Jus Me Bloggin'

Rob Bell teaches a different gospel.

In his own words, after being asked to 'tweet' the gospel in an interview with Christianity Today:

I would say that history is headed somewhere. The thousands of little ways in which you are tempted to believe that hope might actually be a legitimate response to the insanity of the world actually can be trusted. And the Christian story is that a tomb is empty, and a movement has actually begun that has been present in a sense all along in creation. And all those times when your cynicism was at odds with an impulse within you that said that this little thing might be about something bigger—those tiny little slivers may in fact be connected to something really, really big.

So, really, REALLY, I am not to follow him.  Not to listen to his teachings.  Read his books.

This really should grieve me.  Paul was grieved to tears concerning enemies of the cross.  (Philppians 3:17-19)  Maybe I'm revealing my sin more than Bell's here, but, instead of grief, I find relief.  No more having to read between his lines.  No more confusion.  No more, 'well, I guess, the truth could kind of be described that way' in watching his videos.  The Gospel is clearly, in his own words, NOT in his message.  He will not be my teacher.

What IS the Gospel, by the way.  I mean, Bell does  mention the resurrection his his 'gospel story'.

The Gospel is this: Jesus died for our sins, was raised, and saves all who call upon His name.
1 Corinthians 15:1-6, Romans 3:21-26, Acts 20:21

It's that simple and that deep.  Why distort it behind human philosophy as Bell does?  My thought is, then we'd have to acknowledege our sin.  Understand how depraved we really are.  And then come to the horror that we can't save ourselves.  We'd have to trust that Jesus really is enough.

That's hard for us to do.  We're bent toward  knowing.  (We know there's a God. Romans 1:19-20) and doing.  (We know there's a law. Romans 2:12-16).  But the law does not save (Romans 3:20).  The law curses us (Galatians 3:10).

In addition to law, some try to seek God through the wisdom of this world, as Bell seems to do.  He's a gifted philosopher and reeks of Hegelian philosophy and eastern mysticism.  However, consider the Holy Spirit inspired words of Paul in 1 Corinthians :21-25,

"For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men."

"For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek."  Romans 1:16

Seven Pounds

Spoiler Warning!

I just saw the movie Seven Pounds, and I found it disturbing.  In an age where support for euthanasia and assisted suicide is on the rise, any movie that portrays suicide as a good thing raises my suspicion.  But as a Christian, I found the reasoning behind main character choosing death, as denying the hope we have from the sacrificial death of Christ.

Superbly acted, Will Smith plays a man named Ben Thomas who seeks to right the terrible wrong of accidentally killing seven people.  He does so by donating some of his own organs to people he judges to be 'good people' in need of transplants. 

Some organs he is able to give as a 'live donor', such as a kidney, a lung, part of a liver.  But in order to donate other organs, such as his heart, he must die.  And so, he commits suicide, enabling him to give away those organs.

When Jesus said, "Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends" (John 15:13), I think He was talking about Himself, foreshadowing the redemption that would come when He would give His life at the cross.

Ben Thomas will find no redemption in his own death. 

Ben Thomas was a terribly depressed man, filled with guilt and grief- one of those people he killed was his own wife.  Ben was a man desperately in need of the Truth- that there is a God and He is willing to forgive (Romans 3:30, 1 John 1:9).  He needed to know that by giving away his organs, sacrificing his own life so that others may live, he would NOT make up for the terrible tragedy for which he was responsible.  No one can pay for his own sins.  (Romans 3:23).  We need a Savior.  Thankfully, Jesus died for the sins of Ben Thomas'- so that Ben wouldn't have to. 

There is only one sacrifice for the forgiveness of sins (Hebrews 10:10).  There is only one justification (God can justify Ben Thomas), one way of redemption (God can redeem Ben Thomas), one propitiation (the wrath of God that was on Ben was placed onto Christ)- it is the death and the resurrection of the Perfect One (Hebrews 4:15)- the only 'good man' to ever live, by the way (Romans 3:10)- the only begotten Son of God, the God Man Christ Jesus.  (Roman 3:21-26).  

It is He Who makes all things new (Revelation 21:5).  It is the Father, in Whom "we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose."  (Romans 8:28)  All things will work together for good- even a tragedy such as the one Ben faced.

