Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil;
Who put darkness for light, and light for darkness;
Who put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!
[Isaiah 5:20]
I have no words to express my deep sadness in watching the ongoing moral and theological collapse of a man I had once just about worshipped from afar.
We live in an absolutely insane world.
Absolutely.
Insane.
One of the indicators of the madness of it all is the leftward slide into complete cognitive dissonance on spiritual matters in our country.
I'd expect politicians to get spiritual things wrong.
I'd expect theological liberals and "moderates" to get things (very) wrong.
But when formerly staunch theological conservatives give in to the siren song...
Just a few days ago, after our midweek study, I opened up my Bloglines reader and read Dr. Larry Taylor's latest post.
Now, in the past, I have deeply respected Dr. Taylor. In what now seems like a woefully far-distant bygone era, he was a staunch theological conservative.
Long ago, I remember reading his pamphlets like Things I Learned From My Pastor, Calvinism vs. Arminainism, and What Calvary Chapel Teaches, and being very blessed by them.
Yes, I know.
It's now considered uncool to like those books.
Whatebah.
At that time, back when the world was young and right was still right and wrong still wrong, Dr. Larry Taylor was a bulwark of faith and Biblical wisdom. Though I never went to CC Bible College or the School of Ministry, many of my brothers-in-arms had and really loved Dr. Taylor's classes.
I personally, from a very great distance, of course, really looked up to him. In many ways, I wanted to be Larry Taylor when I grew up.
...but then, something happened.
I don't know what, and I suspect it was a creeping thing that took years to take hold, but...something happened - something terrible.
About two years ago, another pastor friend clued me in that Dr. Taylor had put up his own blog - The Word In Focus. I was ecstatic! After so many years of not hearing him, I could at least read his incredible Biblical insights!
...what I got was a shock, and a slowly rising, dark bubble of dread.
Dr. Taylor - bulwark of Biblical soundness - had begun a tragic leftward slide.
I don't know if it's because he was badly burned by his last church (which I know nothing about; I only glean that he was hurt by comments in his blogposts) or through some other insidious poison, but...something was out-of-kilter, and it only got worse with time, not better.
Today, the leftward slide is complete.
And I mourn.
Look - whoever you vote for is between you and your God. I am one that points out consistently that God rides on neither a donkey or an elephant. Our salvation comes from the Lord of Hosts, not Washington. Vote your conscience - but vote.
But - be honest about why you're voting for who your voting for.
I have said before: the DNC's current platform is the single most pro-death political platform in American history. And as usual, the DNC's economic plan is little more than gussied-up, good old-fashioned socialism. Their foreign policy involves sticking our collective head in the sand and pretending the world's a dandy place and everybody's singing songs while holding hands and tossing about dandelions and lollipops.
Those who I know personally who are voting for Obama are doing so purely because they think, ultimately, he'll solve all their problems.
Yep; and I have some lovely beachfront property to sell you in Antarctica.
Whatever.
But recently, more and more of our leftward-leaning Christian brethren have been "re-imagining" not just their faith, but also their political stances, and have come up with very clever ways to spin the Bible to support the DNC (incidentally, other than the RNC's rabidly pro-life stance, I don't believe it's any more "biblical" than the DNC's, either).
Precisely nobody's surprised to discover that Brian "Orthodoxy Schmorthodoxy!" MacLaren is part of the Obamanation. I think I would have an immediate coronary if I found out otherwise.
But others have drunk the Kool-Aid, too.
I like(ED) Donald Miller of Blue Like Jazz fame. I had thought he had a better head on his shoulder.
Yikes.
Part of the spiritual spin that the new Religious Far Far FAR Left puts on things is that the Gospel is REALLY about feeding the homeless, saving the spotted owl, and going green. Jesus stood against the bourgeois capitalists in favor of the downtrodden proletariat, and in Him the Hegelian Dialectic as modified by Marx reaches its fulfillment and a revolution of social justice commences, da, komrade. Enter the Emergents, stage WAY left.
