Dead American

Daniel 3

This particular principle has more to do with Daniel’s friends than Daniel himself.  Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego had gone through the Babylonian training and ended up in leadership in the Babylonian Empire.

Meanwhile, Daniel had interpreted a dream that had been troubling Nebuchadnezzar.  In this dream, God showed Nebuchadnezzar an image of a man that symbolized the current kingdom, Babylon, as the head and then the subsequent kingdoms that would follow.

Nebuchadnezzar took this message from God about the temporal nature of his own kingdom … and proceeded to make a huge image of himself made completely of gold.  Then Nebby decided that everyone had to bow down to it.

After three years of a diet of vegetables and water, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego had seen the favor and faithfulness of the Lord.  They would not bow down.  The consequence of not bowing down was to be put in the fiery furnace.  Nebby practically pleaded with them to reconsider.  Their response?  “God will deliver us.  But even if he doesn’t, we will not bow down.”

We all know the rest of the story well.  Basic Sunday School type stuff.  God did deliver them and Nebby even saw a “fourth” person like the “son of God” in there with them.  The three young men emerged from the fiery furnace unscathed.

While this is a very familiar story, the principle I would like to take away today is, what image are we being asked to bow down to?  Those who seek to serve the Lord alone will bow to NO OTHER IMAGE.  What does that mean?

Well, surely we don’t bow to actual idols, at least in our culture, so we feel safe from idolatry.  But did you know that the scripture equates greed and covetousness with idolatry?  So even though we do not bow down to a little (or big) image of something or someone, we still might be guilty of idolatry.

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego all served in the empire.  They weren’t rebelling against the whole empire.  They just would not bow down to any besides the true God.  Nebuchadnezzar and Babylon had its place for its time, but it did not have THAT place.

So at what point do we bow to something?  When you seek your identity from that thing, or your security, or your provision.  When you give place to something that should only belong to God.  If we continually have faith in the state to rescue our nation from every woe, then we bow down and worship the state.  If we have faith in our nation to police the world and its conflicts, then we bow down and worship our own nation.  If we see a political party or candidate as a reason for hope and prosperity, we bow down to those things.

America, its government and leaders have a place … but not THAT place.

We could also get into religious idolatry, as Alice left in a comment from yesterday’s post.  The hero worship that happens with ministers in the Body of Christ is quite disconcerting at times.  To see preachers, teachers, and worship leaders marketed like the latest celebrity is more worldly than we seem to understand.  It goes directly against Jesus’ example and teaching.  He wouldn’t let them make him an earthly king and continually told people to NOT tell anyone what he did, even though they did it anyway.  He also taught that “the first will be last” and leadership in the Body works differently from the world, that we shouldn’t even let ourselves be called by names like “teacher” or “father” or other position type mentalities.

Those are the words of Jesus, of course.

There are other types of idolatry.  Idolatry is basically giving created, temporal things the place of the eternal Creator.  This is why Paul lists greed and covetousness as idolatry.  You seek your satisfaction from things.  True satisfaction can only come from God.

As people seeking to serve the Living God, be sure that you bow to only him.  He is a jealous God, and he broaches no competitors.  Not your career or your wealth or your entertainment or your country or your politics or your heroes.  Nothing should have his place.

Thoughts?

Peace.

Daniel 1:8

Nebuchadnezzar was king of Babylon when God gave Juday over to captivity due to their idolatry, greed, violence, and the oppression of the poor.  God even calls Nebby “my servant” to indicate His use of Babylon as a vessel.

Daniel and his three friends were singled out because of their youth, appearance, and ability to learn.  The king appointed them a provision of his own delicacies over three years of training.

But Daniel “purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself with the portions of the king’s delicacies.”  He brought his request to the chief of the eunuchs, the man in charge over them.  Daniel asked for only vegetables and water, convincing the chief eunuch to give them a trial period of ten days, since the chief was afraid of the king’s judgment if he saw his prized captives looking sickly.