Ben Thomas needed to be told of the new life found in Christ.  He needed to be told of the LOVE of GOD and that "God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." (Romans 5:8)  Ben needed to be given this hope from his friends- the hope we have from Christ's death- not help in causing his own death.  

This is an excellent article on a father's perspective regarding the right of his son, who has autism, to sexuality and to sex. 

Because this is not a Christian article, it made me think, what would a Christian perspective be on the subject of sex for people with developmental disabilities?

Legally and ethically, an adult with a developmental disability has the same rights and responsibilities to sexual activity as does anyone else.  The only way this right can be interfered with is through proper legal channels due to concern that the person may not be able to consent to sex or because the person's sexual behavior may be predatory toward others. 

Please understand.  A man or woman with a development's disability is not a child.  He or she has passed puberty and is a sexual being.  As do the rest of us, a man or woman with a developmental disability has the right to choose what he or she does with his or her sexuality.  To choose his or her own morals and to act on them.  Our responsibility as caregivers and loved ones is to educate and protect- but we cannot, nor should not, forbid sexual activity, unless someone is immediately being harmed.

What about the Christian man or woman with a developmental disability?  How do we, who have been given permission by this person, mentor his or her sexuality?

I haven't had the opportunity to do this yet.  My experience in the sexuality of those with developmental disabilities has been in a secular setting, where all I had to offer the person were his or her legal rights, counsel on choosing his or her own morals, and counsel on the physical and emotional consequences of sexual activity.  (The nurse was supposed to explain the, um, 'mechanics'.)

I look forward to walking this out with someone one day, not just from a 'Christian perspective', but from a relational perspective, based on the personal relationship between God and the woman I would mentor.  I look forward to affirming her personhood by affirming and protecting her sexuality and inviting her to surrender her sexuality to God.  And I look forward to the good things God will do through her sexuality. 

I look forward the woman making her own decisions about sexual activity as much as she is able, based on what God has taught her through His Word.  I look forward to her deciding for herself to choose God and His laws and deny her flesh unless married, as all of us single women must do, through the power of the Holy Spirit, through which is our only ability to do such a difficult thing.

I look foward to offering her grace and assuring her of God's grace and forgiveness should she fall.

One day soon, I hope...

Today is the fourth anniversary of the death of Terri Schiavo.  I don't really know what to say about it, except that I guess I just wanted to acknowledge it. 

TerriSchiavo

I miss her, this stranger.  I miss praying for her.

Four years ago, a real woman's life was taken from her under guise of compassion and alleged choice.  She was not brain dead.  Though living with a profound cognitive disability, she was not completely void of cognitive awareness (a 'vegetable' being the derogatory term), although, that would not have made her any less of a person nor any less worthy of care had she been.

We have a terrible fear of acquiring a severe disability, and we have a terrible fear of those with severe and profound disabilities.  Until that fear is resolved, the prejudice that leads to institutionalization and this kind of murder will not end.

Before we blame the secular bioethicists and the 'liberal media', though, perhaps we who call ourselves Christians should look at our own ungodly reactions to people like Terri Schiavo, that is to people who are experiencing pain and suffering.

Frederick K.C. Price of Crenshaw Christian Center:

We don't allow sickness in our home." (Frederick K.C. Price, Is Healing for All? (Tulsa: Harrison House, 1979), 20

 ... how can you glorify God in your body, when it doesn't function right? How can you glorify God? How can He get glory when your body doesn't even work? ... What makes you think the Holy Ghost wants to live inside a body where He can't see out through the windows and He can't hear with the ears? What makes you think the Holy Spirit wants to live inside of a physical body where the limbs and the organs and the cells do not function right? ... And what makes you think He wants to live in a temple where He can't see out of the eyes, and He can't walk with the feet, and He can't move with the hand? ... The only eyes that he has that are in the earth realm are the eyes that are in the body. If He can't see out of them then God's gonna be limited he's not going to be helped...” applause (Frederick K.C. Price, “Is God Glorified Through Sickness?” (Los Angeles: Crenshaw Christian Center, n.d.), audiotape #FP605)

In John 5 we read about a man who had been sick for 38 years sitting by the pool of Bethesda for the opportunity to climb into the pool after an angel had stirred it and be healed.  When Jesus asked him, "Do you want to be healed?" vs 6), the man replied, ""Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, and while I am going another steps down before me." (vs 7) After that, verses 8-9 say, Jesus said to him, "Get up, take up your bed, and walk." And at once the man was healed, and he took up his bed and walked.

