Living Water of Washington DC

2008-11-09T16:38:00.001-08:00

The Sovereign: a King and his Coin

In biblical times, and after that, the currency of most nations and empires bore the image of the sovereign, who was the issuer of the currency. Jesus famously asked His accusers to show Him a denarius, which bore the image of its issuer, the Caesar, so that He could direct people to render unto Caesar that which belonged to Caesar.

Here is a silver denarius bearing the image of Domitian, who happened to be Caesar about the time that John penned Revelation.

In the past, the wealth of the sovereign supported the currency. A coin used to be called metonymically a "sovereign". But our own currency bears images of Presidents who are dead. They are neither alive nor sovereign, neither is our currency called such, because the issuers of the currency do not reveal themselves as had kings in the past, such as the Caesars. Some of those dead people pictured on our currency, such as Alexander Hamilton, were never President, nor even governor of any "sovereign" state.

As many people learned quite recently, the sovereigns are those whom statesmen serve, although their identities are not revealed. There are sovereigns today, but they are not George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Obama, etc.

All we know is that statesmen can steal trillions of "dollars" of the committed labor their constituents, and with the stroke of a pen give it to faceless financiers against the will of the serfs who are enslaved by, biblically speaking, true kings of the world. These same kings are enriched by the Harlot of Babylon as prophesied with utmost precision by the Disciple whom Jesus loved.

The secret kings today make sure that we render unto them what they claim as their own, whether we render it voluntarily, or if it is seized from us without our consent, such as what happened with the trillion dollar "bailout". They will not reveal themselves to us, yet. In the meantime, they use their front-men such as H. Paulson, the President, and other puppets.

We cannot buy or sell anything without the currency they manufacture.

We can only enjoy full access to the currency they manufacture by virtue of a "social security" number and "work" which fulfills their agenda.

Otherwise, we beg. Or starve.

2007-11-04T10:18:00.001-08:00

Wild at Heart by John Eldredge has real problems.
Here are 18 reasons why.

1. Eldredge prays that men and women live the life they want (page xii).

2. Wild at Heart says that salvation comes from pursuit of fights, adventure, and beautiful women. (p. 9).

3. Wild at Heart twists the biblical version of The Fall and trashes the doctrine of Original Sin.

4. Wild at Heart says the old heart of man is good and that the central message of the Bible is for man to get back his old heart (p. 129).

5. Wild at Heart's "bondage" of the heart has nothing to do with sin.

6. Wild at Heart assures readers that they are saints and holy ones (p.144).

7. The warped soteriology of Wild at Heart

8. Wild at Heart misuses Scripture and changes meanings of words.

9. Wild at Heart says "We don't need accountability groups"(p. 175).

10. Wild at Heart indiscriminately mixes the profane with the sacred.

11. Wild at Heart recommends that you listen for "voices".

12. Wild at Heart's Freudian view of sex.

13. Wild at Heart says "A man must know that he is powerful"(p. 18) and "Let people feel the weight of who you are"(p. 151).

14. Eldredge blames everything on the devil.

15. Eldredge makes up his own Bible stories, and says that Jesus speaks of "the deep and holy goodness of masculine aggression" (p. 177).

16. Eldredge says that God has given him and his partners a special message.

17. Wild at Heart says women must be rescued by "knights in shining armor" (p. 16).

18. Wild at Heart says we have not taken myths and fables "seriously enough" (p. 182).

Scroll down to read about each of these points.

1. Eledredge prays that men and women live the life they want (page xii).

The introduction to Wild at Heart reads as follows:

"We need permission.

"Permission to be what we are - men made in God's image. Permission to live from the heart and not from the list of "should" and "ought to" that has left so many of us tired and bored.

"Most messages for men ultimately fail... They ignore what is deep and true to a man's heart, his real passions, and simply try to shape him up through various forms of pressure. 'This is the man you ought to be. This is what a good husband/father/Christian/churchgoer ought to do.' Fill in the blanks from there. He is responsible, sensitive, disciplined, faithful, diligent, dutiful, etc. Many of these are good qualities. That these messengers are well-intentioned I have no doubt. But the road to hell, as we remember, is paved with good intentions...

"So I offer this book, not as the seven steps to being a better Christian, but as a safari of the heart to recover a life of freedom, passion, and adventure. I believe it will help men get their heart back - and women as well. Moreover, it will help women to understand their men and help them live the life they both want. That is my prayer for you." [All emphases his.]
(Wild at Heart pp. xi-xii)

Let's summarize:

John Eldredge gives you his permission to live from your heart and not from that restrictive list of "should" and "ought to" that bores you and makes you tired.
" ...responsible, sensitive, disciplined, faithful, diligent, dutiful, etc. Many of these are good qualities." I'm still trying to figure out which of these is not a good quality. Eldredge says the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and the people who say that these are good qualities have good intentions. What is he trying to say here? You fill in the blanks.
Eldredge does not offer his book as steps to being a better Christian, but as a "safari" to recover freedom, passion, and adventure.
Eldredge prays that his book helps men and women live the way they want.

2. Wild at Heart says that salvation comes from pursuing your heart's childish desires to fight battles, seek adventure, and rescue beauties (p. 9).

"There are three desires I find written so deeply into my heart I know now I can no longer disregard them without losing my soul. They are core to who and what I am and yearn to be. I gaze into boyhood… and I am convinced these desires are universal, a clue into masculinity itself… in the heart of every man is a desperate desire for a battle to fight, an adventure to live, and a beauty to rescue. I want to you to think of the films men love, the things they do with their free time, and especially the aspirations of little boys and see if I am not right on this." (WaH p. 9)

It doesn't appear that WaH is talking here about the biblical heart upon which God has written his laws because the laws, taken together, would resemble the annoying list of "should" and "ought to" that Eldredge can't stand. Note his rendition of "salvation by pursuit of three desperate desires": Eldredge says that if he doesn't become what he yearns to be, he will lose his soul. That is, if he doesn't pursue the boyish desires written in his heart, his salvation is lost.

But WaH has a problem with nagging laws being written in your heart. Those laws just keep getting in the way of your deepest personal desires. The heart that Eldredge seeks is the heart of the fallen Adam.

3. Wild at Heart's twisted version of The Fall and trashing of the doctrine of Original Sin.

"The story of Adam's fall is every man's story. It is… almost mythic in its brevity and depth. And so every man comes into the world set up for a loss of heart. Then comes the story we are much more aware of - our own story…the outcome is always the same: a wound in the soul…every man carries a wound. And the wound is nearly always given by his father." (WaH p.60)

WaH teaches that every man's life repeats that of Adam's, that Adam's story "is every man's story". But the fact is that Adam's story is not every man's story: every man except Adam is born of his fallen parents; no man but Adam is responsible for Man's Fall from Grace. The Bible teaches that the opposite of what WaH says is true: all men are born into sin but can be spiritually reborn by grace through faith. If it were true that "Adam's fall is every man's story", then every man is created pure but falls during his lifetime ("the wound") and loses the pure heart he was born with. This is clearly unbiblical, and dead wrong.

WaH treats the sinful heart that one is born with as though it were pure, and brands the heart of the New Creation as "false". Its description of the Fall isn't just unbiblical, it is anti-biblical, and its theology is diametrically opposed to the biblically rendered description of God's plan for our salvation. To build its upside-down theology, WaH meshes the "Fall" into his "Wound" (loss of heart) concept, so that all men experience the Fall from Grace during their lifetimes when they are "wounded" by their daddies.

"every little boy and every little girl comes into the world set up for a loss of heart." (WaH p.57)

The truth is that little boys and little girls are not "set up" for the fall to occur later in life. They do not have to wait for daddy to wound them in order to become fallen. Every little boy and every little girl is born into the consequences of the Fall. In fact, they are born into sin and are "set up" to accept a new heart given by God (Psalm 51). Eldredge either doesn't understand or doesn't accept this. The Fall has already occurred; the Fall occurred once; the Fall occurred with Adam and Eve (Genesis 3; Romans 5:12-19).

The Apostle Paul exhorts those who are in Christ to behave in a manner befitting the new nature that the Lord has given them, not the old:

"Put off your old nature which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful lusts… put on the new nature, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness." (Ephesians 4:22-24 RSV)

But WaH, on the other hand urges a man to recover and put back on the old nature that belongs to his former manner of life. WaH rants on about "recovering" and "getting back" the heart. But nobody should try to get back the sinful heart that God has replaced with His Body. The description of salvation in Wild at Heart isn't just spin on the Bible's message about salvation; it is antithesis. Wild at Heart, would have you crucify the New Creation and resurrect the wild fallen Adam.

4. Wild at Heart says the old heart is good and that the central message of the Bible is for man to get back his old heart (p. 129).

How does WaH propose you chuck those silly "should's" and "ought to's" to get the life you want? Well, it says you've got to get back your own heart. Since it's the heart containing your childish boyhood dreams, it must be the heart you had before you accepted Christ into it. According to WaH, you've got to get back the heart you had before the Lord wrote His boring list of "should" and "ought to" in it, then you can be "free" to do the things you really want: fight battles, live adventures, and chase beauties.

"For if you are going to know who you truly are as a man [emphasis his], if you are going to find a life worth living, if you are going to love a woman deeply and not pass on your confusion to your children, you must simply get your heart back." (WaH p. 18)

"That is why I have written this book. I am here to tell you that you can get your heart back." [Emphasis his.] (WaH p.87)

"I want to you to think of the films men love, the things they do with their free time, and especially the aspirations of little boys and see if I am not right on this." (WaH page 9)

But the Bible disagrees. There's nothing biblical to support WaH's assertion that you should pursue the normal egocentric aspirations of a child's heart to be saved:

"Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child; but the rod of correction shall drive it far from him." (Proverbs 22:15 KJV)

"When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became a man, I gave up childish ways." (1 Corinthians 13:11 RSV)

"Shun youthful passions and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace, along with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart." (2 Timothy 2.22 NRSV)

WaH insists the person must "get back" the old heart in order to save his soul. WaH states that all people are saved according to the new covenant but makes no mention of faith or of repentance anywhere. Therefore, in WaH's theology, people must look to the heart of youthful former days to discover their true godly desires. WaH misuses Scripture to back up the absurd claim that you must recover the old heart of your youth for salvation. It says on page 129 that recovery of the heart was the purpose of Christ's mission and is the central message of the Bible:

"The core of Christ's mission is foretold in Isaiah 61:

" 'The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me, because the LORD has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release for the prisoners.'

