3.03.2005
Farewell Laertes!
Today was a red letter day for the Drake. It appears that a liberal blogger named The Bohemian Mama has blocked me from her comments section. Turns out that open exchange of ideas only flies when you agree with the liberal worldview. Well, that ain't gonna happen here at The Drake Musing! Bring it on, I say.
Like all unbelievers, the liberal clique at Bohemenian Mama's place are committed to denial of the truth, choosing to engage in emotionally charged rhetoric whose only aim is to silence those who would dare to point out that their peculiar brand of love, compassion and justice are lies from the pit of Hell.
Why are Christians perceived by the unregenerate masses as such a threat? I believe it's because we are a witness to their pending doom. We intrude on their blissful dream of non-accountability because we believe the following things:
1. There is one, and only one, God who created all things. He is the giver of life and has the ultimate power over man's eternal destiny.
2. This God is pure and holy. His motives and judgements are unimpeachable.
3. This God has put forth a standard of holy conduct that all men are to be judged by. The righteous to eternal life in paradise, and the unrighteous to an eternity of conscious torment separated from the love of their Creator.
4. No man ever born, save one, has been able to live up to that holy standard to God's satisfaction. Therefore, all men stand condemned before the living, almighty God based on their character and the conduct of their lives.
5. That single exception, Jesus Christ, was sent from God in His infinite mercy and love to provide a way of salvation from our deserved judgement. Being the human incarnation of the living God, Jesus voluntarily died a horrific death on a Roman cross in substitutionary atonement for our sins - past, present and future.
6. Every person who has ever come to believe in his heart and confess to others the above propositions has only been able to do so because God granted him the ability to believe (the gift of faith) and the desire to repent of his sinful behaviors. Any such person has been granted eternal life with Christ in the Kingdom of Heaven, no matter what they have done or may do in their earthly lives.
What galls people who stand outside of the faith is their inability to reconcile the holy wrath of God with His infinite love and goodness. I admit that I have had my share of struggles with some of the Old Testament revelation like that found in Numbers 31:15-18, where Moses, by the command of God, orders the slaughter of every male and woman who has ever known the touch of a man from the people known as the Midianites. No one likes the thought of having to kill a small frightened child or a virtually helpless woman simply because God didn't like their religion. However, closer inspection of the facts reveals that this society was totally depraved, guilty of sacrificing their own children by fire to their god Baal. Moreover, God also killed thousands of the Israelites during their Exodus to the Promised Land when they rebelled against His Rule.
Liberals and other committed unbelievers have taken to calling my God a mass murderer and child rapist, using these narrow quotations of Scripture to paint God as a hateful, evil, bloodthirsty figment of our imagination -- and his followers as the worst kind of threat to society because we build our hope and value systems from this insane example.
Far from being a threat, however, we who know the blessing of salvation have come to understand both the heart of God and our own vileness through the life changing power of the truth and life contained in His Word.
The heart of God as I understand it is this:
God loves us more than any human parent could love a most precious child and wants desparately to hold us close to Himself for all of eternity. However, we generally want no part of that. We recognize in the world around us and in the stirrings of our own soul that we are separated from our true life and purpose, but we tend to stubbornly refuse to seek out the God who declares Himself so plainly to us. Therefore, we choose guilt and death over life, liberty, joy and peace. Because God created us with free will, He honors our choice -- albeit with tears and grieving.
But God is also the Supreme Being of the Universe, and He will tolerate no interlopers. He is also holy, meaning that He will not allow evil in His presence. He casts anyone who clings to evil into outer darkness.
We see this in our world, but will see it even more plainly after death.
So it is the Christian's sad duty to inform all who refuse to bow to the God of Hosts and declare His Christ as Lord and Savior -- the only means to escape final judgement and eternal (ongoing) pains of death -- that they are lost and condemned. Not by us, and not by Jesus, but by their own choice.
But it is also the joyful privilege of believers to share the Good News of hope in Jesus. This is sometimes hard, given the hostility that often comes against a person who will not just go along with the perishing crowd. I am very bad at this, I confess. Now that Bohemian Mama has shut her gates, I wish I had said some things with more love. I regret that at times, I was more concerned with winning an argument or delivering a verbal smackdown than I was about the desperate need of those with whom I was sparring.
Forgive me, Lord, for my arrogance, and create in me new and humble heart that rejoices more in the message of the Gospel than in the retribution of your judgement against the wicked. Especially since I must count myself among their number. Purge me, O God, of the vanity and bitterness and vengeful hatred that spills out sometimes in the words I type -- revealing the ugliness of a heart not in tune with your calling on my life. By whatever means necessary.
Grant me, God of everything, the grace to restrain from engaging in tit-for-tat debates with those who hate me because they hate you and everything you are.
I ask for your power to give my life to unselfish service in Christ's Name, because I have no taste for it in and of myself.
In the Most Holy Name of Jesus Christ, Amen!
Shalom!
- posted by The Drake @ 9:30 PM
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I noticed that this particular person has an amazingly paranoid fear of anything religious, painting the acknowledgement of religious tradition as an undermining of the Constitution and a hurling towards a theocratic facism. Really sad. Although part of me says it must be nice to have so little wrong in someone's life that one has the luxury of freaking out over something so minor.
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