Afflictions continue because of God's mercy

Matthew Henry, commenting on David's plea in Psalm 39 that God would be merciful and relieve him of some unspecified affliction that he was going through:

"He pleads the good impressions made upon him by his affliction. He hoped that the end was accomplished for which it was sent, and that therefore it would be removed in mercy; and unless an affliction has done its work, though it may be removed, it is not removed in mercy."

Kim Davis and the rule of law

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/11842642/Kentucky-clerk-jailed-for-refusing-to-issue-marriage-licences-to-gay-couples.html

In the US in the last week, you've probably seen the news that, elected county clerk Kim Davis, a Christian, was jailed for refusing to issue marriage licences following the US Supreme Court's ruling that same-sex couples not only can marry, but that this is guaranteed by the US constitution.

Some Christians have commented that their sympathies are not with Davis, because a) her resistance will be (and now has been) proven futile, b) Christians should respect the rule of law and c) if she can't do what her job requires her to, then she should resign from her job.

On the contrary, my sympathies are entirely with Kim Davis, and so should yours be. How so?

• The rule of law is great - but God has a law as well as man. And when they clash, God's law must trump man's, every time.
• Any man-made law that strikes directly and unambiguously against God's created order, or which endorses and blesses that which God calls an abomination, is ipso facto necessarily invalid.
• As such, it is not simply an option for a Christian registrar to chose to resist such a man-made law, but a duty. Extreme sexual depravity is not incidental to "same-sex marriage"; it is its very essence.
  
• The legitimate rule of law and judicial tyranny are two very different things.
• This shouldn't be hard to understand. Pol Pot, Stalin, Hitler, etc., all passed laws.
• Resisting evil isn't something we're called upon to do simply in the abstract, as an intellectual game. It's something we're called to do in the real, physical world as part of the real history that God created us as part of.
  
• When we look at pre-war and war-time Nazi Germany, we don't have a particular interest in whether German Christians were generally outwardly moral. We want to know specifically whether they resisted Hitler's evil laws requiring them to comply with the de-humanisation and eventual murder of Jews. That was a front-line of the battle they were in. Today, the secular West's war against God's created order with particular reference to gender roles and distinctions is one of the fronts for us.
• Similarly, when future Christians look back upon our generation, they won't have a special interest in whether we had a generally good reputation for being nice moral people. They'll want to know what we did when confronted by routine baby-murder, how we used our unprecedented wealth and time in light of the appalling darkness that much of the world still resides in, and what we did to resist the secularist assault upon God's created order in relation to human sexuality.
  
• Resistance against evil is never in vain. There will be another, higher court that sits, on another day, when God calls the world to account and judges it through Jesus Christ.
• Whether we resist direct and obvious evil or not is not at all a question to be decided by whether we think we will immediately succeed in the direct object of our resistance.
  
• The fact that the Western elite and media have been running a decades long campaign to persuade us that sexual depravity is nice and cuddly ("it's all about the lurve!") has absolutely nothing to do with the facts of the matter.
  
• The public sector is not the private sector. The state is an ordinance of God, appointed to be his servant (Romans 13:1-8). In the private sector, you can quit your job and take up another, according to your contract. In the public sector, you have a responsibility to God and the people you serve to stand fast in times of trouble, and abandoning your post can be a neglect of duty in a way that leaving a post in the private sector isn't.
  
• There is a difference between hunting for evil, and evil finding you. When evil finds you whilst you occupy a God-ordained role (such as as a state officer), it is your duty to deal with it - not to abandon your post and allow someone else to capitulate to evil on your behalf.

By being willing to go to jail as a testimony to God's truth, Kim Davis condemns legions of cowardly and worldly professing Christians in the West who aim to keep their heads down and coast comfortably into heaven, avoiding the way of the cross wherever possible. Moreover, she joins the glorious ranks of those who have suffered earthly loss for the sake of Christ, counting her freedom as worth less than a clear conscience before God and man. Such may, when everybody else's earthly hopes have passed away, look forward to a glorious inheritance which can never fade. Let us pray that God will sustain her to resist judicial and legal tyranny for as long as it remains her duty to do so.

Generation narcissism and the final judgment

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-kent-33277997

Dartford council commissioned a plaque, to commemorate the Rolling Stones, including the words "one of the most successful rock bands of all time".

Sounds pretty weighty, does it not? That's not just one of the most successful rock bands of the last fifty years, you understand. It's one of the most successful rock bands of all time.

The average life expectancy in the UK out-strips the total time in which rock music has been around, by about a decade. i.e. Rock music has not yet existed as long as the average citizen of the UK can expect to. But don't let that kind of thing spoil your enjoyment. For, my friends, we are the people - and the significant bits of history began with us! Our achievements are the best of all time, and our 3-minute ditties are the real musical stuff that measures all of history. Our culture produced... Keith Richards! And, of course (drumroll) Sir Michael "Mick" Jagger, who was knighted in 2003 for "services (yes, services) to popular music." Please all bow!

One might suggest that we'd better put up a plaque to commemorate this now, as if we don't then afterwards it might not be quite so apparent why someone would want to.

Note that in the BBC "news" story, this ridiculous piece of cultural narcissism - "of all time" - wasn't worthy of notice or comment. That was something else (the description of exactly how Richards and Jagger met, its accuracy - that's the controversy...).

We can laugh. (And weep). But... are you a cultural and historical narcissist? Do you believe the big Western lie, that we are the people, and that history began with us? That anyone and anything before 1962 is ancient history, a stone age of universal stupidity and wrong-ness? That the centre of the universe is your plans to achieve your goals, to fulfil your potential and discover your true self - you're a movie star, and the sound track is about you? That success is when the audience screams out your name, amazed by your level of coolness/fame/amazing display of wit in the latest reality TV show/whatever? That's how we're all being encouraged to think.

But what is your life, asks the Scriptures? It is a mist that appears - and then it is gone. It is the grass of the field: here today, and tomorrow passed away. Only what is done for Christ matters. Human beings love to hand out gongs, because we innately feel that there ought to be some sort of memory, some sort of record and recognition. We all have some sense of the final judgment, and that it's right for there to be one.

But at the final judgment, man's ridiculous self-congratulation will be nowhere to be found. We will all stand before Christ's judgment seat, and the real verdict will be delivered. Are you living your life in the light of that?

Rape victim who chose life: my daughter saved me

https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/woman-who-chose-life-after-brutal-rape-at-12-has-no-regrets-says-her-daught

Should I attend a "gay wedding" ?

http://creation.com/gay-wedding

Exile stage two

http://australia.thegospelcoalition.org/article/stage-two-exile-are-you-ready-for-it

The author doesn't touch on this, but here's something I'd add. In "exile stage one", the assumption of neutrality (which is discussed in the article) meant that children of Christians were raised bathed in the world's culture, with the assumption that some Christian teaching could be added on top to remedy the "bad stuff". This was disastrous, in terms of raising a generation of informed Christians who were equipped to build an alternative culture to the world's. What needs to be done differently this time, to avoid an even worse outcome, now that "stage two" has arrived? And, are the churches doing it?

We've met the enemy, and...

... it's us.

http://baylyblog.com/blog/2015/05/first-they-called-free-love-and-we-were-silent