"The Messiah will come, he says, to bind up and heal, to release and set free. What? Your heart [emphasis his]. Christ comes to restore and release you, your soul, the true you. This is the central passage in the entire Bible about Jesus [emphasis his], the one he chooses to quote about himself when he steps into the spotlight in Luke 4 and announces his arrival." (WaH p.129)

Again and again, WaH emphasizes that the goodness of man lies within his juvenile heart that is buried when a man is "wounded" - Christ the Savior comes to save you by releasing and setting free your pristine heart, "the true you", so that you can take care of your sacred urges to fight battles, live adventures, and chase women. Eldredge's Website, www.ransomedheart.com, repeats this point:

"Our goal is simply this: 'Help people get their hearts back.'

"The heart is the central theme in Scripture and the most important part of any person - including God. We cannot truly live, or love, or even know God without freedom of, and without trusting His heart towards us. In fact, Jesus described the core of his own ministry as healing the brokenhearted and setting people free from the bondage that every human heart falls into in this world (Isaiah 61:1-3). Sadly, a loss of heart describes most men and women in our day - even those within the church. Maybe especially those within the church. The passion and the strength God intended for men to live by has been replaced with a passive 'niceness.' The beauty and tenderness he meant for women has been buried under a weariness, duty and rigidity. We want to see men and women set free to live from their true heart, designed in the image of God."

I've never known any theologian who has believed that your "heart is the central theme in Scripture". Jesus never mentioned that freedom of the heart is necessary to know God. On the contrary, all indications in the Bible are that we are in bondage until we know Him (John 8:32; Romans 8:2). Furthermore, the human heart does not "fall into" bondage; it starts out that way from day one. It has already happened with Adam and Eve, and we are born into the consequences (Genesis 3, Psalm 51).

With respect to Eldredge's views on the youthful heart, the Bible disagrees emphatically:

"the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth" (Genesis 8:21 KJV)

"remember all the commandments of the LORD, to do them, not to follow after your own heart and your own eyes, which you are inclined to go after wantonly." (Numbers 15:39b RSV)

"He that trusteth in his own heart is a fool" (Proverbs 28:26 KJV)

"evil people, who refuse to hear my words, who stubbornly follow their own heart" (Jeremiah 13:10 RSV)

"For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly." (Mark 7:21-22 NRSV)

Bible passages such as these must make Eldredge restless. He recommends that you rebuff the new heart that God gives you when you accept Him and are imbued with the Spirit, and get back your own old heart.

Eldredge gives his reason for writing Wild at Heart on pp. 87-88. It is a defense of the old self (the old heart which was replaced by the new) and a formal declaration of war against his opponents:

"That is why I have written this book. I am here to tell you that you can get your heart back. But I need to warn you - if you want your heart back, if you want the wound healed and your strength restored and to find your true name, you're going to have to fight for it. Notice your reaction to my words. Does not something in you stir a little, a yearning to live? And doesn't another voice rush in, urging caution, maybe wanting to dismiss me altogether? …That's part of the battle, right there. See? I'm not making this up." (WaH pp.87-88)

5. Wild at Heart's "bondage" of the heart has nothing to do with sin.

Before salvation, we were all "slaves to various passions and pleasures" (Titus 3:3 RSV). After salvation, we become slaves to God. But WaH invites you to "recover" the passion from before (WaH pp.xi-xii).

Isaiah 61:1-3, which WaH cites as the "central passage in the entire Bible about Jesus" (p.129), does not refer to the redemption of man from the "wound" of the father. What it does refer to is Christ's role in redeeming man from the bondage of sin. People pray for Christ to release them from the captivity of sins that burden and enslave them. But Eldredge's prayer is for people to get their old hearts back so that they can live the life they want (pp.xii, 129).

WaH never indicates man ever has to ask forgiveness for sin, because it asserts that man is without sin and were it not for that nasty wound from daddy, there would be no need for redemption. Eldredge, who cannot possibly know where each reader is in his spiritual walk, tries to convince all readers that they are saved (page 133). But in his reckless book he neglects to mention indwelling of the Spirit, grace, repentance, and faith. He describes salvation as a done deal, requiring no faith from the recipient. Regardless of where the reader is in his walk, even if he is a nonbeliever, he can simply sit back and believe that he is saved based on Eldredge's personal demagogic assurance. On pages 133-134, WaH makes this point absolutely clear:

"God sees… my sin. That's wrong on two counts.

"First off, your sin has been dealt with…When God looks at you he does not see your sin. He has not one condemning thought toward you (Rom 8:1)…You have a new heart. That's the promise of the new covenant: 'I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees [would these be those should's and ought to's?] and be careful to keep my laws' (Ezek. 36: 26-27). There's a reason that it's called good news.

"Too many Christians today are living back in the old covenant. They've had Jeremiah 17:9 drilled into them and walk around believing my heart is deceitfully wicked. Not anymore it's not. Read the rest of the book. In Jeremiah 31:33, God announces the cure for all that: 'I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God and they will be my people.' I will give you a new heart…Sin is not the deepest thing about you. You have a new heart. Did you hear me? Your heart is good." [All emphases his.]

In this offensive homily, Eldredge forgets to mention, as he does throughout his entire book, that it is through the blood of Christ that our sins are washed away, and that it is through a person's faith in Him and by grace that the person is saved (Ephesians 2:8). Rather, WaH insists that your heart is already good and that there's no need to pay attention to such annoying details.

6. Wild at Heart assures all readers that they are saints and holy ones (p.144).

When we become Christians our sins become obvious to us; we realize how sinful we are and how far from perfection we have always been. But WaH says that when you get on God's team, it is Satan who tells you that you are sinful:

"So long as man remains no real threat to the Enemy, Satan's line to him is You're fine. But after you do take sides, it becomes Your heart is bad and you know it." (WaH p. 162)

Does Eldredge think that it is Satan who speaks through Jesus when He says that evil comes from the heart (Mark 7:21-22)? Is it Satan who speaks through the prophet Jeremiah in 17:9 of the eponymous book? Eldredge actually quotes this verse in his book, knowing he must address it since it challenges his theology, but he dismisses it as entirely irrelevant in today's world (page 134). WaH assures readers that they are all saved, mentioning neither faith nor grace integral to salvation, and dismisses biblical references to the sinful nature of man as passé and misleading. It instructs readers to ignore such passages:

"The Big Lie in the Church today is that you are nothing more than a 'sinner saved by grace.' You are a lot more than that. You are a new creation in Christ. The New Testament calls you a saint, a holy one, a son of God. In the core of your being you are a good man." (WaH p.144)

WaH tells all readers that the Bible says they are saints, holy ones, sons of God, and good to the core. But repentance, remission of sin, and a desire to follow the Lord do not figure into WaH's formula. In its theology, man is sinless, at least in the biblical sense. But WaH doesn't excuse man from its own special brand of sin, which includes "sins" such as circumspection, prudence, selflessness, meekness, humility, and temperance. On page 143, WaH gives its account of Original Sin:

"Ever since that fateful day when Adam gave away the essence of his strength, men have struggled with a part of themselves that is ready at the drop of a hat to do the same. We don't want to speak up unless we know it will go well, we don't want to move unless we're guaranteed success. What the Scriptures call the flesh, the old man, or the sinful nature, is that part of Adam that always wants the easiest way out… It's much easier to go down to the driving range and attack a bucket of balls than to face the people at work who are angry at you. It's much easier to clean the garage, organize your files, cut the grass, or work on the car than it is to talk to your teenage daughter."

Thus, WaH asserts that the truly sinful man is the man who avoids confrontation by golfing, cleaning the garage, organizing his files, cutting the grass, and working on his car. This is the legacy of Adam.

WaH's theology strays so far from the Bible that he uses peculiar vocabulary such as "essence of strength", which actually could be WaH's own euphemism for sexual desire, as we will see later. Using his own strange vocabulary such as "essence of strength", WaH makes up its own account of the Fall.

7. The warped soteriology of Wild at Heart.

WaH urges the reader to chuck the New Creation, which he calls a weak "nice guy", and recover the old heart. But the old heart is the immature heart of the child, and children are born into sin (Psalm 51:5).

WaH counters this challenge by simply positing that children and young adults are without sin. He mocks the truth that man is sinful as "old covenant" (p.175), despite the fact the "New Covenant" writer Paul does more to push this point than any of his Old Testament predecessors. WaH finally deconstructs the biblical rendering of the Lord's plan for salvation and replaces it with his own, in which he posits that people are all born with good and pure hearts. According to WaH, salvation is a one-time historical event accomplished by our Lord Christ so that after Him, all people are saved because they are born into grace. Conversely, WaH takes the one-time Fall and portrays it as an event that happens to every person during a person's lifetime. That is, all people, having pure hearts from birth, encounter obstacles that threaten the salvation that is their birthright, and they must as adults seek to recover their juvenile hearts in order to overcome these obstacles, which WaH calls the "wound" and the "false self".

On pages 65-66, Eldredge talks about one of the many Hollywood movies that he believes contain important Christian messages from God, A Perfect World starring Kevin Costner. Eldredge writes, "as the story unfolds, we see that what looks like a boy's ruin is actually his redemption" (page 65). Kevin Costner plays the role of the Redeemer, who is "an escaped convict who takes the young boy hostage and heads for the state line". In the movie, a young boy's pride has been wounded because the boy's daddy probably said that the boy's penis is small. But Costner redeems the boy when he assures the little boy that his "pecker" is sized well (pp. 65-66).

WaH's soteriology is thus:

A person is born into grace and salvation.
But then the person falls sometime during the person's childhood or young adulthood, and becomes a wimpy, weak, and boring "false self". This usually happens because of mean things that daddy must have said (page 60).
The person needs to recover his passionate wild heart (before his fall) or else the person will lose his soul and his salvation that he was born with.

The central message in Wild at Heart is that we should seek to satisfy the dreams and desires of our own "wild" hearts, because according to WaH, our wild hearts are like God's own "wild" heart since we were created in His image. WaH claims that the wild heart has been lost, replaced by a more tame heart that holds discipline and restraint in some esteem. And according to WaH, the central message of the Bible is that Jesus came to set free man's wild heart (page 129) along with the youthful passions for battles, adventure, and beauties, that it contains.

8. Wild at Heart misuses Scripture and changes meanings of words.

Eldredge misquotes Scripture when he paraphrases the Bible on page 133:

"He has not one condemning thought toward you (Rom 8:1)".