At the end of ten days, Daniel and his friends looked even better than the young men who ate the king’s delicacies.  So from what I can gather, Daniel and his friends ate only vegetables and water for three years of their training and education.

Now, obviously the point here is not to eat only vegetables and water for three years, unless the Lord leads you specifically in that.

But there is an important principle here.  As Americans, the wealth of kings is at our fingertips.  Does that necessarily mean it is God’s will we partake in them?  Daniel would not, understanding that to take part in luxuries afforded him would “defile” him.  He trusted in God for his health and favor.  This was a risk for himself, his friends, and the stewards over him.

Daniel purposefully lived a lifestyle where God would have to supernaturally provide or he would fail.  Daniel would not allow the king to even pretend glory in Daniel’s favor.

Another aspect of this, I feel, is the idea of being an independent agent.  Daniel was a slave, a captive, but he was proactive in being different, set apart, and making his own choices.

Daniel “purposed in his heart.”  This took conscious choice and an act of will to be set apart.  Daniel was intentional about this.

As someone who has made similar choices in my life to live a life like this, it proves very difficult.  Surely the other captives and trainees couldn’t understand why someone, when given the free opportunity, would choose not to partake in the king’s luxuries and delicacies.  It is the same today.  People, even well-meaning Christians, have a hard time understanding why you would choose to live without luxuries in our culture when they are readily available.

I can tell you, as Daniel learned, God is faithful and the discipline of such simplicity is liberating.  One of the main dangers to our spirituality, as Jesus explained in the parable of the sower, is the “cares of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth”, thorns that rise up and kill the life and fruit God desires for us to produce.

The cares of this life are therefore in conflict with the Kingdom of God.  Too often Christians equate the cares of this life with participating in the Kingdom of God.  Jesus clearly felt the opposite.  He continually called those that followed him to leave everything and give everything away, not just the rich young ruler.

It is not coincidence this is the first thing Daniel dealt with in his book, and therefore the first principle we discuss.  It was fundamental to God’s favor and Daniel’s victory while a captive and serving under a foreign king.  He had to establish first his unwillingness to be subject to any ruler other than the true God of Israel.  Then he could act in complete freedom.

Seek first the Kingdom, then all things you need will be added.  Is not the body more than clothes, life more than food?  The “Gentiles (those bound by this world)” seek after these things.

I can’t tell you what “king’s delicacies” defile you.  Whatever keeps you from regular and intimate fellowship with the saints should be an initial red flag, but other things could be revealed to you as the Lord wills if you would “purpose in your heart” not to be defiled by the things of this world, to be set apart, to be a testimony in this.

Thoughts?

Peace.

Over the past few years, more and more Christians have re-visited the role of Christianity and its relationship with the state.  Many became disillusioned with the awkward partnership between the Republicans pary and evangelical Christianity.  Of course others had already partnered their views with the Democrats, while still more were frustrated with conservatives but saw an even greater evil in modern liberalism, therefore they stand stuck in this nebulous region where no political spectrum expresses their views.  And there are still the die hard Christian conservatives that won’t be budged.

So some Christians have become even more apathetic about politics in general.  Also, a growing number of social-gospelites see the state as a possible vessel for redemption.

Overall, I believe any discussion questioning such things to be a good thing, if intellectually honest and seeking what is right and true, not just a knee jerk reaction based in what Bono would think is cool.

I’ve made my personal views clear.  Based on the nature of the two, the Church and the state are not just separate institutionally.  They are separate in scope (eternal vs. temporal), purpose (redemptive vs. legalistic) and design (organic vs. organized).  The state has its role and purpose, but the Church has an even greater mandate that I feel needs to be addressed, especially in the time we find ourselves.  The Church’s mandate is not just for today, but for all of history and eternity.  And we have been empowered by the Holy Spirit to fulfill this mandate.

Jesus once rebuked the Jews by saying, “You can look at the sky and predict the weather, but you can’t seem to discern the times.”  God is shaking our economic systems (and will continue to do so) and is handing our nation over to a messianic political figure all at once.