That's basically all these verses say about this man's healing.  However, both Joel Osteen, who often makes claim to the idea that being healed is one's own responsibility by believing a certain way, in his book, Your Best Life Now and Joyce Meyer in her book, Eight Ways to Keep the Devil Under Your Feet claim that this man lay around the pool feeling sorry for himself and making excuses.  Says Osteen:

If you're serious about being well, if you really want to be made physically and emotionally whole, you must get up and get moving with your life.  No more lying around feeling sorry for yourself."

Says Meyer:

I would think that after thirty-eight years, a diligent, determined person could have crawled over to the edge of that pool.  Even if that man had only moved an inch a year, it seems that in thirty-eight years, he ought to have been able to get close enough to the edge to just roll over into the water when it was stirred up."

And here is where fear and prejudice of disability seem to come through in Meyer's words:

Thirty eight years is a long time to lie somewhere, waiting for somebody to do something for you.  I would have been on the edge of the that pool, and next year when the angel came around, when that water started bubbling, I would have fallen in and said, 'Either I'm going to get healed or I'm going to die, but I'm not staying like this'" (emphasis mine)"

And dare we forget Todd Bentley?  Bentley spent the summer parading people with illnesses and disabilities on stage, either physically assaulting them or telling stories about how he had physically assaulted people at other times, mocking them, and proclaiming miracles for them, though not one single miracle could be verified by the secular media.  (Go to YouTube, search for Todd Bentley, and watch the videos for yourself.)

These are just a very few examples of well known Christians' 'appreciation' for suffering.  This is sad.

Thankfully, they do not represent all of us.

I read these words today in Andrew Comisky's book, Pursuing Sexual Wholeness:

 

Pursing Sexual Wholeness

In this lifetime Jesus does not intend to satisfy very craving of the soul, to remove every weakness.  For our deep longings are for Him above all else.  That longing within us is not merely the result of personal brokenness or the influence of family and friends: it's intrinsic to our status as the created, as children disposed to grow upward to the Creator, through His love. Our fallenness highlights the folly of attempting to secure ourselves on the earth, through the creature.  The Father employs the aches and longings that remain to keep us focused on Himself. 

But His purposes don't end there.  He desires to employ that which has yet to be healed as an avenue of His grace.  Through the wounds and deprivations  that He indwells, God creates in us a deep wellsring of compassion- His heart- toward others who are broken.  He graces us and intends to use us to grace others." 

Though Comisky is speaking to those who struggle with sexual brokeness, the same can be said for all Christians who want their best life now and expect bodily perfection and wordly prosperity.  We are all broken.  This brokeness forces us to find our strengh and sufficiency in Him.  We then, in turn, offer the same undeserved mercy and grace God offers to us to others, to people like Terri Schiavo, caring for and protecting their life.

It's the way of the Cross.  It's the way of Christ.

From Extreme Theology.

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Glyahawpfyl

From the story:

Four people in two states have been arrested as part of an investigation into the Final Exit Network, an organization that police believe helped a Georgia man end his life in June, authorities said Thursday.

John Celmer, 58, lived in Cumming, north of Atlanta. Cumming police, the Forsyth County coroner and the man's relatives all had suspicions that his death was an assisted suicide, and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation launched an investigation, the agency said in a news release.

The GBI on Wednesday set up a sting operation at a residence in adjoining Dawson County, using an undercover agent who had posed as a terminally ill man seeking assistance with his suicide, the statement said.

Four people were arrested and charged with "assisted suicide, tampering with evidence and violation of the Georgia's Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act".

The Final Exit Network, based in the north Atlanta suburb of Marietta, identifies itself on its Web site as "an all-volunteer organization dedicated to serving people who are suffering from an intolerable condition. Network volunteers offer you counseling, support and even guidance to self-deliverance at a time and place of your choosing, but you always do the choosing. We will never encourage you to hasten your death."

An 'intolerable condition'.  What could that mean?  Certainly not just a terminal illness, as this group, FEN, has been linked by police to the death of a woman with mental illness and depression.

