There is a new article on “Growing Up.” This is a good chance to find the new article list. Click on “publications” above. . . then articles.

HughHewitt.com: “Nevada Senator John Ensign has condemned Ted Kennedy’s repugnant statement that ‘Saddam’s torture chambers have reopened under new management, U.S. management.’
John Kerry, on the other hand, said this about Kennedy on the Imus program: ‘No, I don’t agree with the framing of that, uhm, he’s my friend, and I respect him enormously, but I don’t agree with the framing of that, but I know what he’s saying, and so do you.’ “

What does Kerry mean by “framing?” What is Kennedy saying if it is not comparing US prisons to Sadaam’s? Can Kerry say anything clearly?

Wait! I have simply missed the subtle nuance of a Kerry statement, the footnotes that are surely in his mind, the clarifications yet to be spoken. Silly me.

MSNBC - Iraq’s al-Sadr rallies followers to fight U.S.Asked how long his forces could continue fighting, al-Sadr said: Let (me) remind you of Vietnam. We are an Iraqi people that has faith in God, and his prophet and his family. The means of victory that are available to us are much more than what the Vietnamese had. And God willing we shall be victorious.”

Yes, in Iraq the only hope of the Islamo-fascists is for the US to lose the will to fight by working with the DNC to stay on message. Someone should point out to al-Sadr that President Johnson was a Democrat.

Prince Charles found his true spiritual home in Greece? Visits spark claims of royal’s Orthodoxy: “According to friends and associates of the prince, the future head of the Church of England has become enamoured of the Orthodox faith to the point that he has adorned a section of his home at Highgrove with prized Byzantine icons. Many are believed to originate from the Mount, the Orthodox world’s holiest site. “

Prince Charles has been a spiritual drifter. Charles needs to submit to Jesus Christ badly. It is safe to say the Church of England will not help his quest. God have mercy on His Royal Highness.

Thanks to a brilliant Torrey chum, this blog has a new streamlined look. You can find articles under publications on the link above. Feel free to poke around and let me know what you think. All the same information for the same low price!

Virtual camp for killers (Internet - The new Afghanistan): “Their appeal is far-reaching. Visiting a chat room this week on an extremist Islamic website, this newspaper met an Australian web designer wanting to get his hands on a video called The Nineteen Martyrs. In the video, bin Laden eulogises the 19 hijackers responsible for the September 11 attacks; it also contains pictures of them training in military camps. “

Remember: the West has bad people in it who shame their noble cause by their actions. Much of this evil comes from our personal misuse of liberty. Our government does not make us misuse that liberty. Bin Laden and company represent the focus of evil in the modern world, the forces of anti-Christ in our age. They hate the Church and the Lamb. They do evil deeds officially and praise them. These men hate liberty and love slavery.

The War for the West has begun. Will you vote for the man who tells Bin Laden to bring it on or the man who tells Bush to bring it on?

Sad end to boy/girl life Subject of gender experiment: “In 2000, author John Colapinto wrote As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl, providing David an opportunity to tell the real story. It was difficult but David wanted to save other children from a similar fate, his mother said”

This is a sad story that goes a long way toward proving that sexual nature is built into us. It has always seemed to me that the nature/nurture debate has a simple answer: both. Boys want to be boys and a good family helps them do this. Of course, in a fallen world our nature may go awry and our nurture may be wicked. This explains homosexuality and other deviant sexual desires.

Foolish thinkers believe our “genes” are a sort of program that is implemented in us. However, there is simply not enough information in your genes to produce you. Some parts of our bodies and how we turn out may be encoded into our genes. . .but mostly our form and what we are is determined by our souls. These too are fallen and so we live imperfect lives. The good news is that we are not just computers made of meat. There exists a great Spirit, Holy and Good, who will come and fill us and begin to transform our broken natures. There is a reason, even on the physical level, that an old missionary most often looks sweet and lovely while an old lounge lizard looks fearsome and like the walking dead. One has a soul that is making even the body fit for paradise, the other a soul that is making the body ready for hell.

May the soul of David rest in peace and may the Lord God have mercy on His soul.

St. John Chrysostom: HOMILIES ON THE GOSPEL OF JOHN: “But of that Fountain we cannot say this; how much soever a man draw, It continues undiminished.”