Under this new Weltanschauung, morality is redefined to encompass what in a bygone era was known as the social gospel:
...a Protestant Christian intellectual movement that was most prominent in the late 19th century and early 20th century. The movement applied Christian ethics to social problems, especially poverty, inequality, liquor, crime, racial tensions, slums, bad hygiene, poor schools, and the danger of war. Theologically, the Social Gospel leaders were overwhelmingly post-millennialist. That is because they believed the Second Coming could not happen until humankind rid itself of social evils by human effort. Social Gospel leaders were predominantly liberal politically and theologically. In the 21st century Social Gospel principles continue to inspire newer movements such as Christians Against Poverty.
The social gospel was an unqualified disaster - and it's today rearing its foetid head once again.
In the social gospel, THE Gospel (God redeeming man from sin and eternal separation from Him through the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus) becomes co-opted and ultimately subsumed by a new socio-politico-economic gospel (God redeeming culture & creation through the political and social activism of the church). Social gospellers, ultimately by virtue of having abandoned the primacy of what they would consider the too-pietistic Gospel and losing confidence in the Blessed Hope, seek ultimate relief and support for their transmogrified and truncated gospel in the State.
Think of them as spiritual fascists.
Now, if you think that's a bit harsh, consider what socio-political fascism is:
Fascism is a totalitarian nationalistic socialist ideology that is concerned with notions of cultural decline or decadence, and which seeks to achieve a millenarian national rebirth...
...Fascist governments nationalized key industries and made massive state investments. They thought private property was to be regulated to ensure that "benefit to the community precedes benefit to the individual." They also introduced price controls and other types of economic planning measures. Fascists promoted their ideology as a "third way" between capitalism and Marxian socialism.
The place of fascism in the political spectrum remains highly debated. In practice, fascism opposed communism, conservatism and classic liberalism but also laissez faire capitalism and forms of socialism. Many scholars accept fascism as a search for a Third Way among these fields. Sir Oswald Mosley, for example, the leader of the British Union of Fascists, chose to describe his position as "hard centre" on the political spectrum. Scholar A. James Gregor asserts that the most "uninspired effort to understand fascism" is to simply place it on the right-wing, or the radical right as the common tendency was in the Anglosphere during the post-war period. While Walter Laqueur asserts that historical fascism "did not belong to the extreme Left, yet defining it as part of the extreme Right is not very illuminating either", but that it "was always a coalition between radical, populist ('fascist') elements and others gravitating toward the extreme Right".
Fascists opposed what they believed to be laissez-faire or quasi-laissez-faire economic policies dominant in the era prior to the Great Depression. People of many different political stripes blamed laissez-faire capitalism for the Great Depression, and fascists promoted their ideology as a "third way" between capitalism and Marxian socialism. Their policies manifested as a radical extension of government control over the economy without wholesale expropriation of the means of production. Fascist governments nationalized some key industries {{think: Nationalized healthcare, which is what a lot of modern Emergents - including, tragically, Dr. Taylor - advocate for}}, managed their currencies and made some massive state investments. They also introduced price controls, wage controls and other types of economic planning measures. Fascist governments instituted state-regulated allocation of resources, especially in the financial and raw materials sectors. {{in other words, wealth redistribution; addressing "economic inequality" using governmental force}}
The primary identifier of fascism is the idea of the state as the center of society and societal change; Social Gospellers of earlier times and Emergents of today can properly be understood as being fascist in the non-pejorative original sense of the term in that for them change must be imposed, and opposition to change must be neutralized.
Thus, it is the state's job to eradicate economic inequality. It is the state's job to provide universal cradle-to-grave care of its citizens, including universal healthcare. In fact, the state is to arrogate to itself as much responsibility as possible, for the good of all.
That, simply put, is fascism. Again; I'm not meaning it in its pejorative and inappropriately-applied sense, but in its actual sense.