They claim on their website that they will never encourage one seeking their assistance to hasten his death.  However, read on.

Goodwin [one of the men arrested] allegedly walked the undercover agent through the steps and demonstrated how he would hold the agent's hands to stop him from removing the exit bag...

My concern with murders like these is that this will lead to the continued legalization of assisted suicide.  Using the same argument that many do with abortion, some will claim that assisted suicide must be legal, arguing that these 'back alley' assisted suicides are just not safe.

From American Life League

Red Faced and Red Handed: Top Ten Pro-Abortion Moments of 2008
by Katie Walker
Released January 7, 2009

Washington, D.C. (7 January 2009) – 2008 was a down year for the pro-abortion movement's talking heads. As you read the quotes below, despite the seriousness of the subject - after all, we are talking about matters of life and death - it's hard not to laugh at their ridiculous attempts to justify their position.

1) NOT THAT! ANYTHING BUT THAT!

Dear leader, President-elect Barack Obama at a town-hall meeting in Johnstown, Pennsylvania in March:

“Look, I got two daughters  – 9 years old and 6 years old,” he said. “I am going to teach them first about values and morals, but if they make a mistake, I don’t want them punished with a baby.”

Comment: President-elect Obama demonstrates his disdain for the sanctity of preborn babies by stating that children are “punishments” instead of miracles and blessings.

2) HOLDING OUT FOR A RAISE?

President-elect Barack Obama answers Pastor Rick Warren’s question “At what point does a baby get human rights?” at a Saddleback Church interview:

“Answering that question with specificity is above my pay grade.”

Comment: The future president will swear to uphold and defend the Constitution and Bill of Rights - hard to do when you can’t decide who gets rights and who doesn’t because it’s above your “pay grade.”

3) DATE-NIGHT OPTIONS: DINNER? DANCING? ABORTION?

Justin Timberlake/Jessica Biel

“Nobody should be able to say what you can do with your body,” Biel told cheering crowds at Last Chance for Change, a rally endorsing presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama. "I give Jess the right to choose where we go to eat all the time," Timberlake added.

Comment: Just when we start to have a sliver of respect for our Hollywood elite, they say something like this. Justin sees no difference between choosing where to eat or which child to kill.

4) KILLING BLACK BABIES – 'UNDERSTANDABLE, UNDERSTANDABLE'

Planned Parenthood of Idaho – A Live Action Films exposé video exposed Planned Parenthood’s deep-rooted racism.  A caller posed as a potential donor and the following conversation ensued:

Actor: I want to specify that abortion to help a minority group, would that be possible?

Planned Parenthood employee: Absolutely.

Actor: Like the black community for example?

Planned Parenthood employee: Certainly.

Actor: The abortion – I can give money specifically for a black baby, that would be the purpose?

Planned Parenthood employee: Absolutely. If you wanted to designate that your gift be used to help an African-American woman in need, then we would certainly make sure that the gift was earmarked for that purpose.

Actor: Great, because I really faced trouble with affirmative action, and I don’t want my kids to be disadvantaged against black kids. I just had a baby; I want to put it in his name.

Planned Parenthood employee: Yes, absolutely.

Actor: And we don’t, you know we just think, the less black kids out there the better.

Planned Parenthood employee (laughing): Understandable, understandable.

Comment – The apple doesn’t fall far. Planned Parenthood hasn’t strayed much since the days of its racist founder Margaret Sanger, who once spoke to a Ku Klux Klan group and was a member of the American Eugenics Society.

5) HEY LOOK, MOM, HERESY!

Ca. Rep. Nancy Pelosi in a television interview with NBC’s Tom Brokaw:

Tom Brokaw: Madame speaker, when does life begin? 
Rep. Pelosi: As an ardent, practicing Catholic, …I don’t think anybody can tell you when life begins.

Comment: That’s like saying, “As a vegan, I would like my steak medium rare.”

6) BEING 'PRO-CURE' IS BEING PRO-LIFE! ... EVEN IF WE HAVE TO CANNIBALIZE PREBORN CHILDREN FOR IT

Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm  in support of Proposition 2, a bill that now allows embryonic stem cell research:

“As a Catholic, I can say to be pro-cure is to be pro-life.”

