A Defense of the Peter Masters' Article with Criticism of its Bad Reviews part two

Quite a few reviews have been written for Peter Masters' article, "The Merger of Calvinism with Worldlinessm"and mainly negative.

Douglas Wilson's Review

I have enjoyed reading Douglas Wilson in the past and using the Canon Press logic curriculum. I watched his debate with Christopher Hitchens and learned some helpful truths in dealing with atheists, which we have in plenty here in California. However, as I have become more familiar with him, my appreciation has grown dim. He ends the first paragraph of his review of Masters with this high opinion of himself and personal insult of Masters:

If you are involved in ecclesiastical punditry, never ever let a fat pitch go by.

The assumption is that Wilson has taken Masters' article and hit a home-run. Masters lobbed an easy one to Wilson, so he need only argue with half his brain tied behind his back. I'm sure this is the "serrated edge" that Wilson claims to wield. Let's see what he can do with Masters' soft ball.

Before we can even witness a swing of the bat, Wilson scorns again:

Masters . . . rejects some of the doily arrangements on the davenport of old school pietism. So to speak.

The portly Wilson begins his subtle attack on Masters' manhood, relegating his concerns over genuine worship to the sewing and knitting room. Later you get his hint of the feminine with these phrases:

[H]is (Masters') definition of worldliness is more indebted to the residue of Victorianism.

[People like Masters] sprinkle their daytimers with weekly wine and cheese events in support of the local symphony and/or arts councils.

[Y]ou also have ask the same question about Liszt and Chopin, not to mention other composers of other pieces that sweet homeschool girls play at their piano recitals.

Wilson mounts a preemptive defense of this line of mockery with an explanation of what a bad thing Masters has done in implying that MacArthur and Piper "don't have the love of the Father in them." I didn't read this implication in Masters' piece but Wilson applied the special juice for reading between the lines. I wonder if one can purchase the juice at Canon Press.

Wilson's main problem with Masters' review is his "appeal to certain sectarian traditions as though they were the emerald glow around the throne of God." Nowhere does Masters appeal to sectarian traditions. Pass the cracker-jacks as we wonder when Wilson might waddle to the plate.

Wilson gives himself three wacks at Masters' underhand tosses. Right away he displays the most apparent contradiction of himself. On the one hand, he claims that he would not "allow a Time/Life worship song into a worship service," because of his understanding of "what kind of music is suitable for that occasion." Then later, he writes this:

While working on this post, to take a snippet of my playlist at random, I have listened to "Feelin' Alright" by Joe Cocker, "Rivers of Babylon" by the Melodians, "96 Tears" by ? and the Mysterians, "Lonestar" by Norah Jones, "Almost Hear You Sigh" by the Stones, "Watching the River Flow" by Dylan, "Motherless Child" by Clapton, and you get the picture. Now here is a quick quiz. Get out your Bibles, everybody. Is that playlist worldly?

Wilson says he understands "what kind of music is suitable" for a worship service. Based on his standard of exegesis for his musical playlist, how does he know what music is suitable? Where does the Bible list the music suitable for worship? I've got a simple solution for Wilson: use the same "understanding" that you have for "suitable worship music" to determine whether your playlist is worldly. Wilson wants to have it both ways. He can judge his worship service music with an understanding that he has, but no one can judge his musical playlist because those songs aren't specifically listed anywhere in scripture.

Masters must have had some movement on that fat pitch because I felt a breeze coming from Wilson's bat.

The other genius reason that Wilson says we don't use rock music for a worship service is because "ours (sic) forms of it are almost always lousy rock music." Aaaaah. Yes. If we just knew how to do "good" rock music, then it would be acceptable---I guess good like Dylan, Clapton, and the Stones. Every good classical piano player I've ever asked says that rock music isn't hard for him to play. Maybe our Christian rock isn't violent, syncopated, or sexual enough.

Most of Wilson's essay just assumes that Masters doesn't have the special knowledge, cultural education, and maturity that Wilson possesses in discerning what is worldly music.

Before agreeing with Masters that young Calvinists shouldn't go clubbing, Wilson takes his last big whiff. Masters writes that Christians need "the personal guidance of God in the major decisions" or else strike "a death blow to whole hearted consecration." Wilson spins this into making "personal life-decisions as though the gift of prophecy were still operative today." How did "personal guidance" become extra-scriptural revelation? That's not what I got out of Masters' statement. What I read in Masters' sentence, and perhaps he was not clear enough at this point, was that God can guide believers in the application of Scripture. Application of the Bible doesn't require extra-scriptural revelation. Consecration to God requires applying Scripture. The Bible doesn't tell us the name of the person we're going to marry or what the titles of the songs are on our playlist, but it gives us the principles and we rely on the Holy Spirit ("personal guidance of God") to live a consecrated life.

I concur with Wilson's last statement---"It is not that difficult." Unfortunately, Wilson has taken tee-ball and made it look like Nolan Ryan.

Frank Turk's Review

Frank Turk, the Centurion, chimed in the discussion. Many might have a hard time believing that I essentially agree with Frank through his entire post until he gets to his eleventh paragraph. I don't know if that will make him happy. I would tweak the first ten paragraphs here and there, but it is this statement about Masters that brings Turk and myself into conflict.

[H]e honors and confesses a proto-fundamentalist view of all things, down to making even matters of style and context into urgent doctrinal crises and therefore matters over which to separate.

It isn't as simple as this for Masters. For him, like myself, this is a worship issue. He wants God to be recognized, believed, and worshiped. When evangelicalism offers a worship that so contradicts the character and nature of God, men will be deceived as to who God is and what He desires in worship.

That is about all I differed from Frank.

Dan Phillip's Review

Dan Phillips writes a criticism of Masters' article after he had read both Turk's and Wilson's. Phillips makes this amazing statement about Masters and about Spurgeon:

As disappointing and largely wrongheaded as Masters' rant is (basically he dismisses "new Calvinists" because he doesn't like their music style and their worship style), I am afraid he is at least somewhat in Spurgeon's tradition.

I can applaud the honesty of Phillips. He agrees that Masters takes the same position as Spurgeon on this, so that he rejects what both of them say. Later he says that Spurgeon should not have condemned theater-going---this, of course, coming from a Phillips who is a regular theater attender and who writes reviews on his blog for many of the movies he has seen.

His other problem with was the statement about "personal guidance" that Wilson referred to. I think that Phillips read Wilson and then interpreted Masters in light of reading Wilson. I think they are both wrong about what they are rather reading into what Masters believes and teaches. The pretty much renders moot most of the second half of his post.

A Defense of the Peter Masters' Article with Criticism of its Bad Reviews

One of the most famous churches in the world is the Metropolitan Tabernacle in London, England, where for thirty-eight years (1854-1892) Charles Haddon Spurgeon pastored and preached. By the time we get to the late 1960s, the church had shrunk down to a tiny membership. Then Peter Masters became its pastor in 1970 and, despite horrible moral, spiritual, and religious conditions in England, the church has experienced a renaissance of numerical growth with a comparable belief and practice to Spurgeon himself.

Masters, like Spurgeon, is a Calvinist, and one in the Spurgeon tradition. He and his church are aggressively evangelistic while remaining God centered. They have expanded from preaching the gospel, notwithstanding a strong position against many of the unscriptural modern church growth innovations.

Masters has written many books and essays, including Worship in the Melting Pot. Less than a month ago, he wrote an article entitled, "The Merger of Calvinism with Worldliness," a quasi book review of Young, Restless, Reformed, by Collin Hansen. His analysis became more a jumping off point for him to warn of false worship within "new Calvinism." Many well-known, online blogs have responded to Masters' piece, very little positive. This post will support and explain what Masters has written, as well as expose the negative reviews he has received.

The Crux of Peter Masters' Concern

The title of Masters' article aptly communicates his proposition. This section sums it up well:

Indeed, a far better quality Calvinism still flourishes in very many churches, where souls are won and lives sanctified, and where Truth and practice are both under the rule of Scripture. Such churches have no sympathy at all with reporter Collin Hansen’s worldly-worship variety, who seek to build churches using exactly the same entertainment methods as most charismatics and the Arminian Calvary Chapel movement. . . . The new Calvinists constantly extol the Puritans, but they do not want to worship or live as they did.

He warns about worldly, syncretistic worship utilized as church growth methodology and reflecting continuationist charismaticism. He sees Calvinism as the adhesive employed for keeping together the various and contradictory points of view. He evaluates this as an erroneous separation of soteriology from sanctification, yielding a conduct incongruent with God's sovereignty.

Most of the reviews of Masters decried his lack of scriptural exposition. Masters was editorializing. It took on the form of a scriptural exhortation. He didn't refer to specific passages, but he did use biblical, doctrinal truths as a basis of his criticism. He's also exegeted the passages in previous books he's written that stand as a basis for what he says here. He has a reason to be upset. He sees false worship as very bad. Everyone else should too.

My Take on What Masters Was Concerned About

The new Calvinists target the gospel as the minimum objective of fellowship. They get together to revel in the gospel with too much emphasis on reveling. The gospel has become another commodity to consume. They've been saved with the accent on they. They're lovin' their salvation.

The gospel will end in worship, but worship for them has become more about how they feel than what God wants, compatible with the spirit of the age. The current of consumerism flows strong in the United States. The customer wants the best deal for himself. He chooses by what makes him feel the best. What is to make this so special to God is that He gets something that worshipers feel so good about.

