If forgiveness means saying, “That’s OK” to things that aren’t OK then none of us should forgive. Forgiveness is not about pushing ourselves to the limit of what we can tolerate. Susan Shapiro in the Washington Post Eight Times It Might Be Healthier Not to Forgive makes the point that whenever forgiveness begins to sound like “you have no reason to still be upset” it shifts the blame from offender to the person harmed. Forgiveness is not about saying “that’s OK” about things that are not OK.

Ordo amoris was defined by Saint Augustine of Hippo in the fifth century, but best exposition on this heirarchy is in Saint Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologica. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summa_Theologica

1. There is an order in charity, and God is the principle of that order. God is to be loved out of charity, before all others. The other beings that are to be loved out of charity are, so to speak, lined up in their proper places, subordinate to God.

2. God is to be loved for himself and as the cause ofhappiness. Hence, God is to be loved more than our neighbor, who isloved, not for himself, but for God.

3. And we are to love God more than we love ourselves. What we love in ourselves is from God, and is lovable only on account of God.

4. A person rightly loves himself by charity when he seeks to be united with God and to partake of God's eternal happiness. And a person loves his neighbor as one to whom he wishes this union and happiness. Now, since seeking to obtain something for oneself is a more intense act than wishing well to one's neighbor, a person manifestly loves himself more than he loves his neighbor. As evidence of this fact, consider this: a man would rightly refuse to sin if, by sinning, he could free his neighbor from sin.

5. While we love ourselves more than we love our neighbor, we are required to love our neighbor more than we love our body.

6. And we rightly love one neighbor more than another - our parents, for instance, or our children. In this we violate no law so long as we do not withhold requisite love from any neighbor.

7. Our dearest objects of charity among neighbors are those who are closest to us by some tie - relationship, common country, and so on.

8. The tie that is strongest of all is the tie of blood. Hence it is natural that we should love our kindred more than others.

9. And in those related to us by blood there is an order. St. Ambrose says that we ought to love God first, then our parents, then our children, then the others of our household.

10. We are to love father and mother. Strictly speaking, the love of father precedes the love of mother.

11. A man loves his wife more intensely than he loves his parents. Yet he loves his parents with greater reverence.

12. It seems that we love those on whom we confer benefits more than those who confer benefits on us.

13. The order of charity, since it is right and reasonable, will endure in heaven.

In fact, Aquinas, being Aquinas, even offered objections to his thesis and defended against the objections.
https://www.newadvent.org/summa/3026.htm

During 2024, but particularly during the election, we were assailed by warnings of the boogeyman of "Christian nationalism." No one was ever quite sure what it was other than using Christianity as a guardrail for public policy and guaranteeing Christianity had a place in the public square. Both of these ideas were insufficiently inclusive to satisfy the secular left.

JD Vance appeared on Sean Hannity's show on Wednesday, and, in my view, he gave a masterclass on how a Christian worldview provides answers to difficult problems. The intertwined issues were immigration and foreign aid.

Jack Poso 🇺🇸
·
Jan 29, 2025
@JackPosobiec
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JD VANCE: There is a Christian concept that you love your family and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens, and then after that, prioritize the rest of the world

A lot of the far left has completely inverted that. //

Immediately following this, he was hit by leftists shouting, "No way, that's not Christian." //

This is the type of stuff that is not only wrong, but it is such a grotesque misrepresentation of Christian thought that it drives many people away.

I had to look him up, but Rory Stewart is someone who is supposed to be important when up and has his trousers on.

Rory Stewart @RoryStewartUK
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A bizarre take on John 15:12-13 - less Christian and more pagan tribal. We should start worrying when politicians become theologians, assume to speak for Jesus, and tell us in which order to love… //

JD Vance @JDVance
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Just google “ordo amoris.” Aside from that, the idea that there isn’t a hierarchy of obligations violates basic common sense. Does Rory really think his moral duties to his own children are the same as his duties to a stranger who lives thousands of miles away? Does anyone? //

What is ordo amoris? It is the Christian idea of "properly ordered love." All love is not equal. We are told to love God above all else, something the left ignores. In the same way, they use the English word "love" interchangeably for the eight Koine Greek words for love, those rendering love for God the same as homosexual sex because, you know, "love is love."

