Chaos and Mayhem

William Shirer, witness to what was the Third Reich and author of the “Rise and Fall of the Third Reich,” once made an interesting and insightful comment about Germans as they stood by watching Hitler and his rise to power. “How did it happen that an ancient and cultured people steeped in Christianity, cultivating the arts and sciences, preeminent in technology who gave us Luther and Kant, Bach and Beethoven, Gorta and Einstein, collapsed into savage barbarism in the mid-20^th century?”

Busybodies For All!

The human mind is a fickle thing. It will become captivated by just about anything whether worthy of such attention or not, at least for a little while. The current political season is a great example of such a tendency. It has been just over a month since Kamala Harris managed to bump Joe Biden off the Democrat Party ticket, without winning a single primary vote, and become the party’s new presidential candidate. As if by magic, overnight she went from having an approval rating that was even lower than Biden’s (somewhere in the 20’s) to quickly becoming the darling of the left. From being disregarded and soundly criticized even by the leftist media, to becoming the superwoman of everyone’s dreams.

"Ignorance is Strength"

We often hear people speak about George Orwell's famous book "1984." In the book, the motto of the fictitious country (Oceania) that is at the center of the story in the book was that "War is peace," "Freedom is slavery," "Ignorance is strength." When one witnesses the current political landscape in our land, one can be forgiven for believing that the majority of people in our society have fallen prey to this motto. And this gullibility for such ideas is especially prominent among people who hold left of center political views.

The Mind of Christ

This past week (two Sundays ago), I spoke from the pulpit about the mind of Christ and what it means for us as Christians. I mentioned that Paul spoke of the mind of Christ in the context of that attitude serving as the ultimate example for us to follow. What is the mind of Christ? We would ask. We are, thankfully, not left to wonder just what Christ's mind and attitude really are.

Progressing...Right Into The Grave

One of the most common things that those on the left side of the ideological divide do is to engage in the  constant use of euphemisms. It is not abortion, or more accurate the murder of unborn children, it's "reproductive rights." It's not the mutilation, castration, and destruction of the bodies of children, it's "gender affirming care." There are many others, but these are enough to get the point across. The end goal is to change language to such an extent that words really don't mean anything anymore. The better to obfuscate and confuse so that the remaking of our society continues in the background.

"It's Not Us In Here, It's Them Out There"

Human nature is a pesky thing. The natural tendency that man has is to always look at the problems of our society or his own personal ones and point his finger at someone else. Even within our own circles of influence, our home, our friends, our workplaces, that urge to play the blame game does not change. This tendency to blame others began at the dawn of human history. Remember what Adam said to God when He came looking for him and Eve after they had sinned: "the woman you gave me," you remember the rest. And I'm sure that you have witnessed little children time and time again blaming their siblings or their little friends for what they themselves did wrong.

Celebrating Sin!

"But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money  boastful, arrogant, slanderers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God" (1 Timothy 3:1-4).

The annual orgy that is "Pride Month" is once again in full swing. For those who may have spent the last 20 years of so under a rock or somewhere in the wilderness, June has been proclaimed gay pride month every year since Bill Clinton officially declared that the anniversary of the Stonewall riots would be celebrated and remembered back in 1999. Since then, every June has been set aside for a celebration of perversion. Only recently, however, has this "celebration" become so widespread; there is now even an international "LGBT Pride Day" which is commemorated on June 28th every year. Thus, even the rest of the world has been made complicit in celebrating perversion and pride.

The Morally Upside Down Society

There is an urban legend that says that, when the British surrendered to the Continental Army at Yorktown (the battle that effectively ended the war) during the Revolutionary War, their band played "The World Turned Upside Down." Whether this story is true or not, we cannot deny that today we are most assuredly living in the upside down society. A few examples of this trend will suffice to show that our society is under the judgment of God and in the process has been rendered, with few exceptions, unable to think clearly.

"Money, Money, Money, Money...Money!"

The federal government has just unveiled the annual farce that is called the federal budget. And guess what? No, it's not just that they want more money. That should go without saying. What is surprising about the new budget is that it calls for over $7 trillion dollars in spending. That may not mean much to many people simply because the numbers have long ago gotten so large, that we just can't even make sense of the figure.

"They Do Listen!"

One of the issues that affects the church at all times and in every place, is the influence that society has upon it. We often speak of the influence that the church should have on society, but we seldom stop to think about how much the church is being changed and, at times even molded in the image of the unbelieving world around it. It is important to remember, as well, that Christians did not just appear out of nothing and drop into the church. We all come from a particular environment, and that environment, like it or not, has had, and to a certain extent continues to have, an influence on us.

How is God the Foundation of All Knowledge?

One of the ways in which we know that there is a God, is the fact that without Him man cannot know anything. It is because there is a God that we can understand facts, figures, and anything else. During a recent Bible study, we discussed the fact that the secular mind thinks of time as random. In other words, there is no rhyme or reason to time, events, actions; they just simply exist for no particular purpose and with no particular end. That is why evolutionary science so-called, is unable to truly know the truth about the origins of the universe and how it functions. Sure, scientist may know certain things about the universe, but they only know those things because there is a God who has provided order for the universe and Who, unbeknown to the evolutionist, has provided him the ability to know those truths. A totally random, purposeless creation would be impossible to understand simply because what is true today would no longer be true tomorrow. We see this reality in how scientists are constantly changing the age of the universe because to believe that the universe is random will necessarily result in random, unordered "knowledge." 

As Christians we are not left at the mercy of random, unguided, impersonal processes. We have a personal God who is working within time to bring about His good purposes. Nothing that takes place is by chance. We don't have "luck," we know that all that happens is ordered by divine providence (Romans 8:28). This truth gives us great comfort as we face the difficulties of life. Not only do we know that what is taking place at any given time is ordained by God, but we also understand that the end of these events, and even life in general, is a glorious one in the presence of our Lord. We have hope, and knowledge, because we have a God who has given us hope and who is Himself a God of knowledge. With this in mind, we can live victorious lives that will be a testimony to His grace and love.

 "Truth itself is grounded in God. Truths are things we can discover, what philosophers call truth propositions, but they also have the properties of thought, but they can't be our thoughts because truth is what it is regardless of how we think about it. A good argument can be made that truths are divine thoughts and you can't have knowledge without truth and so in so far as truth depends on God, knowledge also depends on God."