Jan 5 2011

How to Be Really Evil

“All these things I will give You if You will fall down and worship me.”

dictator.

The new atheists believe Christianity is a wet paper bag, and they are intent on punching their way out of it. They don’t understand that Christianity is the source of blessing, and that through their unbelief they are its bastard (or mutant) children. They are unlike the old atheists. Their moral outrages are not at all consistent with their nihilistic beliefs.

The truly evil are the ones who do understand the integrating, empowering, culture-building force of Christianity, and shamelessly steal it for their own ends. Satan knows the Scriptures. His policy isn’t scorched earth. His desire is a thorny crop of his own, and for that he must imitate Covenant hierarchy – a totus Diabolus. An authority structure has the potential for far more carnage than anarchy does, especially one with a dictatorial “Covenant succession” built-in.

It is a strange fact that many tinpot dictators, many terrorists, many proponents of promising but destructive modern philosophies, were products of a Western education. Or is it so strange? Counterfeiters invest a lot of time in studying the real tender before they manufacture their own currency, otherwise their plans will fail. The finished product is identical but for two things: the source of authority (Head); and the end result on the community (Body). Gary North writes:

“Satan needs a chain of command in order to exercise power. Thus, in order to create the greatest havoc for the church, Satan and his followers need to imitate the church. Like the child who needs to sit on his father’s lap in order to slap him, so does the rebel need a crude imitation of God’s dominion theology in order to exercise power. A child who rejects the idea of his father’s lap cannot seriously hope to slap him. The anti-Christian has officially adopted an “anti-lap” theory of existence. He admits no cause-and-effect relationship between lap and slap. To the extent that he acts consistently with this view, he becomes impotent to attack God’s people.

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Dec 13 2010

Our Hideous Weakness

josephinterprets

“Deny that God speaks to any area of life, and you have denied God’s jurisdiction in that area of life.”

A very intelligent Christian recently posed the question, “What will be the most pressing intellectual challenge facing the church over the next 50 years?” What if the biggest challenge facing the church is not intellectual at all, but ethical. [1]

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