Ordo amoris was defined by Saint Augustine of Hippo in the fifth century, but best exposition on this heirarchy is in Saint Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologica.

1. There is an order in charity, and God is the principle of that order. God is to be loved out of charity, before all others. The other beings that are to be loved out of charity are, so to speak, lined up in their proper places, subordinate to God.

2. God is to be loved for himself and as the cause ofhappiness. Hence, God is to be loved more than our neighbor, who isloved, not for himself, but for God.
   .... //

In fact, Aquinas, being Aquinas, even offered objections to his thesis and defended against the objections.

Then Vance returned to Mr. Stewart.

JD Vance @JDVance
·
Replying to @JDVance
I’ve said before and I’ll say it again: the problem with Rory and people like him is that he has an IQ of 110 and thinks he has an IQ of 130. This false arrogance drives so much elite failure over the last 40 years.
4:11 PM · Jan 30, 2025

Just as the Constitution is not a suicide pact, neither is Christian Theology. Just as we use the Constitution to order our public lives, we should use well-formed Christian thought to order our personal lives and, through those lives, order the nation. //

anon-todh
2 days ago
Christian hospitality is to welcome the stranger as demonstrated by Jewish law. Welcoming is to offer them food and shelter as they pass through, not to permanently support them. Jesus fed the 5,000 but did not open a housing agency and focus his work there. //

streiff anon-todh
2 days ago
food, drink, clothing, shelter, medical care...and then back home.

Laocoön of Troy anon-todh
2 days ago edited
In fact after Jesus fed the 5K, parts of the crowd followed him to another part of the lake looking to be fed again.

"They said to him, “Sir, give us this bread always.” Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst. But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe. All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out. For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.” So the Jews grumbled about him, because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.”

John 6

Jesus was there to teach them about himself and God. Most of the rest were there to get another free meal. //

Indylawyer
2 days ago
This is true, but I suggest there is a more relevant distinction to be made: charity is an obligation of individual Christians, often exercised in churches and other organizations. It isn't something that can be done through involuntary taxation. Christians can and should be aiding strangers whom they find in their communities, just as the Good Samaritan aided the Jewish stranger who fell into his path. But it's not compassion for the government to tax people to do it, nor is it compassion for the government to forsake its duties to protect its own citizens by allowing mass migration - particularly when it is largely facilitated by criminal gangs.

At first, I was going to just respond in the comments, but after a few attempts, I decided it would best be an article of its own.

He said:

I've always been somewhat bemused by the notion that God lost in the Garden of Eden, that Satan won, and that there was this mad scramble in Heaven to come up with a "Plan B".

Ask yourself this, "If Adam and Eve weren't supposed to fall, why didn't God just start over again with a new couple in the Garden of Eden? Had he lost the power to create such a couple?"

When you realize that the Fall was planned from the beginning, it all makes sense. //

This presents the idea that God had written this drama from the beginning, which would logically lead to the idea that our fates were already decided beforehand. This is a topic that inevitably gets brought up when discussing God at length, which usually triggers a debate between free will and determinism. I can assume the commenter takes the side of determinism, at least in some capacity.

Personally, I take the side of free will. //

To get back to my commenter, the reason God let us fall even though He knew we were going to is because he is a God who knows that love and free will are intermingled, and you cannot have one without the other. //

In Deuteronomy 30:19 God is directing Israel to make a choice with Moses as his spokesman saying, “This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live." Here is God offering the choice to do as one pleases, but points out which way is the right way, which is a habit of God's throughout humanity's existence. //

Jeremiah Cota ✝️🇺🇸 @jeremiahcota
·
Good Morning.👋

The Arizona Republic @azcentral is calling the Bible that Congressman Hamadeh @AbrahamHamadeh sworn in on an "unconventional documents".

