Feb 10
To Heidelblog and Carl Trueman for the part of Trueman's article from First Things quoted in this Heidelblog post. This article is about whether Christians can attend same-sex weddings.
Trueman's full article can be found at the link below:
https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2024/01/can-christians-attend-gay-weddings
The question I want to ask everyone who shares Carl's opinion on Christians attending same-sex weddings is this: Can a Christian attend the worship service of another religion simply as an observer? After all, there are bound to be things said in that worship service that a believer should not just object to, but speak out against. And so to rephrase the question, can a believer quietly attend the worship service of another religion as an observer?
The real issue in us attending a same-sex wedding is whether or not we are condoning the union that is being created by the wedding ceremony. If we are not condoning it and, because of adequate communication, our objections to such a wedding are made known, why can't we attend such a wedding either as an observer or for personal reasons?
This idea of an unbiblical wedding as mocking Christ is a manipulative statement. It is there to stir the anger in any red-blooded American Christian into action. After all, how many sins do not mock God which we are not told to react to? And how are our angry responses going to compare with how God responds? In fact, they might interfere with God's response because He often gives people who sin time to repent. Do we realize how much God treats us that way and will treat us that way for as long as we live on earth? And so when Trueman says that a same-sex marriage mocks Christ, is he saying that so that we either will pray for their repentance or come to God's defense by lashing out at the mockers? And, btw, does God really need us to defend Him?
Isn't it enough for us to respond to the LGBT community by preaching the Gospel in ways that bear the fruit of the Spirit? Or does God need us to try to do more than what the Gospel can do?
Here is the real issue for us religiously conservative Christians. Too many of us have been waging war against the LGBT community because they are starting to gain an equal status with us in society. And not only do we object to that, we are seriously offended because we consider them to be moral lepers. We are offended because our place in society is now going to those whom we consider to be our moral inferiors. And all they want is to be equal to us in society.
It isn't that homosexuality and transgenderism are not sins; they certainly are sins. The question is, how does the New Testament want us to share society with unbelievers. Should we seek to share society with unbelievers, including the LGBT community, as equals, or should we seek a privileged place of supremacy over unbelievers, including the LGBT community, in society because we believe that we are morally superior to them? Please realize that I am not making the claim that we are morally superior to unbelievers. And because we are all sinners and because of what the New Testament says, I believe that we religiously conservative Christians must and should share society with unbelievers, including the LGBT community, as equals.
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Feb 15
To R. Scott Clark and his article that reviews gambling from the perspective of the Reformed Traditions. This article was posted in Heidelblog.
The weakness of the Reformed confessions is that they tend to do what in football use to call a late hit: piling on. In essence, these confessions attribute to the prohibition implied by a commandment actions and practices that does not always relate to the commandment. Gambling is not necessarily stealing. And not all gambling is done for selfish reasons. There is a certain social gambling that occurs in some card games such as when the winnings and losses are insignificant and the playing of the game is mostly for social reasons. The same can be said of playing a state lottery with coworkers. In addition, others are benefiting when one plays a state lottery.
We should also note that there is a form of gambling that is older than the gaming we see today, but it is not only legal, itis deemed to be irresponsible by some not to gamble in this way. That is investing in the Stock Market. But when investments are made purely for the sake of its ROI, how is that different than sports betting? This is especially true when one is not buying originally issued stocks. In that case, those investing in the Stock Market purely for its ROI are like the people whom Martin Luther King Jr described below:
'A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: "This is not just."'
What King stated shows the real problem with most gambling. That is where there is the investment of funds solely for selfish gain without regard for others who might be affected. And here, the idea of vocation stands in stark contrast many forms of gambling including playing the Stock Market. That is because with vocation, one is contributing to others through one's work.
We should note that what drives the wrongful forms of gambling is what also drives the Consumer economy in which we live: making decisions solely for selfish reasons. The idea that one's personal significance is determined mostly by what one consumes and how one consumes it. That idea is not just like a virus that infects an individual, it is more like a virus that becomes a pandemic. It contributes to what King called a 'thing-oriented society.' And King warned us that unless we switch from being a thing-oriented society to being a 'person-oriented society,' we will never rid ourselves of the inseparable triplets of racism, economic exploitation, and militarism.
Thus we can see from King's view that investments made purely for the sake of its ROI, that such investments are a failure to love one's neighbor. And because investments are also a form of gambling, the same can be said of many, if not most, forms of gambling. Such gambling is a failure to love one's neighbor as themselves. And that is true not necessarily because gambling steals from one's neighbor, but it is because practicing such gambling in lieu of a job, doing works of mercy, or giving to those in need is a failure to be concerned about another person's welfare.
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March 3
To Dermont Quinn and his article that states that religion should not longer be privatized by the government. Instead, religion, the right religion of the Roman Church, should have a favorite place in directing society. This article was originally posted in 2013 and has been reposted in the Imaginative Conservative.
Christendom, the time period when religion was imposed on others rather than privatized, had its reign and it was not short enough. Religious wars with their atrocities, inquisitions, imperialism, colonialism, and ethnic cleansings are forever part of its legacy. Another part of its legacy was its strong tendency for the predominant branch of the Church in a given nation to side with wealth and power which resulted in the Church supporting economic exploitation and social injustices in those nations. The pre-revolutionary times of France and Spain where that branch was the Roman Church and of Russia where that branch was the Orthodox Church provide such examples. Here in America, that legacy lives on in the Evangelical side of the Protestant branch that sides with wealth.
In a world where we overuse bipolar thinking, there is an alternative to either imposing or privatizing religion. That alternative can be seen in the work and writings of Martin Luther King Jr and the SCLC. They worked for equal rights for all who were oppressed because of their race and economic class rather than for a privileged position for the Church in society. And because of that, King showed how religion could enter the public square without it being imposed on others.
For most of world history, we have lived in an authoritarian world. That authoritarianism came in two flavors: secular and religious. For perhaps just over a century the world has been flirting with democracy with equality world without ever having fully embraced it. But lately, because democracy with equality has been allowing too many different people into the equality mix, there has been an emergence of authoritarian ethnocratic movements both here and in Europe. Those movements serve as a major counter-revolutionary challenge to democracy with equality.
The above article supports its own specific version of a Christian authoritarian ethnocratic movement. In fact, in America and some Eastern European countries, the authoritarian ethnocratic movement revolves around religion. In Western Europe, it revolves around race and national origin.
The call of these authoritarian ethnocratic movements is a call to return to a time when nations were more ethnically homogeneous than they are today. The belief is that an adequate level of similarity in the nations, especially the appropriate religious one, would allow each nation to function better because there would be more unity and less internal strife.
Unfortunately, the current call by these authoritarian ethnocratic movements is a call to return the world to the past, to its pre-WW I times. And there is every reason in history to believe that if we did return to that past, we would see history repeating itself
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