Bojidar Marinov writes:

The personality cult, the One Great Leader Who Leads the Masses has never been a Conservative value. It certainly has never been a Christian value. The very idea of Conservatism—and especially the American type Christian Conservatism—has always been suspicious toward a system where one person focuses the hopes and the expectations of the movement and leads them according to his will or goals. Christianity has always been firm that there is only one legitimate Leader—Jesus Christ—and He leads through His Holy Spirit. All human leaders are by default imperfect, fallible, and all of them need to be under close scrutiny and healthy criticism by the very people they lead into battle.

It is by no coincidence that we in America don’t have One Great Founding Father. Although we honor George Washington somewhat above the others, we talk about our Founding Fathers, many Fathers. It wasn’t one person that organized and led the First American Revolution, it was a constellation of local leaders who inspired, taught, encouraged their countrymen to fight against tyranny. They all contributed their share, and even though they weren’t always in agreement with each other, or sometimes even disliked one another personally, they were able to work together for the common cause, and they worked and fought like one man, with only Jesus Christ being their Leader and Captain. Compared to other revolutions in other nations, America did not have its Napoleon, nor its Bismark, nor its Lenin, or Stalin, or Mao, or Atatürk, or Hussein. It was a collective effort of free individuals, each one educated and competent and committed, and willing to contribute their talents and effort to the victory over tyranny.

Even more than that, while we talk today about those political leaders as our Founding Fathers, in reality the real leadership was in the hands of the multitude of Presbyterian, Baptist, and Congregationalist preachers and ministers in the small villages and the coastal cities of the colonies. George Washington’s army did not almost freeze to death at Valley Forge for the sheer fear or worship of him as a military hero—he was still to prove as one. The peasant boys and young  craftsmen’s apprentices were motivated by a call to a higher purpose in life; and such a call could come only from their pastors, for no politician can ever promise higher purpose in life. It was the “black regiment” of preachers who made it possible, and today we don’t even remember most of the names of those preachers who made America possible.

No, there wasn’t one person, One Leader who did it all. There was a generation of leaders with one purpose and one vision.

And just like then, today we don’t need One Great Leader to lead us.

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Related to this theologically is the biblical theme covered in There Can Only Be One.

Human talent amazes me. Totally aside from the child prodigies, we are an extremely gifted bunch. After only a couple of decades on the planet, from those who have the opportunity to apply themselves with enthusiasm to their particular area of interest, we see some incredible achievements. For the godless, this should certainly seem miraculous. But for our dark hearts it just proves how smart and wonderful we already are in ourselves. This is the ingratitude Paul speaks of.

For Christians, talent (or beauty or wealth) is just another dead giveaway of God’s existence. And God Himself almost seems to despise this early glory as a short-lived covering of wildflowers that appears suddenly after some long-awaited rain. This is the glory of youth and it is insufferably vain. It exalts itself by calling its competition dumb and ugly.

It’s even worse when we don’t grow out of it. We bury our talent, even build a civilisation upon it, and pretend there will be no reckoning. One of the characteristics of ungodly men and kingdoms is the belief that because they are strong they can do no wrong, that the process of maturation through history, under the shaping hands of God, is no longer (or never was) necessary. [1] They think they are springs instead of channels.

Fools like this refuse correction. Fools like Obama neither learn from history nor listen to sound advice. Fools like Dawkins might postulate about future evolution for mankind, but in their hearts they revel in the idea that they are the gold at the end of the refining process. While the gifted, gilded and good-looking regard their talents, heredity or inheritance as personal achievements, the Spirit-led come to see themselves as good bread baked by God to be broken.

The faithful always become aware of this. By the Spirit, they know correction and humility. They understand that this willingness to be broken is our very hold on the future. Death is a door to the greater glory of resurrection. Any institution or administration that claims to have arrived, that needs no further grace from God, is the one that trades in God as a commodity. It loves to turn stones into bread, cast out demons in Jesus’ name, and buy the power of the Spirit with cold, hard cash.

But history is a series of deaths and resurrections, from glory to glory, and the only way to escape this humiliating process is to disconnect yourself from history and replace it with a fiction that puts you out of the reach of the correcting Hand of God. You defiantly hop off the unstoppable eschatological train and are left forever standing at the station. The Kiplingesque story of evolution puts atheists out of God’s reach, so they think. Liberal historians have worked hard to put western civilisation out of God’s reach.

