated with pride they think it disgraceful to mingle with the common people...they must always be climbing to great titles and great honors." Now this one is iffy John; because the validity of your viewpoint all depends on what party you support. "So, Calvin, we are split, we need you to commit to our agenda before we can agree on this one. I like my guy in office, sure he makes a lot of money, but he lobbies for me." 10) THE RICH: "The rich lack compassion. Men who had enough to feed a hundred allowed their neighbors to die of hunger; they would snatch the sun from the sky for their own enjoyment, if they could, leaving the poor in the dark." John, now here is a statement all of us can agree upon. "Go get em' Calvin, atta boy!" 11) THE LOWER ORDERS (aka. Poor): Bouwsma writes, "Calvin was not sentimental about the poor because he believed that true Christians are a small minority in every social group." Calvin writes, "The fierce passions of the common people, as a result of which the most frightful disorder inevitably follows if everyone is allowed to do as he pleases. (Do I hear Ferguson anyone?) Poverty lends to the temptation to murmur against God." But John, how can you blame them, especially when its the rich man who made them this way? "Get lost Calvin, you don't understand!" 12) WAR for ACQUISITION: "The lust for domination has ruled mankind in every age. War opens up the gates to robbery, pillage, arson, slaughter, rape, and every violence." How can you argue against that? "Good one Calvin, here, here!" 13) HYPOCRISY IN THE CHURCH: "The church had become a den of thieves, it exhibited all the evils of the secular world, it subordinated its aims to politics, and it aggravated wickedness elsewhere." He especially went after the Pope and monks "who are completely unlearned asses, they spread out their feathers like a peacock and are worshiped by his fellows." Ouch, John, ouch! "Well John, in this day and age, calling people unlearned asses won't fly! Bad move!" Whew that is just a small taste of Calvin's fire; trying to control the world can be a tiring business! Calvin offers something for everyone here, but I am pretty sure not everyone likes the everything he offers. That is always the way it is, people will keep their pet sins while attacking the behaviors that they abhor. At least Calvin consistently attacks all vices with equal measure. The bigger question is this:, "Are we our brother's keeper on every sin? And is that really the meaning behind the idea of our brother's keeper?" Am I responsible for your sin? Or am I only responsible for warning, teaching, guiding and praying? This is the issue at stake in our society. Who is in charge? Be very careful how you answer that because the list above will be enforced the way those in charge see fit; often choosing winners and losers without any rhyme or reason. My suggestion for a better world is naively simple? Please God. Honestly, before the watching eyes of a pure, almighty God, live righteously. Micah 6:8 is exactly right: "He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God." These are the types of men and women God wants us to be, to elect, and to teach our children to be. Like a pebble in a still pond, change starts slow -- first from your soul and then slowly reaching out to others. We need to start taking responsibility for ourselves: be pure, share your time and money with the needy, stop living to fulfill sexual urges, avoid addictions, and display the joy of Christ. Can't we start there?
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"We have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that this all surpassing power is from God, and not from us." (2 Corinthians 4:7) It is hard to admit, but I am horribly flawed. Made of ash, dust and debris.
