Our Brain-Dead Culture - Ode to Joey

Our culture is brain-dead. Yes there is entertainment, a great deal of it, in film, music, art, literature; but that's because culture is human, and humans have talent, and the best of the human herd are taken to the front of the pack and yoked together to be set up as our idols in the progressive march "forward".

So show us the way Jay-z and Beyoncé.

Wasn't it Joseph Stalin who proclaimed that if he could rule Hollywood he could rule the world? So that's what we want, 20 million dead in your gulags? In your prison camps? In your beloved Siberia? Is that what we want? Your camps Joey, weren't they for the non-conformists, the freedom-loving, and generally all who failed to march to your progressive drum-beat? Oh how you could not tolerate the tolerant!

But we know who your war was really against. You hated God more than anything else didn't you Joey? Because you weren't Him. Oh how you wanted to be Him, but you died didn't you Joey and God didn't, so you're mad. If we could peel back your grave, we'd find your angry face, your paranoid eyes, your clenched fist staring back at us, wouldn't we Joey? But beyond us, toward the God who sits in the heavens, right Joey? While you are in the grave - the man of "steel", rusting like an axe.

Just like all the progressives - they are mad because God is alive, and you just can't seem to kill Him - not with your talent, your sway, your swagger, your money or your fame.

In the meantime, we'll appreciate the music, art, literature, the culture of our shared humanness. But we'll feel your pulse and hope for the best, knowing all the while our culture is still brain-dead. And God is still alive.

Sorry Jay-z, Beyoncé, Joey.

In the end, you lose.

A Steady, Relentless Faith - Thoughts on Christian Tolerance

We tend to be creatures who run most of our lives on "autopilot", barely conscious of our selves, the nature of our relationships, God above or any other thought-worthy occupation.

Yet our fast slipping culture is always about the business of creating something of a reaction in the minds of Christians, both conscious and unselfconscious. This is often precisely the point when the Church gets into trouble. Being yet short of her ultimate goal, "without spot or blemish", she betrays that all-too-human character trait of imbalance, of running to extremes and making sudden assumptions of self-immutability (think of Y-2k).

A major example of this tendency toward overreaction is when the culture was slipping rapidly in the period 1890-1945 or so. Post-Darwin, post-Enlightenment, post-Industrial Revolution and post 2nd Great Awakening, we needed a new theology. And the progressive theological establishments in Europe (especially Germany) were more than happy to oblige.

As the liberal theological debates intensified into the 1920s, a major movement was born which eventually embraced the moniker of Christian Fundamentalism. This reactionary movement, combining the revivalism of the Finney era, the camp and conference movement of the western frontier expansion, along with its step-child Premillenialism became a spiritual retreat from the culture, became anti-culture, and eventually became something of a ghetto into which the faithful retreated in order to protect and preserve that which they believed were the non-negotiable "fundamentals" of the Christian faith. The self-described character trait of "faithful" which they embraced was seen as "intolerant" by the larger culture undergoing slippage.

This Fundamentalism resulted in an encased, closed-minded, inbred expression of the "way true of Jesus", to the neglect and ignorance of the "true way of Jesus". Correct doctrine and being "right" trumped all. Thus american Christianity split into two thought streams - the Fundamentalists with the trademark "we are right, the whole world is wrong, and we really don't care that much about love, thank you", and the reaction to Fundamentalism, Evangelicalism in it's varied, shifting forms, always seeking to become more "relevant" to the culture, usually by conforming itself to it.

Progressive strains of Evangelicalism, in an attempt to be relevant to the culture, tend to morph into something amorphous, edge-less, with few boundaries and void of the "saltiness" that Jesus declared without which, you become "useless to men".

Somewhere in the middle of these two streams is truth - a Jesus-shaped tolerance and relevance that is, if nothing else, steady as it is relentless.

In the face of fast-paced cultural slippage ("Progressivism"), the place of the believer is not to react in fear, pulling out of the marketplace, taking our toys and hiding in our Christian ghettos hoping the thing will blow over. Nor is it to wave a big banner of "I'm a Christian, but I'm okay- I don't believe like the others! I like Che Guavara!", etc, etc.

The truth is in-between, in the way that Jesus walked, which in the end is not hard to determine. He blasted the "fundamentalists" of His day. When He even mentioned a place called Hell it was in the context of these two types of characters: the established, unteachable religious class and those who acknowledged truth, but allowed the "saltiness" and the hard edges to be ground to nothing. So while he certainly was no hide-your-head-in-the-sand Fundamentalist, neither was he an Occupy Movement loving progressive making sure the culture was aware that He was not like those other "mean-spirited" Christians, so intolerant.

A Jesus-shaped tolerance comes with maturity, reflection and a steady, relentless faith. Such can go neither to the bunker with the Fundamentalists, nor let the teeth of the "salty" elements of the Gospel slip through in an effort to be politically correct, "cool" and accepted by the culture.

A steady, relentless faith, alive, awake, and genuine, is a Jesus-shaped faith marked by love, compassion, hope AND truth.

What About my "Rights"?

The recent school shootings and subsequent threat to our 2nd Amendment rights is triggering a reactionary spirit on both sides of the issue. Those who fear the erosion of second Amendment rights would do well to broaden the scope of their thoughts to the larger concept of "rights" in general, for it is not just the 2nd Amendment which is at stake, but the first, fourth, tenth, etc, etc.