The Social Gospel and its modern son, the Emergent Church (I BTW am distinguishing between the EmergENT Church, which is gleefully socially and theologically liberal, and the EmergING Church, which is ambivalent, but has some good people in it as well as outright wack-jobs) are looking to the state as the primary agent of social change - thus the candidate who promises to address the non-gospel "gospel" issues that are currently in vogue get the endorsements and votes.
Dr. Taylor has come out and endorsed Barack Hussein Obama for the presidency, citing his social (fascist, in the non-pejorative original sense of the term of ever-increasing state control) agenda as being more faithful to the "gospel" than McCain (incidentally, I personally find neither contender for the throne to be anything but unsavory, and was all set to vote for Chuck Baldwin of the Constitution Party on November 4th, since the CP most closely matches my own personal political views - until Sarah Palin became McCain's veep pick; that changed everything...) going so far as to say:
Senator Obama describes his journey to faith in depth in his books and other writings, and has spoken on the issue many times. He is a devout, thoughtful, Christian by any reasonable definition.
Senator Barack Hussein Obama, who has consistently voted against protecting children from the unequivocally barbaric practice of partial-birth abortion, is a "devout, thoughtful Christian."
Well...we can't say one way or another. But if one cheerfully continues to condemn hundreds of thousands of innocent children to death before they've even had the chance to be born, and still calmly pray to the God who said "let the little children come unto Me" with their blood effectively on his hands...I'm sorry, but something just does not compute.
It's like if a man rapes women one day, then the next day calmly sits in church and sings the songs and prays and says all the "hallelujahs" and "amens" and smiles and whatnot, playing the part of the Christian.
Works don't save us; Paul's clear on that.
But what fruit - what works - come from my life certainly show whether or not I have been saved by grace through faith.
I'm just sayin' is all...
Now, whereas our Founders (for instance, Chief Justice John Jay) advised:
Providence has given to our people the choice of their rulers, and it is the duty, as well as the privilege and interest, of our Christian nation to select and prefer Christians for their rulers...
...I don't currently expect to be able to choose a good, Biblically-faithful Christian to high office.
Sad, but true.
However, given that, I probably shouldn't choose a man for office who epitomizes the extreme opposite of Christian character and/or positions.
Now, in trying to explain his endorsement of Obama in spite of the fact that he's one of the most stunningly pro-death candidates the presidential scene has ever seen, Dr. Taylor asserts:
ABORTION. It may seem strange for a person who is pro-life to side with Obama who is seen as the pro-choice candidate, but, although I disagree with him on the issue of abortion, his plan to reduce the number of abortions through a multifaceted attack that includes education, economic relief for the poor, and universal health care is, it seems to me, more likely to actually help ease the rate of abortion in the U.S. Abortion rates have not dropped under 20 years of staunch pro-life presidents.
First off: his premise is wrong.
The data show that the abortion rate has been falling overall the last 20 years - darn those wascawy, annoying facts.
Second off: if abortion is murder - if it is the execution of a de facto death sentence on an innocent child (which it is) - then it is quite simply inexcusable no matter what extenuating circumstances may be conjured up to explain or justify it.
As I'd said in my comments to Dr. Taylor's post:
Who's crying for those children who Hussein Barack Obama voted to not protect from the unqualifiedly horrific practice of partial-birth abortion?
Why punish these children by the most barbaric forms of execution invented for the sins or economic positions of their parents?
Even if we assume that poverty causes abortion (which is exactly analogous to saying poverty causes theft, or pornography causes rape, or reading Blue Like Jazz causes Emergentism), that still fails to make it any less horrifically wrong.
Again: Why punish the innocent child for the economic condition of her mother? Why execute the child because the mother is poor?
The bare fact that the mother will still commit abortion anyway is utterly tangential to the issue.
That's true also in the case of rape or incest. Many liberals scream bloody murder (ironically) that über-conservatives (like me) don't even countenance "exceptions" in the case of rape or incest.
"How could you torment the poor girl by forcing her to have that child?"
My response: Why are you so terribly insistent on punishing the innocent child? What did that baby ever do? Will killing the baby un-rape or un-incest the mother? Why brutally murder the child for the gross sins of her father...?
