Saturday, June 24, 2023

One day I hope you see the truth...

 

The Christian Duty To Produce “Cultural Christianity”

 The Christian Duty To Produce “Cultural Christianity”

By: Pastor Andrew Isker

One of the most commonly held ideas within conservative evangelicalism is that “cultural Christianity is bad because it produces nominal Christians.” Nearly everyone has heard this from evangelical pulpits at one time or another. The former head of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, now a professional accuser of the brethren at Christianity Today, famously said, “Mayberry leads to hell just as certainly as Gomorrah does.”

There was a time when it seemed to make sense. When the entire world around you was clearly influenced by Christian moral teaching, and everyone knew that everyone else expected you to live more or less in this Christian-influenced way, there were many people who thought they were saved because they considered themselves “good people” because they lived within these moral bounds and not because they trusted in Jesus Christ alone for their salvation. This was a very real problem that pastors had to deal with as they sought to minister to their flocks.

But today we are seeing that bemoaning “cultural Christianity” when the Christian religion had cultural dominance in America is like a trust-fund brat complaining that the Michelin-starred restaurant does not have her favorite kind of caviar. If you only knew just how good you had it. We traded having our biggest pastoral problem be “people living in a society that is so well-ordered they think they are going to heaven because of it” for “children being propagandized 24/7 into anal sex and genital mutilation.” To think that “cultural Christianity” was ever a real problem was to have no historical perspective.

“Cultural Christianity” was never a problem, “cultural Christianity” was the fruit of generations of obedience. Put another way, “cultural Christianity” was a problem like a lifetime of extremely hard work producing massive wealth for your children and grandchildren to inherit is “a problem.” Is it possible that your children will grow up being born on third base thinking they hit a triple? Yes. That is always the danger of success. But to treat the results of faithfulness as something worse than crushing poverty is utter foolishness.

This isn’t some unique or idiosyncratic take on “cultural Christianity.” It is the Bible’s perspective on it. God’s Word gives us an example of what happens when God’s people are faithful:

Deuteronomy 28:1 “Now it shall come to pass, if you diligently obey the voice of the Lord your God, to observe carefully all His commandments which I command you today, that the Lord your God will set you high above all nations of the earth. 2 And all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you, because you obey the voice of the Lord your God:

3 “Blessed shall you be in the city, and blessed shall you be in the country.

4 “Blessed shall be the fruit of your body, the produce of your ground and the increase of your herds, the increase of your cattle and the offspring of your flocks.

It is true, the situation of Israel as they are about to conquer the land of Canaan is different than ours. The main difference is that instead of a single geographical territory, God has called us to conquer the entire planet. In His resurrection, Jesus won back His world from Satan, and just before His ascension where He sat down to rule at His Father’s right hand, he told His disciples that all authority in heaven and on earth had been given to Him, and they were to go forth and disciple the nations, to conquer them by baptizing them and teaching them what He has commanded (Matthew 28:18-20). Israel’s conquest of Canaan is a type of conquest of the world by the church. The main difference is that this conquest is far more glorious. God brings His people from glory to glory, and rather than conquering by wielding death, His people conquer by wielding new life. 

So these promises to Israel can be applied to nations that are baptized and discipled into Christ’s kingdom. This is the blueprint for what happens when a people together accept God’s way of living. When a people together collectively live the way God has commanded, blessings will follow. Deuteronomy 28 is not about a random assortment of individuals living faithful, but an entire society together. It does not assume that literally every, single person will have a saving relationship with the Lord, but the majority of the people do. What is in view here is corporate faithfulness as a nation, not as individuals. The same is true of, and can be applied to, nations that the gospel has reached.

It is no coincidence that the nation that became the United States of America, which began as colonies filled with courageous, faithful, hardworking Christians, eventually became the most powerful and economically successful nation in human history. This does not mean that America was without sin (any more than ancient Israel was without sin), or that literally every single person who ever lived in America has been sealed in the Lamb’s Book of Life. What it does mean is that faithfulness produces prosperity; and that both faithfulness and prosperity are a blessing from the hand of the Lord?

