Author: Matt Powell

Augustine on Manichaean arguments about the integrity of the Bible

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“Even before I left Carthage I had listened to the speeches of a man named Elpidius, who used to join in open controversy with the Manichees, and I had been impressed when he put forard arguments from Scripture which were not easy to demolish.  I htought that the Manichees’ answer was weak and, in fact, they were chary of giving it in public and only mentioned it in private to adherents of the sect.  They claimed that the books of the New Testament had been tampered with by unnamed persons who wished to impose the Jewish law upon the Christian faith, but they could produce no uncorrupted copies.” – Augustine’s Confessions, Book V, par. 11.

 

Interesting that even in the fourth century, there were claims that the Bible had been altered, but no proof could be provided for the claim.

God is a Conservative

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I know, I know, we’re all supposed to believe that God is above politics. And certainly, God is not a member of a party, nor does He endorse one of them. But He certainly does talk a lot about how human beings ought to relate to one another, and that’s politics when one goes beyond the family and the workplace and out to society at large.

And God says, “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land which the Lord your God gives you.”  This is a profoundly conservative principle.

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The “Kissing Case” and the Misuse of History

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*updates below.

I’ve been seeing a story about the so-called “Kissing Case” going around, primarily used as evidence of how awful America is.  This happened in 1958, so about 50 years ago.  It was a case where a couple of young boys were incarcerated and beaten for the crime of being kissed by a white girl.  These boys were seven and nine.  The KKK threatened the parents and burned crosses in their yard, and they weren’t even able to see their boys for weeks.  The locals wouldn’t do anything about it.  The NAACP wouldn’t get involved.  Finally through a civil rights activist, Robert F. Williams, the story hit the papers in Europe, causing a huge international outcry leading to the president intervening with the governor of North Carolina, leading to the boys being released without explanation or apology, after three months of incarceration.

The case is certainly a travesty.  That certainly can’t be doubted.  There’s a lot about the case that isn’t clear given the rather sensationalized accounts I have read.  One account says that the NAACP wouldn’t do anything and that Williams was a socialist, but other accounts have Williams as the head of the local chapter of the NAACP.  So that’s not clear.

But more importantly, I think a case like this and the way it is being used is a great example of the wrong lessons being drawn from history.

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On Skillful Rhetoric

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From Augustine’s Confessions, speaking of an encounter with a particularly charming and well-regarded teacher of Manichaeanism:

 

Neither did I think that a pleasant face and a gifted tongue were proof of a wise mind.  Those who had given me such assurances about him must have been poor judges.  They thought him wise and thoughtful simply because they were charmed by his manner of speech.

Lies can be and often are spoken with great beauty and eloquence, and important and vital truths can be and often are spoken with awkwardness and simplicity.  So many chase after this or that religious teacher or this or that politician merely because of his eloquence.  May God give us wisdom by His Spirit to perceive the truth regardless of the form in which it comes.

Abstain from every form (meaning appearance or mask) of evil. – 1 Thess. 5:22

Blue Tribe Totalitarianism

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From a comment by Scott Alexander on his own blog, via Xenosystems:

So given the fact that our knowledge of the world is coming from a 90-percent-plus liberal group that’s working hard to enforce orthodoxy, and then being filtered and broadcast to us by another 90-percent-plus liberal group that’s working hard to enforce orthodoxy, our knowledge of the world is…about as skewed as you would expect from this process. To give just one example, every number and line of evidence we have suggests that the police do not disproportionately target or kill black people compared to the encounter rate (see Part D here and this study) but the conventional wisdom is absolutely 100% certain they do and anybody who questions it is likely to sound like some kind of lunatic.

 

Part of a much longer pair of comments that brilliantly exposes the Blue Tribe (meaning- liberal educated elites) tactics for enforcing orthodoxy and suppression of any / all dissent.  The thing I think he misses though is here:

I am pretty darned Blue Tribe myself – I’m pro-choice, pro-fighting-climate-change, pro-gay, pro-transgender, non-religious, pro-higher-taxes-on-rich, pro-single-payer, anti-gun, ready-for-Hillary, etc – and after having watched the Republican debate tonight I can honestly say I’m terrified at anyone other than the Blue Tribe having power. But just as I can be proud of my Jewish heritage but also upset about the occupation of Palestine, so I can be proud of the Blue Tribe and not too happy about their project of crushing everybody else with an iron fist regardless of the collateral damage. Doing anything about this is a dauntingly large project, but my own comparative advantage is in picking apart some of the sillier studies they use to put a fig-leaf over what they’re doing.

He thinks this aspect of progressivism can be separated from the whole; it cannot. The need to control the worldview and suppress dissent is necessary, because their goal is utopia, and when utopia invariably fails, the reaction of the Utopians is never to reexamine their beliefs and reconsider they’re right, it’s to look for scapegoats who caused their righteous dreams to fail and destroy them so that it will work this time.

In fact, even the Red Tribe / Blue Tribe moniker itself is part of this effort. Before about 2000, politically conservative groups were always blue, and politically progressive / leftist groups were always red. But the media just decided to switch that up on us at one point, probably to try to obscure the connection between the left and communism. And we all just went along, because such a huge percentage of the communications apparatus in this country is dominated by these people.