This will be a bright day for the Church if we can see ourselves for who we are.

I feel the example of Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego are timely for us now and in the future, and also as a basic understanding of the role of God’s people within a worldly government, under any type of administration.

We are, by nature, aliens and strangers, a people in exile but with a full assurance of full and eternal restoration.  In this world but not of it.

I will be pulling seven principles from the book of Daniel.  Please consider them over the next week … and comment!  Share your thoughts, as well, on these principles as we go.  I would love to hear your input.

Peace.

Just wanted to give kudos to the Republicans for holding back their support for this Auto bailout until they get more concessions from the Union.  The UAW is one of the biggest contributors to this mess.

Of course now the UAW is blaming the GOP for holding back the bailout.  It passed the House and the Dems have a majority in the Senate and Bush would sign it.  Why do you need Republican support?  either the GOP is uber unified (doubtful) or there are some Dems afraid to support it without the Republican stamp of approval, so that if it fails, they all have someone else to blame.

The same issue exists with this bailout as with the Wall Street one.  We’re giving people money who are responsible for failure.  We’re not holding the right people accountable.  The Republicans are finally willing to make that stand.

In other news, a substitute teacher in England this week told a class of 7 year olds that Santa wasn’t real and parents really put the presents out.  Some of these same parents were livid.

“We’re lying to our kids and you ruined it!”

Not an exact quote, but you get the point.

Peace.

Ok, so I changed my blog over from blogspot to my own site earlier this year.  While there have been and continue to be advantages to this (thanks d10!), the comments situation is fairly annoying.

Every couple weeks I get ten plus spam comments that I must delete from my site.  It has gotten a little better over time, but it still happens way too often since I am supposedly reporting them as spam.  Most of these spam comments are just gibberish, although some are ads.

Then we get the spam comments from people who go on a rant because I used a specific word or mentioned something on my blog.  This has increasingly happened since I’ve been doing my Top Ten Lists.

For example, a couple weeks ago I wrote a blog detailing why the Church is the hero of the story and I used the movie Hook to make a point.  I got a comment from some dude ranting about how Hook wasn’t true to the Peter Pan mythology and linking to some site about such important matters … to him.  Of course this had nothing to do with the original post, so I deleted it.

This happens often; which means that there are individuals who somehow know immediately when a blog is posted that mentions some artist or subject (these comments are pretty soon after the post) and they have some sort of canned response or they respond personally.

Which means someone has dedicated an inordinate amount of their time and energy to making sure everyone on the internet is informed, in their mind, about the truth of Peter Pan as he relates to a Robin Williams movie.

How do these people have enough free time for this?  That’s always my question.  Do they really have nothing better to do than indiscriminately spam people with gibberish and crap?  Do they have friends, a girlfriend, a wife, kids?

I would support (someone get Obama on the phone) legislation where we track down these internet terrorists and force them to do some hard labor or community service in their free time.

But they’d probably just find a way to spam me about that, too.

Peace.

First off, I’m gonna get a little negative and review War, Inc. by and with John Cusack.

John Cusack is my favorite actor.  This movie made lose respect for him.  War, Inc. takes every crazy Michael Moore liberal conspiracy theory and puts it in this farce in order to paint the Bush administration and the American military as evil as you can imagine.  As a result, it is not thought-provoking at all and only serves to make opponents of the War in Iraq seem ridiculous.

(There were a couple good aspects of the movie that made some interesting commentary, but not enough to redeem the ridiculous.)

A better commentary, and source for thought, was the movie the Kingdom. Not quite as action packed as I had hoped, but it still ends up raising the issue of how violence begets violence and contributes to a disturbing cycle.  I liked that.  Didn’t necessarily demonize a position or side but raised important questions about the human condition with the backdrop of the War on Terror.

(The Kingdom was a decent movie.  Worth watching.)

Third, I’d like to discuss some fantasy pulp fiction, the Pirate King by RA Salvatore.