In the Bible, Romans 8:1 actually reads: "There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit" (KJV). If a man is not in Christ Jesus (and Eldredge has no way of knowing where each of his readers is) then he's in trouble, and to have him run around fulfilling his deepest masculine desires would be catastrophic. Furthermore, Eldredge twists the passage's meaning for the word "condemnation", which leads to even more egregious fallacy:

"We stand on what Scripture says about us…The Father's voice is never condemning." (p.136)

Here we see the real damage that is wrought by WaH's deliberate misuse of Romans 8:1 on page 133. Beginning with his paraphrasing of Romans 8:1, he twists the Apostle Paul's intended meaning of the word "condemn" so grotesquely that he makes assertions about God having no biblical support whatsoever. He then misuses Scripture, using his new meanings for words, to defend the lie that his assertions have biblical support. In Romans 8:1, by "condemnation" (Greek "katakrima") Paul means "punishment", or "judgment" - the serious kind. But by misquoting Scripture on page 133, WaH distorts Paul's meaning of "condemnation" so that mild "disapproval" is the definition indicated. It uses this new definition on page 136. The absurd result from this new definition is that not only won't God ever punish you, He won't ever speak or even think disapprovingly about anything. Even worse, WaH uses the postulate that "the Father's voice is never condemning" to test the identity of voices he hears, and encourages you to do the same. If the voice says something like: "Stop doing it. It's harmful," it can't be God who is making such a condemning statement, so it has to be the devil who speaks. If the voice says something like: "It's good because it makes you a bigger man," then it is WaH's god who speaks.

9. Wild at Heart says "We don't need accountability groups"(p. 175).

WaH ridicules the aim of church accountability groups, which it disparages as obsolete and meaningless. Of what use are accountability groups if nobody ever sins? He says on page 175:

"the church understands now that a man needs other men, but what we've offered is another two-dimensional solution: 'Accountability' groups or partners. Ugh. That sounds so old covenant: 'You're really a fool and you're just waiting to rush into sin, so we'd better post a guard by you to keep you in line.'

"We don't need accountability groups; we need fellow warriors, someone to fight alongside, someone to watch our back."

Again, WaH's twisted version of the "new covenant" is that a man is born into grace and does not sin at all unless the devil makes him do so (more on this later). WaH takes any implication of the sinful nature of man, in any context, and discards it as irrelevant, obsolete, and "so old covenant" (p. 175). But the fact is many people, believers as well as unbelievers, church-going or not, struggle with sin. And there is nothing wrong with accountability groups where friends help to strengthen the spiritual walks of friends.

"Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another." (Proverbs 27:17 NASB)

"Brothers, if someone is caught in sin, you who are spiritual should restore him gently.” (Galatians 6:1 NIV)

Eldredge thinks we need fellow warriors to watch the backs of our sinless brethren from attacks by the devil, or from people who disagree with Eldredge.

10. Wild at Heart indiscriminately mixes the profane with the sacred.

Eldredge is proud to admit that God speaks to him through Hollywood:

"My answer came through several movies." (WaH, p.126)

"God's word comes to me in many ways - through sunsets and friends and films and music and wilderness and books." (WaH p.200)

Eldredge doesn't just use movies for merely illustrative purpose, which is a fine way to use movies. Rather, he insists that through movies come epiphanic answers to life's toughest questions. Wild at Heart places movies such as Braveheart and Gladiator at the right hand of the Bible as sources of wisdom and life, and it could do hardly less to distinguish them. In WaH, Jesus takes a back seat to Mel Gibson's William Wallace in Braveheart, or to Kevin Costner's Redeemer who saves little boys by assuring them that that they have good-sized penises in the movie A Perfect World.

On page 134, Eldredge references a Hollywood movie that has been particularly inspiring to him:

"After I saw Gladiator, I longed to be a man like Maximus…I wept at the end, pierced to be like him."

Many Christians strive to walk as Jesus walked. And the Lord Jesus, by Eldredge's own account, is a wild man. But Eldredge feels "pierced" to be like the Russell Crowe rendition of Maximus from Gladiator. Eldredge wants so bad to be like Crowe's starring role in the movie that he cries about it. What's really silly is that Eldredge's deep-hearted desire to be like the fictional movie character Maximus from Gladiator is so strong that both the Almighty God and the devil are compelled to speak to him about it at all.

11. Wild at Heart recommends that you listen for "voices".

WaH recommends that you seek divine revelation by sitting around listening for voices (pp.135-136). How does Eldredge always know when it's God's voice he hears? Even Eldredge himself says on page 203:

"people hear voices all the time and who really knows whether it's God or just one's imagination."

Except for the fact that most people do not "hear voices all the time", Eldredge makes a good point. But then why is it Eldredge never has a problem knowing that it is God's voice that he hears? Does Eldredge enjoy an exclusive personal relationship with God that other Christians do not? Indeed, the Lord speaks to Eldredge so much that one can hardly help but to conclude from Eldredge's report that he believes he's a prophet. Don't forget WaH's assertion that the Father's voice is "never condemning" (page 133). So any critical word about anything has got to be from the devil.

Eldredge goes on to describe a sappy prayer where God answers that He is pleased because Eldredge is Maximus, and is His friend (page 135). So the Lord Almighty gives Eldredge comfort by likening him to a fictional movie character played by Russell Crowe and by telling Eldredge that he is His buddy.

There was an instance when Eldredge was struggling about whether to accept a "plum job" with a firm in Washington DC. Eldredge was ambivalent, so he went into the mountains for the weekend to sort things out. And as God had spoken to Moses on Sinai, so God spoke to Eldredge that weekend:

"On the second day God began to speak. John, you can take that job if you want to. It's not a sin. But it'll kill you and you know it." [Emphasis his.] (WaH p. 202)

Eldredge's method of receiving answers to his prayers about what to do regarding his plum job is to hike up into the mountains and listen for voices. I'm still not convinced that it is the Lord's voice that Eldredge hears in the wilderness. From this example, we know that Eldredge's god uses words like "kill" with startling levity. This is consistent with Eldredge's description of his god, who uses words such as life, soul, law, sacred, and save, as though they were words without real meaning. The words sin, guilt, forgiveness, and repentance, are not in his vocabulary at all. Eldredge and his wild wilderness god choose words more for the way they sound than for what they mean.

12. Wild at Heart's sex-centered world.

Some of WaH's use of sexual imagery occurring in rambling discourse about male-female relationships is disturbing. Like many pagan religions centering on male virility and fertility, WaH implies that a man's real strength is his phallus, and extols the man's "strength" for its life-giving qualities:

"The man comes to offer his strength and the woman invites the man into herself, an act that requires courage and vulnerability and selflessness for both of them. Notice first that if the man will not rise to the occasion, nothing will happen. He must move; his strength must swell before he can enter her. But neither will the love consummate unless the woman opens herself in stunning vulnerability…the man enters his woman and offers her his strength. He spills himself there, in her, for her [emphasis his]; she draws him in, embraces and envelopes [sic] him. When all is over he is spent; but ah, what a sweet death it is.

"And that is how life is created. The beauty of a woman arouses a man to play the man; the strength of a man, offered tenderly to his woman, allows her to be beautiful; it brings life to her and to many. This is far, far more than sex and orgasm. It is a reality that extends to every aspect of our lives." (WaH p.185)

There you have WaH's version of the birds and bees, and to Eldredge, sex is a "reality that extends to every aspect of our lives" and ejaculation is "ah, what a sweet death". Eldredge and Sigmund Freud have a lot in common.

WaH describes sexual intercourse as a "selfless" act. Perhaps men who make frequent visits to brothels should receive citations for their selfless acts of valor and charity.

Another passage appearing in a section of WaH entitled "Desperate for Initiation", contains more of WaH's sexual gobbledygook, and denigration of Christians that doesn't even merit response:

"A man needs to know his name. He needs to know he's got what it takes. And I don't mean 'know' in the modernistic, rationalistic sense. I don't mean that the thought has passed through your cerebral cortex and you've given it intellectual assent, the way you know about the Battle of Waterloo or the ozone layer - the way most men 'know' God or the truths of Christianity. I mean…the kind of knowing that comes when you have been there, entered in, experienced firsthand…The way 'Adam knew his wife' and she gave birth to a child." (WaH pp.99-100)

13. Wild at Heart says "A man must know that he is powerful"(p. 18) and "Let people feel the weight of who you are"(p. 151).

On page 151, WaH says enigmatically, "Let people feel the weight of who you are and let them deal with it." In Wild at Heart, excessive pride is portrayed as more than a virtue: it is requirement for life.

"A man must know that he is powerful [emphasis his]; he must know he has what it takes [emphasis his]. A woman must know she is beautiful [emphasis his]; she must know she is worth fighting for [emphasis his]." (WaH p.18)

"We need to know who we are and if we have what it takes [emphasis his]. What do we do now with that ultimate question? Where do we go to find an answer? … a man's core question does not go away…It is a hunger so essential to our souls that it will compel us to find a resolution. In truth, it drives everything we do." (WaH p.88)

WaH says our "need to know who we are and if we have what it takes" is a hunger that is "essential to our souls" and "drives everything we do." If our need to know if we have what it takes is essential to our souls, does that mean we lose our souls if we're not sure we've got what it takes? This is salvation?

We learn on page 91 that for many men the "The Question" feels "hardwired to his penis". He also says on page 100 that when it comes to our question, we need to "know" the way Adam knew Eve, "intimately, through flesh-and-blood experience". Those of you who know (in the modern sense) the English of King James understand what WaH is driving at.

WaH recommends that you seek God with rigorous self-exploration of your own deepest desires, especially of your childhood years. WaH talks about quiet time listening for God and about quiet time listening to yourself, but doesn't clearly differentiate God from self:

"To recover his heart's desire a man needs to get away from the noise and distraction of his daily life for time with his own soul. He needs to head into the wilderness, to silence and solitude. Alone with himself, he allows whatever is there to come to the surface." (WaH p. 207)

WaH sums up its view of all-powerful man on page 138:

"We thought that the power of our life was in the golden bat [phallic symbolism probably not here intended], but the power is in us [emphasis his]. When we begin to offer not merely our gifts but our true selves, that is when we become powerful."

And of course, according to WaH, Hollywood movies are at least as good a source of truth and inspiration as the Bible. Page 142 says:

" 'I'd love to be William Wallace [from the movie Braveheart], leading the charge with a big sword in my hand," sighed a friend. 'But I feel like I'm the guy back there in the fourth row, with a hoe.' That's a lie of the Enemy - that your place is really insignificant, that you really aren't armed for it anyway. There is no other man that can replace you in your life… If you leave your place in line, it will remain empty. No one else can be who you are meant to be. You are the hero in your story [emphasis his]. Not a bit player, not an extra, but the main man."