Here's a thought: when a man is convicted of incest or rape - execute him.
Then help the mother bring her child to term, and give her the option of adopting out the baby.
My lovely and gracious wife have struggled with infertility for all of our marriage; we and hundreds of thousands of others would love to adopt these children, but can't because everybody and their mammas in government have their pork-barrel enslimed hands out for their piece of the pie and thus make the prospect too expensive for most families in (for instance) our tax bracket. It's a bald-faced lie that there aren't enough prospective adoptive parents to take in the blessed children who would go up for adoption - we're here, but the same {insert Mark Driscoll colorful language here} liberal Democrat government that spouts the rhretoric of "abortion should be safe, legal, and rare" forces me as a taxpayer to pay for the wholesale butchery of these children while erecting massively onerus financial bulwarks against us adopting them...all the while claiming "hypocrisy" on the part of Pro-Lifers because we're against abortion but won't adopt.
Give. Me. A. Break.
Dr. Taylor's newest blogpost continues to try to craft an apologetic for supporting extreme liberal Pro-Death ideologues (like Barack Hussein Obama) while maintaining a Pro-Life patina.
70% of all abortions are directly related to poverty. The typical woman seeking an abortion is not evil, she is a young single woman working at a dead-end minimum wage job without health care insurance. She cannot take off time from work to have and care for a baby; childcare is not affordable for her; she has no health insurance or savings; she will lose her job if she takes off to have her baby and give it up for adoption.
Granting for the moment the premise (that 70% of abortions are directly related to poverty - I reject that premise outright, but that'll have to be dealt with later), this argument still sidesteps the most fundamental issue: abortion kills an innocent child.
Again: are we saying that the answer is to make it "safe, legal, and rare" (and by "rare" the liberal means "very, very common and by the way taxpayer-funded") to punish the child - to condemn her to inhumane death because of the economic condition of her mother? Is that really what we're saying here?
Are we saying that because, even in this intentionally heart-string-pulling parable that Said Woman Aforementioned Hitherto would lose her job if she had the baby - that therefore the murder of that baby is morally justifiable...?
Have we truly slid so far?
Have we gone insane?
I really need to stop here. It's 2300 (that's "eleven pee-emm" for you civilians) here on the Glorious West Coast of Michigan; the one-on-one discipleship thingy that I came into the church office for was over two hours ago, and I need to get home to my lovely and gracious wife and our beautiful baby boy, who we adopted almost fourteen months ago, saving him from being butchered en utero the way the likes of Barack Hussein Obama would seemingly have preferred. His birth-mother was a 13 year-old girl who wanted to terminate his life. It was through the grace of God and the intervention of faithful Christians who still took the Bible seriously and - thankfully - were one-issue types on the subject of abortion that that tragedy was gloriously averted. Via private adoption (which side-steps much, but not all of the financial barrier the government places around adoption - thanks to the liberals), we were able to save him from being executed for the sins of his birth parents and give him a loving home.
So you will excuse me, I'm sure, if I sound a bit vehement about this issue, and fail utterly to comprehend how anybody who arrogates to themselves the name "Christian" can countenance supporting infanticide - for whatever imagined justification.
Dr. Taylor closes his blogpost:
If we really want to end abortion, let’s work to win the hearts and minds of others in a spirit of love.
Yes.
While also working to save the lives of those very children by not giving aid and comfort to the enemy concept that slaughtering them is in any way, shape, or form justifiable and therefore protected (and in fact supported via my tax dollars - thank you, Democratic Party) - by not punishing the child for the sins of or economic condition of (or any other imagined justification) of her parents.
God save us.
Sobering words attributed to the oft-maligned Thomas Jefferson - for those of you living in either Miami-Dade County or Rio Linda, that's the old dead dude who helped found our nation and actually penned the Constitution, way back before the interweb or MTV chose our presidential candidates for us based on celebrity status - for those who want to elect politicians who will right all wrongs by bringing the imposing, majestic power of the state to bear on all and over all...
