sin is illogical

Some have sent this around as the illogic of folks like Santorum. Me, I see the illogic of those supporting sin ... Santorum is right here.

occupy thoughts

I do not recommend reading Pyromaniacs for a number of reasons yet at times their thinking and posts are brilliant. Here, one of the team provides an excellent analysis of data that should give pause to those embracing the "occupy" movement. Please read the post, it's insightful and the conclusion, below, is spot on.

"So I say all that to say this: your problem is not actually on Wall Street, or Atlanta, or San Fran, or any other city. It is actually in your own heart -- and your accuser is not me and my blog-audacity, but the billions who look at you incredulously and see you complaining that you have a silver spoon in your mouth rather than a platinum one. Your problem is the problem of all mankind, which is sin. .

And the only cure for sin is repentance and faith in the only savior of men, Jesus Christ. .

So today, when you read this, don't gird up your loins to context the data: repent. Turn away from your simplistic materialism and repent."

small government

Some wise words by John Mark Reynolds ... emphasis is mine. I am always surprised when professing Christians look for answers in government but when I look at those individuals I often find fundamental differences in the Christian perspective ... how to do government is simply a symptom of those differences.

And now JMR's post ...

Economists tell us how the economy goes, but God tells us how it should go.

Christians know what God hates: oppression of the poor, stealing, and covetousness.

The rich must not oppress the poor. The rotten deals between big business and big government are an odor of death in Heaven’s nostrils. Big government will always be in the hands of looters and moochers with the money to buy favors.

Both parties reward donors with graft, favorable regulations, and special laws while ignoring the rest of America. It sickens me to see President Bush and President Obama declare some corporations “too big to fail” while the jobless rate grows. Big corporations hire lobbyists and lawyers to escape regulation. Mom and pop struggle to run a business, but are strangled by regulations designed to enshrine special favors to those in the economic aristocracy.

Most American Christians favor small government because we know that large government will always fall into the hands of those wealthy enough to buy favor. Public servants face inevitable corruption becoming bureaucrats bloated on boodle.

The power to do great good will corrupt, the power to reach utopia will corrupt absolutely.

In this sad time, Christianity offers hope of improvement, but no promise of utopia this side of paradise. Perfection is the enemy of good enough and good enough is all we can safely hope to see. The party that promises perfection today will strangle our liberty and make this life hell on earth.

Christians are content with two basic ideals.

The rich and the poor must receive equal justice before the law. Most Americans are convinced that money can buy a lawyer and that lawyers are no longer advocates of justice. The law is in the hands of sophists who will argue that good is bad for a fee.

Minority and poor defendants too often do time while rich defendants walk away. Christianity demands that the law not respect the rich more than the poor, but the prison terms given to drug offenders in the inner city compared to drug offenders from the suburbs mocks this notion.

We ask for a reformation in the law so that all Americans can anticipate an equal chance at justice. Christians reject special favors of the law for any man or woman based on wealth.

If the rich must not be favored, then the poor must not covet or steal the wealth of the rich. While the rich get no special favors, the poor cannot prosper by theft, graft, or threats. Too often the rich are forced to buy off the poor, or the false friends of the poor, with bribes.

Wealth stolen from the rich by punitive taxation is no more justice than wealth “liberated” by direct theft. An American should not face unequal taxation based only on his or her success.

It is not a crime to be rich and no virtue to be poor. It is injustice to favor the poor because they are poor just as much as to favor the rich because they are rich.

All of us should do to others as we would have them do to us. This simple idea from the mouth of the Lord Jesus Christ would protect the rich and the poor. The Golden Rule would necessitate treating all humans as humans and not as “rich” or “poor.”

As we are equal before the judgment seat of God, so we must be equal before the throne of God.

Human beings have a God given right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It is impossible for a man or woman to reach their full potential without the chance for meaningful employment.

Theodore Roosevelt was right that government must act to defend the consumer from corrupt private wealth.

Ronald Reagan was correct in asserting that states and private individuals must be given liberty from oppressive government taxation and regulation.

When we pay for our welfare today by borrowing our grandchildren’s taxes, we act like sybaritic Romans and not as patriots.

Americans would accept a higher tax load if it came with reduced government spending and a balanced budget. Both parties have refused reasonable compromise on these issues. Like Reagan, Republicans should accept a social safety net and end the fantasy of a stateless state. Like Clinton, Democrats should accept that the era of big government must end.

Christians fear gigantic states, businesses, or organizations because we put no trust in humankind. We know we are all fallible: church, state, society, and business. By dividing power as equally as possible between each sphere of society and through prophetic cries for justice, we hope to lessen the pain of broken humanity longing for justice.

We reject the utopian delusions of no state and of an omni-competent state.

American Christians reject any king, but King Jesus. We reject any theocracy before King Jesus returns, because humans would have to run it. We long for justice tempered with mercy and we will vote for the man or woman who will give us a government small enough to allow liberty, but big enough to preserve it.

kingdom power

Scot McKnight nails it. The work Kingdom has become a flabby term in our current usage ... read his article. I can only add that this is one of my frustrations with the perceived social gospel - it simply isn't the Gospel at all.

. . Too many today have abstracted the ethical ideals from Jesus’ kingdom vision, all but cut Jesus out of the picture, and then called anything that is just, peace, good and loving the “kingdom.” The result is this equation: kingdom means goodness, goodness means kingdom. Regardless of who does it. My contention would be that kingdom goodness is done by kingdom people who live under King Jesus. I applaud goodness at large. This is not a question of either or but whether or not all goodness is kingdom goodness. Some say Yes, I say No.

He continues ...

Get out your Bible and find the references to kingdom and you will discover that it refers to a society in which God’s will is done, with Jesus as the King, where the Story of Israel finds its completion in the Story of Jesus and where that same Story of Jesus shapes everyone. Kingdom refers to that Davidic hope for the earthly world where God sets up his rule in the Messiah and where people live under that Messiah as God’s redeemed and liberated and healed and loving and peaceful and just people.

Yes, feeding the poor is good and it is God’s will for this world, whoever does it. But “kingdom” refers to that special society that does good under Jesus, that society that is buried in his death and raised in his resurrection and lives that Story out in our world today. It makes no sense to me to take this word of Jesus that he used to refer to what God was doing in and through him at that crucial new juncture in time and history and use it for something else.

Very good ... and I'll add that it contains a power beyond human means. For example, Jesus didn't have fund raiser to feed the masses. He didn't recommend occupying Rome to get some government funding to feed them. He didn't send the disciples Costco with a pile of coupons. He just did a God thing ...

christianity is not socialism

I've had many people tell me Jesus was a socialist. I don't buy it. I like this from Terrell Clemmons.

Christianity: What's mine is yours.
Socialism: What's yours is mine.

Christianity: I am my brother's keeper.
Socialism: My brother is my keeper.