Mick's Blog

I think there are sometimes a couple of biblical images we struggle to lay hold of. In the New Testament we find when we talk about life, we have the idea of living or ‘bios’. In other words, we talk about how we are alive. But Jesus talks about the fact of “coming to life “ when we know him. That doesn’t suddenly mean that our heart starts beating. It means that there is this whole side to us which was dead… which wasn’t alive and is now… that has actually sprung to life. And we run into complications maybe if we reduce all of these things into exactly the same categories. Now you can have the same issues with ‘death’ too.
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While I am not sure the author of the origianl post sees all of the implcations, I believe this is a place to start.
Also the comments are worth considering too.

found at the kruse kronicle

"In our country, the younger generation is becoming obsessed with social justice," including through government opportunities, politics and voting, said McKnight, author of The Jesus Creed: Loving God, Loving Others. "What it's doing is leading young Christians out of the church and into the public sector to do what they call 'kingdom work.' "

"I want to raise a red flag here: There is no such thing as kingdom work outside the church -- and I don't mean the building. The kingdom is about King Jesus and King Jesus' people and King Jesus' ethics for King Jesus' people.

"Social justice outside the church is not biblical justice or kingdom work. It is social work. Fine, that's a good thing. But let's not call this kingdom work."

Instead, he called on listeners to make the church "a beachhead of justice and peace and love" for those in need in the church. Then, "let that kind of church and kingdom and justice work spill over into the walls of your community."

read the entire article here


I have become a big fan of Scot over the last several years. I have read many of his books and vist his blog regularly.
Jesus Creed

Hello darkness, my old friend
I've come to talk with you again
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence

In restless dreams I walked alone
Narrow streets of cobblestone
'Neath the halo of a street lamp
I turned my collar to the cold and damp
When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence

And in the naked light I saw
Ten thousand people, maybe more
People talking without speaking
People hearing without listening
People writing songs that voices never share
And no one dared
Disturb the sound of silence

"Fools", said I, "You do not know
Silence like a cancer grows
Hear my words that I might teach you
Take my arms that I might reach you"
But my words, like silent raindrops fell
And echoed
In the wells of silence

And the people bowed and prayed
To the neon god they made
And the sign flashed out its warning
In the words that it was forming
And the sign said, "The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls
And tenement halls"
And whispered in the sounds of silence

A California-based Christian radio network is using the Internet, thousands of billboards and even RV caravans to warn of overwhelming evidence that Judgment Day will arrive May 21.

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by John Armstrong
The crunch, argues Parker, is that a lot of government directed decision-making denies more and more of our personal freedoms, thus creating a combination that becomes less and less pleasant for more and more people. Government programs aim, generally speaking, to aid people with real needs. But in the process they very often eliminate the options that freedom has brought to us. We do best, she argues, when we are free to direct our own lives in most areas. And this fundamentally where Democrats and Republicans differ. The main question here, which will not go away, remains: “At what point is the common good bad for people?”

But Parker takes this question to a different level when she says that people who live in more wide-open space in red states see less need for government than people who live in large cities. They do not want the government managing their lives so directly when they experience the open spaces. But those who live in dense population centers see this very differently. They will trade some freedom for “the convenience and cultural riches of city life.” I have found this to be true time and time again as I listen to my friends talk about this in terms of where they live and what they value.

The bottom line is this: these are two very different approaches to the role of government in particular. Parker is not sure the two can be reconciled. I think she is right. In a society where freedom allows citizens to elect their own leaders there will almost always be a kind of pendulum effect at work, as we will likely see again in November. But remember, we are likely to correct one problem by swinging in a different direction which only creates an opposite reaction and other problems. And all of this has a lot more to do with where we live, and how we understand our personal freedom and the role of government, than it does with our theology or personal sanity.
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By Gary DeMar and David Chilton

If there’s one passage of Scripture that is repeatedly brought up as an indictment against anyone who objects to modern-day prophetic speculation, it is 2 Peter 3:3–18. If you dispute with those who argue that all the signs around us indicate that we are living in the “last days,” then you are labeled a “scoffer” or a “mocker” (2 Peter 3:3). If this is true, then how should we describe those who argued that proposed signs during the two world wars were not signs of the end? They were right! Were they “scoffers”? The same could be asked about those who rejected the claim that events surrounding the French Revolution in the 18th century were sure signs of a prophetic end of all things. Every generation has had those who claimed the end was near and those who argued that the end was not near. Appealing to contemporary signs to make predictions of a near end has a long history as Francis Gumerlock demonstrates in his book The Day and the Hour. One would think that by now Christians would stop doing it. But they don’t. They know revving people up over the “last days” sells books, lots of books.

