Pandering

Elizabeth Scalia is pandering to the Politically Correct crowd, and she’s doing it at Pajamas Media, which is not the best place to do that sort of thing. She criticizes both “the gays” and “the Christians” for behaving “badly” during the Castro district altrication – you know, the one I blogged about the other day in which a crowd of angry anti-Prop 8 thugs surrounded a Bible study and prayer group and poured coffee on them, urinated on them, grabbed a girl’s Bible and attacked her with it, and then tried to molest the members of the group as they were escorted away by the police. Okay, I think we can see where “the gays” behaved badly.

But what are the sins of the Christians? According to Ms. Scalia, it was “singing hymns and praying for them, which might have seemed both separatist and condescending.” She says this “as a Catholic,” who says she’d feel judged by the fact she was being prayed for by strangers.

So on one hand we have a group engaged in physical assault, verbal abuse, and public sexual misconduct… and on the other hand we have a group who was praying.

Yeah. Those eeeevil Christians sure need a good talking to.

Praying is something we are commanded to do without ceasing, and singing hymns like “Amazing Grace” and “Nothing But the Blood of Jesus” are hardly extreme measures. These people were holding a prayer meeting – the same one they held “almost every Friday night” according to the locals – where they prayed for the community and tried to share the Gospel.  This is commendable behavior, not something to be looked down on. I have yet to see a report from anywhere on this issue that says the prayer group did anything wrong, or did anything to provoke the attack other than praying and singing.

Yet Ms. Scalia says that what they did was very un-Christlike. Jesus would never have been so intolerant. I wonder, has she read Christ’s sermons? This was a guy who did not have concerns over coming across as extreme or controversial. Remember, he ransacked the temple and screamed at the Pharisees in public, decrying them as a brood of vipers and whitewashed tombs, hypocrites in every sense – can you imagine someone running up the stairs of the Vatican calling out such a thing? No, Christ was truthful. He was direct. He was loving. But he was not afraid of confrontation, and he was not afraid of what the truth would bring. In the same vein, we should speak truth in love, but be careful that we do not worry so much about appearing loving that it is no longer the truth being spoken.

On Abortion

Digging this topic back up from a couple of posts ago, because it seems to be coming up all over the place lately. As a result, it’s been on my mind, and now is getting its own blog post.

Abortion, to my eyes, is one of the most incredible problems we face as a nation, from a moral standpoint. It’s extremely divisive, morally ambiguous, and has great social power weighing in on both sides of the argument. More importantly: it involves the mass murder of over a million Americans every year.

Did that get your attention at all? Let me say it again: this is the mass murder of over a million Americans every year. Condoned, and sometimes paid for, by your government. If you’re not pissed off about this yet, then you probably won’t like the rest of my blog.

The debate surrounding the topic of abortion is a fascinating one to me: the undisputed facts are that currently about 1.2 million abortions are performed in America every year, and that each of those abortions ended the life of a human baby in utero. No one argues that. The argument is over whether or not that’s an acceptable occurance. If you think about that for a while, that the argument has nothing to do with medical procedure, but whether or not those babies are in fact people with natural human rights – well, its enough to drive a person mad. And people can argue back and forth about that all day, and it certainly will not be solved on the pages of this blog, but in my mind I’ve never understood how someone can so easily rationalize away a human life – be it an unborn child or an eldery grandfather or a woman in a coma.

But even bringing up the topic of abortion will quickly expose the presuppositions of those involved in the discussion – those who feel it’s simply a social/religious policy issue versus those who feel it is a moral life and death issue. And while I suppose you may find many of the “social policy” crowd in the pro-life camp, I doubt you’ll find many who think that abortion is muder participating at pro-abortion rallies. What I am saying is that those who suggest abortion is only a social issue are dismissing abortion as being the ending of human life, because if it was truly about human life then we’d be talking about whether it should have the full weight of first-degree murder behind it, or if it should just constitute something like negligent homicide.

Instead, these people have for the most part either try to remain ignorant of the facts, or else grasp at straws to suggest that somehow the baby has not yet been given its right to live because it lacks specific body parts, or is too dependent on its mother, or has not yet fully developed conciousness… But these are trifles, and cannot form a solid platform to stand on. So instead you hear, far more often than any other argument, that abortion is necessary in cases of rape, incest, or instances in which the life of the mother is risked.

