by Marc Hays

It comes as no surprise to hear that the 6^th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against the Romeike’s continued asylum in these United States.   Judge Jeffrey S. Sutton, a George W. Bush administration appointee, said, “Germany is not forbidding home-schooling … It’s not like saying you can’t teach them at home in the evenings.”  This is, of course, utter nonsense, but that is not surprising either.  “W” appointed him.  Michael Farris of the Home School Legal Defense Association related this type of thinking to telling a Jew that their children could eat kosher at home every evening even though the state will be feeding them bacon for 6 hours per day for 180 days per year.  How is that eating kosher?  How is forcing Christians to subjugate their children to the religion of the German state not religious persecution? If you think Germany does not have a state religion, you can read more about that here.

This news comes to us as bad news, and it is.  Anytime a God-ordained liberty, like a father raising his children (Deut. 6), loses to tyranny, it’s bad news, and it’s bad news for all of us.  This ruling is indicative of our court system, our attorney general, our president and his administration, but worse yet is that they don’t define us.  We define them. The people of the United States elected Barak Hussein Obama to four more years.  President George W. Bush appointed Judge Sutton to his bench.  We granted them these powers, so they are indicative of us as a nation.

So, this is bad news, but this is not the end of the story.  (more…)

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By Uri Brito

In the best sense of the term, this has been a very patriotic weekend for me. It began on Thursday evening at the Banquet for Life hosted by Safe Harbor. Safe Harbor is a ministry the saints of Providence have invested in for quite a few years. It is more than just another pro-life ministry, it is a labor that saw 162 women this past year choose life rather than live with the blood of the innocent in their hands for the rest of their lives. They provide counseling, medical help, and the environment to best guide confused young women out of their present chaos.

At their annual fundraising banquet they invited Senator Rick Santorum. Santorum was still living off the energy of last year’s election. The Senator from Pennsylvania shocked the nation by losing to Mitt Romney by only eight votes in Iowa and going on to win several other primaries. Though Santorum was no match for the prosperous GOP establishment candidate, the Senator was still able to leave a lasting impression in the GOP Primary.

Santorum observed in his speech that though he had opined continuously on the state of the economy and on other pertinent matters, the media chose not to pursue the Senator’s opinion on these issues, but rather focus on some of his more “extreme” ideas. Ideas like opposition to abortion, which according to the general American public are far from extreme. Yet, we are at such a stage in the civil discourse that when anyone speaks passionately about any moral issue, he is already termed a radical. To hell with logic! (more…)

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by Marc Hays

Usually sanctification comes as a steady rain.  Drop after drop after drop until the ground of your conscience has been saturated and you’re different than you were before.  As the Spirit is prone to move like the wind, we don’t see where He comes from or where He goes.  Sometimes sanctification comes like a flash flood.  Life was dry and sunny and then “boom”!  You’re not even sure what hit you, but you’re soaking wet and you’re no longer the same person you were before.  I had one of these flash flood, sanctifying moments as G.K. Chesterton unfolded the “Ethics of Elfland” in his book Orthodoxy.  Here’s a paragraph that changed me forever:

The sun rises every morning. I do not rise every morning; but the variation is due not to my activity, but to my inaction. Now, to put the matter in a popular phrase, it might be true that the sun rises regularly because he never gets tired of rising. His routine might be due, not to a lifelessness, but to a rush of life. The thing I mean can be seen, for instance, in children, when they find some game or joke that they specially enjoy. A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we. The repetition in Nature may not be a mere recurrence; it may be a theatrical ENCORE. Heaven may ENCORE the bird who laid an egg. (more…)

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What does Jesus expect to happen in world history?  We know what he told his disciples to make happen:

And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and disciple all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age”(Matthew 28.18-20).

This is quite clear.  The disciples are to bring all national/ethnic groups (ethnoi) into submission to Jesus by teaching them everything Jesus commands so that they observe it.  This involves not just teaching a moral code, but initiation into a new society through baptism. (more…)

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The Westminster Confession of Faith says this about the Sabbath:

VIII. This Sabbath is to be kept holy unto the Lord when men, after a due preparing of their hearts, and ordering of their common affairs beforehand, do not only observe an holy rest all the day from their own works, words, and thoughts about their worldly employments and recreations, but also are taken up the whole time in the public and private exercises of His worship, and in the duties of necessity and mercy.

In defense of the Sabbath for Christians, some have argued that the reason we don’t appreciate the Sabbath is because we don’t appreciate the other half of the commandment: to work six days.