The points of Calvinism are not alone enough to stir the new Calvinists' affections above the level of indifference. Instead adoration must be propelled along by the histrionics of the musical composition. They reason that something living must be felt. The music causes a feeling so it must be alive and, therefore, is authentic. The theological content of the words justifies the feeling.

Physiological manifestations validate spiritual reality like is seen in the charismatic movement. They are feelings choreographed by musicians with the credit going to the Holy Spirit. If not produced by the music, they are faked according to the importance of facial expressions to the communication of authenticity. Grimacing, eyes closed, hands waving, and heads wagging are all stock reactions in the catalog of sincerity. And yet the Holy Spirit hasn't worked through music not characteristic of His work. And these aren't responses anywhere in scripture that authenticate spiritual reality.

Within the five points Christ is to be glorified by Calvinism. Jesus chose, atoned, supplied grace, and secured. Instead of the Lord being raised high above and separate from what is common and profane, He is dragged along by the musical choices of professing adherents. Jesus has become an icon to them. They use Him as an excuse to celebrate. The party is fun and Jesus is a good reason to have it. It's so much fun that it must be real, so He must be pleased. And on top of that, 'Jesus' logo is imprinted on my teeshirt with matching grafiti font.' Hardly anything is more heart-felt than grafiti, the crumbling brick walls of a third world infrastructure, and a Mao Cap with a "resolved" symbol in place of the red star.

The most recent spiritual, historical patriarch of new Calvinism is the Jesus movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s. These evangelicals often mention fundamentalism's infatuation with the 1950s. Most evangelicals, whether they know it or not, love the 60s and 70s. The Jesus movement invented the new measures for new Calvinism revivalism. Masters makes reference to this when he mentions the "Arminian Calvary Chapel Movement" as well as Francis Schaeffer's sixties sit-in style of biblical dialogue that mirrored what college students were doing on the campuses at the time. Schaeffer's method could easily be the forefather of today's online forum where everyone with an opinion counts as much as anyone elses.

Some of the important new measures the Jesus movement introduced into evangelicalism are worldly music, very casual dress, new hip styles of communication, casual relationships between boys and girls outside parental authority, and cutting edge marketing. All of these provided a comfortable and accepting environment for that generation of young people. We see the same new measuresas the Jesus movement (except worse) in the new Calvinism with Piper, Macarthur, Mahaney, and Driscoll. The reason these new measures work is because these young people are immersed in the world as a Christian liberty. The measures speak their langugae, a worldly one, and makes the religion an acceptable one to them.

There really isn't that much different, probably only a little in degree, between the new measures of new Calvinism and the methods of Rick Warren and the seeker sensitive. It is obvious that this new missiology and contextualization are appealing to a demographic. The content has more substance in the new Calvinism, but the methods are often the same. The joy in Jesus Christ and the teaching of scripture isn't enough. It must be embellished with the accoutrements of the natural man.

The points of Calvin start with total depravity. The new Calvinism parks on the inability of depravity, so that when Christ chooses, ability is what they've received. They were unable and now they're able. They seem to forget that depravity was alleviated as well. Enabling grace limits the power of unredeemed flesh. Its power no longer has dominion. Children of darkness become children of light. That separation is blurred by the revivalistic new measures of new Calvinism.

The new Calvinism lacks the distinction between the sacred and the profane. Indeed, they are jumbled together in a way that you can't tell where one stops and the other ends. Recently John MacArthur has become incensed with the smutty language used in the preaching of Mark Driscoll, and rightly so. However, he doesn't seem to have the discernment to see how that the new revivalistic measures his church employs have profaned the holy name and character of Christ by framing Him within the common fashions of smutty culture.

In contrast to Finney revivalism, some serious exposition in the conferences and gatherings supposedly justifies the new measures of new Calvinism. Many of the various video clips of preaching used to advertise this preaching attract using worldly means. The clips themselves accentuate the theatrics one would experience if he chose to attend. The exposition in these meetings does enlighten in doctrine, but often without the specific and strong application that would give pause to a seeker more interested in the fun time.

Comments on Varied Details of Masters' Piece

"Immoral Drug-induced Musical forms of Worldly Culture"

The forms of present rock music utilized in contemporary Christian music was induced by drugs. The world itself says this (also here among many other places online). Rock musicians were often on drugs when they wrote their music. However, they also wrote music that used fuzztone, feedback, synthesizers, and volume to mimick the supposed mind-expanding properties of marijuana and LSD. The drug induced state was simulated by electronic amplification. The Jesus movement and the hippie subculture both arose from the same location and with this same music. The grunge used by Mark Driscoll in his "worship" was part of the drug counter-culture in Seattle, the location of his church. This is the type of music that Douglas Wilson proudly proclaims is on his playlist at home:

While working on this post, to take a snippet of my playlist at random, I have listened to "Feelin' Alright" by Joe Cocker, "Rivers of Babylon" by the Melodians, "96 Tears" by ? and the Mysterians, "Lonestar" by Norah Jones, "Almost Hear You Sigh" by the Stones, "Watching the River Flow" by Dylan, "Motherless Child" by Clapton, and you get the picture.

I suppose that this is what the grace of God means to Douglas Wilson.

One of the vaunted new conferences is called Resolved, after Jonathan Edwards’ famous youthful Resolutions (seventy searching undertakings). But the culture of this conference would unquestionably have met with the outright condemnation of that great theologian.

I believe that Masters could safely say these two sentences in the light of Edwards' book Treatise on the Religious Affections. This conference violates the major theme of Religious Affections that Edwards unpacked from scripture.

Worldly culture provides the bodily, emotional feelings, into which Christian thoughts are infused and floated. Biblical sentiments are harnessed to carnal entertainment. (Pictures of this conference on their website betray the totally worldly, showbusiness atmosphere created by the organisers.)

Masters is here differentiating between passions and affections that Edwards treated in his book. The latter starts with the mind and the former with the flesh. Masters implies that the doctrinal message is ruined when it is harnessed to carnal entertainment. MacArthur decries the attack on truth in our culture and yet what Masters describes is at the very root of the attack. David Wells has much to comment on this in his No Place for Truth:

What shapes the modern world is not powerful minds, but powerful forces, not philosophy but urbanization, capitalism, and technology. As the older quest for truth has collapsed, intellectual life had increasingly become little more than a lgoss on the process of modernization. . . . Christian faith, which has made many easy alliances with modern culture in the past few decades, is also living a fool's paradise, comforting itself about all of the things that God is doing in society (which is the most commonly heard religious version of this idea of progress) while it is losing its character, if not its soul.

Wells says this about the place of feelings in evangelicalism:

Today we "demand instant access to authentic reality, " he [author Brian Wilson] says, and these ministries do indeed offer instant and painless access, the authenticity of which is "guaranteed by subjective feeling, reinforced by group-engendered emotions"; the televangelists capitalize on the widespread perception that "reality is to be felt rather than cognitively realized."

The contradiction in harnassing "Biblical truths to carnal entertainment" is exposed by Wells:

The growth in this type of evangelical faith in America is in part also to be explained by the powerful undercurrents of self-absorption that course through the modern psyche. Many charismatics have made the experience of God rather than the truth of God foundational. The self therefore becomes pivotal. This, in turn, links with the deep subterranean sense of progress that is inescapable in America, as the proponents of this movement tout it as the most recent cresting of the Spirit.

When you look at their ‘favourite films’, and ‘favourite music’ you find them unashamedly naming the leading groups, tracks and entertainment of debased culture, and it is clear that the world is still in their hearts.

The new Calvinists talk about worldliness being only a matter of the heart. Even if it were just in one's heart, it will come out in the life and Masters is right to point out that this is how it is seen. The new Calvinists talk about their favorite lager, the latest blockbuster, and the music of their most beloved rock group. This displays the world in their hearts.

The new Calvinism is not a resurgence but an entirely novel formula which strips the doctrine of its historic practice, and unites it with the world.

The old Calvinists like Spurgeon, Gill, Owen, and Turretin, among many others had much to say against worldliness. And they did in a day when there was so much less to be attracted by in the world. You can't appreciate their soteriology with appreciating their seperation from the world. When you read those old Calvinists, you see that their sanctification arose out of their soteriology. You couldn't divide the two with them. The new Calvinists have separated them anyway.

A final sad spectacle reported with enthusiasm in the book is the Together for the Gospel conference, running from 2006. A more adult affair convened by respected Calvinists, this nevertheless brings together cessationists and non-cessationists, traditional and contemporary worship exponents, and while maintaining sound preaching, it conditions all who attend to relax on these controversial matters, and learn to accept every point of view. In other words, the ministry of warning is killed off, so that every -error of the new scene may race ahead unchecked.

Wells talks about this phenomenon in No Place for Truth:

The kind of pluralism that is necessary to eliminate antagonisms among the competing views has the effect of reducing the values of each inhabitant to the lowest common denominator. City life requires the kind of friendliness that allows us to cohabit with the mass ethic. It is typically assumed that this sort of friendliness must be divested of moral and religious judgment, since it is difficult for our society to see how judgments about truth and morals can escape the charge of social bigotry. And so we settle for the kind of friendliness within which all absolutes perish either for lack of interest or because of the demands of social etiquette.

It doesn't seem that Masters is willing to settle for that "friendliness." I know I won't. The new Calvinists do.

(to be continued) I will deal with several of the negative reviews that Masters has received.