This self-exaltation over actual history is also the key to understanding the Reformation. Jeff Meyers says:

What we call the Reformation was in truth one of the biggest death-and-resurrection events for all the regional churches in the Middle Ages. But it wasn’t the first. The church had been suffering and dying, humbly, periodically, in various regions for many years. This produced reform in the church, and advanced Christian culture as well. Sometimes Rome participated in these events. A reforming pope would promulgate needed corrections. But later on, especially, Rome became the enemy of the prophetic movement of the Spirit through the Word of God to bring death and resurrection to the churches. Rome solidified her opposition at Trent, where she proclaimed herself to be the “eschatologically arrived,” glorified church. Bad move.

[Here's] a reading from Karl Barth. Barth has some good things to say. He’s not always wrong. He latches onto a problem that is really bedeviling our communities right now… All this talk about community, community. Of course, in the Roman Catholic Church it’s the body, the congregation. He says there’s a danger in this, and it consists in

“an exaggerated estimate of the greatness of the community, in consequence of an equally exaggerated estimate of its present existence in relation to the future. Or, as we may also say, of a failure to recognise the criticism of the Holy Spirit, whose work keeps the community moving toward its Lord in dissatisfaction with its present condition. When this is not perceived, the community, or “the church” as it loves to call itself, forgets that it is on the march, and that the inauguration of the consummation is still to come. Instead of bearing witness to the authority of Jesus, it invests itself with its own authority, attributing absolute perfection to its order and cultus and dogma, and interpreting historical progress as the automatic development of the divine truth incarnate in itself. Thus, at each successive stage of its development, it acts and speaks as if it were itself permitted and commanded to blow the last trumpet now. Its doctrine, at any given moment, is the normative voice of Jesus and His apostles. Its tradition perpetuates the original apostolic witness, claiming equal dignity and attention. But in these circumstances, what place is there for Christian hope? The church of Rome is the typical form of this de-eschatologised church.”

No eschatology, no movement, no march, no continuation, no humility, no acceptance of the Spirit’s criticism through the Word of God and the prophetic voice of people in the church. We’re here. We’re it. It’s us. Submit to us, our tradition, our dogma. The Roman Church, I pray, will be reformed some day, maybe a thousand years from now. She is not the arrived church. [2]

Before the Reformation, things were dark for those with the Spirit. It seemed there was no hope for a corrupted Christianity.

When things are dark, and unbroken men fancy themselves as gods, brave men of faith pick up the cross as a door and walk through it. They drag their own flesh through it, kicking and screaming. And the unbroken kingdoms inevitably get dragged kicking and screaming through it in their glorious eschatological train. This is our work, and in its every occurrence, no matter how mundane, we transform the world.

For Christians, it’s easier to hold onto our lives loosely. Like Abraham, we know something better awaits us. As Tozer puts it, we know “the blessedness of possessing nothing.” But we also need to hold onto our confessions, traditions and institutions wisely but loosely. Until the last day, these too can only ever be baby sacs and wineskins.

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[1] See also The Significance of Jabal and Jubal, Omega Males, Where the Wild Things Were, and Knowledge and Wisdom.
[2] Jeffrey Meyers, On the Significance of Martin Luther’s Name Change, “The Necessity of the Reformation,” 2010 Auburn Avenue Pastors Conference. Series available from Auburn Avenue Media.

“Let his days be few, and let another take his office.” Psalm 109:8

The imprecatory Psalms seem to contradict the instruction of Christ to love our enemies. Ben Myers recently noted a campaign to pray for President Obama, to pray Psalm 109:8, that is:

Apparently some Southern Baptist pastors have been using Psalm 109:8 as a prayer for Obama’s death: “May his days be few; may another take his place of leadership. May his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow.” This even inspired a line of creepy bumper stickers and T-shirts that read “Pray for Obama.”

 One of these pastors says: “You’re going to tell me that I’m supposed to pray for the socialist devil, murderer, infanticide, who wants to see young children, and he wants to see babies killed through abortion and partial-birth abortion and all these different things. Nope. I’m not gonna pray for his good. I’m going to pray that he dies and goes to hell.”

I replied:

Yes, these guys are nuts, but…

Modern Christians fail to understand the need for imprecatory prayer. When leaders do evil, praying for God’s judgment is what we are called to do. That is our ministry. We are Spirit-filled elders with access to the true throneroom. When we pray, in unity, it changes history. 