When we ask the question, "what really are my rights?" we can go directly to our nation's foundational documents and get a pretty good, broad-based idea of what they are. They are written for all to see.

However, if you were born in a different culture, different country, a different time, say under the bloody tyrant, Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s, or modern day North Korea your discussion about "rights" would be a very different thing altogether. In a day of the ascendancy of tyranny, individual rights and liberties are more than ever subject to the whims and dictates of those in the ascendancy. We have come to such a day in our great but dying country.

So in addressing the larger subject of "rights" - their identity, source and permanence, it seems necessary to divide the subject into two major categories.

There are rights that are derived from our position as citizens of a particular generation, geography, ethnicity, nationality, and other variables which all play into the identification and exercise of rights. These "derived" or secondary rights are not universal, nor are they permanent. They are subject to the turnings, and upheavals of the nations and the peoples themselves. What may be considered to be a "right" one day may not be a right at all the next day. In America, the highest court of appeals from which we may demand free exercise of our rights is the Constitution of the United States.

So what about permanent, universal rights? Are there none of those? In other words, does mankind, as a race possess any universal rights that can and are exercised by all men and women, everywhere, in every generation and every culture? Are there no what we might call, "essential", "universal", or "original" rights that I can claim? Do I not have a right to life? Private property, the pursuit of happiness? The answer is no, not as part of your essential or original rights. To what court will you appeal if you are killed by disease or accident in the prime of life? When and by whom were you granted such a right? Nor do you have the right to freedom from slavery, private property, happy, healthy children, financial stability, a happy marriage, good neighbors and on and on the list goes. You are promised the right to none of this as a permanent, foundational, universal right. Some of these rights may exist in some form or another as a set of secondary, or derived rights but it depends on the nation wherein you exist, and on the current social-political climate of that nation. As Americans under a leftist ascendancy, we are realizing a fundamental erosion of our derived or secondary rights.

But as humans, regardless of place of citizenship or geopolitical situation, or generation, or culture, we do enjoy whatever universal, essential or primary rights we have, don't we? Actually the whole range of universal, essential "rights" can really be boiled down to just one actual right. It is a right pictured from Genesis to Revelation. The Apostle John puts it this way: "But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God," (John 1:12). We may call this one, essential, universal "right", the "right to life in God". That's what John is describing here. It is the one thing we can insist, can take to the highest court and demand that we have it - and that demand is in fact, the most basic act of faith. It is a demand that will always be honored, for He says, "He who comes to me I will in no wise, cast out."

From Genesis to Revelation, this theme is a thread that ties the narrative of God together in a beautiful and striking manner.

Beginning in the pre-fall, pristine experience of man in the Garden, he was given this right to life, this freedom to enjoy life. He was given access to the trees of the garden, and primarily to the "tree of life" which was in the midst of the garden. By partaking of this tree of life, he enjoyed the benefit of enduring life. He had the "right" to life. He partook of that which God provided, and thus enjoyed the life of God himself. Adam did not have the ability to perpetually sustain his own life, but was dependent on something outside of himself for life. That life was his right and it was his privilege.

After the fall, man was banished from the Garden and forfeited his access to the tree of life. But that didn't mean that the one essential, universal "right" itself was forfeited. The picture of man exercising his one basic right comes into sharp focus in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Not only is the term "right" (gr. exousia) used in John's text quoted previously, "to those He gave the 'right' to become sons of God", but repeatedly Jesus takes up this theme urging his countrymen to "come, eat of My flesh and have life in yourselves," and "I am the Bread of life". making both points, that man is not able to sustain his own life, and also that man has an unswerving, universal, unconditional "right" to get that life directly from God. In Jesus life, we have the tree of life, and an unmitigated right to that tree.

Finally the narrative finds it's resting place in the end chapter of the bible where we read of those who have "washed their robes, so that they may have the right (gr. exousia) to the tree of life and that they may enter the city by the gates. (Revelation 22:14). In this scene all of the elements come together. You have paradise restored, man exercising his one basic right, his right to life in God in the presence of God and the Lamb for unnumbered eternities.

in summary, our derived or secondary rights are to be cherished, fought for, preserved, exercised and enjoyed so long as we have them. But they are not, of themselves permanent or unwavering. Like a raging beast, the pressure of "Progressivism" which is at it's heart Marxism, which is at it's heart, Atheism, which is at its heart Statism, always needs to be beaten back in America. It has in it's crosshairs, our cherished rights, freedoms and liberties. Thank God there is one right this juggernaut can never trample - our right to the Tree of Life, who is Jesus, This, our one true right means we will never be defeated ultimately. A skirmish here, a battle there...a right preserved here, one lost there, but we cannot lose the war.

So what are our secondary or derived rights in the end? Given that they are neither permanent nor universal, we should look at them more as privileges, or even as blessings. Every day the Father of Lights showers down His blessings upon us. We simply enjoy them, cherish them as we gather them up from the path of life. One day the path may be narrow, the blessings not so richly strewn. Who are we to murmur? We have our true right that can be enjoyed under any circumstances, any outward limitations.

There was a day when our nation was very mindful, and held out great honor to the essential "right" and to the right-giver. That's how we as a nation came to enjoy such a richness of secondary, derived rights. That was a time that gave birth to the bill of "rights" and spoke of the right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness". And so it goes. When the essential right is neglected, we forfeit our secondary rights. But the opposite is true as well. Let's make sure we're fighting the right battle.