Watch Out for Falling Anvils

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“Will he prosper? Will he who does such things escape?  Can he break a covenant and still be delivered?” — Ezekiel 17:15b

In Psalm 57:6  David says something that we see frequently in the Bible, that the wicked dig a pit to entrap someone else and fall in it themselves.  This is not a narrowly tailored statement intended only to apply to David’s particular situation.  It is repeated broadly enough in so many places in the Scriptures that we ought to take it as a general principle, that whenever a man seeks to do evil against someone else, he always ends up hurting himself instead.  When I was talking about this at breakfast this morning, Allie, 5, says, “Oh yes!  That’s what always happens in the cartoons!”   Continue reading “Watch Out for Falling Anvils” →

Dying to Self and Sin

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Rosaria Butterfield in Openness Unhindered says that sin never feels like sin.  It feels like life.  That so perfectly captures the struggle in my own life, I think.  When I am in the grip of sin, it feels necessary to me.  It feels like food and drink, like I’m going to die if I don’t have it.  Or at least, that my life will be boring, pointless, insignificant, joyless if I don’t have it, which really is the same thing.

But of course when we repent, when we start to put sin away, we realize that our sin wasn’t life at all, but the opposite.  It’s death.  It’s toxic poison destroying us and those around us.  But that is so hard to see in the moment.

That really helps me understand better then what it means to die to self, to take up the cross to follow Jesus.  We have to renounce our life, as we see it and understand it in our natural state.  That’s what it means to give up sin.

Accepting Christ feels like drowning, feels like giving up and accepting death, and then when you slip underwater you realize that you were already underwater and drowning, and now in fact you are emerging to life and light.

Culture Matters, Again

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With the reports coming out of Germany of mass coordinated assaults by Middle Eastern and North African men against German women, I once again am reminded of the importance of culture. And culture flows above all from religion. Europe’s culture is informed by hundreds and hundreds of years of Christianity, which teaches, among many other things, the equal value of women. Islam teaches no such thing, especially regarding non-Muslim women. I again urge the nation to rethink the wisdom of bringing large numbers of people with a fundamentally different culture into our country.

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Is Your Church a Den of Thieves?

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“Behold, you trust in lying words that cannot profit. Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, burn incense to Baal, and walk after other gods whom you do not know, and then come and stand before Me in this house which is called by My name, and say,`We are delivered to do all these abominations ‘?  Has this house, which is called by My name, become a den of thieves in your eyes? Behold, I, even I, have seen it,” says the LORD.
(Jer 7:8-11 NKJ)

Is your church a den of thieves?

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How to make Christ the Object of our Faith

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If I am to make Christ Himself the object of my faith, what does that actually look like?  How do I apply that?

First, by belief, trust, faith itself.  I am to resolve myself to trust Him entirely, to rest in Him fully, to lay aside my hope and desire for anything else but Christ.  I am to be convicted that every desire I have will be satisfied by Him, with the single exception of my sinful desire for autonomy.  That desire must be renounced.  But that is precisely what I do when I rest in the conviction that all good things will come to me through my union with Christ.  To rest in that conviction is to renounce my ability to secure God’s blessings by my own efforts, on my own timetable, and for my own glory.

Secondly, in my life, everything I do becomes reflective of that desire.  When I work at the work God has put in front of me, no longer do I do it out of a belief that I can bless myself through my labors.  Instead, I do so in thanksgiving that God has already secured all blessings for me through His Son.  Through the labor God has given me to do, I learn what it means to be the perfect servant, as Christ was.  I am conformed to His image.

In my human relationships, I learn to forgive, to forbear, to put the needs of others ahead of myself.  I learn to be meek and mild and submit to others.  In all these things, I become more Christlike.  I learn to love others truly, as Christ did.

In entertainment I learn to be thankful for the salvation of Christ that has redeemed the world from slavery and misery, to free us to enjoy the good things of God’s creation, including art, music and the like.  All such things are an expression of what it means to be truly human.  In an unbelieving world all art will be distorted by sin, and the Christian must therefore be careful in his use of these things, but that is true of all parts of our lives.  Even that art which is done by unbelievers is nonetheless a reflection of God’s image and a testimony to God’s grace, and can rightly be enjoyed with thankfulness by the believer.  In the appreciation of God’s goodness, I become more Christlike, as I become more thankful and joyful in who God is and the good things He has made.

In my worship, I learn most directly who Christ was and is, what He has done and is doing for me, and how I can be more conformed to His image.  In worship I receive grace from His hand, and am fed by His life.  I learn the law of God, His precepts and judgments, which if a man does them (like Christ did), he will live by them.  I learn to pray, to talk to God in close fellowship, to learn how dependent I am on Him and how good God is to bless His people.  I learn to live in fellowship with His own people.  Through the worship and the life of the church, I draw closer to Christ.

So if I desire Christ above all, I will learn to pursue all these avenues for Christ to be formed in me.