Comment: What about this statement is Catholic? Not a thing.

7) FIVE-FINGERED DISCOUNT FOR PLANNED PARENTHOOD C.E.O.

PP C.E.O. Miriam Inocencio

Despite a six-digit salary drawn from Planned Parenthood’s tax- and abortion-gorged pockets, Planned Parenthood of Rhode Island CEO Miriam Inocencio must have really liked that Macy’s blouse!

Comment: Clearly her day job – helping to kill preborn babies – has affected her moral judgment. If Miriam is hurting for cash, perhaps we can redirect some of Planned Parenthood's extra Title X taxpayer funding her way?

8) MODERN CHIVALRY

Comedian Doug Stanhope

These are not empty words. I, Doug Stanhope, am offering you, Bristol Palin, the sum of $25,000 so that you can abort your child and move out of that draconian home. I have also set up a PayPal link so that others around the world can help increase this amount to ease the burden of starting out on your own at such an early age.

Comment: We love it when pro-abortion radicals show their true colors. Stanhope can’t fathom why a young couple would actually want their baby. Nope. Clearly, Bristol doesn’t need love and compassion – she needs $25,000!

9) MORE THAN WE CAN SAY FOR SOME POLITICIANS

South Carolina Democrat chair Carol Fowler

Vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s “primary qualification seems to be that she hasn’t had an abortion.”

Comment: South Carolinians overwhelmingly voted for the Palin ticket. That’s got to hurt, Fowler.

10) KEEP IT CLASSY, OLD BOY

Comedian Bill Maher

Refers to Sarah Palin’s Down syndrome baby as “it” three times in a monologue citing why she isn’t qualified to be vice president and then ends with ::: the rest of quote deleted by me, Jus Me Again :::

Comment:  What can we say, really? We’ll just let Maher condemn himself.

 

Montana judge: Man has right to assisted suicide

HELENA, Mont. (AP) — A Montana judge has ruled that doctor-assisted suicides are legal in the state, a decision likely to be appealed as the state argues that the Legislature, not the court, should decide whether terminally ill patients have the right to take their own life.

Judge Dorothy McCarter issued the ruling late Friday in the case of a Billings man with terminal cancer, who had sued the state with four physicians that treat terminally ill patients and anonprofit patients' rights group.

"The Montana constitutional rights of individual privacy and human dignity, taken together, encompass the right of a competent terminally (ill) patient to die with dignity," McCarter said in the ruling.

It also said that those patients had the right to obtain self-administered medications to hasten death if they find their suffering to be unbearable, and that physicians can prescribe such medication without fear of prosecution.

"The patient's right to die with dignity includes protection of the patient's physician from liability under the state's homicide statutes," the judge wrote.

Attorney General Mike McGrath said Saturday that attorneys in his office would discuss the ruling next week and expected the state will appeal the ruling...

...The state attorney general's office had argued that intentionally taking a life was illegal, and that the issue was the responsibility of the state Legislature.

Assistant Attorney General Jennifer Anders had argued the state has no evaluation process, safeguards or regulations to provide guidance or oversight for doctor-assisted suicide. The state also said it was premature to declare constitutional rights for a competent, terminally ill patient because the terms "competent" or "terminally ill" had yet to be defined.

The ruling noted that doctors are often asked to "determine the competency of their patients for the purposes of guardianship and other legal proceedings."

"Whether a patient is terminally ill can also be determined by the physician as an integral component of the physician-patient relationship," McCarter wrote.

McCarter's ruling makes Montana the third state after Oregon and Washington to allow doctor-assisted suicides. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1997 that terminally ill patients have no constitutional right to doctor-assisted suicide but did nothing to prevent states from legalizing the process.

So, apparently, a judge can go a make a decision like this all by herself... How? It's unbelievable.

The Media's Love for Suicide Outlaws

On this episode of What It Means to Be Human, Wesley J. Smith takes a look at the media’s fawning treatment of suicide advocates. What does a reporter see when he visits the home of a suicide facilitator? Strangely and sadly, he often sees a hero.

Listen in as bioethicist Wesley J. Smith shows how journalism has become a prime mover in the culture of death, to the point that its terminal nonjudgmentalism cannot be trusted.