I really like his Drizzt series of books.  In some ways, it is cheap fantasy, but the characters are engaging and the stories have really matured over the last couple years.

In The Pirate King, the 2nd book of Salvatore’s latest trilogy, there is this rough and tumble city of pirates and thieves that is being oppressed by this dictatorial witch-king.

This famous pirate-hunter is convinced to take this witch-king down and free the city.  But the question arises: who will take the place of the witch king once removed?  The pirate-hunter eventually does, but the removal of the witch-king allows for other criminal elements of the city to rise up and persue their own agenda, all to the detriment of innocents.

Again, I appreciated the creative analogy, as silly as it may seem to non-fantasy readers.  Certain questions are asked.  I believe they’re valid:

Is the removal of evil always good and redemptive or may it sometimes lead to even greater evil and chaos?  Is it always the right thing to interfere based on our cultural notions of political morality into a separate culture just because we have the power to do so?  Does it therefore make it our responsibility?  At what point does fully understanding the historical context and sovereignty of another culture question our own intervention, either in the past, present or future?

Some conservatives would have you believe asking some of these questions to be unpatriotic and even flat out wrong.  I think it is dangerous NOT to ask them and try to understand a little more.  Some of the pat conservative answers belie a very Cold-War attitude and mindset.

For the Pirate King, I appreciated the idea that the pirate-hunter was a hero, cared about the innocent and freedom and doing what was right.  The witch-king was evil and oppressive and the resulting criminal elements were selfish and closed minded individuals seeking their own agenda.

But these questions remain for the US to truly ask ourselves.  Now that the world has moved on from a Cold War necessity, is it always our responsibility to be the world’s police force?  At what point is our intervention in world affairs fighting the War on Terror and how does it perpetuate it?

I know many in the military.  I know their hearts.  They are heroes and have the best of intentions.  Much good has been done in Afghanistan and Iraq, but disallowing the questions I’ve raised in this post proves just as intellectually dishonest as Michael Moore and those who put their name on War, Inc.

Peace.

Merry Christmas, conservatives!  You have a huge scandal in the Democratic party, possibly affiliated with Obama!  And he hasn’t even taken office yet!

Seriously, this story is everywhere, and everyone is talking about it.  No shock to me, although I giggled when the AP story I read today mentioned that Blogo was elected in 2002 in order to clean up after a very corrupt governor … and that governor is still in jail, I believe.  Blogo might join him.

The Obama manic media is doing its best to help Barak distance himself from this guy … but I’m telling you Obama may not have known what this guy was doing, but he knew the governor pretty well and was associated with the man.  The “I never spoke with the man about this” is as much a lie as “I didn’t know Jeremiah Wright held these views.”

I told someone (I don’t remember who … you don’t have to trust me) before the election that if elected, we would see scandal after scandal around Obama.  He’s been tied to corruption and radicalism like few politicians ever before.  But give the media credit.  They’re working harder than a lipless chick in a kissing booth to cover for him.  I doubt anything will stick, but you’ll continue to see it.

Joe the Plummer said some interesting things about the McCain campaign.  First of all, he was sickened by McCain’s justification of the Wall Street buyout when he directly asked ol’ Maverick John about it.  Joe the Plummer isn’t a liberal, so the chances of him writing a book is slim, but it might happen.  Joe did say that Palin was the “real deal”, however.  Oh, and despite how sickened he was by McCain, Obama scared him even more.

Interesting to me because I’ve said that if McCain had stood against the buyout, he would have won in a landslide.  Hopefully Maverick John really believed in it, because I seriously think it cost him the election.

A woman tried to smuggle a monkey into LA by putting it under her blouse and pretending to be pregnant.  She’s probably a Darwinist.

A cat bit Santa this week.  Apparently, some people take their pets to PetSmart to get a pic with Santa.  They probably dress them up in weird clothes, too.  Story says that the woman bought the cat from a breeder for $1,500.  Okay, that’s ridiculous.

Peace.

