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We’re always at our strongest in our fight against sin when we see how it trades away God’s goodness for what’s much less satisfying.
Marshmallows and Trust
The marshmallow test was a 1960s psychological experiment that measured delayed gratification in children. One group of kids resisted the temptation to eat a marshmallow while the other group couldn’t. The study concluded the first group would have more success in life while the others would struggle to succeed.
The test isn’t without methodological problems, but its “findings” are influential enough that they probably shape the way you think about what you’re innately able to do or not do. For instance, have you ever said, “I just can’t seem to help myself”?
Sin trades away God’s goodness for what’s much less satisfying. //
Kidd concluded children can delay immediate gratification for a future reward in the context of a trusting relationship. //
It’s not that different with fighting sin. Just as with Satan’s lie in the garden, and comparable to Kidd’s version of the marshmallow test, doubt lies at the heart of every temptation. Doubt in God’s goodness. A temptation to believe transgression will deliver satisfaction God can’t supply.
Each of us is made with a desire to enjoy sexual pleasure. It’s part of God’s benevolent design to provide us comfort, satisfaction, and procreation in marriage. But trusting that design is difficult when the world puts constant marshmallows in your face and tempts you to think the art supplies will never come.
As America prepares for November’s presidential election, the fight for votes will inevitably intensify.
But as conservative commentator Megan Basham explains in her new book, “Shepherds For Sale: How Evangelical Leaders Traded The Truth For A Leftist Agenda” (Broadside) — and in an interview with The Post — nowhere will the campaign be more fiercely fought than in the battle for the one of the most powerful voting blocs in the country: evangelicals.
A culture reporter for the Daily Wire and former editor at Evangelical publication World Magazine, Basham reveals in “Shepherds For Sale” how “progressive power brokers” are targeting not just churches but Christian media, universities and even entire denominations in a bid to force their hands when it comes to dealing with culture war flash-points like abortion, LGBTQ rights and climate change. //
“Look at nearly any issue that represents a key priority for progressives, and you will find that even when all other major demographics have signed on, Christians, and evangelicals in particular, represent the most formidable roadblock,” she says. //
Basham maintains that in return for toeing a more left-wing line on key issues — as well as reinterpreting or even eschewing scripture — many church leaders have received everything from praise to prestige, career progression to significant amounts of cash, selling out Christianity in the process.
“Evangelicals don’t always win at the ballot box, but in most regions of the country, they always present a massive hurdle to leftist power grabs,” writes Basham. //
A significant aspect of the left’s ability to infiltrate the Church is the existence of what Basham calls the “Eleventh Commandment,” namely: Thou shalt not criticize church leaders.
“What the Eleventh Commandment has meant in practice is that even as prominent pastors and theologians have spent the last few years accommodating every sort of secular, progressive influence, critical or even cautioning voices have been slow to respond [to the challenge],” she says.
Kintsugi, meaning “golden joint” or “golden repair,” is a Japanese method lacquer masters use to remake broken teaware. The lacquer seals the pieces back together, then gold powder accentuates the cracks between pieces rather than hiding them. Tea families would even keep fragments for generations, seeking a master who could put them together into something more beautiful than before. It is a challenging and meditative craft.
What we love about this practice is its emphasis on maintaining the fragmentation. Or as we like to call it in our line of work, the wounds. Kintsugi considers how something that was broken, no matter how badly, can be put together into a creation that is even stronger and more striking. //
This idea of “new creation” is also central to Restoring the Soul’s mission because it reflects Jesus’ journey on the cross and post-resurrection appearance. He chose to be a wounded human, appearing to his disciples with nail marks in his hands still showing. As Isaiah 53:5 says, “By his wounds we are healed.” His wounds created a path to restoration for us, no matter how shattered we are. Through Jesus, we are kintsugi pieces, new creations: ourselves, but even more beautiful than before.
Jesus accepts and loves us with all our flaws, imperfections, and painful experiences. He offers you an opportunity to be created anew, filled with rivers of gold — to be as valuable to yourself as you are to God.