Majoring on the Minors

A few days ago, I received a nasty comment here from 'anonymous,' and he started it with some sarcasm about my majoring on the minors. Don't look for the comment. I didn't post it. It was error-filled, so I wasn't interested in anyone entertaining its content, especially since he wouldn't own it. But it did motivate me to speak to the concept of "majoring." I've found the criticism, "you major on the minors," to be common. Rather than dealing with the actual exegesis or application, the critic attacks the choice of subject matter. It is akin to a poor review of a book on Gettysburg because the author didn't choose Antietam.

I refuse to accept the 'majoring on minors' charge. The Bible chronicles the technical character of God. He wants minutiae kept. I believe we invented "minors" for fake unity or to excuse some kind of disobedience. A violation is minor to the ones who want to do it. Our concern should be whether God is pleased or not.

Cain thought fruits and vegetables were minor. Nadab and Abihu thought their unique recipe for the altar of incense was minor. Achan thought the Babylonian garment was minor. Uzzah thought touching the ark was minor. David thought the means of carrying the ark was minor. Moses thought that striking the rock was minor. Ananias and Saphhira thought that holding back part of their offering was minor. Israel thought that using Gideon's ephod for worship was minor and that worshiping God in the high places was minor.

What we have with these denials of the "minors" are presumptuous sins. We ought to instead pray with the Psalmist (19:13):

Keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins; let them not have dominion over me: then shall I be upright, and I shall be innocent from the great transgression.

2 Peter 2:10 speaks of presumptuousness:

But chiefly them that walk after the flesh in the lust of uncleanness, and despise government. Presumptuous are they, selfwilled, they are not afraid to speak evil of dignities.

We can see the presumptuousness comes from a disrespect of authority. The presumptuous takes liberty where he doesn't have it. He assumes too much. He takes matters into his own hands, presuming that it shouldn't matter as much as other issues, because it isn't as important. And yet, if God said it, it's important. He possesses all authority. If He said it, He meant it, and He expects us to obey it. If we love Him, we will keep what He said, and it won't be burdensome to us to do so (1 John 5:3).

The "minor" that my critic disapproved was the obedience of Deuteronomy 22:5. Deuteronomy 22:5 ends by saying that all who violate one of its prohibitions "are abomination unto the LORD thy God." My critic is saying that an abomination to God is a minor issue. How could anyone who loves God think that becoming "an abomination to God" is permissible, only a minor issue? John writes in Revelation 21:8 that "the abominable . . . . shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death." You can see how presumptuous they are who say that disobedience to Deuteronomy 22:5 is a minor issue.

The Issue of Designed Gender Distinction: Answering Comments or Questions

I commented on the blog of a young man who is leaving fundamentalism. One of his big criticisms was "standards." In the comment section, another pastor who blogs, Will at Reforming Baptist, wrote this:

KB: "On the pants/skirt, I don't think the position gets explained exegetically and historically well enough, but your position will fail exegetically and historically"

A few weeks ago on the former fundies blog, I demonstrated that your argument for this is not exegetical, it's circular. I'm not going to get into it here, but your argument for "the male article" is strictly a cultural determination and not a biblical one, yet you say that the culture used to hold to a biblical standard which can't be found anywhere in the Bible concerning the definite male article.

As you can see, he pulled a quote from my comment (I'm "KB") and then addressed it. I want to deal with this idea that my position on designed gender distinction is not exegetical. Of course I believe he's wrong. I think it does show a blind spot in how to exegete and then apply scripture that is common in many evangelicals and fundamentalists.

A Model for Exegesis in Passages that Require Second Premise Application

Ephesians 4:29 reads: "Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth." When we make application of that command, that imperative, we can see it in this logical syllogism:

Major Premise: Corrupt communication is disobedience to God's Word, that is, sin.
Minor Premise: #&$%@*# is corrupt communication.
Conclusion: Therefore, #&$%@*# is disobedience to God's Word, that is, sin.

Paul did not tell us what corrupt communication was. When he wrote that passage in the first century, the English language didn't exist. So we must apply this passage culturally. We would assume that there is English language that is corrupt communication. If we cannot make that assumption, then we cannot apply this passage and it is meaningless to us. We know that is not the case. I'm going to guess that Will thinks that there are English words that Paul would be referring to "in principle" in this verse, words that we should be expected by the verse to refrain from communicating. Does Will disregard it because of a "cultural determination?" I doubt it. Does he dismiss the verse because it is a "circular argument?" Again, I strongly doubt it. So that's what makes his little diatribe a totally moot point.

When we make application of scripture, we must often use second premise arguments. That is not a circular argument. It says that there are certain truths in the real world to which scripture is referring. Let's now show how this works with Deuteronomy 22:5. But first, let's read the verse:

The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman's garment: for all that do so are abomination unto the LORD thy God.

Here's a syllogism that comes from the verse:

Major Premise: A woman who wears a designated male-only article is an abomination to God,
Minor Premise: Pants or trousers are a designated male-only article.
Conclusion: A woman who wears pants or trousers is an abomination to God.

I'm dealing only with Will's criticism, the so-called cultural one. (I want to limit the comment section to discussion only about this particular point, so I won't publish comments that are off this narrow aspect.) Quite a few verses in the Bible require application within a culture. That doesn't make the interpretation of those verses less exegetical. We've got to apply scripture within our culture. That doesn't take away from the meaning or the authority of the Bible in those issues.

What About Culture on Designed Gender Distinction?

The position that the culture determines what are the male-only and female-only articles of clothing is the historic position. You'll see it word for word in seventeenth century Puritan Vincent Alsop's "The Sinfulness of Strange Apparel." Women don't have on the male garment and men don't wear the female articles of clothing.

Even though culture makes the application, the purpose of this prohibition in Deuteronomy 22:5 relates to God's created design as seen in Genesis 1:26-27. There we see God created man in His image, male and female He created them. The image of God is seen in both male and female. The distinctions between the two make up the image of God in man. This is how God's image is represented by man, by distinctions between male and female.

Every culture and people are responsible to keep Deuteronomy 22:5. You can see this in the words "all that do." In every instance these words are found together (in the Hebrew too), they refer to all of mankind, any nation or people. This one grammatical point says that this wasn't only an Israelite regulation.

In 1 Corinthians 11:3-16 Paul expects the Corinthians to keep a culturally designed distinction between male and female with the head-covering. We can see in Isaiah 47:2-3 that the absence of a head-covering for Babylonian women ("uncovered locks") was a shame unto them. In 1 Corinthians 11, not having the head-covering was a shame to a Corinthian like the shorn or shaved head was significant of a prostitute. This is obviously a culturally related issue, because in our culture, the shaved female head does not portray a prostitute. It did in Corinth.

This criticism usually centers on the dress that was worn by men and women when Israel received this law. Most say that men and women both wore robes. Perhaps they did. The Bible doesn't say. What is ironic about this criticism is that the Bible doesn't tell us what the male or female garments were.

For the sake of dealing with this criticism, however, let's say that there was a male robe and a female robe. I think there were. The point of Deuteronomy 22:5 was that there the robes were designed differently. How were they different? There may have been colors that must be kept different, ornamentation that must remain peculiar to each robe, perhaps the actual type of material, the girdle, the sleeve length, and more. We don't know what those distinctions were. The point of Deuteronomy 22:5 is that they were designed distinct, not sameness.

For centuries in our culture, the unique male garment, which was public and constant, for the purpose of distinction, was the pants or trousers. The woman distinguished herself from the man with the skirt or dress. When women began wearing pants or trousers, the distinction was not replaced, but removed. Women began wearing pants at the expense of the distinction, not for distinction.

For arguments sake, let's say that now both men and women both wore pants, like we are saying that in Old Testament Israel, they both wore robes. Some would argue that since they both wore robes, we can both wear pants. That makes some sense at first glance. However, the point of Deuteronomy 22:5 was that there was a male-only robe that was distinct from a female-only robe. The woman would not put on the man's robe and the man would not put on the woman's robe. This did not relate to size differences or even fit (tightness or looseness), but some clear, public, designed distinctions that made them purposefully different. That has not occurred with pants. The point of pants was to remove the distinction.

Our culture has not replaced the distinct female garment, the dress, with a new one, pants. Men wear pants. Now women wear pants. Some will say, "But women wear women's pants." But no distinctions have been designed in women's pants for the purposes of obeying God's requirement in Deuteronomy 22:5. We haven't said as a culture or as Christians, "Well, women's pants shall always have the zipper on the side." Or, "Women's pants must always be of a pastel color and men's pants must always be either dark brown, blue, or black." We have made no distinctions between the two. Sure, women will wear pants that are more feminine looking---in color, in embroidery, or unfortunately in tightness---but these are not designed distinctions. Women can and do wear pants the same color, material, embroidery, and sewing as men.

Again, the point of pants on women was to remove the distinction. This attacked the image of God in men. This attacked God's design. That's why the person who does so is an abomination to God. It is a personal insult to God. This should be a serious issue to Christians. It should be about God and not about fitting in with the world.

Is There Something Non-Cultural In the Argument?

At the end of Job, God speaks directly to Job. In two places, Job 38:3 and 40:7, God says this to Job:

Gird up now thy loins like a man.

God says that only men gird their loins. What is "girding your loins?" Men wore a robe. Only men girded their robe. Men had a belt, a girdle around their waist (in the loin area). When they would do manly activity, they would pull up the center of the robe and tuck it into their girdle so that they could function as a man.