Few motivational speakers, real or not, can top that sermon for self-worship. Incidentally, Eldredge's use of double entendres is legendary. But in any true Christian's story the Hero, the main Man, isn't you, it's Jesus.

In one of the many instances in which Eldredge says God speaks to him through non-biblical books, Eldredge received the following message from God through Gil Bailie:

" 'Don't ask what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that'…Reading the counsel given to Bailie I knew it was God speaking to me." (WaH pp.200-201)

Eldredge knows that he must listen to his god. He adds to his god's divine "counsel" on page 206:

"You see, a man's calling is written on his true heart, and he discovers it when he enters the frontier of his deep desires. To paraphrase Bailie, don't ask yourself what the world needs, ask yourself what makes you come alive because what the world needs are men who have come alive…I've met men who've used advice like it to leave their wife and run off with their secretary. They are deceived about what it is they really want, what they are made for." [All emphases his.]

Unfortunately, WaH doesn't explain how these adulterous men have been deceived by the messages that he embraces. The fact is: those men are doing exactly as WaH's theology tells them to do, encapsulated in maxims such as Bailie's, and Eldredge admittedly knows this. Eldredge actually begins on page 206 to speak of the closest thing to sound theology contained in his book, because he needs to defend his caveat that one should not use his advice to leave one's wife and rescue the beautiful secretary:

"Because our hearts have strayed so far from home, He's given us the Law as a sort of handrail to help us back from the precipice. But the goal of Christian discipleship is a transformed heart; we move from the boy who needs the Law to the man who is able to live by the Spirit of the law."

Bingo. The goal of Christian discipleship is a transformed heart; we grow from the boy with the "wild" untamed heart, needing the Law to bridle him, into the man upon whose heart the law is written, who is then able to live by the Spirit.

If WaH could stick to this theme, it would be on track. But it can't. It contradicts everything else in the book. Except for this brief paragraph that Eldredge inserts to point up that most adulterers are immature, he urges men to get back their boyish lawless heart and then to trash the Law because it is "so old covenant" and irrelevant. The fact that maturity occurs later in an individual's life after the person is born again of the Spirit is utterly inconsistent with the theology that Wild at Heart propounds, and buries this understanding on page 206 where most readers will doubtless miss it since the reason for having mentioned it at all is because Eldredge knows that he must pay some lip service to condemnation of adulterous affairs, against the tenor of his book.

After having made mention of sound theology, WaH immediately reverts to his dim blabber about recovering dreams and desires long buried deep in the childish heart.

"the whole thing takes on a transcendent purpose when he releases control in exchange for the recovery of the dreams in his heart. Sometimes those dreams are buried deep and it takes some unearthing to get to them. We pay attention to our desire." (WaH p.207)

14. Eldredge blames everything on the devil.

Eldredge blames everything on the devil because he believes the human heart is too good to sin; people are not responsible for any of their actions, or for sinful behavior. But Adam and Eve were not absolved of their momentous sin by impugning the serpent that had deceived them; they were punished, and the consequences of the Original Sin are felt to this day. Similarly, even if the devil is ultimately to blame for all the world's ills, that doesn't absolve the people that he beguiles into sinful behavior. Eldredge even projects his own mad finger pointing onto the devil:

"He simply loves to blame everything on us, get us feeling hurt, misunderstood, suspicious, and resentful of one another." (WaH p.160)

Eldredge is outraged that the devil blames people for their own problems in life.

In Eldredge's world, it is the devil who makes you feel guilty after you have committed a wrong. Repentance is not part of Eldredge's version of salvation, nor is it even in Eldredge's vocabulary. Eldredge blames the devil for any difficulties he has in his marriage (pp.151-152, 161), and since Eldredge does not like to be told when he is making mistakes in his marriage, only the devil himself tells Eldredge that he is "blowing it" (page 161).

On page 163, Eldredge speaks about a man's lust:

"This can make a good man feel so awful because he thinks he's a lustful man when he's not; it's an attack [from the devil] through and through."

Eldredge says that a man who thinks himself to be lustful is not actually lustful. It's an attack from the devil, through and through. Eldredge himself notices that he is blaming everything on the devil, so on page 163, like a guilty man speaking in his own defense, he says eloquently:

"Please don't misunderstand me. I'm not blaming everything on the devil."

Actually, that's exactly what he's doing. He goes on:

"In almost every situation there are human issues involved. Every man has his struggles; every marriage has its rough spots; every ministry has personal conflicts. But those issues are like a campfire that the Enemy throws gasoline all over and turns into a bonfire…All the while we believe that it's us, we are blowing it, we're to blame, and the Enemy is laughing because we've swallowed the lie 'I'm not here, it's just you.'" (WaH p.163)

Eldredge therefore concedes that humans aren't perfect (which is a startling admission, since up to this point in his book humans were described as totally pure in heart), but whenever anything really bad happens, it's the devil's fault. On page 194, Eldredge returns to this theme, where a "campfire" disagreement between himself and his wife is turned into a "bonfire" fight because of the devil, not because Eldredge nor his wife have any weaknesses that they need to work on.

The bottom line is that the WaH version of the sacred heart has written on it the urges to do battle, have adventure, and rescue beauties. But one's own conscience, in Eldredge's world, is not written in the heart. According to Eldredge, one's own conscience is the voice of the devil.

15. Eldredge makes up his own Bible stories.

Eldredge makes up his own versions of Bible stories so that they synch with his principles that man is fundamentally good and that the devil is responsible for each and every sin of all persons.

"Bored, sated, and fat, he [David] strolls around on the roof of the palace looking for something to amuse him. The Evil One points out Bathsheba, and the rest is history-which as we all know, repeats itself." (WaH, p.170)

But the Bible indicates events where the devil directly intervenes in the lives of men, such as in the troubles of Job, and in the sinful behavior of Judas Iscariot - and of Adam and Eve for that matter. In 2 Samuel 11, the Bible does not indicate that the devil had anything to do with David's affair with Bathsheba, nor is it even implied. Furthermore, in the biblical account, King David himself does not blame the devil for his sins with Bathsheba, but repents for his own adultery and for the role he himself played in the death of Bathsheba's husband Uriah.

Eldredge, on the other hand, makes sure to point out that the Evil One was responsible for the illicit tryst of David and Bathsheba, and that since everyone knows history repeats itself, no man is ever responsible for his adulterous affairs. History repeats itself, so it's always "the Evil One" who makes men do it.

But this is only the beginning of Eldredge's perversion of the biblical account of King David's reign. Remember that Eldredge says every man has a "fall" that occurs sometime early in a man's life; there was no single Fall that occurred only with Adam & Eve, because Adam's story "is every man's story" and "history repeats itself". Like all of Eldredge's men, David was born pure, but he had a fall, and it wasn't when he committed adultery with Bathsheba or put her husband in harm's way. No, David's adultery wasn't his fault, since the devil made him do it; David fell when he stopped being a warrior:

"Notice this - when did King David fall? What were the circumstances of his affair with Bathsheba? 'In the spring, at the time when kings go off to war, David sent Joab out with the king's men and the whole Israelite army' (2 Sam. 11:1). David was no longer a warrior; he sent others to do his fighting for him." (WaH p. 170)

David was bored, and according to Eldredge we just simply cannot allow men to be bored - that's when they are victimized by the devil.

But even David himself disagrees with Eldredge's assertion that David had a "fall". David knows that he didn't "fall" as Adam fell. David affirms that he, unlike Adam, was sinful from the very beginning:

"Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity; And in sin did my mother conceive me." (Psalm 51:5 ASV)

On pages 190-192 Eldredge gives his account of the biblical Ruth as a loose and scandalous gold-digger. As usual, Eldredge embellishes the biblical account with his own details.

"Boaz is not giving Ruth what she really needs - a ring.

"So what does Ruth do? She seduces him. Here's the scene: The men have been working dawn till dusk to bring in the barley harvest; they've just finished and now it's party time. Ruth takes a bubble bath and puts on a knockout dress; then she waits for the right moment. That moment happens to be late in the evening after Boaz has had a little too much to drink." (WaH p.191)

Eldredge then goes on to say on page 192 that the Bible cripples women:

"I'm telling you that the church has really crippled women when it tells them that their beauty is vain and they are at their feminine best when they are 'serving others'. A woman is at her best when she is being a woman [such as Eldredge's Ruth]."

It is the Bible that says in Proverbs 31:30 that "beauty is vain": "Charm is deceitful and beauty is vain, But a woman who fears the LORD, she shall be praised" (NASB). And it is actually a woman's quest for beauty, not the Bible, which is crippling. Never before has this country seen so much self-mutilation, artificial augmentation, eating disorders, and depression, as women strive to achieve vain, empty beauty that can never bring fulfillment. Only Jesus can fill the void, and Eldredge wreaks lots of damage when he misrepresents Ruth as heroic by virtue of her seductiveness, perfumes, and "knockout dress". The fact is Ruth was a selfless hard-worker whose devoted service to others made her a worthy ancestress of David and of Jesus.

And of course, there is Eldredge's account of Creation. Eldredge claims that Adam was at first a wild man with a wild man's heart, until the Fall. Then Adam became a passive wimp. But the biblical account disagrees. According to the Bible, Adam lived in a paradisiacal garden where all of his basic needs were met until the Fall, at which time Adam was banished to the wilderness where he had to explore the land, fight and kill animals, and probably had to rescue Eve from all kinds of dangers and potential mishaps. Eldredge has taken the story of the Fall and turned it upside down. And by distorting the story of the Fall and of Original Sin, Eldredge perverts the biblical explanation of salvation.

Eldredge uses Proverbs 4:23 as an identifying verse for his ministry at his Website, www.ransomedheart.com, and quotes this verse on page 164:

"Our goal is simply this: 'Help people get their hearts back.'