Sharing the Good News can often be as simple as scattering seeds. The majority of street evangelism is like that. When I first started doing street evangelism, I quickly realized I only had a window of less than sixty seconds between the lights. Certainly not enough time to to say much, so I started carrying a sign with me.
Knowing your identity in Christ will change your outlook on life. In this resource, memorize some or all of these 26 Bible verses focused on remembering your identity in Christ.
Earlier this month, a handful of teenagers were charged with felonies for leaving marks on an LGBT mural that was painted on the road. In fact, there's a rash of these kinds of vandalizations happening all over the nation and each one is treated like a massive hate crime by Democrats and activists.
So holy is the LGBT cause to the left that they're willing to go above and beyond to make you accept it.
So, you'll pardon me if I'm not too moved by complaints from the left, the LGBT activist community, and elected Democrats when they clutch their pearls and run to their fainting couches over the Ten Commandments being displayed in school. //
Let's be real here. These activists aren't mad about religious symbols going up in schools. They put theirs up in schools every chance they get. They preach the word of queer activism to children as young as four, and try to hide it from parents if they know there would be backlash about it. These people are zealots.
Their issue with the Ten Commandments is that these laws come from a rival religion. One they hate more than any other, despite it being a religion that allows for these people to live, work, and commit their sin without worrying about being murdered, tortured, or imprisoned for it. Hilariously, they'd much rather show their support toward religions that would do horrendous things to the LGBT community if their dominance was established here in the West, but they don't like talking about that.
Sometimes, when teaching theology at a Southern Baptist seminary, I would quote Pressler warning about what he called the “Dalmatian theory of inspiration.”
“Once you say that the Bible could contain error, you make yourself the judge of what portions of the Bible are true and which portions are error,” Pressler said in an interview at the height of the Southern Baptist controversy over biblical inerrancy. “It is a presumptuous thing for an individual to edit God. Somebody has called it the spot theory of inspiration. The Bible was inspired in spots, and we are inspired to spot the spots.”
Even before the court actions and subsequent revelations, though, those of us in the conservative wing of Baptist life should have recognized the low view of biblical authority even in the actions Pressler did in full public view. Instead, we were told, and believed, that the stakes were too high—the orthodoxy of the nation’s largest Protestant denomination—to worry that the warlords leading the charge were not like Jesus. Many of us learned to tolerate the idea that one can do evil that good may result—a contradiction of the inerrant Word of God (Rom. 3:8).
The implicit idea is that, if the stakes are high enough, the usual norms of Christian morality—on truth-telling and kindness, gentleness, love, joy, self-control, etc.—can be ignored, at least long enough to fix the problem and return to normal.
This is not an unusual temptation: Let’s violate human rights in order to save human rights. Let’s terminate the Constitution to save the Constitution. Let’s elect sexual abusers to protect the family. Let’s disobey the Bible to save the Bible. Pressler warned (about other people in other situations) that what is tolerated is ultimately celebrated. That’s not always true, of course, but it certainly was in the case of conviction defined as quarrelsomeness.
Before one knows it, one ends up with a partisan definition of truth, all the more ironic for defenders of biblical inerrancy and—with a situational definition of ethics—for warriors against moral relativism. When this happens, the criterion by which the confession of faith is interpreted is through whatever controversy enlivens the crowd. Biblical passages that seem to be violated by one’s “enemies” are then emphasized, while those applying to one’s own “side” are minimized. To do this well, one needs some authoritative, if not authoritarian, leaders to spot the spots that are to be underlined and to skip over those to be ignored.
What difference does it make if one’s liberalism is characterized by ignoring Paul but quoting the Sermon on the Mount, or by ignoring the Sermon on the Mount but quoting Paul? How is one a liberal who explains away the Exodus but takes literally the Prophets, while that’s not true for the one who explains away the Prophets but takes literally the Exodus?
If the Bible is breathed out by God, then all of it is “profitable for teaching, for reproof, for training in righteousness” (2 Tim. 3:16, ESV throughout). A high view of biblical authority does not, by itself, guarantee orthodoxy.
