The miracle of biblical tongues is that the word of God can now be translated into any language and the division of Babel is gone.
The miracle of Charismatic tongues is that anyone, even without prior experience, can instantly become talented scat singers.
Often atheists will try to refute Christianity by saying to the Christian: “You’re only a Christian because you were born into a Christian family in a predominantly Christian society. Had you been born in India, you would be a Hindu.”
The first part of that assertion is true — one of the main reasons I am a Christian is because I was born and raised in a Christian environment — more on that in a second. The second assertion is nonsense. Had I not been born to the parents I was born to, in the country I was born in, at the time I was born in, I would not exist, and so no logical assumptions can be made from that assertion. It is like saying, “If 2 + 2 = 5, then….” Well, two and two don’t equal five, and so no logical argument can result from that line of reasoning.
As to the first assertion: I am a Christian because my forebears were Christian — yes, that’s true — so… so what? That does nothing to refute the Christian faith; in fact, it supports it. We know from the bible that God is a God of covenant: “For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.” (Exodus 20:5b-6) God maintains relationship from generation to generation through covenantal relationships. That is the way He operates, and the concept of covenant is one of the essential ideas one must understand in order to understand Christianity.*
Perhaps I will write more on covenant at a later time. For now, if you’re interested, click here for further reading on the concept of covenant.
*The other essential idea one must understand is holiness.
There is a fairly new ice cream seller in Canada, which is expanding beyond the border, named Sweet Jesus. I’ve never been there myself, so I can’t say if the ice cream is any good; although you can click here for one opinion.
The name, I’m guessing, is designed to be edgy and cool. “We’re not afraid of offending anyone! But we’re not bad people either. We give to kids’ charities! So if you’re offended, you can f#@k right off! Yeah!”
They state on their website…
Our name was created from the popular phrase that people use as an expression of enjoyment, surprise or disbelief. Our aim is not to offer commentary on anyone’s religion or belief systems. Our own organization is made up of amazing people that represent a wide range of cultural and religious beliefs.
Clearly they either don’t understand the nature of speech or care about truth in speech when they state, “Our aim is not to offer commentary on anyone’s religion or belief systems,” as is made obvious in some of their ads:
And I find myself wondering, if they really wanted to be edgy, why didn’t they name their business Magic Muhammad’s Isis-Cream: It’ll blow your mind, and the rest of you too! Something dangerous like that.
I wonder if it’s because they knew if they’d done that, they wouldn’t have had only to put up with a few inconvenient bomb threats from angry Muslims, but also the full-on insanity of the regressive diversity social engineering crew, which is much worse. It’s just easier to target Christians. And hey, not all Christians will get offended at the name; there’s plenty of Progressive Christians who are cool enough to play along.
A petition has been started, by Christians, directed at Canada’s Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, and (for some reason) American President Donald Trump. It states…
We, as Christians are deeply offended by the name of a new Ice Cream chain of stores calling themselves Sweet Jesus. This is a mockery of taking the Lord’s name in vain and also highly offensive to Christians. The imagery used to promote the brand is also anti-Christ and therefore anti-Christian, for example, using upside down crosses on the labels of the ice cream cups.
As a Christian myself, I understand why the name is offensive, and I will not be buying any ice cream from that business. However, if you’re a Christian and you are not just as upset by the Playboy magazine that’s been sitting on the shelf of your local convenience store for the last 40 years as you are by the name Sweet Jesus, then I’d suggest you don’t spend too much time and energy getting upset about this ice cream joint either.
If I were a military commander, I think that, when facing a superior opponent, I would want to force my enemy to engage in constant useless battles. This would distract him from his real goal, it would tire him out and waste away his resources, and it would cause division within his own forces. I think this is what Satan does a lot of the time with Christians. Look! Here is some inconsequential group of people doing something offensive towards Christians — go and get angry at them! Seethe with soul crushing rage and demand that someone with power do something!
The best things for Christians to do when encountering a business like Sweet Jesus is, first, simply ignore it and don’t go there; second, write a letter to the company and intelligently and forcefully express your opinion; and third, continue on with the primary mission of the Church, which is to expand Christ’s Kingdom to cover the whole world — which Christians do indeed have the resources, authority, and ability to do, as long as we don’t continuously get distracted by pointless engagements.
“Jesus … would have been nothing but a fanatic dreamer had He not carried within His own soul the full time span from Adam and Moses to Himself. Only because He did was He later accorded a corresponding power to shape the future. That power reaches from Him — through the Church and Christendom — to the end of the world, and is undeniably still being revealed to us every day since we are still fighting about Him as much as ever before.”
~from Practical Knowledge of the Soul, page 13
I recently tweeted: The only theology that matters: Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18.
A Progressive/Liberal Christian responded….
Obviously LunaticFringer didn’t bother to look up the two O.T. verses, in which she would have discovered what Jesus was quoting when He said, “And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment. And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these.” (Mark 12:30-31)
As I have young children, I have been thinking a lot lately about how I will successfully pass on my Christian faith to them. It is not a guaranteed thing when mom and dad are Christian that the kids will be too. I’ve seen it too often when children, even raised by pastors, reject the faith when they’re old enough to be allowed to do so.
This passing on of the faith can be looked at in relation to a whole society in much the same way as individual families. The Deuteronomy passage tells us what to do…
Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord:
And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.
And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart:
And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.
And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes.
And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates.
(Deut. 6:4-9)
First we are told to love God with all our hearts, souls, and minds — everything we are. Second, we are told that these words need to be in, or on, our hearts. That doesn’t happen automatically. If we want the faith to continue to the next generation we must teach God’s word, and make His word foundational to all aspects of our lives — our children need to hear us talking about God and living what we are saying. Whatever we do with our hands and with our minds is submitted to God (compare to Revelation 13:16). Our family life (thy house) and our political sphere (thy gates) are shaped by His word.
If we don’t do these things we are guaranteeing that our children will either become atheists directly or Liberal Christians, which leads to the same place. Liberal Christianity, both its fading modernist version and its new progressive/post-modernist version, with its worship of the zeitgeist god and its false mission to “save” the Church from itself, has always been and will always be a direct road to atheism.
Today we live in an overly feminized culture. If you say or do anything which offends people and makes them feel bad, you are in the wrong. Truth, when offensive (as it often is), is rejected. God’s word is truth; God’s word is offensive. The strong father figure is no longer respected and is seen as “toxic masculinity”.
God is one — He is not divided. He is not tossed to and fro in His thinking. He was not different in the Old Testament as He is in the New Testament. His word does not change meaning over time (as post-modern philosophy teaches). What He said to the O.T. Israelites as recorded in the Bible was not just their confused understanding of His word muddied by their tribalistic warrior worldview.
Christian fathers need to grow some backbones and pass on the uncompromised word of God to their children and the entire next generation.
Further reading…
Men in Charge?! So Patronizing!