"For it is from the heart that a person finds intimacy with God and with others, and it is in our heart that we discover our life’s purpose and calling. As Proverbs 4:23 urges us, we are to 'watch over our heart' as though it were our most precious treasure, 'for from our heart flows the wellsprings of life.' "

Eldredge says that it is in this heart that we discover life's purpose and calling, and then he misuses Proverbs 4:23 to defend his point. There is no biblical passage that urges us to search our own hearts if we want to discover life's purpose and calling. If we want to understand what Proverbs 4:23 means, let's do something Eldredge doesn't talk about - let's open up the Bible and look at the context of Proverbs 4:23:

Solomon urges us to guard our hearts not because the heart holds our deepest desires but because we have put his divinely inspired Words of wisdom into them (4:21), Solomon's God-breathed Words are life for those that find them (4:22), so that the heart is, as the container for these Words, the wellspring of life (4:23). It is God's Word that is the wellspring of life and we must search God's Word if we want to know about life's purpose. One of the Bible verses that Eldredge loves most to misuse is Matthew 11:12, where Eldredge emphasizes that Jesus speaks of "the deep and holy goodness of masculine aggression".

" 'The kingdom of heaven suffers violence,' said Jesus, 'and the violent it take it by force' (Matt 11:12 NKJV)… Hopefully by now you see the deep and holy goodness of masculine aggression and that will help you understand what Christ is saying." (WaH p.177)

16. Eldredge says that God has given him and his partners a special message.

At his Website www.ransomedheart.com, Eldredge proclaims that he and his business associates hold the key to redemption of men and women. They have a special "methodology" that God has given them to exalt the human heart:

"God has entrusted to us a very powerful and beautiful message and methodology. Our message brings the heart back to center stage."

Eldredge and his business associates claim to redeem men and women through stories. Sound Christian principles have no place in their redemptive methodology. They also attempt to misrepresent catechism and hermeneutics as silly and worthless methods of instruction:

"Our methodology allows us to reach the heart through story. Principles and propositions do not free the heart; tips and techniques do not convey the Gospel."

17. Wild at Heart says women must be rescued by "knights in shining armor" (p. 16).

"childish dreams of a knight in shining armor coming to rescue her are not girlish fantasies; they are the core of the feminine heart and the life she knows she was made for." (WaH p. 16)

So, Eldredge says that "childish dreams" of being rescued by a knight in shining armor are "core" to women's lives. He reemphasizes this business of rescuing beauties being written in the heart on page 181:

"From ancient fables to the latest blockbuster, the theme of a strong man coming to rescue a beautiful woman is universal to human nature. It is written in our hearts, one of the core desires of every man and every woman."

Illustrated above is one of Eldredge's most egregious errors in his book, and I'm not talking about his notion that a core desire of every man and every woman is for the strong guy to grab the beautiful woman: he treats the profane as sacred, craftily blending the two. He treats core, universal desires of every man and every woman, regardless of faith, as sacred.

Unremarkably, since Eldredge's desire of spending his life rescuing a beauty is written into his heart, he concludes that it must be written into everybody else's heart too. Eldredge universalizes his own selfish thoughts, desires, and experiences. Needless to say, they are not always universal. But his line of thinking should be no surprise, as psychologists would admit that it would naturally result with regression of the adult mind back to the heart of the egocentric child.

Indeed, this urge that men have to "rescue a beautiful woman" might be universal to human nature, but that is a reason Eldredge should not include it in discourse of behavior he purports to be biblical and Christian. That which is holy and that which is universal to human nature are not the same. The sacred and the profane must be clearly distinguished. Yes, perhaps the theme of strong men chasing after beautiful women is written in our old hearts, but it is irresponsible of Eldredge to intermingle desires of human nature with the laws that the Lord writes in the heart of the New Creation. Eldredge attempts to give equal weight to the base urge to chase beautiful women as to the Law by saying that, like the Law, it too is written in the heart. Here is the real deception: Eldredge equates the old heart governed by universal urges of human nature with the new heart in which the Lord writes His laws. Eldredge thus distorts the biblical account of rebirth.

18. Wild at Heart says we have not taken myths and fables "seriously enough" (p. 182).

In Chapter 10, Eldredge strengthens his "back to childhood" argument by using myths and fables to support his endorsement of puerile ambition. He recounts the well-known "Once upon a time" story of the "beautiful maiden, an absolute enchantress" on page 180. He then continues:

"Every little girl knows the fable without ever being told… Little boys rehearse their part with wooden swords and cardboard shields. And one day the boy, now a young man, realizes that he wants to be the one to win the beauty. Fairy tales, literature, music, movies, all borrow from this mythic theme. Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Helen of Troy, Romeo and Juliet, Antony and Cleopatra, Arthur and Guinevere, Tristan and Isolde…Our culture has grown cynical about the fable. Don Henley says, 'We've been poisoned by these fairy tales'…No, we have not been poisoned by fairy tales and they are not merely 'myths.' Far from it. The truth is, we have not taken them seriously enough." (WaH pp.180-182)

If it isn't enough that Eldredge promotes fables and fairy tales as guidebooks for life, he has the arrogant audacity to include notorious adulterers in his pantheon of legendary lovers. The adulterous relationship of Antony and Cleopatra is historical; it isn't a fairy tale, and it resulted in disaster (they commit suicide). Furthermore, over half of the persons that Eldredge lists, mythical or historical, commit suicide for the sake of sexual "love": Tristan and Isolde, Romeo and Juliet, and Antony and Cleopatra. Is this the kind of fable/history that Eldredge wants us to embrace as exemplary for our lives? Why does he praise these characters?

Eldredge says that the truth is that we have not taken myths and fables seriously enough. But actually, the opposite is true. The Truth is: "For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables." [Emphasis mine.](2 Timothy 4.3-4 KJV)

Comments? New comments can be posted on this site, below. You can read prior comments regarding this review
here.

2007-09-16T07:35:00.000-07:00

The Enduring Servants of Mammon

This article was originally published at
lwwdc.org/Enduring_Servants_of_Mammon.htm

Overview

“Yet our distress comes from no failure of substance. We are stricken by no plague of locusts. Compared with the perils which our forefathers conquered because they believed and were not afraid, we have still much to be thankful for. Nature still offers her bounty and human efforts have multiplied it. Plenty is at our doorstep, but a generous use of it languishes in the very sight of the supply. Primarily this is because the rulers of the exchange of mankind's goods have failed, through their own stubbornness.”

— President Franklin D. Roosevelt, March 4, 1933. [Emphasis added.]

In the Bible, Babylon appears in many different forms: a city, an empire, a vivid image in prophecy. Through these various forms and through the civilization’s literal history presented in the Bible, God provides for us a graphic depiction of the abuses and inexorable upheavals rooted literally in the love of money, and of His striking final visitation upon those who worship it. In the Bible, we find arresting pictures of God’s wrath poured out upon those who by deception lead nations astray wholesale, into unwitting and compliant bondage, by the power of harnessing the “all evil” rooted in the “love of money” (1 Timothy 6:10).

Indications of this persistent syndrome of proud civilizations, affecting peoples of all generations, are thoroughly described in the Bible and prominently borne out by history. The Great Depression was only a single, relatively recent manifestation of the multitude of evils, international in scope, stemming from the well-established root. This article is premised on the unyielding conviction that the biblical perspective of history is the authentic and true perspective of history given to us by its supreme Author.

The problem at the onset of the Great Depression was not lack of wealth. Factories in America had plenty of capacity. There was no shortage of natural resources. The disastrous drought and dust storms of the Dust Bowl were yet to happen—the worst occurring in the mid-1930’s. There was no lack of real wealth in America, and that is what President Franklin Roosevelt declared in somber, almost religious tone, in his first Inaugural Address quoted above.

Our media-driven dumbed-down culture, short on attention and fond of sound-bites and catchy but meaningless platitudes, has managed to latch onto the one-liner “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself” occurring elsewhere in this speech. Meanwhile, startlingly revealing passages such as the one above are completely overlooked: Roosevelt clearly indicated that the problem precipitating the Great Depression was not a shortage of food or necessities. The problem was a shortage of currency needed to buy and sell anything, including food and necessities! Economists would say that there was a shortage of money. (I believe that “currency” and “credit” are more apt terms than “money”, but the basic principle, in any case, is the same.) As a result, food was given away in soup lines, and there was plenty food to go around, but no currency.

Furthermore, during the Depression there was no shortage of jobs. The problem was that private enterprises had no currency or credit to pay their employees. But there was lots of work to get done and plenty of paying jobs—government jobs. The government could hire workers with the oodles of currency it was borrowing hot off the printing presses, with credit (debt incurred) to “pay” workers. What brought about these conditions?

“Take these things away!” (John 2:16)

Before we delve deeper, let’s review the passage in the Bible where Jesus’ fierce wrath is most evident. Think about it: what is it that raised the ire of our Savior? It wasn’t sinners, whom He came to forgive and to save. It wasn’t the Pharisees for whom He had choice words and with whom He had heated debates (which He always won). It wasn’t Judas Iscariot, whose verbal exchange with Him at the Last Supper left the apostles none the wiser (at that point) about the identity of His betrayer. It wasn’t even the Roman soldiers who hammered stakes into His bleeding flesh, whom He mercifully forgave.

It was the temple money changers and merchants.

Jesus entered the temple area and began driving out those who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves, and would not allow anyone to carry merchandise through the temple courts. And as he taught them, He said, “Is it not written: ‘My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations’? But you have made it a den of robbers.” (Mark 11:15-17 NIV)

The problem with love of money—“the root of all evil” (1 Tim 6:10 KJV, my emphasis)—is not limited to a personal struggle with greed. The issue here is not simply one’s personal disobedience to God’s law “thou shalt not covet” (Exodus 20:17). If we perceive the God of the boundless universe and supreme Author of History as a mere “personal” matter, we can easily forget how much God especially detests, as amply documented His Word, the abominations that entire nations, or for that matter the entire world, commit for the sake of Mammon. Deplorably, the modus operandi of the servants of Mammon has been to use, in horrific arrogance, the Lord’s house for cover.

Although one might think that Jesus protested in the Temple against personal greed, He conveyed a much larger message in His extraordinary demonstration. No where else in the New Testament can be found an incident where He actually resorts to physical threats to get a group of people to leave their dirty shenanigans and send them packing. He protested insidious corruption occurring in His house, the “house of prayer for all nations”.

History, as shown in the example of the Great Depression, proves the Word of God to be true.

FDR’s Explanation for the Great Depression

In his first Inaugural Address, Roosevelt directly fingers “money changers” as responsible for the intercontinental woes of the Great Depression, a fact that is lost in the history textbooks whose authors prefer to highlight the “fear itself” sound-bite banality. In his speech, Roosevelt said:

“Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men…They know only the rules of a generation of self-seekers. They have no vision, and when there is no vision the people perish. The money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths.”