Fantasia Apocalyptica World Premiere
Composed 2012-2017 by Donald E. Knuth
Performed by Jan Overduin
The Biblical book of Revelation, also know as Apocalypse (Uncovering), is a mystical work that is filled with symbols. It consists chiefly of a dream that was recorded in the first century A.D. by Saint John the Divine. The dramatic events in this famous dream run the gamut of human emotions, as they highlight crucial aspects of life, death and spirituality.
During the 60s, Donald Knuth became fascinated with the ways in which the author of Revelations emphasized many different numbers (2, 3, 3.5, 4, 7, 12, 24...) and gave them symbolic significance. Knuth soon began to wonder about the possibility of creating a pleasing musical work that would incorporate Revelation's numbers and other mystical symbols in essentially their original order.
Fantasia Apocalyptica is a multimedia work for pipe organ, accompanied by several video tracks. It can be regarded as a somewhat literal translation of the Biblical book of Revelation into music.
When he volunteered to teach a Bible study course, Donald E. Knuth, computer scientist, master programmer, creator of TeX, inventor of Literate Programming, and author of The Art of Computer Programming, pondered the two main ways of reading the Bible.
Method 1: We can read it straight through, for context. By reading at normal speed, we can follow the flow of ideas and get intuitive impressions, just as the first readers and hearers of those words might have done. Or, Method 2: We can single out isolated verses, for meditation and/or scholarly study. By focusing on small details, it’s possible to understand the deeper significance of a passage.
Both of these ways are important. Method 2 is most satisfactory for group study, since Method 1 works best when a person can read at leisure and without interruption.
My idea for a Bible class was based on a fourth way to select Bible verses for study, making use of a mathematical principle that provides an effective way to gain knowledge about complicated things: A large body of information can be comprehended reasonably well by studying more or less random portions of the data. The technical term for this approach is stratified sampling.
Knuth’s idea was to pick a chapter and verse number, essentially at random (but with the chapter and verse numbers not so large they excluded too many shorter books and chapters), then examine that chapter and verse from each book in detail.
CatholicVote
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This. Is. VILE!
President Biden makes the Sign of the Cross at an abortion rally in Florida!
You cannot be Catholic and support abortion!
You cannot invoke GOD and promote Death!
5:18 PM · Apr 23, 2024 //
Aaron Rupar
@atrupar
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Wow. Biden in Tampa on Trump: "He said there has to be punishment for women exercising their reproductive freedom ... maybe it's coming from that bible he's trying to sell. I almost wanted to buy one just to see what the hell is in it."
3:21 PM · Apr 23, 2024
While some depict the Bible’s Passover meal and Jews’ Exodus from Egypt as a fable, archeological and other evidence squares with the Bible’s account.
While Magi sounds like a Persian word, Kenneth E. Bailey in Jesus through Middle Eastern Eyes: Cultural Studies in the Gospels gave evidence that the Wise Men were for Arabia:
According to Matthew 2, the wise men arrived with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. Rich people usually possess gold, and gold was mined in Arabia. But more specifically, frankincense and myrrh are harvested from trees that only grow in southern Arabia [Yemen = Sheba].
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Dr. Bailey pointed out that Justin Martyr identified the Wise Men as from Arabia:
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In the 1920s a British scholar, E. F. F. Bishop, visited a Bedouin tribe in Jordan. This Muslim tribe bore the Arabic name al-Kokabani. The word kokab means “planet” and al-Kaokabani means “Those who study/follow the planets.” Bishop asked the elders of the tribe why they called themselves by such a name. They replied that it was because their ancestors followed the planets and traveled west to Palestine to show honor to the great prophet Jesus when he was born. //
The wisemen or magi all came from present day Ethiopia. There were at least 12 in total not just three. Three magi or people who understand how to read the stars and three kings with each of them (9 kings). The three gifts mentioned of gold, myrrh & Frankincense are the same gifts that the queen of Sheba (Ethiopia & Yemen) had taken to king Solomon a few centuries before when she returned and introduced Jewish religion in Ethiopia. Being strong Jewish believers and always making pilgrims to Jerusalem to worship it is the Ethiopians outside of Israel who were anticipating the birth of the messiah. Ethiopian kings traveled from different parts of ancient Ethiopia to present the gifts to the Christ child to fulfill the prophecy of their sages. Maṣḥaf Kebur (መጽሐፍ ክቡር), an Amharic source published in 2008/9, lists the names of the three wise men and the kings who accompanied them to Jerusalem.