Just wanted to put down a note that I had the best birthday ever … well, as far as I remember, and as a year older, who knows …

But really, having a lot of people together, loving one another, fellowshipping, and the time at Eddie’s Attic, it was great.

Also awesome was the amount of emails and facebook well-wishers … I was overwhelmed.  I know Becca instigated some of the email stuff, but I just wanted everyone to know that it really blessed me to get a happy birthday and a couple sentences of encouragement.

I actually think it helped to further heal me of this head crud.

Love you all,

Peace.

When did it become godly to “seek to save your own life”?

Peace.

So I finally got to see the movie Expelled from Ben Stein.

Honestly, I was a little disappointed.  For a 90 minute movie, I would’ve liked to see some more of the science behind Intelligent Design.  They talked about it, but there was a lot more they could have showed instead of focusing so much on some other things.

Of course, per the title, Ben Stein does a good job exposing the discrimination and oppression in the larger scientific community against anyone who even mentions Intelligent Design or that their research could in any way support it.

Many like to act as if it is the Christian community oppressive against Evolutionary Theory (ET), but the modern situation weighs heavily in the opposite extreme.  Anyone even mentioning Intelligent Design (ID) is blackballed and ostracized from the scientific community.  This cuts scientists from their funding, removes then from tenured university positions and the like.  It is a very facist approach by the evolution dominated scientific community.

The issue is not about whether evolution is true.  Any scientist, even creationsists, will heartily agree that there are mounds of evidence that supports a change in species over time, what Darwin discovered.  The issue is the belief in how life began, the origin of life, what Darwin and later evolutionists extrapolated from micro-evolutionary evidence.  A hugely insane jump.

ID states that, based on an incredible amount of research, life has been designed.  Of course, if something has been designed, then therefore there must be a designer.

Here is where ID is rejected as a religious and un-scientific study.

But to believe that ET can explain the origins of life takes just as much faith.  In fact, every possible explanation that ET scientists come up with to explain the origin of life is more preposterous and scientifically impossible than what they roll their eyes at and mock.

So the issue is not between religion and science, as ET dominated science would have you believe.  It is between two separate world-views, or religious ideas, one of them being a belief in a higher power responsible for the design and another believing that man IS the higher power.

Think of it.  The idea that a single celled organism spontaneously, on its own, rises from the muck and crawled out into the atmosphere and, through billions of years of natural selection, becomes the mysteriously complex being that we are, gives glory not to God but to man and the flesh.  We, in essence, created ourselves by this theory.  We become the creator.

ET as an explanation for the origin of life is the creation myth for secular humanism.  Humanism is the belief in man’s inherent goodness and ability to better himself to the extent of even achieving some sense of Utopia.  Secular humanism says this all happens apart from any silly notions about a higher power.

ET and secular humanism are then the basis for such things like extreme socialism and communism, which have always failed, lowering the standard of living more than they ever raised it, and dangerous studies like Eugenics that justifies things like removing whole races (the Holocaust), euthanasia and abortion.

The question becomes, can someone believe in ET as an origin for life and be a Christian?  Some would say yes, and if you have just a surface belief in one or the other or both, I could agree.

But as Ben Stein found, every ET scientist he spoke with did not believe in God.  One scientist specifically gave a “testimony” in which he believed in God before, but his studies of ET changed his mind; and he therefore no longer believes.  A second scientist explained his turning away from God through his studies in ET as liberating, a transcendent, religious experience.

Now, to be fair, some horrendous things have been done in the name of all major religions, not just secular humanism, but it is important to note that a belief in ET as an origin for life is a religious idea and has had religious consequences.

And belief in Evolution as the origin of life apart from God’s hand and design is in direct conflict with true Christian belief.  Creation by God Almighty supports Christian belief.

As for the movie, I can recommend it, especially more than most of the crap you can get at Blockbuster; my disappointment is related to the fact that I didn’t feel the movie was strong enough to give a non-believer pause and make him or her re-think their worldview.

Peace.