We are to obey those in power, and we are also to leave vengeance to God. Praying for judgment upon a leader with bloodlust of any kind (whether murdering civilians overseas or slaughtering the unborn) is godly ministry. Bombing abortion clinics is not. 

These bumper sticker guys, despite the gimmick, and the attitude Hauerwas describes, are correct. But what action would Hauerwas advocate? To withhold such judgment is to hand your culture over to Satan. Biblically, there is such a thing as good death. It is a judicial death to be carried out by the state. [1]

When you actually read the offending psalm, it seems like these politically incorrect gents picked the least offensive verse. Its context appears to make matters even worse.

One commenter quoted Scot McKnight with a possible resolution:

“Here’s the sad and tragic irony: interpreters today (Goldingay, Alter) agree that vv. 6-19 are the words of the opponents, the accusers, the enemies of God’s king (David) and not the words of the man of God! … In other words, these folks have clipped — probably reading the psalm mistakenly — words from the opponents of God and used for themselves.”

This is a possibility. The accusers are plural, yet the curses are invoked upon a single man. Moreover, they are Covenant curses for crimes against God’s Law. We know David did not commit these crimes. Like Satan the arch accuser, like Job’s accusers, and like those who accused Jesus, the crimes for which they invoke the curses are slanderous lies.

But even this theory backfires against those who doubt the lawfulness of imprecatory prayer, for after recounting the curses, David says:

“Let this be the Lord’s reward to my accusers, and to those who speak evil against my person.”

David might not have been the one who spoke the curses, but he did ask that these same curses would fall upon his accusers. This is exactly what happened to Jesus’ accusers. The Covenant curses fell and they were wiped off the face of the earth. The great Accuser was thrown down “like lightning” and replaced with the Advocate.

“I will greatly praise the LORD with my mouth;
Yes, I will praise Him among the multitude.
For He shall stand at the right hand of the poor,
To save him from those who condemn him. “

So, after some thought, it seems like both sides might have this psalm wrong. It is not a psalm about vengeance but about vindication. Just as Paul waited for the Day of the Lord in AD70 to reveal who were the true “sons of God” (ie. the Christians or the Jews/Judaisers), David waited for the Lord’s judgment to reveal his innocence. We know that he was vindicated against his enemies. Even the ones he failed to destroy were eliminated wisely and efficiently by his Covenant-successor, Solomon.

But then, what are we to do with this song?

The best conclusion might be that, like all of the Old Testament, application takes wisdom. Not all of the Bible is “timeless.” Much of it actually is contextual. That sort of “Greek” thinking leads not only to this wooden quoting of single verses to put on T-shirts and bumper stickers, but to things like the Jews’ manufactured Oral Law or the idolising of creeds and traditions. It leaves no room for growth. James Jordan writes:

“The Jews and the Circumcision rightly said that God had given the Law and that the old arrangement was good. That’s true: It was good as long as we were children. But now we must move on toward adulthood. This movement into the future was what is rejected by the Jews and the Circumcision. For them, all time was the same, and there is no progress in history. They had become philosophers, treating the Law as a timeless ideal instead of as rules for children in their home.

This is how all paganism thinks. For them, time and change are evils. The writings of Mircea Eliade explore this hostility to time in depth. The pagan will admit to eternal cycles, but not to any real progress or maturation in history and biography. It is for this reason that pagans never grow up. They never progress beyond childhood and adolescence. Any missionary will tell you this, that the heathen are just like children. Greek philosophy and literature also never progresses beyond adolescence and Homer’s two great poems are about adolescents. Stuck in the time before marriage, the Greeks became homosexuals. Because this hostility to God’s plan is part of our sinful nature, we find that the Church repeatedly falls into the same way of thinking…

While it is true that a major sin is to cling to the past, to the old way, and not embrace the new birth and the new marriage, it is also possible to move into a new future that is a false future. Think of adolescence. Our very bodies impel us toward a new relationship with a member of the opposite sex. It is possible to enter a sinful future by having sex without marrying first, to seize forbidden fruit. It is possible to leave home in a rebellious way.

We see this phenomenon in a very striking way in the New Testament history. The fact is that what we call the Old Testament was not complete, for the completion awaited the New Testament writings. In the Restoration era, the Jews became wonderfully enamoured with the Bible and studied it constantly. At some deep level of their psyche they became conscious that it was incomplete. But then they jumped the gun and created their own new testament, their own completion of the Bible. This was the demonic Oral Law tradition that Jesus fought, which was eventually written down as the Mishnah and is commented upon in the Talmuds. Thus, they were impelled forward, but they refused to remain patient.