Luke 3:1 "In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar" - convention for counting years (NOT what the actual A.D. year was)
This question is NOT what the A.D. year was but about the counting convention for years when mentioning reign of a ruler.
“We believe in objective truth. We believe that there are often right and wrong,” Woodruff told me when asked about its editorial process. “There are many times when our entire staff agrees on a specific issue, but that doesn’t mean that we’re going to only present that side. We trust our readers to be able to be discerning.”
That purported neutrality is built on the hope that Christians avoid “falling into culture wars that promote hate of the other group” and instead seek greater understanding and love for “political enemies.” Concerned by how Christians, and Americans in general, are becoming siloed in ideological media echo chambers, Woodruff wants Pour Over readers to understand what “both sides” are saying about the news of the day.
But Woodruff’s philosophy conflates the understanding of other political opinions with the belief that they should hold equal weight, a fatal conclusion that misleads and misinforms his readership. While I resonate deeply with the idea that all Americans need an accurate view of what their political others believe, these perspectives shouldn’t be framed in an amoral vacuum. Political neutrality has never been the silver bullet that some presume it to be. //
Presenting all perspectives as equal creates a false binary and results in an unwillingness to hold firm, journalistic principles for the preservation of democracy and human rights, all while eroding public trust. According to reporter Sean Illing, “The issue for many people isn’t exactly a denial of truth as such. It’s more a growing weariness over the process of finding the truth at all. And that weariness leads more and more people to abandon the idea that the truth is knowable.” //
In these ways, The Pour Over is not so different from the mainstream outlets it’s seeking to distinguish itself from. In chasing the biggest news of the day, The Pour Over magnifies the vices of the mainstream press by framing its own view of objectivity as in line with the divine. The daily news is not all-encompassing, and holding a long-term perspective is important, but it also has real material and spiritual consequences. Good journalism should inform readers not only of the facts but also of the stakes.
By framing the news as all-but-equal, The Pour Over pushes readers toward an unbiblical political indifference.
Since World War II, most American Jews have believed that the more secular American society is, the more secure their status.
This has been, as I have argued all of my life, a colossal error. Indeed, it may turn out to be a fatal error.
With the outburst of unprecedented levels of antisemitism, American Jews are living the famous warning: “Beware what you wish for; you just may get it.”
The primary reason American Jews have lived in the most Jew-friendly, even Jew-honoring, country in history is that most Americans have been Christian. But we must make a key distinction here. American Christians have been not just Christian, as Europe was, but Judeo-Christian. //
In a famous study published in the American Political Science Review, Donald Lutz, a professor of political science at the University of Houston, surveyed the political literature of the American founding. He found that the Bible was cited more frequently than any other work or any other author. The Bible accounted for approximately one-third of the Founders’ citations. The single most frequently cited work was Deuteronomy, the fifth of the five books of the Torah.
The late great Catholic theologian Michael Novak wrote that the roots of the doctrine that “all men are created equal lie in Judaism, carried around the world by Christians.”
As American society and Americans individually become less religious, i.e., less Christian, the Jews become less significant.
Yet, many, perhaps most, American Jews, have bought—and promulgated—the idea that Jewish security in America lies in secularizing, i.e., de-Christianizing, America. //
Look around, my fellow Jews. Are you happy with the results of the secularization of America? Do you feel more secure? Or less?
I ask you: Is it not obvious that when more Americans attended church every Sunday, America’s Jews were far more secure?
Size: 24 x 36 inches on sturdy cardstock
Description: This colorful, easy-to-read poster shows the family tree of every major Christian denomination.
ISBN: 978-0-7753519-3-1
Helsinki prosecutor Anu Mantila argued Finnish courts should ban from the internet the booklet, Rasanen’s tweet, and an audio recording of Rasanen defending Christian views. Mantila also seeks punitive fines. “Male and Female He Created Them” was published in 2004, several years before Finland adopted the antiterrorism laws now being used to prosecute the two Christians for “hate speech.”