The loins are between the legs. Only men would pull a garment up to the loins. Pants permanently girded the male garment. The new expertise and skill and technology in sewing allowed for pants to be made, so that men could have their garments permanently girded. This way men could ride a horse, jump over barriers, and run much more easily.

"Gird up your loins like a man" means nothing to us in Job if we don't understand what that practice meant. God said that this girding was a unique male activity or appearance. We should at least understand from this text that God wants these distinctions in appearance.

How Should We Determine Our Position On Issues?

When we take a position on an issue we start with interpretation of the appropriate passages. Then we investigate as to whether this is a historical position. Have Christians believed like this in the past? In other words, is it a private interpretation? It shouldn't be. If it is a non-historic position, great scriptural exegesis should overturn it. Then we make an application of the passage on the issue.

What I have found with this issue of designed gender distinctions is that those who do not take the male pants and female dress position do not spend any time on exegesis themselves. They are not curious as to what the historical position is. All I've seen them do is take pot shots at those who take the same position as I do and usually ridicule.

I would hope to see critics study the passages and history. I would expect them to interact with the multitude of commentaries that take the same position as I do. They don't. That should be tell-tale to anyone who is attempting to sort out his position. Pot shots and ridicule should not be respected as a way to deal with any issue.

Who Would Make the Decision to Replace the Distinctions?

When these cultural changes occur, it should be a big deal. It was when women started wearing pants. If there were distinctly female pants, who would decide that had occurred? The culture would. So has it? It hasn't. Why not? The culture isn't interested in distinctions. That was the point for allowing the distinction to disappear.

What our culture has done in allowing this distinction to be removed is something unique in the history of mankind. Secularists believe that mankind has been here millions of years. We've actually been here around 6000 years. Men have believed in a creator or a designer. We have moved away from that belief as a culture. We have left the concept of a designer so it is no wonder that it doesn't matter if we reflect design any more in our culture. When Christians do not obey Deuteronomy 22:5, they are supporting this false idea that there is no design for humanity.

Our culture isn't going to decide to replace old distinctions with new ones. For that reason, on this issue, Christians can't follow the culture. We must go back to the distinctions that were removed. Those were pants for men and dresses for women.

Two Obvious Contemporary Theological Contradictions and their Meaning part two

God "cannot deny himself" (2 Timothy 2:13). "Let God be true, but every man a liar" (Romans 3:4). We should not expect contradictions. This is not the nature of God. Jesus said, "I am the truth" (John 14:6). There isn't more than one truth.

From this perfect unity of God's attributes and revelation of Himself and His will through Scripture, we expect the same lack of contradiction in our own doctrine and practice. Recently, however, two such contradictions have caught my attention. I wrote about a first in part one, entitled: "Contradiction Number One: The Eruption over the Fundamental Baptist Fellowship Sermon."

Contradiction Number Two: The Supposed Rejection of Total Apostasy and Yet a Belief in a Total Apostasy in the Scriptural Doctrine of the Perfect Preservation of Scripture

The concept of a total apostasy is foundational to most cults. They must prove that the doctrine and practice of the first century early church has been forsaken for an erroneous replacement. For instance, the Jehovah's Witnesses must believe that the pure, original teaching of the Person of Christ had been lost to the conspiratorial Trinitarians. The Campbellites must accept that the pure, original teaching of salvation had been lost to the novel salvation-by-grace-through-faith alone view. The Mormons, to make room for their theological system, must show how that the right interpretation of scripture had actually been lost.

We have a scriptural basis for not believing in a total apostasy. Any belief that espouses a total apostasy of doctrine, we should reject. True doctrine will not be lost. We should assume that. Paul in 1 Timothy 4:1 writes:

Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils.

The key here is that "some shall depart from the faith." Not all. Some. "The faith," which includes all of the teachings of scripture, will not be lost. Ironically, even most of those, who don't think we have all the words of the original manuscripts of the Bible available to us, do believe that scripture promises that none of the doctrines will be lost. This is an important part of their belief in preservation, that is, that no doctrine is lost in the words of the critical text. They hope to calm the fears of those who are finding out for the first time that 'we're not sure what the words of the originals are.'

Jude 1:3 also rejects a total apostasy.

Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation, it was needful for me to write unto you, and exhort you that ye should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints.

The key portion on this is "the faith which was once delivered unto the saints." "Once" comes from the Greek hapax, which means, "once for all time." It is a strong statement about the teachings of God's Word. They were delivered to the saints once and for all time. "Delivered" is aorist, speaking of completed action. The deliverance of the faith was complete. We don't need to be concerned that we had not yet been given doctrine that God still planned for us to receive. From this verse we believe that no doctrine would be lost.

A scriptural pneumatology, the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, precludes the possibility of a total apostasy in the age in which we live. Jesus made promises that ensure that every Christian can count on having all of the teachings from God's Word.

John 16:13---Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come.

1 John 2:27---But the anointing which ye have received of him abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you: but as the same anointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie, and even as it hath taught you, ye shall abide in him.

In John 16:13, we see that the Holy Spirit "will guide [us] into all truth" and in 1 John 2:27 that the Holy Spirit "teaches [us] of all things" and "is no lie." Biblical Christianity will last and every doctrine will survive in its midst.

Does this mean that there will never be a total apostasy? There will be a total apostasy. 2 Thessalonians 2 talks of that time and we know that this apostasy will be witnessed when the Antichrist reveals himself. Verse three informs us of that:

Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition.

The "falling away" (apostasy) and the "son of perdition" being revealed occur at the same time period. Also the Holy Spirit, the restrainer (the one who "lets" or "restrains"), will be taken away.

For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way.

The Holy Spirit will go before the apostasy occurs, explaining how it could take place. 2 Thessalonians 2 goes on to describe it in verses eight through eleven:

8 And then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming: 9 Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, 10 And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. 11 And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie:

Until this occurs, there will be no total apostasy. All doctrines will remain intact.

So What Happened to the True Doctrine of the Preservation of Scripture?

Most evangelicals today say that the true doctrine of the preservation of Scripture is that God chose not to preserve the words of the original manuscripts. He preserved the doctrines of scripture, but we do not possess a perfect copy of God's Word any more. Enough mistakes were made in copying that we do not know what the words of the original are anymore. They contend that this is the orthodox doctrine. Those who do believe in perfect preservation they will attack as heterodox and heretical.

If what these evangelicals propose, which includes many fundamentalists, were actually true, then we should find their doctrine from 1500 to 1800 among orthodox, evangelical Christianity, that is, the ones who possessed the Holy Spirit. However, when we read the doctrine of reformation era and post-reformation era saints, we don't see this supposedly orthodox doctrine of the "preservation of all the doctrines but not the words." They didn't believe that. They believed that they had available to them all of the words of Scripture. You find this in the Westminster Confession (WC) and the London Baptist Confession and the Formula Consensus Helvetica. You will find this bibliology of modern evangelicalism and fundamentalism nowhere during that time period.

When we can't find a particular doctrine in history, we should look to see if we can determine when it arose. This is actually simple. Evangelicals didn't start holding this view until Benjamin Warfield of Princeton Seminary came along to read this view into the WC in the late 19th century. No one else had read this doctrine in the WC until that point. Many evangelicals and then fundamentalists (once the fundamentalist movement began in the early 20th century) latched ahold of this new Warfield doctrine.

Today you can read fundamentalist materials written that attempt to formulate a history to their new doctrine. As you read their books and articles, you see that they trace the teaching no further than the late 19th century. And then they claim this as a historic position. You read this in God's Word in Our Hands: The Bible Preserved for Us and in God's Word Preserved and God's Word Preserved: A Defense of Historic Separatist Definitions and Beliefs. Notice how Sproul says, "Historic," in his title. I believe that we would need to give a new definition to "historic" if "historic" refers to a doctrine that one can trace back a little over one hundred years. That is just the opposite of a genuine understanding of "historic."

Neither of the above mentioned books does anything to show why the history of 1500-1800 could not be true. They don't show why we shouldn't believe what Christians believed in that time period. Both Sproul and the authors of the other book just make an assertion that they have a history, one that cannot be proven for them. They either don't think it important to deal with historic doctrine or they're ignorant of it. If their doctrine on preservation is true, then there was a total apostasy from 1500 to 1800 at least. They need to explain that. Not only haven't they, but no one has. That should make their doctrine completely suspect as the actual new doctrine, the new heterodox doctrine of preservation.

When you read the materials by mainly fundamentalist authors in their multiple volumes attacking the historic doctrine of preservation and the King James Version of the Bible, what you will see is that they mainly resort to ad hominem attacks, including slanderous smears of those who hold to the scriptural and historical position. This is a major part of their strategy to make their position acceptable. They attempt to discredit those who take the historical orthodox belief. They often point out how that they are the ones that are being slandered and misrepresented, and yet, this very activity is a major technique they utilize to buttress their own position.

True believers should expect more than this theological contradiction of those who claim orthodoxy. They ought to be able to produce some history. If they can't, then they should admit that they're holding to a new position. To do otherwise is dishonest and manipulative. A new doctrine should not arise without scriptural and historical support.

If I had this kind of charge brought against me, that is, that I am believing a brand new doctrine without historical basis, and that by doing so, I am holding to the total apostasy of a particular doctrine, I would take it very seriously. I would go to the one(s) making the charge and give them my answer. I wouldn't stand for it. I would want to show that it wasn't true. I would expect to see that reaction from men, evangelical and fundamentalist, who claim to hold the truth.