I’m fascinated by the fact that the magnitude of the damage wreaked by the “money changers” did not escape Roosevelt’s understanding, but even more so by the remarkable candor with which Roosevelt reported it, revealing familiarity with topics customarily eschewed in public discourse: in addition to his explicit references to money changers in the temple, his solemn proposition to restore the “temple to the ancient truths” is striking. I would argue that the ancient truths to which he refers are not biblical truths; they are more probably keys to ancient Babylonian mysteries (but that’s for another article). In any case, Roosevelt appeared to have not only a grasp of the problem, but also confidence that he knew the solution (i.e. by restoring the “temple to the ancient truths”). Whether or not he took the right course of action, Roosevelt began the sweeping New Deal programs that, in this writer’s opinion, exacerbated the problem by further empowering the “money changers” through increased borrowing from them. By both his words and his actions as President, Roosevelt unambiguously identified “money changers” with modern bankers. Roosevelt’s first act as President was declaration of the U.S. Bank Holiday on March 5, the day following delivery of his Inaugural Address in which he also said:

“we require two safeguards against a return of the evils of the Old Order; there must be a strict supervision of all banking and credits and investments; there must be an end to speculation with other people's money, and there must be provision for an adequate but sound currency.”

Presumably, FDR believed it were “good” money changers who championed his policies.

Today’s Money Changers

As Roosevelt clearly indicated, the money changers are astir today. They are the modern equivalent of the money changers of the Bible; after Jesus kicked them out of the Temple, they didn’t just pack their bags, apologize, and with long-faces mosey home. They were a persistent and unrepentant lot, proven by the fact that Jesus needed to resort to the physical use of whips just to get them to leave His house. They still have not, figuratively, left the building. Neither have they “fled from the high seats in the temple of our civilization” as Roosevelt declared with confidence in his Inaugural Address. Rather, they have shifted into higher seats and have grown their business to wield incalculable influence in our civilization. Today, they deal in international currency lending, trading, and speculation (i.e. modern “money changing”). Although they can no longer use the inside of the physical Temple as a marketplace to carry on their deceitful practices, they still attempt to shroud their business inside of the “temple” by camouflaging their business as the will of God, or Manifest Destiny, or enlightened Modernity, or the spread of “freedom and democracy” through the world. They have many noble-sounding slogans and jingles to mask their schemes, knowing that the populace will mindlessly adopt their appealing catchphrases.

When by divine inspiration Paul wrote the “love of money is the root of all evil”, he wasn’t speaking merely of personal covetousness. Greed is only one form of evil. But it is the root of much more—all evil, in fact. Control of a civilization by being the issuer of its currencies (“Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s”, Mark 12:17) is a practical element of the Babylonian system. Researchers need not look hard to confirm that the Caesars were declared gods in their own civilization. They practiced a depraved religion—the Babylonian religion—sustained by the ever-present supply of universal covetousness. This is critical, and is perhaps difficult to comprehend because we dwell in a culture that is similarly covetous and hardly capable of imagining things being any different. A showdown will eventually occur between this abhorrent religion and the Truth.

The Showdown

In Revelation, John writes of the wrath of God being poured out upon merchants and traders (i.e. Babylon) by fire just as it was poured out on Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 19:24; Isaiah 13:19). The judgment of Babylon is an event so important, that chapter upon chapter in the Bible is devoted to it (see, for example, Isaiah 47, Jeremiah 51, and Revelation 18). The destruction of Babylon is a cataclysmic event destined to occur from the moment that Nimrod founded the wicked city (Gen 10:10) and made it the base for a united civilization that was repugnant to God (Gen 11). Babel finally attained her goal of reaching heaven for sure, but it wasn’t because of the Tower—“For her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities” (Rev 18:5). These folks are the same profane horde as the money-changing rackets that desecrated the Temple in Jerusalem. It is not merely the transgressions of individual men, however enormous, that figure heavily in prophecy, but the detestable corporate “love of money” of the Whore of Babylon who sits upon the Beast (Rev 17:3).

I saw another angel … he shouted: "Fallen! Fallen is Babylon the Great! She has become a home for demons and a haunt for every evil spirit… all the nations have drunk the maddening wine of her adulteries. The kings of the earth committed adultery with her, and the merchants of the earth grew rich from her excessive luxuries…She will be consumed by fire, for mighty is the Lord God who judges her. When the kings of the earth who committed adultery with her and shared her luxury see the smoke of her burning, they will weep and mourn over her. (Rev 18:1-3, 8-9 NIV)

Now who is it that despairs along with the kings of the earth when Babylon falls? Muslim clerics? Pagans? Romans? Gentiles? Arabs? Jews? Democrats? Republicans? No.

Merchants weep and mourn when Babylon is judged:

And the merchants of the earth shall weep and mourn over her; for no man buyeth their merchandise any more (Rev 18: 11).

They are wealthy “merchants of the earth” and “kings of the earth” of no specific nation or blood, but who are all unified in Babylonian harlotry. The violent outpouring of God’s fierce wrath was foreshadowed by the forcible expulsion of the money changers from the Temple. And what do these merchants buy and sell? Oil? Natural gas? Uranium? Not quite. They buy and sell everything; they rule “the exchange of mankind’s goods”:

...merchandise of gold and silver, precious stones and pearls, fine linen and purple, silk and scarlet, every kind of citron wood, every kind of object of ivory, every kind of object of most precious wood, bronze, iron, and marble; and cinnamon and incense, fragrant oil and frankincense, wine and oil, fine flour and wheat, cattle and sheep, horses and chariots, and bodies and souls of men. (Rev 18:12-13 NKJV)

Significantly, the merchants of Babylon deal in, among other things, “bodies and souls of men” (v. 13). These guys make the trading going on in the Temple before the table-flipping incident look like a holiday Tupperware® party. They buy and sell everything, including the kitchen sink, because they control the means of exchange. But Babylon is consumed with fire and brought to ruination in an hour.

The fruit that your soul longed for has gone from you, and all the things which are rich and splendid have gone from you, and you shall find them no more at all. The merchants of these things, who became rich by her, will stand at a distance for fear of her torment, weeping and wailing, and saying, ‘Alas, alas, that great city…in one hour such great riches came to nothing.’ (Rev 18:14-17 NKJV)

International traders and financiers are especially despondent:

Every shipmaster, all who travel by ship, sailors, and as many as trade on the sea, stood at a distance and cried out when they saw the smoke of her burning, saying, ‘What is like this great city?’ They threw dust on their heads and cried out, weeping and wailing, and saying, ‘Alas, alas, that great city, in which all who had ships on the sea became rich by her wealth! For in one hour she is made desolate.’ (Rev 18:17-19 NKJV)

Rewind

From Revelation, the last book in the Bible, let’s backtrack to find out more about this mystery “Babylon”. All the way back in the first book of the Bible, Genesis, we find the first reference to the city in Chapter 10, where it appears in Hebrew as “Babel”. (“Babylon” is the Greek name for the same city.)

And Cush begat Nimrod: he began to be a mighty one in the earth. He was a mighty hunter before the LORD: wherefore it is said, ‘Even as Nimrod the mighty hunter before the LORD’. And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel… in the land of Shinar. (Gen 10:8-10)

Nimrod accumulated enough wealth to fund the building of a great tower, an ambitious endeavor requiring a great deal of manpower and man-hours, a monument to the wealth and prosperity of Babylon. Immigrants from faraway lands (Gen 11:2) gathered and participated in the construction of the obnoxious Tower:

Now the whole earth had one language and one speech. And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar, and they dwelt there…And they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top is in the heavens; let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.” (Gen 11:1-4 NKJV)

Thus, the first dress-rehearsal of the Prince of this World’s (John 14:30) global coup was staged in ancient Babylon. You can be sure that the “tower whose top is in the heavens” was an edifice of tremendous religious significance. As we have learned from Revelation, the mystery religion of Babylon is intimately linked to commerce and economics. In addition to a unifying religion, the way to achieve, in practice, and to maintain control in a one-world government is to have as with “one speech”, one currency. The issuer of the currency will have power to control populations just as Caesar was able to do through “ownership” of the currency he issued, which bore his image, and belonged to him. Only those who have sufficient amounts of the exclusive currency will be able to buy and sell anything. It will become, quite artificially—literally by despotic fiat—the exclusive medium of exchange and of economic transaction, rather than just one of various means of fair exchange between two or more earnest parties (as has occurred by barter through the millennia ).

The issuer of this currency wields immeasurable power over those beholden to it, even becoming, in effect, a god, as the Caesar was proclaimed to be.

Propaganda War

A uniform, universally coveted currency is a mighty implement to advance the anti-Christian agenda. Matthew 28:12-15 explains the origins of prevailing anti-Christian propaganda:

When they had assembled with the elders and consulted together, they gave a large sum of money to the soldiers, saying, “Tell them, ‘His disciples came at night and stole Him away while we slept.’ And if this comes to the governor’s ears, we will appease him and make you secure.” So they took the money and did as they were instructed; and this saying is commonly reported among the Jews until this day. (NKJV)

In the case from Matthew 28, as is absolutely the case today, effective propaganda was achieved by control of currency at high levels. In addition, the source for the means of propagation for the anti-Christian lie was the Temple treasury, and the lie was given by the community’s most respected religious leaders. To be sure, similar charges of hypocrisy are leveled at today’s Christians leaders for varied reasons. But on the pivotal question of whether the Resurrection occurred, there is no way to reconcile the affirmation of His witnesses with the claims of them who report it did not happen—one account is truthful, and the other is false. Verse 14 further implies bribery of the governor by those controlling the currency of the Temple treasury in order to crush the truth of the Gospel of the Resurrected Christ while the Church was still in its infancy.

Today, this propaganda war has spread from Jerusalem out to all nations. As a result, the desire for unchallenged control of the world’s currencies and credit is the impetus for today's push in high places for currency consolidation and globalization. Fallen humanity’s “love of money” makes the power of this terrible weapon irresistible; it is a Pandora’s Box “of all evil”.

Because the issuance of today’s currencies is not directly linked to any naturally-occurring resource existing in finite quantity (such as precious metals), its power to influence and to advance the agenda of its issuer is unbounded and infinite, except for the extent to which the evil of inflation can be tolerated. Today, of course, inflation is much tolerated, even wrongly accepted as a sort of “fact of life”—this is an idea which our forefathers in America would never have entertained. To them, inflation was a by-product of the hateful designs of money changers.