Unreal, the Bible is now considered an "unconventional documents" by the writers at the Arizona Republic.
11:36 AM · Jan 4, 2025

The "unconventional documents" were, in fact, the family Bible of the loved ones of Kayla Mueller, an Arizona humanitarian worker who was murdered by ISIS in 2015--something the Republic apparently is quick to wave away as unmentionable subject matter. //

A humanitarian worker from Arizona, Mueller was abducted by terrorists while leaving a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Aleppo, Syria, in 2013. She was held hostage for 18 months, when she was believed to be repeatedly tortured and raped by ISIS militants, including then-ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

Mueller was killed in February 2015. //

As I take the oath of office, I am profoundly honored to fulfill my promise to the Muellers and the American people by being sworn into Congress using Kayla’s family Bible. It serves as a testament to her unwavering belief in light over darkness and freedom over oppression.

Sixty-four scholars and theologians have signed on to a “Wesleyan witness,” a six-part, 62-page document they hope will shape the future of Methodism, define orthodox Wesleyanism, and ground more Christians in the story of sanctification and restoration through grace. //

“The Faith Once Delivered” was first drafted in January at a summit for “The Next Methodism.” Scholars allied with the evangelical wing of the United Methodist Church, as well as holiness and Pentecostal denominations, came together, formed five working groups, and co-wrote statements on five theological topics: the nature of God, Creation, revelation, salvation, and the church. A sixth section on eschatology or “the fullness of time” was added later.

What Does it Mean to be Human? Part 3--Free Will
Imago Dei, meaning of life, What am I?, What is human? //

Philosopher Alvin Plantinga defines an agent who has free will as one who is free to perform a morally right action and free to refrain; “no causal laws and antecedent conditions determine either that he will perform the action, or that he will not”.(1) In the literature, it is generally defined as follows,

Free will:

The ability to make a decision that satisfies two criteria:

a. the decision was not determined by any antecedent conditions and,

b. the person could have decided otherwise,

where ‘determined’ means it was caused to happen such that no other result was possible. The conditions leading up to the outcome were such that the result was “carved in stone”. This is in stark contrast to bringing some influence to bear on a decision or putting pressure on a person to make a particular decision. Influence is compatible with free will; it can be considered and overridden by the person making the free decision. So even if we have a proclivity, propensity, or an almost overwhelming desire to say “yes” to something that we know is not good for us, we can override those powerful influences and say “no”.

Resources, Training, and Certification that promote excellence and doctrinal integrity in biblical counseling

Alert and Alarmed
7 hours ago edited
Martians land on the White House Lawn. They say they have been studying our broadcasts and speak our language. They ask for a televised interview with our world leaders. The Pope takes his turn saying "Honored guests, the most important question I have is: Do you know Jesus?
Martians: Yes we know Jesus, the Son of God. He comes to see us every year.
Pope (visibly shaken): What? Every year? Well we have been waiting two thousand years for His Second Coming.
Martians: Maybe He didn't like your chocolates.
Pope (even more rattled and hardly able to speak): Chocolates? What do chocolates have to do with anything?
Martians: When He came to see us, we gave Him a giant box of our best chocolates. What did you do when He came to see you?

Your marriage is shaped by your commitment to say no. Your parenting is shaped by your willingness to say no. Your friendships are shaped by how often you say no. Your friendships and fellowship in the body of Christ are determined by your discipline in saying no. I am not talking about saying no to your spouse, your kids, or your friends, but rather about how spiritually important it is to say no to yourself. It is important to understand that no one is in greater danger of you than you are, because of the sin that still resides inside of you. That sin makes you susceptible to the myriad temptations that greet you every day. When faced with all of temptation’s deception, seduction, and allure, it is important that you say no to the sinful desires that draw you in and make you want to say yes.

You need to understand two things when you are facing temptation. First, in that moment no one can say no for you. Only by God’s empowering grace can you turn from temptation’s allure and run in the other direction, and no one else can do that for you. Second, you will say no only when you see sin as deeply evil and destructive. //

The imagery of lopping off your hand, amputating your foot, and gouging out your eye is here because your Savior understands your struggle with sin and temptation. Your commitment to seek the empowering grace you need in order to say yes to God and no to sin is more valuable than your hand, foot, or eye. Of course, God isn’t telling you to mutilate your body as a defense against sin, because that wouldn’t work. Sin is a battle of the heart and is won or lost there. Jesus’s use of hyperbole reminds us that no part of our body is more valuable than resisting sin and temptation.

Remember, however, that you never fight this battle of resistance alone or in your own power. By grace, the one who defeated Satan is always with you and always fights for you.

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.