This false future was really no future at all. The Oral Law is not a new kingdom, but a perversion of the old. The Law of God was taken as timeless truths, as an Ideal, on the model of Greek philosophy, and then turned in upon itself to generate new laws in order to create a perfect, static timeless order, a Jewish version of Plato’s Republic and Laws. Thus, the Oral Law provided nothing new at all, but rather reflected a complete rejection of time and history.” [2]

The Bible is anchored in history for a people growing from childhood to maturity. New situations and applications arise to make us use our noggins (as the Jews were forced to do after the exile). But the Bible also makes clear what is obsolete and what is not, like any good parent. The Covenant under which David lived is not the New Covenant, although the latter grew out of the former. The New Covenant, like the Restoration Covenant, calls for greater maturity than its predecessor. Things aren’t quite as cut-and-dried once we are out of school; there’s no longer any truant officer to harass us if we don’t attend lectures.

However, this factor certainly leaves the Scriptures open to abuse from both sides, not just the hardliners. Both sides use isolated Bible verses as simplistic slogans. For the fuzzy-thinking liberal theologian, the gradual revelation of truth is a handy excuse to make “obsolete” the very delineations and categories inherent in the created order (ie. male and female)– the ones that offend their modern sensibilities, anyway. That is not honest exegesis. [3] It is not wisdom, either. They invoke the Covenant curses upon themselves, twisting the Scriptures to their own destruction. Being a biblical Covenant, even the New Covenant has both blessings and curses. This has more to do with those within the church than those without.

Timeless truth is a tree. The trunk is not the branch is not the fruit, yet they are all parts of the whole. President Obama is not the king of Israel, nor his accuser, but just as the Jews were priests within Ezekiel’s Jew-Gentile Temple, Christians are a royal priesthood in a New Jerusalem that is gradually conquering the world. When a Gentile empire turned bad, God eventually replaced it. We live in a situation that is similar and yet even wider in its scope. Our “oikoumene” is global. Governing it by prayer requires the wisdom found only in Christ. We no longer have to draw lots. We have the Spirit of God.

Any leader who rejects the lordship of Christ (by his actions and policies) is an enemy of Christ and His people. This is the reign of Christ and we are required to pray for those whom He has put in government. We blindly follow neither the sycophants of the left or the right. Our goal is the vindication of Jesus Christ and His gospel. If this means asking God to bring the slanderous curses of unrepentant murderers down upon their own heads, so be it. God’s judgment is exactly that—a judgment. He chooses between the goats with wisdom beyond our understanding. It is God’s call. Jacob’s Pharaoh was converted. Moses’ Pharaoh was hardened. In both cases, the people of God were vindicated. [4]

If the slanderers repent, we sing with the angels and welcome them into the holy city. If they harden their hearts, we also sing. We sing like the firstfruits church sang over the destruction of the Jezebel-city who twice let the blood of innocents run freely in her streets.

So, pray for President Obama with the wisdom of greater Solomon, Christ. Pray that both His love and His truth would be vindicated.

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[1] See Good Death – 7 and Dashing Her Little Ones.
[2] Excerpts from James B. Jordan, From Bread to Wine, Toward a More Biblical Liturgical Theology. Booklet available from www.biblicalhorizons.com
[3] See Timeless Truths?
[4] We could also mention the contrast between Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar. Also, the book of Esther contains one of my favourite examples of God’s people praying for a leader.

During the 2008 election campaign, I remember being chastised for suggesting that a  McCain/Palin administration was the best choice off a “bad-or-worse” menu. As Doug Wilson put it, it was a choice between heading for the cliff at 5mph or 100mph.

It amazed me how many Christians were sucked in by Barack Obama’s smooth (and forked) tongue, er, teleprompter. They just stared at the cobra and discounted the extremely worrying company he keeps and the lack of just about any good reason to allow him to “govern the free world.” Nothing personal, but either he is an imbecile or a cunning enemy. There are simply no other choices.

Perhaps Chuck Norris should be president. He is no fool. Here is his down-to-earth fact-and-figures assessment of The Fool on the Hill’s disastrous first year in office. Like Obama or not, this is some distressing report card, and, like it or not, his performance affects us all.

State of the Union: Grade F

“Immediately, the Spirit drove Him into the wilderness.” —Mark 1:12

NOTE: THIS POST HAS BEEN REMIXED AND INCLUDED IN GOD’S KITCHEN.