Conclusion

The creators of the currency—“the rulers of the exchange of mankind’s goods”, to use Roosevelt’s words—issue (i.e. lend) the currency for purposes according to the will of their deceitful hearts, not for the facilitation of the efficient exchange of goods as was the original intent of money. They enslave debtors in the process (Proverbs 22:7). President Franklin Roosevelt, in his first Inaugural Address, even pointed out the clear-cut culpability of the “money changers” in causing the evils of the Great Depression. Succinctly, the issuers of today’s exclusive currencies are pagans and worshippers of Mammon, as were Pharaoh, Caesar, and their archetype—rulers of Babylon. As such, they cannot serve the Living God (Matthew 6:24; Luke 16:13).

All of humankind is born into sin and inherits a fallen nature, but the irresistible global system of rebellion against God developed in, and was propagated from, ancient Babylon. This system exploits the sinful and covetous nature of humanity. Only Christ can redeem a person. Without Him, a person is hopelessly, irretrievably enslaved to sin and will enthusiastically participate, without realizing it, in the seductive Babylonian system that exalts humanity and wealth while perverting the words of the true God of the Bible.

Currency is the pervasive, flowing lifeblood of the anti-Christian state—the things that are Caesar’s—and the intoxicating wine of her fornication (Rev 17:2), giving genuine meaning to the expression “money makes the world go ‘round”. When a people’s inclination to love money is exploited, they are rendered unable to serve God. To deny this truth is to deny the words of our Lord and Christ.

The truth of the Bible is borne out by History and by the observations of history’s most astute, and honest, students. In addition to the Bible (which is plenty sufficient), you have a President’s clear indictment of the money changers. Finally, consider these words from another famous President regarding the system of central banking that money changers have regrettably succeeded in establishing:

"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies . . . If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered . . . The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs."

—Thomas Jefferson, in his Letter to the Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin (1802)

2006-12-17T19:52:00.000-08:00

The Parable of the Talents

This article is excerpted from "Towering Trees and Talented Slaves" written by Ched Myers and Eric DeBode, originally published in The Other Side Online, © 1999 The Other Side, May-June 1999, Vol. 35, No. 3.

The article is no longer available at that site and apparently has all but disappeared from the Internet. We want to make sure this important article remains available and that is why it appears here on our site. Comments that I have inserted into the original Myers and DeBode text appear in [brackets].
— Editor

Even more problematic than our sentimentalizing of kingdom parables is the way we misread Jesus' parables about the world, reading them as if they were kingdom parables—with disastrous consequences. The most notorious case is the infamous parable of the talents (Matt. 25:14-30).

This has been for many an unsettling story. It seems to promote ruthless business practices (v. 20), usury (v. 27), and the cynical view that the rich will only get richer while the poor become destitute (v.29). Moreover, if we assume, as does the traditional reading, that the master is a figure for God, it is a severe portrait indeed: an absentee lord (v. 15) who cares only about profit maximization (v. 21), this character is hardhearted (v. 24) and ruthless (v. 30).

Despite these concerns, this story still routinely occasions countless homilies (usually on stewardship Sunday) about how we Christians should gainfully employ our "talents" for God—despite the fact that "talent" in the Gospel text has nothing to do with our individual gifts and everything to do with economics. Might it be that we have imposed upon the parable our capitalist presumptions about the glories of a system that rewards "venture capital," and thus read the story exactly backwards?

Our first clue lies in the parable that immediately precedes the story of the talents. A specifically kingdom teaching, the story of the bridesmaids reiterates the traditional gospel exhortation to "stay awake" so as not to be caught unawares by the "moment of truth" (Matt. 25:1-13). This story prefigures the drama in the Garden of Gethsemane, in which the disciples are urged to remain vigilant for when the time comes to confront injustice.

What follows is a story about a very rich master—but there is no indication that this is a kingdom parable (25:14). We have been warned to be alert! [Please note that in the original Greek the words “kingdom of heaven” do not appear in v.14—those words were inserted: the KJV faithfully indicates the insertion with the use of italics. Several commentators assert that the "Parable of the Talents" is understood more correctly as a cautionary tale about the world than as a parable about the kingdom of God, and that the harsh master in the parable does not represent the Lord. Jesus refers to the master as simply "a man" (v. 14).]

The original audience of this story would not have had to allegorize the parable to make sense of it. Its portrait of a great household—the closest thing in antiquity to the modern corporation—was all too recognizable. The powerful patriarch would often be away on economic or political business. His affairs would be handled by slaves, who in Roman society often rose to prominent positions in the household hierarchy as "stewards" (25:15).

But the sums entrusted here border on hyperbole. Scott writes: "A talent was one of the largest values of money in the Hellenistic world. A silver coinage, it weighed between fifty-seven and seventy-four pounds. One talent was equal to 6,000 denarii." Since one denarius was an average subsistence wage for a day's labor, one talent was worth more than fifteen years wages. In the modern era, we might roughly translate the assets made available for investment at about $2.5 million. These are elite financial dealings indeed!

The first two slaves double their master's investment (25:16-17). Though lauded by modern interpreters, this feat would have elicited disgust from the first-century audience. In his article "A Peasant Reading of the Parable of the Talents," Richard Rohrbaugh notes that in antiquity the highest legal interest rate was about 12 percent; anything higher was considered rapacious. This is the first of many hints that the operations of this household are something less than exemplary.

Bruce Malina in The New Testament World: Insights from Cultural Anthropology has shown that in traditional Mediterranean society, the ideal was stability, not self-advancement. Anyone trying to accumulate inordinate wealth imperiled the equilibrium of society and was thus understood to be dishonorable. Greed was widely believed to characterize the rich, who extorted and defrauded other members of the community through lucrative trading, tax collecting, and lending money at interest. In fact, usury was understood in antiquity to be responsible for the destructive cycle of indebtedness and poverty, while profiting from commodity trading was explicitly condemned by no less a sage than Aristotle.

The biblically literate, moreover, would recall the warning against stored surplus in Exodus 16:16-20, the prohibition against usury and profiteering off the poor in Leviticus 25:36ff, or Isaiah's condemnation of those who "join house to house and field to field" in their real-estate dealings (Isa. 5:8). Yet Herzog thinks it is precisely such unscrupulous business dealings that are implied by each slave's doubling his master's investment. [In the 1st Century AD, without the availability of today's electronic financial instruments, securities exchanges and stock markets, hedge funds, derivatives, arbitrage, trading on margin, etc., to double such a vast fortune in currency within a journey's time was unthinkable, and impossible through honest “work”. We today have difficulty hearing the story as those first listening to Jesus heard it, because in our day and age we are utterly habituated to dubious investment schemes, unlike the poor in Jesus’ audience. The fabulous returns of the first two servants would have seemed bizarre to those living in Jesus’ day, but in the corrupt economies of the fallen world today such returns are not aberrations. Today, such enormous gain seems the laudable result of prudent investment, if not resulting from sheer crime such as insider trading, which is usually the case. For those listening to Jesus as He gave the parable, such a return on investment would have been deplored because it could only have occurred through the most predatory of means: extortion, fraud, tax collecting, and lending money at illegal rates of interest. Today's acceptance of usury shows how the parable is coming to pass, as Jesus told it in response to the Disciples’ question: “What will be the sign of Your coming and of the end of the age?” (Matt. 24:3)] Even large landowners made loans to peasant small holders based on speculations of future crop production. With high interest rates and vulnerability to lean years and famine, farmers often were unable to make their payments, and faced foreclosure. After gaining control of the land, the new owner could continue to make a killing by hiring laborers to farm cash crops.

It is a process of economic exploitation and wealth accumulation that is still all too characteristic of our own global economy. In the parable, the master's slaves do this highly profitable dirty work well.

We, of course, undaunted by this historical context and blissfully interpreting the parable through capitalist lenses, have nothing but praise for these "good stewards." As Rohrbaugh puts it, "commentators of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have genuinely reveled in the parable's seeming exhortation to venturous investment and diligent labor." We then turn to castigate the third slave who, cautious and "unproductive," represents an object lesson of entrepreneurial failure (25:18).

But if the manner of profiteering portrayed in the story would have been understood by the original audience as rapacious, is it not possible that this noncooperating third slave might in fact be the hero of this parable?

When the master returns to settle accounts we find identical phrasing in his commendations of the first two financiers (25:21,23): "Well done, good and trustworthy slave—enter into the joy of your master." We are used to reading this allegorically as connoting entry into heavenly bliss. But at the plain level of the parable it serves not only as a promotion ("I will put you in charge of many things"); it is also a reminder that these handlers are still slaves, and that it is the master's joy in which they are participating! We might say that these slaves are more captive than ever to the world controlled by their lord.

Like a good three-part joke, we now come to the punch line: The third slave is about to explain his (in)action (25:24-25). That he buried the money in the ground seems strange at first glance. But considering that many in Jesus' audience were farmers, there may be some wry peasant humor here. Those who work the land know that all true wealth comes from God, the source of rain, sunshine, seed, and soil. But this silver talent, when "sown," produced no fruit!

Here is the clash between two economic worldviews: the traditional agrarian notion of "use-value" and the elite's currency-based system of "exchange-value." Money cannot grow the natural way like seed, only unnaturally, through usury and swindling. Is this symbolic act of "planting" the talent a case of prophetic tricksterism to reveal that money is not fertile?

The third slave now begins to speak truth to power. "I knew you were a harsh man" (the Greek is skleros, a word associated with old Pharaoh's disease of hardheartedness). "You reap where you did not sow, and gather where you did not scatter seed" (25:24).

With these words the third slave becomes what Herzog calls a "whistle-blower," having unmasked the fact that the master's wealth is derived entirely from the toil of others. He profits from the backbreaking labor of those who work the land. Unwilling to participate in this exploitation, this third slave took the money out of circulation, where it could no longer be used to dispossess another family farmer.

This courageous dissident embodies the moral of the bridesmaids parable. He has awakened to the rules of the master's world. His repudiation of it is simple and curt: "Here, take back what is yours" (25:25). But he admits that through it all "I was afraid." For good reason—he is about to meet the prophet's fate. [“…you build tombs for the prophets, and it was your forefathers who killed them… God in his wisdom said, 'I will send them prophets and apostles, some of whom they will kill and others they will persecute.' Therefore this generation will be held responsible for the blood of all the prophets that has been shed since the beginning of the world, from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah, who was killed between the altar and the sanctuary.” –Luke 11:48-51]

It is instructive that the master does not refute the whistle-blower's analysis of his world [neither does the master refute the whistle-blower’s characterization of him, if indeed incorrect. My emphasis]. He simply castigates him as "evil and lazy" (the favorite slur of the rich toward those who don't play the game), and wonders rhetorically why the slave didn't at least seek market-rate return. The master is not interested in what is his own—he appreciates only appreciation. He then decides to make an example of the third slave, dispossessing him and giving the single talent to his obedient colleague, in order to illustrate the way the real world works: "For to those who have, more will be given—but for those who have not, even what they have will be taken away" (25:28-29).