We serve a God who is never tired, never broke, and never in need. He is the good Father who has unlimited resources to help those He loves and He loves us! There is no end to His abundance. We are not saved to give up things for the sake of the pain. We are saved from material pleasures to wade deeper into His great grace and joy. The more of that joy we experience, the more is accessible to us. The fasts and disciplines of the Church are for our good, for our joy. When we complain about restraints, we are like children who cannot enjoy the ride at Disneyland for fear of the lap bar. Nothing is done to us that will cost us a single real pleasure. Instead, every order, every move, on the part of God is a further invitation to a deeper plunge into his great goodness and grace.

It is almost unfair that we get to be Christians. All of Jesus and joy evermore.

Amazon.com: DVD: To End All Wars

A reader pointed out that this fine film is on DVD at last. I had the honor of seeing this movie at the palatial Arc Light Theater here in Los Angeles. Made by Christians lovingly from a true story, it is outstanding in every way. It is a war movie that does not glorify war, but also does not bow to political correctness. It contains one of the greatest images of Christian martyrdom ever filmed, including Gibson’s Passion of the Christ. The acting is terrific with a strong turn by Kiefer Sutherland that should have earned him an award nomination in a less corporate Hollywood. In short, if you could stand the violence of Gibson’s epic, rent or buy this film.

MSNBC - Altercation“How about we go through the nation we profess to be liberating, arrest a whole bunch of innocent people and then torture them, raping a few here, killing a few there. “

Dr. Alterman believes that any evil done by an American is American policy. He is, I fear, logically challenged. If a liberal group has a parade and some members spit at clergy and attack them, then is the liberal group responsible? Is the nation responsible for the actions of any person on duty? Does Alterman know the difference between public and private evil?

Let’s explain it to him:

Sadaam tortured his people as an act of government. He applauded people who raped, murdered, and killed. He wanted this done.

The United States does not want to rape, murder, and kill. We have rogue soldiers who do bad things. When caught, they are punished.

Daily Dr. Aterman proves that education in most of the humanities is in a shocking state.

MSNBC - Islamic Web site claims revenge killing

Yesterday Edward Kennedy compared our bad treatment of prisoners with Sadaam and his thugs. Today we saw how utterly facile Mr. Kennedy’s comparison was. Some rogue elements of the US Army, aided by inept commanders, humiliated Iraqi captives. Our nation will punish them swiftly and compensate the victims. Today our foes executed a non-combatant in cold blood and broadcast it for his family to see. They will go on killing until stopped. They glory in their evil which they view as a great good.

Burn it into your brain. Useful idiots of great evil compare the wrongs of a democracy to the rampages of tyrants to weaken our will in the great fight. It happens every day. Israel is a democracy that does wrong things. . . but the wrong she does is nothing, nothing compared to the terrorists who torment her. Radical Islam is an evil like Marxist-Leninism and Fascism. It is red with the blood of innocents.

Many leftists in Christianity actually have no ideology. Their opinions are formed in reaction to the dominant conservative culture. “Christians do not have to be Republicans!” they cry. Like the good Uncle Tony, they bow and scrape to dominant secular culture while lauding their own courage in resisting the evangelical sub-culture they despise. They talk a great deal about the need to destroy the sub-culture, not because they want to see the rest of the culture become Christian, but out of their loathing of most people in the pews. They don’t love Christ’s sheep; they want to give them a good thrashing.

Why do I say there is no ideology? Most of these folk simply want to be left alone to live their self-centered lives. Any strong point of view requires hard labor that would require mental discipline and sacrifice. The new leftists do not want to read their Marx in German; they simply read a few hundred pages in English translation and then outgrow Marx. They flit from movement to movement seeing through everyone and everything. This advanced cynicism allows them to go on sinful lives they can think heroic. Even their vices are protests against the dominant hypocritical culture. They will not be hypocrites. They will sin boldly. As a result, they mostly harm themselves as age gradually reduces their burning rage to a guttural whine. They become the incarnation of what is left when the angry, young man is merely angry.

In short, the new leftist Christian is intellectual lazy, substituting cheap cynicism for careful thought. They are frequently crude, which can conveniently cover up their flagging cultural growth and act as a protest against convention. These f-word evangelicals behave as if their Christ died on the cross to give them the right to give the finger to the system.

How should a Christian react to these types of leftist? One can oppose their intellectual laziness and crudity forcefully in general. In individual cases, one must love and not despise. One cannot feel superior to these lost sheep, but at the same time one cannot have much to do with them. God calls us to minister to the worst sinners in the non-Christian world, but to pull away from the Christian in sin who goes on sinning boldly. Arguments will never persuade this crowd. One can only hope that reality deals them a soft enough blow that there is time and energy for recovery.