The application of God’s Old Testament promises to all of His people is true enough, “for all the promises of God in Him are Yes, and in Him Amen, to the glory of God through us”  (2 Co 1:20), but we also see even more direct and explicit New Testament commands to produce the kind of collective faithfulness we see in Deuteronomy 28. In the Apostle Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesian Church, he gives instructions to Christians from various walks of life. In particular, he gives the command to Christian fathers to raise up their children in the “paideia of the Lord” (Eph. 6:4) Most English translations render that word as “training” or “discipline” but this Greek word means so much more than that.

In fact, that word, “paideia” is one of the very most important words in all of classical Greek. A teacher of mine was fond of saying that to an ancient Greek, the word “paideia” was so full of meaning he could write volume upon volume about it, like if you asked a modern American to explain what the word “democracy” means. If fact, classical scholar Werner Jaeger indeed devoted three, 400+ page volumes to this solitary word. If you want to understand the classical world that the church conquered, and in which the New Testament was written, you have to understand just how important this word is.

Paideia is the whole of Greek culture, it is everything it meant to be a Greek. Every facet of the Greek mind, body, and soul was shaped by paideia. The paideia of the Hellenistic world was the culture. Every influence that worked upon you to make you into a part of the Greek polis was paideia.

So when Paul borrows this Greek word, he was borrowing the entire concept and used it to serve the ends of Christ’s kingdom. Instead of the paideia of the Hellenistic world, the Christian father was to train his children in the paideia of the Lord. Quite literally, the command to Christian parents was to instill cultural Christianity in their children.

And it does not stop there. The household is not a collection of individuals but a collective group, and the first building block of a nation. If the households of a nation are faithful in instilling the paideia of the Lord, the end result is the entire nation is influenced by the paideia of the Lord. The fruit of this is a culture where the expectation is for everyone to live in a Christian manner and within Christian cultural and social mores.

Some are old enough remember this. Older popular culture, like The Andy Griffith Show, referenced above by the odious Russell Moore, might seem quaint or even moralistic to 21st Century men discipled in the paideia of post-Christian demons, but it was representative of how people generally lived. The standards and way of life in those times were governed by the Word of God, and though some might be deceived into thinking that simply living in such a world would grant them eternal salvation, it made the job of the heralds of the gospel of Jesus Christ so much easier than trying to persuade a they/them that God exists and they should repent and believe in Him.

By standing by and allowing millennia of cultural equity to be burned up in just a few short years, because of a foolish prejudice against “cultural Christianity” we have summoned things that are not so easily un-summoned. We have exchanged a society that imperfectly served Jesus Christ, and asked for a society that perfectly serves Baal and Molech. And we have saddled our children and grandchildren and generations not yet born with the task of exorcising these demons.

But the good news is that Jesus Christ is seated at the right hand of God the Father, and He rules over heaven and earth. He built the first Christendom and it is He who will build the second Christendom. And the task at hand for us is to learn how not to spurn precious gifts from His hand and embrace the Christian duty to produce “cultural Christianity.”


SERVE GOD, NOT THE WORLD!

 



http://welcometohealth.blogspot.com/

WE'VE BEEN DANCIN' WITH THE DEVIL WAY TOO LONG...

    

WE'VE BEEN DANCIN' WITH THE DEVIL WAY TOO LONG...

https://debunkingdeath.blogspot.com/

TRUTH TELLER'S RADIO EPISODE 39: GO SEE 'THE FLASH' IT KICKS ASS!

 

Shout out to Elm Road!

Elm Road Drive-In Theatre - Warren, OH
https://mobile.elmroadtripledrivein.com/index.php

1980s: Mr. Mom is Batman GTFO! He surprised and impressed us all and still is!

https://truthtellersradio.blogspot.com/
http://welcometohealth.blogspot.com/
http://batmanparodyhub.blogspot.com/
https://starwarsparodyhub.blogspot.com/

GO SEE THE FLASH! IT'S GREAT AND NOT JUST FOR THE DELICIOUS MEMBER BERRIES. 👍👍
http://batmanparodyhub.blogspot.com/2023/06/go-see-flash-its-great-and-not-just-for.html

https://www.forbes.com/sites/simonthompson/2023/06/06/the-flash-review-this-dcu-winner-promises-a-good-time-and-delivers/


TRUTH TELLER'S RADIO EPISODE 39: GO SEE 'THE FLASH' IT KICKS ASS!