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[1] My Utmost For His Highest, March 14th.
[2] The Old Covenant Day of Atonement (covering) could only put the lid on the trash can and spray a fragrant deodorant around (incense). Jesus came to take out (ekballo) the trash.
[3] James B. Jordan, Obama As Fool. There is some talk now about Obama’s foreign policy being “cruciform.” We’ll see how this pans out.

Solomon Snubs Ally with Trashy Gift

When I was in sales, I was taught that it takes twelve times as much energy to gain a new client as it does to keep an existing one by letting them know they are not taken for granted. Same goes in geopolitics.

James Jordan writes:

One way to understand the relevance of Egypt [during Solomon's reign] is to contrast Egypt with Tyre. Hiram, king of Tyre, had been a loyal ally of David. He loved David. He clearly was a converted man. When Solomon came to the throne, Hiram could not do enough for him. He volunteered to help build the Temple, because Israel’s God was his God also (1 Kings 5). He showered Solomon with gifts (1 Kings 9:11, 14). If there was any nation Solomon should have allied with, it was Tyre.

Yet, Solomon gave Hiram a cheap and insulting present, and offended him (1 Kings 9:11-12; 2 Chronicles 8:2). Solomon evidently thought his relationship with Hiram was secure, and so did not try to please him. (I am reminded of how the “conservative” Reagan and Bush administrations constantly offend their Christian supporters–evidently because they regard them as “in their pocket–while they pursue the goodwill of liberals and degenerates.)…

Moses had forbidden the kings to engage in horse trading with Egypt (Deuteronomy 17:16). Solomon not only got horses from Egypt, but became a middle-man for horses between Egypt and other nations (1 Kings 10:26-29)… Solomon’s equine enterprise actively supplied the king of Syria with horses (1 Kings 10:29). Shortly thereafter, Syria was taken over by a man who hated the house of David, and who used those horses to plague Israel (1 Kings 11:23-25)…

Solomon ignored his friends (the Lord and Hiram) while he courted and curried favour with his enemies (Syria and Egypt). The result was disastrous to the nation.

Solomon’s Disastrous Geopolitics

“When a man’s ways please the Lord, He maketh even his enemies to be at peace with him.” — Proverbs 16:7

“One of the most ominous events of modern history is quietly unfolding. Social science and economics come together to declare a looming demographic winter which threatens to have catastrophic social and economic consequences.”

If the data this documentary presents holds up, most of Obama’s “change” is based on hysteria that is between 1 and 3 decades old and totally debunked. The only thing going for these suicidal policies is political correctness. A good example is a recent Outloud Opinion podcast which covered the baseless ideology behind Obama’s aggressive pro-abortion policy, highlighting just one of the nutcase extremists the President continues to surround himself with.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius tried to reassure citizens in New Orleans this week that Obamacare bureaucrats will make sound medical decisions for all Americans. She failed. Under the government-run plan, she promised, a team of health care experts will recommend what should be covered: “I think it would be wise to let science guide what the best health care package is.”

Gulp. It’s the Obama administration’s view of sound “science” that should send chills down patients’ spines. Case in point: The president’s prestigious science czar, John Holdren, refuses to answer questions about his radical published work on population control over the last 30 years.

Last week, I called the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy to press Holdren on his views about forced abortions and mass sterilizations; his purported disavowal of “Ecoscience,” the 1977 book he co-authored with population control zealots Paul and Anne Ehrlich; and his continued embrace of forced-abortion advocate and eugenics guru Harrison Brown, whom he credits with inspiring him to become a scientist.

After investigative bloggers and this column reprinted extensive excerpts from “Ecoscience,” which mused openly about putting sterilants in the water supply to make women infertile and engineering society by taking away babies from undesirables and subjecting them to government-mandated abortions, the White House issued a statement from Holdren last week denying he embraced those proposals. The Ehrlichs challenged critics to read their and Holdren’s more recent research and works.

Well, I did read one of Holdren’s recent works. It revealed his clingy reverence for, and allegiance to, the gurus of population control authoritarianism. He’s just gotten smarter about cloaking it behind global warming hysteria… [1]

It seems Marxism is not the only clapped-out, historically and empirically unsupportable leftist ideology that has taken over the White House.

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[1] Michelle Malkin, Ghoulish Science Plus Obamacare Equals Health Hazard.