Many leftists in Christianity actually have no ideology. Their opinions are formed in reaction to the dominant conservative culture. “Christians do not have to be Republicans!” they cry. Like the good Uncle Tony, they bow and scrape to dominant secular culture while lauding their own courage in resisting the evangelical sub-culture they despise. They talk a great deal about the need to destroy the sub-culture, not because they want to see the rest of the culture become Christian, but out of their loathing of most people in the pews. They don’t love Christ’s sheep; they want to give them a good thrashing.

Why do I say there is no ideology? Most of these folk simply want to be left alone to live their self-centered lives. Any strong point of view requires hard labor that would require mental discipline and sacrifice. The new leftists do not want to read their Marx in German; they simply read a few hundred pages in English translation and then outgrow Marx. They flit from movement to movement seeing through everyone and everything. They confuse the ability to question, learned by every two year old, with asking good questions, a Socratic work indeed!

Their main goal is to mock everything so as to go on living sinful lives they can think heroic. For with care they can pretend that even their vices are protests against the dominant hypocritical culture. They will not be hypocrites. They will sin boldly. As a result, they mostly harm themselves as age gradually reduces their burning rage to a guttural whine. They become the incarnation of what is left when the angry, young man is merely angry.

In short, the new leftist Christian is intellectual lazy, substituting cheap cynicism for careful thought. They are frequently crude, which can conveniently cover up their flagging cultural growth and act as a protest against convention. These f-word evangelicals behave as if their Christ died on the cross to give them the right to give the finger to the system.

How should a Christian react to these types of leftist? One can oppose their intellectual laziness and crudity forcefully in general. In individual cases, one must love and not despise. One cannot feel superior to these lost sheep, but at the same time one cannot have much to do with them. God calls us to minister to the worst sinners in the non-Christian world, but to pull away from the Christian in sin who goes on sinning boldly. Arguments will never persuade this crowd. One can only hope that reality deals them a soft enough blow that there is time and energy for recovery.

Dante class is ended. Both sections finished their work tonight. We concluded by reading Canto XXXIII aloud. I thank God for the wonderful students in Torrey. It is an honor to even sit in the same room with them on nights like tonight when we are working together.

The most profound question of this term was a simple one: How do we see people as they are and learn to love them appropriately? This leads naturally to the final question of term: How do we see God and love Him as we should?

Two things come to mind when I think of tonight’s session. First, we spoke about the proper place of each human being in God’s plan. God must help each one of us to be content with the gifts God has given us. The Kingdom is not a democracy, but a monarchy. There are roles and order for each one of us. Our goal is not to become someone else . . . to strive to fill the role of Phillip Johnson or C.S. Lewis. Instead, we are called to be transformed to fill our own unique place. Second, Dante reminds us that justice can only be done for humanity after charity has done her work. We are delivered by grace and transformed by Jesus Christ’s love. After this, we can be seen by God as children of God. We are safe from God’s righteous judgments.

Lord deliver us from the snare of thinking we must love you as others love you. Instead, help us to love each person as you have made them to be.

NPNF2-04. Athanasius: Select Works and Letters (xvi.ii.xi)

We are seeing a new thing at Biola: a combination of the power of the Holy Spirit with deep theological and philosophical reflection. A sane experience of power and a passionate knowledge of God is rare. That is God’s call and we are beginning to see results. Last Thursday, we experienced the divine healing of a student’s eyes. Thanks be to God. At the same time, there was a powerful anointing at services the apologetics team (Hazen, Moreland, Reynolds) held in Olympia, Washington. I was able to think and speak more clearly than ever. However, many of the team feel a demonic attack has been leveled on us. Pray for us!

Fred Sanders encouraged us all by sending this witness from Athanasius. A few things stand out in this passage. First, we are called to be on guard. As God works in us, we will attract the attention of the evil one. We have been sensing that in our house. We plead the blood of Jesus over all we do. Second, we must be careful that our wickedness gives no place for the Satan and his kingdom. Hope and I are trying to keep our house free from taint and move forward in holiness. No one much thinks about holiness, but my past life demonstrated to me that without it there is no hope of doing good things for God. Power without holiness is destructive to self and others. Finally, demons have no power over the Christian if he is bold. They cannot tell the future only make guesses. Prayer may turn aside great harm they are sure will come.

Please pray for the safety of my family and the ministry.