Two Obvious Contemporary Theological Contradictions and their Meaning part one

Taxing cigarettes and taxing income. Do you see the contradiction? Government taxes cigarettes to what? Stop smoking. And then they tax income to what? Stop income. No, not for the second one. You can see how a progressive tax is actually a regressive tax. This is simple. We can understand it. But I'm not dealing with government and politics. I've got two other obvious contradictions in the realm of theology. These seem to appear again and again.

Contradiction Number One: The Eruption over the Fundamental Baptist Fellowship Sermon

I need to give some back story for those who are not aware of this. The Fundamental Baptist Fellowship (FBF) is a fellowship of independent Baptist pastors who claim to be a part of fundamentalist Christianity too. On April 6-7 the FBF held a meeting of the South Regional Fellowship at Wilds Christian Camp. At this meeting, Pastor Danny Sweatt was invited to preach.

I knew nothing about this meeting until I read about it on a blog that I visit to read from time to time to gather the thoughts of a younger fundamentalist, Pastor Bob Bixby, in Rockford, IL. His post is actually what started the firestorm. He wrote several other follow up posts (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8).

What Pastor Sweatt (whom I met a couple of times when I was in college---at that time he was the music director of an independent Baptist church in the Chicago area) did in his sermon was attempt to deal with what he saw as the biggest problem in fundamentalism today. It was mainly a speech in which he attempted to defend big name fundamentalists from the recent past and then to criticize the new heroes of today's young fundamentalists, which happen to be new-evangelical and Calvinist. As part of his diatribe, he spent a few moments dealing with Calvinism.

That I know of, Pastor Bixby said something first. If it was he alone, there would probably not be any kind of significant conflict that would have ensued. But then the dean of the Central Baptist Theological Seminary, Kevin Bauder, wrote about it in his weekly column, called In the Nick of Time, along with a follow-up. This ratcheted up the rhetoric with numerous posts being written on blogs all over fundamentalism, as well as a few well-known evangelicals.

Since Kevin Bauder entered the frey, the FBF has posted a statement on the controversy on the front page of its website. Many forum threads broke out at the fundamentalist forum, SharperIron, on the subject, including one polling its members as to whether they believe the FBF statement was strong enough. Danny Sweatt hasn't said anything publically that I've heard, although at his church website, he has linked on the front page to a downloadable book against Calvinism, called Deconstructing Calvinism.

The Theological Contradiction

That's the back story, but what I see as a theological contradiction is found in the second of the two essays written by Bauder. In his third to fifth paragraphs, he writes:

If we did not challenge leadership such as that of Rice, then we were too complacent. If we did challenge it, however, and a fight ensued, then Carpenter was ready to spank us for being schismatic. I suggested that this was a no-win situation.

Carpenter’s response was that there are plenty of intermediate steps between tolerance of an evil and outright separation. For instance, he said, you can admonish a brother but not withdraw fellowship from him. What Carpenter found distressing was the unwillingness of fundamentalists to attempt these intermediate measures.

I think that Carpenter was not entirely correct. Fundamentalists have indeed attempted intermediate measures.

It is here where I see the major flaw in fundamentalism. For some reason, fundamentalists don't see the contradiction. Or they see it and choose to ignore it. Bauder calls it a no-win situation. Well, I didn't know there were any no-win situations for Christians. Of course, there are not, but a fundamentalist error brings one. No-win is another word for contradiction. It is a contradiction that appears again and again and again and again, which produces the incessant fighting in fundamentalism.

"Intermediate Measures"

The problem is the one of "intermediate measures." The solution is found, according to the man Carpenter, the provost of Calvin Seminary in Bauder's story, and according to Bauder, in something between tolerance of evil and outright separation. Let's get this right---we don't choose tolerance of evil and we don't choose separation. Bauder and fundamentalism, I have noticed, says that there is some kind of relationship that isn't toleration but also isn't separation. Do you understand that it isn't possible scripturally to tolerate unrepentant evil without separating? So why do that?

We have a rub here. There is a contradiction between tolerance of evil and choosing separation. If we don't choose separation, we tolerate evil. We're talking about unrepentant sin or false doctrine. But Bauder expresses what he sees as his problem and the problem of fundamentalism and why it is that evangelicals like Carpenter say they can't get along with fundamentalism. It is in this section of Bauder's piece:

If we did not challenge leadership such as that of Rice, then we were too complacent. If we did challenge it, however, and a fight ensued, then Carpenter was ready to spank us for being schismatic. I suggested that this was a no-win situation.

We can't be schismatic and we can't be complacent. No-win. It seems that the politics are actually being played right here. We've got to get along so that we're not schismatic. Schismatic with what? What are we dividing if we don't tolerate evil? Bauder doesn't say. He assumes we understand. He means we are splitting the "body of Christ." Of course, the body of Christ to fundamentalists is fundamentalism, which it isn't, but for intents of keeping together something in the realm of evangelicalism, they draw the line at fundamentalism.

Fundamentalists in the past have thought that they had good reason to keep together and exclude evangelicals from this hypothetical "body of Christ." The evangelicals were too bad, too evil. They messed up too much. But the FBF-types look over at who they see as their ugly cousin revivalists or easy-believism-ers or KJV-onlyists or, as Bauder says, the "bellicose," and wag their heads and whisper, "These guys are worse than John Piper and Mark Dever and at least John MacArthur, and probably D. A. Carson. We're more comfortable with those conservative evangelicals than we are with these theological inbreeds." I see the wheels turning among fundamentalists, who still believe in separation, explaining how that these conservative evangelicals are enough separatist that they will tolerate fellowship with them. They would contend that these conservative evangelicals are the militant fundamentalists of the early twentieth century. That's not true, but that's the elephant in the room now.

They hear the Sweatt message at an official FBF function and the buzzers start going off. "We've got to do something about this. At least FBF was a safe haven. We can give the fundamentlist ugly cousins the cold shoulder, but we're not going to be able to do that with an FBF. That we can't tolerate." Hence the feud in the fellowship. If the FBF can't monitor the inmates, well, we'll just have to see what happens. The threat is out there.

John Piper and Phil Johnson have their ear to the rail. They foresee the prospects of additions to their gospel coalitions. Together for the Gospel and the Shepherd's Conference are already a fundamentalist reunion. They have the proverbial fundamentalist track in their workshops. Accepted fence straddlers like Andy Naselli have the heat on and the car waiting.

Sweatt brought frightening recollection of a former time. Abusive leaders who kept power over the constituency with harsh platform rhetoric. Or in the destructive whispers of the backroom corridors. Almost all power coalesced within the human derived organization on the few flamboyant, who wielded it for maximum self-service. No matter how embarrassing they may be, their privileges remained untouched. In this present age, we insist that we spread the faux authority thinner, cobbling together the coalition with diplomacy. The pendulum has swung to cerebral heroes who are multi-syllabic. Someone with the right mix of popularity, likeability, success, and education could harness the reins of power once again.

What's Missing

What seems to be missing in all this? I don't think it is a what. It's a Who. God. God is missing in the equation. What does He want? Does He really want intermediate measures? Does He want a hybrid toleration-separation?

If the body of Christ is all believers, then any division is schismatic. Yet scripture teaches to separate. How can unity not coexist with evil? This is the contradiction that manifests a flaw in doctrine. In 1 Corinthians 10, Paul talks about the communion of the body of Christ. Communion exists in the church. We don't have a universal, invisible communion. We're held together by the ordinances, baptism and the Lord's Table, by church discipline, and by the offices of pastor and deacons, a one-mindedness that is found only in the Lord's assembly.

We don't have to tolerate any sin or false doctrine. We're not supposed to. But we will if we look to intermediate measures and something bigger than a church for unity. Any other way will keep presenting the incessant contradictions that we see in fundamentalism and evangelicalism today. You don't have to sacrifice unity for separation or separation for unity if your ecclesiology is scriptural.

The church is a place of independence and protection. We can believe and practice scripture and proclaim it. The church just isn't big enough for most. It hasn't been big enough through much of the last two millennia. It was big enough for Jesus. Still is. If we could be happy with the church, we could have the confidence to resist these clubs of compromise that minimize doctrine to a lowest common denominator. We should always keep the right spirit, but we'll be less concerned about hurting someone's feelings. We're thinking about pleasing God. We break fellowship over doctrine and practice. Why? To honor God. To please Him. To walk by faith. We unify over doctrine and practice. We don't tolerate evil. We don't look for intermediate measures.

POST UPDATE: Sometimes I read my posts to my wife. I just did that. She commented that when she thought of "intermediate measures" she thought of Matthew 18:15-17 with the steps for church discipline. Wow. That's how simple this is. But that isn't what Bauder means by "intermediate measures." He means something that is entirely unscriptural that will keep unity while showing that the FBF isn't tolerant. And that's what the FBF did with their statement. They took on an intermediate measure. My wife then asked, "What gives the FBF authority to post that article?" Good question, huh? And it shows how easy this is. No one gave the FBF authority. I told her that the FBF didn't really tell Sweatt that they weren't tolerant. They wrote something that was ambivalent enough to retain deniability. They could deal with Sweatt without actually dealing with Sweatt. Doesn't this sound like politics to you?