The origins of decay are from old, inherited from our ancestor in the garden. Adam, red clay, dirt mingled with blood...from the animal slain...to hide his stain. I am my father's son. I'm stained too. As years melt into to decades, decades to thousands, and the shadows of generations grow long, the army of humanity forgets. We want to forget. Hiding behind brilliant lies, barriers built by the machinations of the geniuses. Slippery words written on bounded books and golden letters that deny our dirt. The consensus no longer adopts the origins; instead we try to bleach out the stain. It still soaks through. "It's not me, it's you, it's them, they did this to me!" Lies, thousands of years of lies. Adam has been twisted into myth, laughed to scorn. Now, the academy uses charts and graphs to determine blame. The sages who worship numbers cry out, "We are all victims, perfect vessels broken only by the cruel folly and greed of others. They did it, those seeking power. Running wild over the innocent, something must be done. Down with the system, lynch those in charge!" The crowd listens, the crowd demands. What drives their cries? Honest justice or jealousy? They claim to carry no malice...but they do. They are stained too. They are part of Adam's brood. They would love to drive if they were only given the chance. They would run wild too. We all would because Chesterton was right, "What's wrong? I am." So go ahead and speculate, in your bleached white throne. Point that finger and judge. Determine blame, demand for heads to roll. But be careful... Yours might be the next one under the guillotine's blade. You can't hide, Adam's red ash is smeared all across your face. Jars of clay. Jesus teaches us through John 15:5, that closeness to God and being changed by his life is all a matter of being attached to the vine. This is not something that can be forced or willed to happen. We don’t wake up and say, “I am going to pray like George Muller this morning,” or “I am going to gaze at the blue sky in ecstatic wonder for hours like Jonathan Edwards.” No. Mere determination and militaristic devotion is not the answer for vital connection with God. Well then, how do I get there? You need to understand the art of grafting. Grafting is when you unite a growing branch or bud to the vital root system of another plant through permanent attachment. I have included two pictures of a branch attached to a stem by use of a heavy binding string. Jesus, in the same says in John 15, “a man remains in me and I in him.” What does he mean by this? The word he uses in the Greek is meno, to remain. The New Testament uses this Greek word for many different situations: · In Matthew 10:11 this word is used by Jesus when he sent the disciples out to preach that the kingdom of heaven is near, and when invited in a home that is worthy “stay, remain there for awhile.” · When Mary went to see Elizabeth she “stayed” at her home for 3 months. · In other places it has the idea of enduring, persevering, standing strong. · One of my favorite uses of this word is in the first chapter of John 1:35-39. To sum up, this word meno in our language means to make a home with a person, to stick with them, to endure with them. To dwell with Jesus Christ by faith!
But when a man gets married, and invites a woman to share a home with him, everything changes, and I am not exaggerating, everything changes! You need to buy a bed with a headboard, you start buying dressers to put your socks in and tables and shelves to put your plates and dishes on. And then, out of no-where these strange little items called “nick-nacks” start appearing all over the house and colors begin to match. But even more drastic than that, you begin to start thinking like your spouse, you see the world the same, and you adopt the same priorities, goals, plans objectives. You have to if you are going to be one. It is the same when you share a life with Christ, not only does the wall of your mind start looking different, but your priorities, goals, plans objectives and even your friendships MUST change. It is the only way Jesus will live with you. What is interesting about making a home with someone is that they utterly change you. You start acting like that person, and you even start looking like each other. There are a lot of people who claim Christ but they look nothing like him. I'm curious, do you? Finally, someone is telling the truth!
I can't believe I am saying this, but for the first time in a long time I think I actually agree with "Time Magazine" on an important social issue of the day. And even more surprising, the writer of this article is a fire-brand woman and she is spot on...go figure? The article I am referring to is titled "Camille Paglia: The Modern Campus Cannot Comprehend Evil."** The dialogue she is initiating with the reader addresses the questionable "claims about the epidemic of sexual assaults on American campuses" that she says are both 'wildly overblown' and 'are obscuring the true danger to young women.'" Her main argument is this, "despite hysterical propaganda about our 'rape culture,' the majority of campus incidents being carelessly described as sexual assault are not felonious rape (involving force or drugs) but oafish hookup melodramas, arising from mixed signals and imprudence on both sides!" Can you believe it, she is not joining the lock-step journalistic cry that places blame on everyone but the woman for sexual assault on college campuses? And to go a step further, she is pointing her finger right at the women for much of the deviant sexual aggression; because she believes they have bought into the mind numbing clap-trap that has been spewing out for years from our smug, arrogant, elitist educational institutions of higher