A couple of years ago, while arguing the so-called merits of abortion in an online community, I dug up an interesting fact: less than 1% of abortions are because of rape or incest, and somewhere between 75% and 85% of rape victims opt against abortion. Even fewer are listed as due to the mother having life-endangering health problems. We’re talking roughly 0.7% of all abortions being done for these reasons. Even if we add in other health reasons, the total rises to only roughly 2%. The vast majority of abortions are done out of mere convenience, not because of this percieved “necessity.”

Now, with President-elect Obama promising to pass FOCA if it gets to his desk, and the Catholic church facing widespread withdrawl from the healthcare field as a result, we face the possibility of government-assisted abortion making massive leaps forward on a national scale and overriding every countermeasure placed in the last 35 years. It’s a scary thought and proves that the pro-abortion movement is not interested in merely making abortions available where it could be considered “necessity,” but instead making it available upon request to every girl and woman in America, without such restrictions as waiting periods, parental consent or even notification, and funding it with your tax dollars. This wants you to pay for the systematic genocide of an entire generation of as yet unborn children, and that’s simply the fact of the matter.

This is not a country that should embrace genocide as a national heritage.

On Moral Squirming

Via Leanna comes this link, which got my blood boiling for all sorts of reasons, as it attempts to invoke God’s grace as a reason for being accepting of not just political views based on sin, but the sin itself. The post is copied here almost in its entirety as I dissect it, and you can find the original here. This is going to be a little bit scatterbrained, but I needed to get this written down… Continue reading On Moral Squirming

Values and Principles of Worship, revisited

There’s actually more to what we did, and what I believe, than what I put in that last post.  I’ve incorporated those ideas further into this outline, and rearranged some of the old ideas as well. Expanded thoughts are below the cut.

Purpose Statement:
Worship is form of expression and communication to God from believers. It is therefore personal and individualized while remaining solidly truthful and pleasing to God.

Three Principles For Worship:

  1. Worship should be truthful. (Rom 11:33-36, Ex 20:16)
    • Songs should be doctrinally and biblically sound.
    • Lyrical content should be valued over form, but with neither being devalued.
  2. Worship should be God-centered. (Col 3:17, Ps. 95:6, Rev 5:12)
    • Focus of songs should be on God.
      1. Songs should be unique to God’s character
      2. Songs should not focus on the singer or his response – they should be the response.
    • Songs should not be overly controversial, as only the Gospel should be a stumbling block.
  3. Worship should be a personal experience. (various Psalms)
    • Worshippers should feel comfortable to express worship in their own way.
      1. Worship leaders should allow for differing levels of physical response to worship.
    • Worship leaders should strive to provide a worship environment free of distraction.
      1. Songs should be familiar, or made familiar, to the worshippers.
      2. Musical style should be relevant and familiar to the worshippers.
      3. The leaders should be skilled in the role in which they serve.
      4. Worship leaders should not “perform” – it is not a concert.

Continue reading Values and Principles of Worship, revisited

Values and Principles of Worship

Purpose Statement:
Worship is form of expression and communication to God from believers. It is therefore personal and individualized while remaining solidly truthful and pleasing to God.

Four Principles For Worship:

  1. Worship should be God-centered. (Col 3:17, Ps. 95:6, Rev 5:12)
    1. Focus of songs should be on God.
  2. Worship should be truthful. (Rom 11:33-36, Ex 20:16)
    1. Songs should be doctrinally and biblically sound.
    2. Content should be valued over form, though neither can be devalued.
      1. We should avoid seeing a certain style as “better” than others.
      2. Song lyrics and content should be valued above the song’s musicality.
  3. Worship should be a personal experience. (various Psalms)
    1. Worshippers should feel comfortable to express worship in their own way.
    2. Songs should not be overly controversial, as only the Gospel should be a stumbling block.
  4. Worship leaders should strive to provide a worship environment free of distraction.
    1. Songs should be familiar, or made familiar, to the worshippers.
    2. The leaders should be skilled in the role in which they serve.
    3. Musical style should be relevant and familiar to the worshippers.

I wrote this three years ago, as a guideline for our worship team at my old church. I think it’s a rather concise statement of my beliefs on the nature of corporate worship. I thought I’d post it here as an example of what I believe on the subject, as well as to get feedback.