Wednesday, June 21, 2023

LIVNG LIFE DEFEATS DEATH!

HANGIN' WITH THE TOP GUNS AND HOT SHOTS WHILE DOWN BELOW FILMIN' ON MY PHONE


Editor's Note: I had a blast looking at the Thunderbirds kick ass! 100% 9/11 was an inside job! Go watch these heroes and tell me they wouldn't be able to stop 9/11 if they weren't, in one way or another, told to stand down...


Thursday, June 1, 2023

Matisyahu - King Without A Crown (Live from Stubb's)

LYRICS/RELATED INFO BELOW...
"King Without A Crown"

[Freestylin']

Zee you're all that I have and you're all that I need
Each and every day I pray to get to know you please
I want to be close to you, yes I'm so hungry
You're like water for my soul when it gets thirsty
Without you there's no me
You're the air that I breathe
Say sometimes the world is dark and I just can't see
With these, demons surround all around to bring me down to negativity
But I believe, yes I believe, I said I believe
I'll stand on my own two feet
Won't be brought down on one knee
Fight with all of my might and get these demons to flee
Hashem's rays fire blaze burn bright and I believe
Hashem's rays fire blaze burn bright and I believe
Out of darkness comes light, twilight unto the heights
Crown Heights burnin' up all through till twilight
Said, thank you to my God, now I finally got it right
And I'll fight with all of my heart, and all a' my soul, and all a' my might

[Chorus (2x):]
What's this feeling?
My love will rip a hole in the ceiling
Givin' myself to you now from the essence of my being
And I sing to my God, songs of love and healing
I want Moshiach now, time it starts revealing
What's this feeling?
My love will rip a hole in the ceiling
Givin' myself to you now from the essence of my being
And I sing to my God, songs of love and healing
I want Moshiach now. ya

Strip away the layers and reveal your soul
Got to give yourself up and then you become whole
You're a slave to yourself and you don't even know
Want to live the fast life but your brain moves slow
If you're trying to stay high then you're bound to stay low
You want God but you couldn't deflate your ego
If you're already there then there's nowhere to go
If you're cup's already full then its bound to overflow
If you're drowning in the water's and you can't stay afloat
Ask Hashem for mercy and he'll throw you a rope
Looking for help from God you say he couldn't be found
Searching up to the sky and looking beneath the ground
Like a King without his Crown
Yes, you keep fallin' down
You really want to live but can't get rid of your frown
You try to reach unto the heights and wound bound down on the ground
Given up your pride and the you heard a sound
Out of night comes day and out of day comes light
Said nullified to the One like sunlight in a ray,
Make room for his love and a fire gone blaze
Make room for his love and a fire gone blaze

[Chorus (2x):]

Yah yah, yah yah yo yah yah...

[guitar solo]

Yo [x13]

And see, I lift up my eyes where my help come from
And I seen it circling around from the mountain
Thunder!
You feel it in your chest
You keep my mind at ease and my soul at rest
You're not vexed

When I look to the sky where my help come from
And I've seen it circling around from the mountain
Thunder!
You feel it in your chest

Ziggy-yiggy-yo viggy-yiggy-yo
Said Thunder!
You feel it in your, I feel it in your,
Thunder!
You feel it in your, I feel it in your,
Thunder!
You feel it in your, I feel it in your,
Yo ho ho..ah!
...
Woo!

What's this feeling?
My love will rip a hole in the ceiling
Givin' myself to you from the essence of my being
Sing to my God (wah, ha ha..)

Zee wah yo
Zee wah yo ho..
Ho yo..
Zyeh yo ho ho
Yah!

Bryson Gray - KINGDOM AT HAND [Music Video] #repent #brysongray

 


All People Have a Right to Marriage & All Children Need Male and Female Role Models Update 3/28/2023: Since putting this page together, I've read arguments that civil unions should be all the government does for anyone and that marriage should be a church activity. I like this take on things. Steven Crowder expresses a similar opinion (and did so to a gay man who was OK with it) in this interview...
https://mindtreasury.blogspot.com/2016/05/all-people-have-right-to-marriage-all.html