One other thing. When you look at the context of Bauder's usage of "intermediate measures," language taken from Carpenter, a new-evangelical, this is not saying that this is something temporary and more will come later. This is saying that this is how we operate in fundamentalism. We take intermediate measures to deal with men so that we don't tolerate and neither do we separate. We find some middle ground, some unscriptural middle ground. Dan Sweatt doesn't use exposition. The FBF and Bauder don't use it either. There isn't a passage that explains "intermediate measures." None. For those who are saying that "intermediate measures" means "more is coming later," you are misreading what Bauder wrote. "Intermediate doesn't relate to time, but to position. It is a position between two other positions, not a time that is between two other times.

By the way, why is it that "intermediate measures" are so good? They make a no-win situation a win-win situation. It's like President Obama with his supreme court nominee. He chose a female Latina who likes to make policy with her court decisions. Republicans won't want to oppose the nomination because they're afraid they'll lose Latino votes. Plus she has a rags to riches story that will be hard to resist. Republicans can latch on to her story to tell their own story to their own supporters. I'm just using that as an illustration, but what am I talking about? The FBF has done enough to hold together their coalition. That's what matters most to them. But what about to God?

Bauder goes to a new-evangelical to find out how fundamentalists are to operate. Why would he do that? Shouldn't the new-evangelicals be coming to fundamentalists how to function? Aren't we the ones with the scriptural position? Why is it that it is so important to make Carpenter happy? Again, shouldn't we just always do what scripture says?

In the next post, I'll deal with number 2.

Maybe the Two Biggest Recent Economic Lies

We should vote on facts and not impassioned rhetoric. For that reason among others, I want to clear up what are perhaps the two biggest lies repeated by politicians and the media. Why do I care? Righteousness exalts a nation. These lies damage our country. They enable injustice in our land.

Lie One: Government Deregulation Caused the Mortgage and Housing Industry Crisis

The Truth: Government Regulation Caused the Mortgage and Housing Industry Crisis


The people telling this lie want more government regulation. They say that the mortgage and housing industry crisis could have been averted with tighter and closer government regulation. They say, "See what happens with deregulation? This theory of Reagan has been disproved. Say goodbye to Reagan." And then they proceed to grow government by enacting more and more regulations on as many sectors of the economy as possible.

How did the government supposedly not regulate enough? When all the bad loans were being made by unscrupulous bankers and loan brokers, lawmakers should have stepped in and written stiffer regulations to protect consumers. When the mortgage and housing industry were veering off the tracks, George W. Bush and the rich Republicans were asleep at the switch. And why? They could have stepped in to stop the debacle, but they were loyal to their Reagan principle of government deregulation and look what it caused.

Blaming deregulation for the mortgage crisis is like Hitler blaming the Communists for the burning of the German Reichstag. Of course, Hitler started the fire. The event gave the Nazis credibility and influenced his ultimate dictatorship and command economy. The blame for the fire stuck on the, in this case, innocent Communists.

The mortgage and housing industry crisis was caused by bad government regulation. In 1977 banks would not give loans to people in certain neighborhoods---it wasn't very safe banking practice to do so. President Carter changed this by signing the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA). This law made banks give loans to people who lived in bad loan areas. CRA encouraged home loans through two government sponsored enterprises: one was The Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) and the other was The Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac). With this new law, to go unpunished by the federal government, banks had to find buyers who could qualify for loans under the old, reliable standards. They often could not find any so out of the lack of qualified buyers hatched the concept of the sub-prime mortgage. CRA also created hundreds of unregulated housing "agencies," who would lobby banks for more money for their agencies. If they couldn't get the money, these agencies would cause great difficulties for banks with nasty lawsuits. One of these agencies, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) bragged that because of their influence, over one trillion dollars worth of these CRA sub-prime mortgages were written. President Barack Obama was a community organizer heavily involved in ACORN.

We're not done yet. In 1980 President Jimmy Carter signed The Deregulation and Monetary Control Act. In 1982 President Ronald Reagan signed The Alternative Mortgage Transactions Parity Act. These two laws created some modern mortage products with which we have now all become familiar: adjustable rate mortgages (ARM), balloon payment mortgages, interest only mortgages, etc. In 1986 the IRS tax code was changed to give a deduction for only the interest on a home loan. Financial advisors started encouraging customers to pay off mortgage debt only and to pay off other forms of debt with the equity in their homes. In 1993 President Bill Clinton made changes to the CRA that made it even more difficult for banks to deny loans to under qualified and gave banks points for giving out the more exotic loans.

Home loans became a major business. Many made incredible amounts of money as loan brokers. Amazing numbers of loans and bad ones, deceptive ones, were given to unqualified buyers. These mortgage brokers were just swimming in the waters created by new government regulations of the industry, designed by Democrats for the purpose of social architecture in poor neighborhoods. The government regulated the loaning institutions, forcing them to give loans to unqualified buyers. So it wasn't government deregulation that caused the crisis. It was regulation.

Lie Two: The Rich Didn't Pay Their Fair Share of Taxes During the Bush Years Because He Gave Tax Cuts to the Rich

The Truth: The Rich Paid a Greater Share of Taxes Under Bush Than They Ever Had Before


I think most people in America believe that President Bush gave unfair tax advantages to his rich buddies at the expense of the poor. Is that true? What really happened?

This isn't even going to be political. It's just the truth. I did not get my statistics from the Republican Party office. I took my figures from the non-partisan, completely neutral Congressional Budget Office (CBO). In order for you to see what really happened in the Bush years, I'm going to ask a few questions.

What Happened to the Share of Tax Liability for the Rich and the Poor during the Bush Years?

Again, I'm looking at the statistics available through the CBO, which presently ends in 2005. So I will give the figures in 2000 and then the ones in 2005 with which to compare. We will define the rich as those in the highest quintile (1/5, 20%) of wage earners and the poor as those in the lowest twenty percentile. The rich earned pretax on average $231,300 per year. The poor earned on average $15,900.

In 2000, the top 20% of wage earners paid 81.2% of all the individual income taxes paid in the United States. In 2005, after six years of President Bush, the top quintile in income paid 86.3% of those taxes paid in the U.S. So you can see that the rich actually paid a higher share of the taxes with George W. Bush as president. Under Bush, the rich paid a 5.1% higher share of the individual income taxes in the United States.

What about the poor? In 2000 the bottom 20% of the wage earners paid -1.6% of the individual income taxes in the United States. You may wonder how someone could pay a negative or minus income tax. Well, that means that the poor received 1.6% of the taxes from those paying taxes. They not only did not pay income tax, but they got money from the payers. Surely that number went down as the cruel presidency of the cruel George W. Bush progressed. No, by 2005 the poor were paying -2.9% of the individual income taxes. They made out like bandits under Bush, taking more than ever from the tax coffers from other Americans.

What Happened to the Incomes of the Poor and the Rich During the Bush Years?

What you heard was that during the Bush years that the rich got richer. We know they had more tax liability under him, but some would submit that they deserved it because of all the advantages they had. In 2000 the top 20% of earners in the U. S. took in a 51.4% share of the total individual income in the United States. In 2005 the top 20% took in 51.6% share of the total. So the rich grew in their percentage of the income in the United States by .2%. How is that for the rich making out like bandits?

You can believe that those top twenty percent and those bottom twenty percent fluctuate. Some of the rich drop out of the top category and some of the poor move up to another quintile in share of income. For instance, a whole lot of mortgage and housing people were in the top twenty percent five years ago, but they aren't any more. New people moved up into the top twenty when they dropped out. That is the nature of the free enterprise. Who earns money depends on the choices people make in the market. They aren't buying houses right now and the ones they're buying are much cheaper.

When you hear that the rich aren't paying their fair share of the taxes, don't believe it. When you hear that the rich got richer during the Bush years, don't believe it. That's just propaganda used to get votes. In other words, it's a lie.

The Blind Spots of www.Christian part one

Did you hear that Chicken Little got it wrong? He did. But we'll allow him that. For one, he's not Humpty Dumpty. Not even Al Gore.

His obsession---the sky. He had a paranoia about it, probably stemming from something that occurred in his mother's egg. So let's take a deep, cleansing breath and recognize that the sky is not falling. Falling, no. Rolling up like a scroll, yes. Just not yet. A few things will happen first.

Some technophobic believe we've already opened up Pandora's box with robots, genetics, and highly complex machinery. Someone is going to invent something that he can't control, a modern day Frankenstein's monster (except a real one), and we'll be running for our lives like Japanese in a bad lizard movie. All of those fears make good fiction and some scary stories, but the real problems with technology lie elsewhere. My global positioning satellite is zooming in on the world wide web and then focusing on one small part of it: the Christian www.

The world wide web and modern Christianity are a perfect match. I don't know about a match made in heaven, but they do come together based on the unique interests and needs of Christianity. Matt Drudge was created by the web. And all he did was provide black hyperlinks on a white background that looked like they were plunked out on an old manual smith-corona. Christianity wants more visibility and attention. The web allows for that and at a very low cost. On the relative cheap, a church can build a fortress of a website that likely dwarfs what's really happening.

You've heard of the big fish in the small pond. The web can make the small pond an ocean and big doesn't describe the fish anymore. Immense fish in the Great Lakes. The world isn't meant to make Christians feel significant, and most of them don't feel that way. The web can produce a stronger sense of a missing significance. Even if not many are attending, the crowd grows because of a new, larger web audience. Even part of the status of an organization in the minds of its constituency ties into its online presence.