“With the right police and prosecutor, we could expect to see similar cases crop up across Europe and in fact around the world,” noted Alliance Defending Freedom International lawyer Paul Coleman, who is assisting the Christians’ legal defense. Hate crimes laws like Finland’s are on the books in many European nations and American states and cities.
Rasanen said the most difficult part of her prosecution has been the prosecutor’s false accusations against her, including that Rasanen considers homosexuals inferior. She said that is “against my conviction” as a Christian. Christianity teaches that every human is made in God’s image and so beloved by God that He sacrificed His own Son to wash away every sin ever committed.
“We represent the common traditional classical understanding of family and sexual ethics, and now this has been labeled widely in our society and also in the established Lutheran church as something which is … not only offending and extremist but it’s also criminal,” Pohjola said.
Pohjola is the bishop of a small non-state church body that adheres to the Bible’s teachings, which Finland’s state church has in large part abandoned. The Federalist interviewed Pohjola in person in 2021, and Rasanen in person in 2022.
Free will
God created a perfect world, yet gave Adam and Eve a way to reject him by accepting something that would remove their innocence. Why offer them a choice? Why not leave it perfect?
Because without a way to reject God, their love would have been meaningless.
God goes to great lengths to make sure people can choose to love Him without violating their free will. That plays heavily into the idea of deus absconditus, or "hidden god". God is hidden, but wants to be found. Thus, you ensure that the majority of those who find Him are actually those looking.
Predestination
I think the confusion that surrounds this issue is largely rooted in the question of free will. If God wants us to be saved, will we not be saved? If God wants you condemned to Hell, will you not be condemned? There is some level of truth there, but it misses that God does not throw Free Will out the window to accomplish this.
God orchestrates the universe. He knows every decision that can be made, and what decisions will, in fact, be made. Take Luke 13
13 “Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago, sitting in sackcloth and ashes.
Jesus is speaking here, and this verse illustrates predestination perfectly. Jesus spent time doing miracles in two cities that bore no fruit. Indeed, we see Jesus do many things that do nothing to promote faith. What is positively mind blowing is that Jesus is saying that if he had done those same miracles in Syria they would have repented wholeheartedly. So... why not go and do those things there?
Jesus' ministry was primarily to the Jews. Other miracles will be done in those places later, but Jesus was trying to get the Jews to repent first and foremost. In other words, God was showing love to the Jews by giving them miracles He knew they would reject, so they could be seen from a different perspective later.
To watch Killers is to observe the slow progression of what Mollie calls a “wasting illness” (in literal and metaphorical terms) that surrounds her family. It’s the creeping, insidious, nature of sin devastating a community in real time, like an invasive weed gradually suffocating the life out of a thriving garden. //
The film ends with a brilliant, unexpected coda, set several years after the movie’s main action. It’s a scene of a true crime radio program recording that dramatizes the story in auditory form. We catch the end of the broadcast, as radio actors and sound-effects artists narrate the “what happened to” fates of the key players in the Osage Murders case.
The scene is brilliant narratively for how it informs the audience about where Hale, Ernest, and Mollie end up. But it’s also brilliant thematically, as a commentary on the importance of how stories get told in different forms, across generations. We’re watching a live radio program, filmed for a movie, adapted from a book, about a true story.
Most meta of all, Scorsese himself appears in a cameo, as a radio performer who reads the newspaper obituary printed after Mollie Burkhart’s 1937 death. After reading the obit, Scorsese’s character notes, as he looks soberly into the audience, that “There was no mention of the murders.”
It’s the last line of the film. It speaks to the ways we’re prone, in our fallenness, to whitewash history and edit out the uncomfortable episodes and the sins of our ancestors, even as (like Ernest and others in Killers) we’re prone to concealing rather than confessing our present sins. Our instinct to hide sin is as old as Eden. //
When future observers look back on our generation’s telling of the Christian story, may it never be said that “There was no mention of _____ [insert unpopular or difficult biblical teaching].” Let’s tell the whole truth, even if it means the audience dwindles. And let’s rejoice that the whole truth includes not only the guilt of our sins in the past but also the grace of Christ in the present and an unfailing hope for the future.