learning. Her goal of this article is to tell naive women to "wake up and quit being so stupid" when it comes to the reality of predatory men. She writes, "Too many young middleclass women, raised far from the urban streets, seem to expect adult life to be an extension of their comfortable, overprotected homes. But the world remains a wilderness. The price of women’s modern freedoms is personal responsibility for vigilance and self-defense." It is refreshing for someone to tell the truth and to stop the blame game. She cites all the popular societal red herrings and then correctly points out the falseness of their claims: "The basic Leftist premise, descending from Marxism, is that all problems in human life stem from an unjust society and that corrections and fine-tunings of that social mechanism will eventually bring utopia. Progressives have unquestioned faith in the perfectibility of mankind." Yes, finally, someone pointing out the idiocy of utopian fallacies like Marxism and progressive thought...I love it! She goes on, "The horrors and atrocities of history have been edited out of primary and secondary education except where they can be blamed on racism, sexism, and imperialism." Oh my, she is even boldly calling out and destroying all the "isms" as nothing more than ideological smokescreens that divide us as a culture... "Liberalism lacks a profound sense of evil — but so does conservatism these days, when evil is facilely projected onto a foreign host of rising political forces united only in their rejection of Western values." She offends everyone who needs to be offended in this article, even conservative idealists don't escape the hot truth of her pen. Take a look at her balanced approach... "The gender ideology dominating academe denies that sex differences are rooted in biology and sees them instead as malleable fictions that can be revised at will." She is so right! You have to be a fool to be gullible enough to believe gender is decided by personal taste & choice and not by our chromosomes! We have become so smart we are stupid...and the the "Pièce de résistance" of the article is this ... "There is a ritualistic symbolism at work in sex crime that most women do not grasp and therefore cannot arm themselves against. It is well-established that the visual faculties play a bigger role in male sexuality, which accounts for the greater male interest in pornography. " She goes on to say... "Misled by the naive optimism and 'You go, girl!' boosterism of their upbringing, young women do not see the animal eyes glowing at them in the dark. They assume that bared flesh and sexy clothes are just a fashion statement containing no messages that might be misread and twisted by a psychotic. They do not understand the fragility of civilization and the constant nearness of savage nature." Finally, someone correctly acknowledging that men are sexually triggered by sight, (No duh!). Therefore, it may be true that how a woman dresses or doesn't dress may possibly be one of the main stimuli to arouse unwanted male aggression? Maybe our modern elites need to take human anatomy class again? Where I believe she gets it wrong is by labeling this aggression as the product of 'ritualistic symbolism' and 'savage nature.' Sadly, it is much worse and goes much deeper than that; it is the fallen nature of humanity which all men carry. Depravity has effected us all, not just a few psychotics. And if the conditions are right, men will turn into hungry beasts at the snap of a finger. Case in Point: Spring Break (The new male 'rite-of-passage' experience) It is a the perfect "Petri Dish of Depravity" set up for young women to be preyed upon by lust driven men. Think about it: Boatloads of alcohol, bikinis, & all night rave parties on the beach--mix it all up-- and what do you think you are going to get? You would have to be the most ignorant parent in the world not to think your daughter is stepping into an extremely dangerous male shark feeding frenzy? And yet all the intellectual elites still blame patriarchal dominance when a drunken girl finds herself in the bed of some jacked up athlete or loud-mouthed frat boy. You see the problem isn't some secret alliance of men to subjugate all women, it is just evil acting on juiced up male hormones. I am not excusing the sin nor the crime, but we must place some blame on the stupid women who are throwing gasoline on the fire by dressing and acting like sluts. "If it looks like a duck..." The solution, once again, is not more education and government studies. The solution is teaching "moral purity, the fear of God, and advising your daughters to make men wait by acting as a noble ladies of virtue." If guys were allowed to be honest, that is really what the good men want in the first place. They want to date and marry a person they can honor and respect. It is the bad men who don't mind it at all when women dress and act like whores. Just think, when no one is asking men to behave, or isn't demanding a commitment out of them, the unscrupulous idiot has no problem complying when nothing is demanded of them. In truth, when adolescent minded men go to a college party and see drunken, half-naked women walking around, in their minds they are being served the finest smorgasbord imaginable and it is all of the stupid girls making. Thank you "Time" and Camille for writing an article that a man is not allowed to write in our culture. Thank you for telling the truth. And thank you for placing the blame for sin on all of us, including women! _________________________________________________________________________________________________ ** http://time.com/3444749/camille-paglia-the-modern-campus-cannot-comprehend-evil/ |
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