Some great opportunities have arisen from the web---easy access to a wealth of teaching, print, audio, and video, new avenues of gospel presentation into homes, a place to visit to find the distinctives of a particular institution. There are also some harmful traps on the web distinctly in the realm of professing Christianity---more false teaching, bad examples spread, and something of a replacement for actual, tangible church life.

What I want to talk about are just a few of the damaging blindspots that I see today online. We need to take the biblical commands and principles and apply them to the web for our own spiritual discernment and the honor of God. We still need to be scriptural even with the anonymous feel of the internet. The Lord still sees everything. There are many more, but I'm going to list four of them.

1. A Skewed Promotion of Men Who Haven't Earned this Veneration in the Real World

2. A Muddying of the Distinctions between Male and Female Roles

3. A Replacement for Actual Church Involvement

4. A Loss of Respect for Age and Authority

A Skewed Promotion of Men Who Haven't Earned this Veneration in the Real World

My Story

A recent trend is former fundamentalists coming out and telling "the" story of what led them to leave fundamentalism for evangelicalism or new-evangelicalism. Their story makes them the hero and the separatists or fundamentalists or independent fundamental Baptists are the villains. The entire authority for the point they are making is their own personal experience told not only from their own perspective, but their own slant.

In their stories, they often "profile" their villains with stereotypical descriptions. The villains must be villains. That is what vindicates their story and their move. Normally the former fundamentalist was a deep student yearning for more, but the separatist villain was shallow and couldn't or didn't answer questions. The story-teller has a great memory for mistreatment. He often has deep, really mystical insight into the villain's motives.

These "stories" either do or try to do several things. First, they are getting sympathy from people like them and the ones who already dislike fundamentalists or separatists. They are carving out their new niche here. They could secretly be a Nazi prison guard, but it doesn't matter as long as they are not a fundamentalist and an evangelical, or just a rabid Calvinist. They could have serial killed youngsters at recess, but as long as they're a Calvinist and a big tent evangelical, welcome.

Second, they not only get sympathy, but they are martyrs who have been abused. They have moved into the very popular American class: the victim. They are victims, which, of course, deserves our sympathy, but not just any sympathy. They have gone through the terrible ordeal of being in churches with standards higher than their own.

Third, fundamentalists are abusive (evangelicals are not). Fundamentalists abuse. They were under tremendous pressure because of these fundamentalists. They were threatened with the extreme persecution of having to leave a church that they don't like being a part of, but having the further embarrassment of having people now know that they don't like being a part of that kind of church. On top of that, these abusers treat them like they think they should stay, that it's wrong to leave (and other similar types of heavy-duty suffering).

Fourth, it's everyone else's fault. They have flown with turkeys so long. These eagles have been now set free. Down with turkeys.

Fifth, they want to "help" others like them. This validates their own experience when they can find others. This is all therapeutic, you know. You find others, bash the worst examples of what you left and smear the whole group. My how grand we've been. We are so wonderful. They are so bad. We must warn. Others could be abused like we were. Let's help rescue these others before they chew off three legs and still remain in the trap.

Sixth, they want to show how they've matured. Now they can drink, go to movies, listen to Christian rock or punk, mix swim, dance, date, touch, go to the prom, get tattooed, use whatever Bible version they want and other important Christian growth. What is all of this that's happened to them? Transforming grace, that's what (not worldliness because that's only in the heart). Oh and they just want unity (unity = reduce doctrine down to a few "important" ones and then even water those down for the sake of staying together).

I have a unique opportunity here, because one of the young former fundies with a story was once a member of our church. He's actually a real prominent one. In his story, he, of course, is the hero, and he marches through former churches like Sherman at the end of the Civil War, leaving them pummeled in his path. He could have just left fundamentalism and went about living the new kind of Christian life that he would say he loves so well. He has a whole new group of friends and he could just spend time with them. However, he couldn't do that. He's not that kind of person.

This new evangelical has to start blog upon blog in which he can be the very young hero with many elderly villains trampled over. They were wrong. He was right. He's an extremely young person and instead of forging ahead into his new life, he starts by trashing the places he had been before. However, I know the real story, and I'm going to tell it. I will change his name in this case to protect the guilty, but this is what happened. For everything that I write, I could present witnesses. We'll call him Bill. Bill is not his real name.

I met Bill when he attended school in Indiana (not Hammond). We were looking for a couple of teachers for our school and we considered him and the young lady he was going to marry as teachers. When we talked to the school faculty, they couldn't recommend him and his wife to us. Why? He had been looking at pornography. What they did know was that he had been assisting in a church in the summer and the pastor caught him watching pornography on the church computer. He was immediately removed from his position and sent away from the church.

I thought that maybe we could help Bill if he was willing to be under accountability and discipleship at our church, and that we would work with him in our church. I took him and his new wife in part because I knew that we he was intelligent, said he wanted to serve the Lord, and that he was willing to submit to discipleship. Doesn't that sound like grace, even like a doctrine of grace? Doesn't sound too mean, you know, unforgiving like "fundamentalists are"? He had skills. I wanted to help the young man. Later I found out that he had not been up front with his wife about his pornography issue until after he was engaged to be married. By the time everything was planned and invitations sent and more, he told her about what had taken place. I also learned that he had been addicted to pornography and looking at it since he was a boy. While at his college (one that he trashes), Bill broke through the filter of the college computer to support his internet habit.

After he and his wife got to our church, I found that he was often a proud, know-it-all. He wasn't much of a help with other people (selfless ministry) because all he wanted to do was talk about theological matters with just a few people in the church. He took up a tremendous amount of time, which I patiently gave to him, often spending an hour after church services speaking with him. On the other hand, his wife was a jewel---hard worker, very helpful, and a good teacher.

So he started teaching elementary in our school, along with his wife. Part way through the year, Bill mentally snapped. He temporarily went insane. I had never seen anything like it in my life. One school day our principal received word from one of the students in his class that Bill was just sitting straight up, almost comatose at his desk, saying nothing. When the principal went down to check, that's what he found too. The class was talking, messing around, doing whatever they wanted. He wasn't teaching. He wasn't doing anything except sitting there in some other zip code. It was about half way through the day. What we found out is that he had lost his mind. He was delusional and incoherent.

We had to dismiss him as a teacher in the middle of the year, which was quite a hardship to us. But that was perhaps the least of it. We spent many hours in counseling, helping him through this episode. For at least a week, we always had somebody watching him to be sure that he wouldn't do something harmful to himself or someone else. He would sit staring straight forward, eyes vacant. When I would go to run an errand, I would take him with me so that he wouldn't be left alone. We were paying him during that time too, despite the fact that he wasn't working. We've always been stretched to the limit financially. We don't operate with debt, but we can't afford to pay two teachers for one class. We had to do that. This all was an embarrassment to the school, trying to explain how we happened to hire someone so mentally fragile.

As the next few days passed, he was finally able to come out of his shell. And then we found out why he had snapped. For years he had been faking it. He had been looking at pornography for at least a decade. At the same time, he had been trying to impress people around him with how righteous he was. His parents had been in a kind of Christian service and they had not prevented him from getting involved in this type of lifestyle. He had learned how to put on a show. Being noticed for his spirituality was very important to him, despite the fact that he knew that he was looking at these things. He confessed that his brother had done the same thing. They had both been involved. Part of his eagerness to impress other people was a kind of means by which he could prove that he really did belong and fit into the standards of holiness that were around him.

This battle within Bill for so long had so stressed his mind, body, and emotions, violating the carefully set up scruples that he had himself set up. A big part of his break-up at our church in particular was the preaching. He had never been under consistent, thorough expositional preaching, verse by verse. He had never been somewhere like our church where the gospel was preached with precision. One specific point that contributed to the apex of this struggle in his heart and mind was an emphasis in our church on the believer not living in a continual state of carnality. In particular he said that he was penetrated by a dealing with 1 John 2:19. His soul was confronted with the realities of the gospel, the scriptural expectations of a genuine conversion. This unsettled him greatly.

When some of his mind returned to him, he confessed a continued battle with pornography. He had gone so far as to go to a convenience store a few blocks from his apartment to purchase hard copies to look at. He had continued to feed his mind on the images but at the same time try to keep up the facade that he loved the Lord and wanted to serve Him.

Bill confessed his need for salvation. He had examined his heart whether he was in the faith and he did not think so. He had just been going through the motions. During this very weak time, a few weeks after the worst of it, he professed that he made a profession of faith. I asked him what happened. He still found it difficult to communicate coherently. He would make meaningless, imbecilic statements like someone who was talking in his sleep. When you heard it, you would just smile and nod your head, knowing that he didn't have everything together. At that time, he said that one night he had been saved. What had happened was that he had a pillow with a heart on it. He said that at night when he went to sleep, he saw the heart on the pillow and he knew that Jesus loved him. It was at that moment of realization, he said, that he knew that he had been saved. He stuck with this conversion experience.

We knew that Bill knew the facts of salvation. He had a brilliant sort of mind. This was part of the battle for him. His thoughts bounced around all over the place in his head like a pin ball. He insisted that this night time pillow prayer was when he was converted. We nodded our heads in approval, not wanting to cause any problems in his head, and continued to watch him. He said that he wanted to be baptized, and since we believed that obeying the Lord was important for his fragile psyche, we went ahead with the baptism.