In other words, if we honored the commandment to work six days, we’d be much more inclined to rest on the seventh. This post is brief, in that the combination of these two points, 1. working six days and 2. resting the seventh, raises one question for me.

When do we play?

Is play a subcategory of work, so we play on the six days of the week that we work? Or, is play a subcategory of rest, so we play on the seventh day of rest?

The Westminster Confession of Faith defines rest and Sabbath-keeping so that it explicitly excludes play: “are taken up the whole time in the public and private exercises of His worship, and in the duties of necessity and mercy.”

So when do we play? What are your thoughts on this question?

* Matt Bianco is a PCA elder, the homeschooling father of three children, a result of his marriage to his altogether lovely high school sweetheart, Patty.

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By Uri Brito

The results are in and they don’t look good. Christianity Today reports on the Sex Lives of Unmarried Evangelicals. The two surveys offer differing numbers, but the conclusion is summarized in this manner:

Bible Reading? Evangelicals who infrequently read the Bible were 70 percent more likely to have been recently sexually active than frequent Bible readers.

Church Attendance? Evangelicals who attend church less than weekly were more than twice as likely to have been recently sexually active than weekly attenders.

Conversion? Of the sexually active singles, 92 percent had sex after becoming“born again.” That’s largely because the average age when evangelicals under 40 became “born again” was 8.

Evangelical statistics have a way of increasing our national Christian guilt, which is something that usually is already mighty high. Furthermore, the numbers usually paint a more pessimistic picture than what is actually taking place. My general principle when dealing with these statistics is to cut the percentage by a third. When the oft-cited “50% of Christian married couples end in divorce” statistic is referenced, this usually means about 35% of Christian married couples divorce. Those original statistics also included Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons. A Non-Trinitarian marriage is anything but a Christian marriage.

But however you do the math, the numbers are still frightening. No one can deny that they reflect a weak evangelicalism. It is not that evangelical churches are fully entertainment driven without any substance, but that the substance they offer is not sustaining, and therefore leading our young generations to find pleasure is worldly entertainment. Part of this worldly entertainment is the casualness of the sex culture.

Since this is the case, we have responded in the way we evangelicals do best: we have over-reacted. (more…)

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commendation by Marc Hays

In this post I’ll be commending to you an article and a man. Said man wrote the commendable article. In fact, he writes many commendable articles, hence the commendation.

On April 30, Toby J. Sumpter published an article on his blog entitled, “The Porn War”. He reminds us that the war against sexual sin must have a strong defense, but that simply having a defense will never win a war.  He begins,

Defensive warfare is not a winning tactic, but it is a necessary tactic. And usually, when the Spirit has sacked a man, and he comes to his senses, repents, and wants to get out the prison cell of lust and pornography, the defensive angle has to be emphasized first. You need to get real accountability (pastor, parent, wife, godly roommate), change jobs, stop traveling so much, throw away your computer, put Covenant Eyes on your smart phone, cut off your hand or eye causing you to sin (Mt. 5:28-30). Jesus prescribes amputation, so don’t expect this to be very fun. (more…)

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The debate is raging over whether the latest immigration bill is an amnesty for illegal immigrants, but one part is clear: The legislation would forgive businesses that have employed those immigrants illegally.

via Immigration bill grants amnesty to employers of illegals; no prosecution for bogus IDs – Washington Times.

It is amazing to see the same people who, day and night, scream and moan against business regulation and Obama’s socialism, suddenly act as if this is some sort of “smoking gun” proving the evil nature of immigration reform.

Restricting who a business can hire is an inefficient regulation that hurts consumers. I can’t say as a Christian that I condone breaking the law in such as case, but then, if this law passes, the lawbreaking will be dealt with by the highest civil authority. Paul’s directions in Romans 13 will have been followed. (more…)

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Since belief in the Trinity lies at the very heart of the Christian faith, a tiny difference in Trinitarian theology may well have repercussions upon every aspect of Christian life and thought.[1]

Trinitarian theology is just that, the very heart of the Christian faith, yet Christianity has largely pushed Trinitarian theology to the sidelines. As some have pointed out, it has become nothing more than an awkward mathematical formula that we must accept as part of the faith, but has little to no bearing on our lives beyond that. By way of illustration, the very word processor I’m typing this post into keeps trying to change my use of the word Trinitarian into the word Unitarian!

(more…)

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