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President Obama has been reported to want to redistribute America's wealth more fairly. (here and here ) That view of President Obama is refuted here.

Now comes a story from NPR about a paper, which has not been released yet, telling us that Americans do want wealth distributed more fairly. It will be interesting to find the paper when it comes out and find out how the questions were asked and answered. Listen to the story here.

from Kruse Kronicle 10/01/2010

A couple of years ago Brian McLaren wrote in Everything Must Change that government is the lead societal entity in confronting social problems while volunteer community efforts fill-in at the edges. This perspective is implicit in the advocacy of Sojourners and Jim Wallis. If you read and listen closely you will see this perspective is simply assumed in progressive discussions.

...[T]he New Testament seems more concerned with the pervasive influence of empire in the every day lives ... "Do not be conformed to the patterns of this world , ..." Ironically, those who speak most passionately about empire are frequently the same ones who advocate the loudest for centralized solutions to problems and provision for daily life from the empire. As Gerald Ford once noted, "A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have."



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By Peter Kreeft

The fallacy of Progressivism is peculiarly modern. [T]he typically modern use of that very word “modern” to carry a (positive) value judgment is part of the fallacy. But the fallacy goes back to the Book of Job, who detected it in his three “friends” and repelled it with the famous bit of sarcasm: “No doubt you are the people and wisdom began with you!” It has also been called “the Whig theory of history,” “The Idea of Automatic Progress,” “Americanism” (by a papal encyclical, no less -- see Ch. 12), and “Presentism.” The term “chronological snobbery” comes from C.S. Lewis (to my mind the clearest and most useful Christian writer since Thomas Aquinas) in his autobiography Surprised by Joy, where he gives his friend Owen Barfield credit for inventing it.

The typically modern mind is 1) skeptical of absolute, unchanging standards and 2) in love with the idea of progress. But this is a logical impossibility, a self-contradiction. Without an unchanging standard, there can be no progress, only change. To such people, “progress” means no more than “change,” and therefore “change” means the same as “progress.”

A third argument for Progressivism is the fact that there has indeed been progress, in fact obvious, automatic, and spectacular progress, in one field: technology. And since this has both causes and effects in every other field, it seems reasonable to believe in progress there as well.

But it isn’t. Cleverness in inventing machinery has no tendency to cause wisdom or virtue in the inventor. If anything, it causes pride, hubris, and addiction to the power the new machines give us. And that is regress rather than progress in wisdom and virtue and happiness. If “all power tends to corrupt,” the same must be true of intellectual, scientific, and technological power. Why don’t we make that inference? Might it be because the addict always lives in denial?


Read more Progressivism: The Snobbery of Chronology

Option 1: 50,000 varves represent roughly 50,000 years, and the fact that the Suigetsu varves continue to about 100,000 means the earth’s history also must extend to at least 100,000 years.

Option 2: God started with a fast rate of carbon 14 decay and dozens of diatom blooms and die-offs each year, but then intentionally and precisely slowed down each independent and unrelated process in such a way as to make it falsely look as if the data confirms the accuracy of carbon-14 and varve counting as legitimate methods of determining age.

We argue with great conviction that Option 2 above does not reflect the God of King David who proclaimed that the heavens declare the glory of God (Psalm 19), nor of the Apostle Paul who stated that God’s eternal character and divine nature are manifest in what he has created (Romans 1:20). If the creation speaks of a specific history, it is our belief that God’s creation speaks truthfully and the history is real.

Where does this leave us? Many in the world marvel at the handiwork of God while denying the Creator. In response, the Church demands that to acknowledge the Creator, we must deny His workmanship. Can there be a more ineffectual witness? If after seeing the results of God’s creation in Figure 4 we insist that the obvious meaning is not in fact true, we will drive people away from faith in Christ on a misplaced assumption that belief in Christ represents the abandonment of reason. Christ Himself is a sufficient stumbling block – we need not create any other!

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