Bill couldn't keep cogent thoughts enough to be counted on for any kind of contributory task in the church. We wouldn't assign him anything. However, he liked reading. He read and read and read. His wife would come home from teaching all day and he hadn't done anything at home. He would just sit and read. So she was the breadwinner and she would come home to cook for him and care for him. He would read. He still wanted to discuss theology like playing with truth in a test tube. He liked figuring doctrines out like a brain teaser, a puzzle. When you talked to him, even though his eyes were somewhat distant, and you could tell he wasn't all there, he would tell you something very deep that he had gotten in reading a book.

Most of the time, these doctrinal finds of Bill's had nothing to do with what was important to him for living the Christian life. They weren't devotional in nature. They were in the way of arguing about theological issues. After months, we told him that if he wasn't going to work, he had to do some chores at home. We had to make him accountable and check on him to get this accomplished.

About that time, Bill got a visit from his parents. They came from another continent to get to our church in California. We were not of the same belief and practice as his parents. Close, but not in fellowship enough to have his father preach. When they came with some relatives as well, they were very cynical about our church, very critical. You could tell that they were blaming us for what had happened to Bill. That was the furthest from the truth. They were very excusing of his behavior and very defensive. They communicated to Bill that they didn't like us. While staying with Bill and his family, they decided that what he needed more than anything was a television. So they went out and bought him one. I was disappointed. Knowing Bill's big problem, and that the negligence of his parents was part of the problem, I thought a television was a bad move in light of the amount of skin that showed up on today's programs.

So now Bill could sit at home and watch television while he wasn't working and we were taking the duties that he was supposed to take during the year. Bill still came to church. He would sit in services and then afterward pepper me with questions about issues that he wanted to talk about, essentially ignoring everyone else. I regularly encouraged him to work on relationships with people that weren't necessarily offering him all the things that he wanted, which was about books and theological issues. I desired for him to be more concerned about his own character out of love for God and his wife.

In addition to weekly prayer meeting, we had men's prayer time one Saturday morning a month. The men's prayer time is at 7am, which in California is very early since people get up so very early for commute during the week. Men rise often at 4 and 5 am to start their long treks to places of employment in some of the busiest traffic in America. Bill wasn't working, but he still couldn't get to some of the men's prayer times. He would complain about us not praying enough. I told him that this was just public prayer. Also, I was doubtful about his complaints, seeing that he didn't get up half the time for the scheduled prayer meetings. What he wanted to do was "lead" a prayer time on Sunday mornings before services. I was all for prayer, of course, so had a hard time resisting this. It just seemed like this was something else that was disingenuous in light of how I knew Bill was in his basic character. It looked like another show to me.

Bill actually had a lot of time on his hands for prayer, since he didn't have a job. When he was finally able perhaps to get a job, he was offered one by a business man in our church. This man was a very weak Christian if a Christian at all. I had taken him through a thirty week discipleship, which he fought all the way. I didn't like the idea of Bill with this man. The man wanted a Christian to hire though. I went out of my way to tell him that I thought it was possible that Bill could fail. Bill did fail. The man had to fire him because he couldn't get the job done. The man had immigrants who knew very little English that were his best workers and Bill could not accomplish the job up to their standards.

Bill couldn't get a job for months. He was always looking for a kind of job that fit his personality and desires. I told him to get a job anywhere, but because he had to have one that fit him, he took a long time. When he finally did get one that suited his fancy, it didn't last. He didn't make it there either.

The ladies of our church during this time really showed friendship to Bill's wife. She didn't know what she was bargaining for when she married Bill. Her family was sure they were getting a solid man. He was good at acting that way in front of them. They thought they were getting someone just like them---a separatist, independent Baptist with strong standards of holiness. Ladies really helped her through this time. She was the strong one, carrying her husband along.

While Bill was with us, he received letters from his brother, arguing with him about Calvinism and about the text issue. His brother would recommend books for him to read that would push Calvinism and the critical text. His brother, a fellow pornography man himself in their boyhood, wanted him to believe like him. I really didn't know the extent of this communication. Bill would suggest some of these books to me and I was hopeful that his brother could suggest books that would help him be a better man and better husband, instead of being a Calvinist.

One of the books I remember him receiving that Bill passed along to me was one by John Piper on the death of Christ, right about the time that Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ came out. I read it and even though there was some good doctrine in it, I thought it was overall weak and afraid to differentiate what Scripture said with what the Catholics believed about the passion. That should have been a major concern, I thought, for Piper because he had marketed the book to look just like the advertised materials for the movie. There was nothing in the book that would have been offensive to the typical Catholic. Of course, my point was not to try to be purposefully offensive, but to use the truth as a sword that cut through the false doctrine and pulled down that stronghold. Gibson's movie was Catholic, so what Piper wrote should have differentiated with Catholicism. I noticed that Bill was very defensive of Piper.

Bill wasn't getting a lot of respect at our church. He wasn't earning it. We treated him very well, but not giving him the status that he would think he deserved. That always bothered me. He was very proud. Everyone around noticed this. When someone tried to talk to me, he was right there attempting to take my time. If you didn't give him your time, he would suggest that you didn't want to answer his question (or that you couldn't). If he did do anything in the way of service, he would make sure that he mentioned it to others. Often his testimonies during testimony time were an opportunity to parade some of his accomplishments.

Then one day Bill told me that he was in deep financial trouble. I understood that. He didn't hold a job and his wife was earning the living, paying the bills. You couldn't live in California especially with one small income from one spouse, in this case the woman of the family. He had a child now. His brother had called him and told him that there was job in another state in the midwest and that he would have it. This was Bill's type of job, one that he would like. He came to me and said that he needed to move because of his conviction to support his family. I knew that where he was moving there was a giant new-evangelical church, pastored by a Calvinist that he was presently really into. I saw this as him going there to be in that church.

Bill seemed to me to be drifting. He wasn't the cat's meow. He wasn't looked at really highly. He wasn't at the top of the heap. If he went somewhere else, he could start over. The people there wouldn't know about his despicable behavior and he could be a big shot again. This looked like running from problems. However, I looked at his wife. His child. I talked to our other pastor and some other men in the church. We agreed grudgingly that we would let him go with certain criteria. There was a certain church he should join when he went. I told him that I was afraid that he was going to go there and within a year join the new evangelical church. He insisted that he believed like us and that he was going to do that. So we sent him. A lot of people helped them.

They left and went to that midwest state. They joined that church I recommended. Upon getting there, Bill started questioning the pastor on everything, challenging him. And this lasted about a year before he joined the Calvinist, new-evangelical church. He dropped dozens of his beliefs and on things that I never ever heard him ask about. I told our church that Bill had left the church. I told them what our criteria had been and that Bill had broken them, even though he said that he would not.

When Bill was with us, I answered every possible question he asked. I taught him part of a year in third year Greek for free. After they moved to another state, the day that one of our benefits for Christian school teachers, a certain amount of money for dental that we allotted to be a blessing and help, would run out, we received from them a dental bill for the top amount that we allowed. We sent them the check. That was my only communication that I received from Bill, was that dental bill. He never checked in at all to discuss theology and all the multiple questions he had about his beliefs. Right now, as far as I know, he still hasn't paid his college tuition.

But what does Bill do now? Very soon after he left the church we sent him to, he began a blog bashing fundamentalism, blaming his problems on all the churches he had been in. There was nothing against him or his parents in these blogs. He was good at this. This was his type of activity, something very theological and very argument oriented. He was able to cobble together a lot of support from Calvinists. Men link to him all over the nation. In my opinion, he's got people fooled.

I told one person about him at the evangelical blog, Pyromaniacs, who was giving him big time kudos. He too was a former "fundamentalist" and he had a website bashing them called the Texas Underground. For the most part, I would have agreed with his opinion of that branch of revivalism. I thought he was pushing this young man, a neophyte, way too much. I wrote him privately and he essentially told me off. He could care less about the porno problem that Bill had recently had. Then one day I noticed that this man's name just disappeared off of the Pyromaniac roll along with all his posts. He dropped off the face of the earth. He had a problem that was akin to Bill's, and he had it when I wrote him about Bill. This man was one of the most popular men on the evangelical internet at the time.

Bill is still going about bashing fundamentalism, blaming his own problems on them. I know that his problems have zero to do with fundamentalism. He has told "his story," and none of this is in there. None of it. Instead, he goes after fundamentalism and the people from his past. And people validate him for it. They accredit it. They are doing that because what he says makes them feel good in some way. He doesn't go through the biblical basis of gaining that kind of credibility spiritually. He says the things that many, many want to hear.

Of course, by giving people those credentials, they also feed a major problem for Bill, his pride. He is able to move up to what he really wants to attain without having to do the real things that it is supposed to take to get there. He need only talk a particular talk, say what it is that people really want to hear. He is skilled at that. That is where his talent set is at. He can get it done there. And so he can be that big fish in an even bigger pond. This also justifies the decisions he has made, despite what a church has done for him. And in the end, the church that has done so much for him is the villain in the story. Those church people get to read him and see him all the time and really know the truth. Others are associating with that and they don't even know it.

Some may wonder why I tell this story. For one, it is the story. It is my story about his story. His story leaves out most of the important details. I tell it because of the credentials that are gained on the internet without anything that resembles anything scriptural in the real world. A person can gain a following because he knows the right buttons to push. He doesn't have to earn it with years of faithfulness, not sinless perfection. None of us are claiming that, especially not me. However, a young man shouldn't be put up into such a place of honor without proving himself in a local church, just because he can find a niche among other disgruntleds that are out there. This is one of the major blind spots on the Christian www.