This parable reads much more coherently as a cautionary tale about the world controlled by great householders (this is even clearer in Luke's version of the story, Luke 19:11-27). Jesus may even have been spinning a thinly-veiled autobiographical tale here—for he, too, will shortly stand before the powers, speak the truth, and take the consequences. To read in it a divine endorsement of mercenary economics and the inevitable polarization of wealth is to miss the point completely—and to perpetuate both dysfunctional theology and complicit economics in our churches.

The consequence of the third slave's noncooperation is banishment to the "outer darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth" (25:30). We have presumed this to be "hell," and so perhaps it is—that is, the hell on earth experienced by those rejected by the dominant culture: in the shadows where the light of the royal courts never shine, on the mean streets outside the great households, the dwelling place of the outcast poor like Lazarus (Luke 16:19-21). But the story that immediately follows this tragic conclusion—the famous last-judgment parable of the sheep and the goats (Matt. 25:31-46) may illuminate the nature of the dissident slave's exile. This singular judgment story in the Gospels suggests that we meet Christ mysteriously by feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, welcoming the stranger, clothing the naked, caring for the sick, and visiting the imprisoned (Matt. 25:25-40). In other words, we meet Christ in places of pain and marginality; the "outer darkness." The whistle-blower's punishment kicks him out of the rich man's system, but brings him closer to the true Lord, who dwells with the poor and oppressed. [The parable which immediately follows “Talents” is the “Least of These” (Matt. 25:34-46), the tenor of which is quite contrary to that of the Parable of Talents in its traditional interpretation. The traditional interpretation of the Parable of Talents certainly seems inconsistent with the message of charity, giving, and love found in the “Least of These” parable.]

We have for too long ignored or trivialized parables as arcane, pedantic, or platitudinous, ever hoping to keep aright the world they mean to turn upside down. But our two examples show that Jesus used these "folksy" stories to expose the most entrenched arrangements of power and privilege, whether Roman militarism or Judean elitism. He challenged the "tall trees" of imperial domination with his "mustard seed" movement of Jubilee justice. And he called for renewed resistance to usurious "business as usual" in Israel, a costly vocation of truth and consequences.

Only by bringing the parables back down to earth can we encounter their power both to unmask the "real world" in its cruelty and presumption, and to proclaim the radical hope of God's sovereignty, buried like a seed in the hard soil of our history.

2006-06-17T18:04:00.000-07:00

The Wide Gate (Matthew 7:13)

This article was originally published at
lwwdc.org/Wide_Gate.htm

“… every faith in the world is based on fabrication…The Bible represents a fundamental guidepost for millions of people on the planet, in much the same way the Koran, Torah, and Pali Canon offer guidance … Religious allegory has become a part of the fabric of reality. And living in that reality helps millions of people cope and be better people.”
The Da Vinci Code p. 341-342. [Emphasis in original.]

The passage above is an example of how the meaning of Christianity is being systematically reduced in the mind of the general population to mere allegorical fiction, or to stock and stale guidelines for better living. It is an example of how Christianity is being relegated to a diversionary side-road along the broader way to “salvation”, the broad way with a wide gate into which the paths laid down by all of the world’s respective religions coalesce. But this broad road, this superhighway with its wide beckoning gate, does not lead to salvation; it leads to destruction.

Christianity is not merely guidelines for better living. You can find plenty of guidelines for living outside of Christianity—just have a chat with your doctor or financial advisor. On the contrary, true Christianity is the less trodden path, but the only path, of absolute truth that leads to life. Few people will take this difficult path and enter by the narrow gate (Matt 7:14). Jesus assures us that many people will prefer the wide gate that leads to destruction.

Yes, as Dan Brown contends in his novel The Da Vinci Code, every faith is based on fabrication. But Brown’s assertion is true of all faiths except for one. And that’s what makes the one—Christianity—different and real. But the devil and his servants have manufactured a different “one” religion. They have created an anti-Christian one, a compromised and counterfeit one: a unified single religion encompassing all others, forged through iterative compromise, which competes with true Christianity for the hearts and minds of fallen, rebellious humanity. It is a broad way that seems right to many people, “but its end is the way of death” (Proverbs 14:12). This false “one” religion has been around for centuries—its roots reach all the way back to Eden in fact. Therefore, among the few factual statements in the TDVC is that its anti-Christian religion is very ancient and thoroughly seasoned (more on this later).

People such as author Dan Brown and his fans attempt to distort and to drag down biblical Christianity to comic levels by contending, among other things, that it is fabrication, arguing that certain aspects about biblical Christianity cannot be “proved”. We could take their bait and attempt to “prove” Christianity through apologetics, but this is unnecessary and counterproductive. We should not dignify Brown’s contention with a response from apologetics; it merits no such response. Christianity is manifest truth and does not “need” to be proved. Dan Brown and his fans have forgotten that that which cannot be proved is not the same as that which is fabricated. It might be the case, for example, that a murderer’s guilt cannot be proved with logic and evidence, but yet the fact remains that the murderer is guilty, that his guilt is absolutely real. There are absolute truths that cannot be proved with logic, yet they are absolute truths indeed. To answer this particular attack of Brown’s, at least, doesn’t require the Christian to try to “prove” anything. The truth of Christianity needs no defense, no apology, against such foolishness. An observer could spend his time as productively by trying to prove to another observer that the sky is blue.

Now, back to the matter at hand.

TDVC, among other books that have been published or that have surfaced in recent years, is the devil’s preemptive strike against the inevitable revelation of Truth. It is intended to prepare people to receive and to accept even greater lies to follow, by easing the initial shock with “innocuous” fiction and entertainment, and to shut out the Gospel. By attempting to disprove the real Christ who is Jesus, any future Antichrist will appear less “Anti” and more Christ-like. This preparation, the preaching of a one religion merging all religions together, is attractive to most “reasonable” people who are systematically taught to believe that compromise is virtue, and to prefer compromise as the solution to any conflict, instead of unyielding adherence to principle and unchanging truth. This brings us to a discussion of syncretism. Syncretism paves the broad road into which all paths that supposedly lead to God (but actually lead to destruction) merge together, in accordance with infernal notions emanating from the very mouth of the Serpent.

“All paths lead to God”

“Rosslyn Chapel…stands seven miles south of Edinburgh, Scotland, on the site of an ancient Mithraic temple. Built by the Knights Templar in 1446, the chapel is engraved with a mind-boggling array of symbols from the Jewish, Christian, Egyptian, Masonic, and pagan traditions…Rosslyn Chapel was a shrine to all faiths… to all traditions… and above all, to nature and the goddess.” TDVC 432-434. [My emphasis.]

Christ tells us that the gate to destruction is wide and many will go through it. The gate to life, on the other hand, is narrow and few people will go through it. The wide gate is what Babel (Genesis 11:1-9) is all about: people from all over the world gathered together there in hope to make a name for themselves. In Babel (Babylon in Greek) the pagan religion flourished and we can be sure from the biblical account that Babylonians were of one mind in the matter as they attempted to erect the obnoxious Tower: “Behold, the people are one” (Gen 11:6). It was this unified, one world enterprise to exalt humanity that God detested, so He scattered the peoples and confused their tongues, making it difficult for them to try again anytime soon (Gen 11:7-8). But now rebels in the face of God are ramping up for another go at it. We see the one world religion that they took out of Babylon and into their respective destinations cropping up everywhere all over again—in different languages and cultures—as exemplified in the passage above from TDVC. Indeed to this day, people such as Dan Brown, through his characters in TDVC, claim to all worship the same “god”. There are many different paths to their one god and many different flavors of their religion, in many different languages. Today’s heirs of Babylon conspire to reveal the world’s one “true” religion, lost but not forgotten, which accommodates all faiths and belief systems through endless compromise, vaunting a wide beckoning gate to heaven for all proselytes. All those paths which lead to “God”, when combined, make for a very big path indeed. It is the broad road to destruction.

There is only one Way to the One True God (John 14:6): the road is narrow, the gate small (Matt 7:14).

The denizens of Babel aspired to display and to memorialize their power, to make an everlasting name for themselves. Today, the postmodern interpretation of all religion is that it is only about power. The syncretistic power religion identified in TDVC has no prayer to our Lord God. There are only mantras, chants, trances, false “prayer”, and transcendental meditation that focus the adherent inwardly. Often drugs are used to enhance the effect. It’s all about self-fulfillment. Specifically, it’s about power harnessed by the performance of acts, deeds, rituals, and incantations in order to get some reward, to obtain a result or object selfishly sought after, or to achieve “self-actualization”. Unfortunately, many people practice Christianity for these very reasons, and this is no service to our Lord God.

As I have said before, Babylonianism is the one world religion that manifests in civilizations as vogue forms of paganism. Mithraism, mentioned in TDVC for example, was the mystery religion practiced in Rome, based on Persian and Babylonian mysticism. If Christianity today is compromised to the extent that it conforms to this one world religion, then it ceases to be Christianity and becomes a form of paganism with a “Christian” spin: it would be “Christian” in name only. And we see this “Christian” paganism all around us today. Those of you who have read our previous articles can recall our discussion of Gnostic influence in such “Christian” books as John Eldredge’s Wild at Heart. Consider the parallels that Eldredge’s “god” has with the goddess of TDVC:

“Look around you. Her [the goddess’] story is being told in art, music, and books.” TDVC p.444.

“God’s word comes to me in many ways—through…music and wilderness and books.” Wild at Heart p.200.

This “god” (or goddess) is not the God of the Bible. It belongs to a Gnostic faith described in TDVC as worship of the “sacred feminine” and which Wild at Heart mislabels “Christianity”. There is little material difference between the theology of TDVC and the theology of Wild at Heart: in both books is depicted a religion devoted to nature and to an impersonal creative force that speaks through secular music and books, among other things. We must heed especially the apostle Paul’s warning to understand that the creation and its Creator are separate (Romans 1:25).

What I call Babylonianism in the postmodern world was often referred to in the modern world by the now passé term Secular Humanism. The “ism” in Humanism tells you what you need to know: it is a religion, a creed in which the human takes center-stage. There is a reason for this. The Bible explains it with a piece of critical history that is habitually ignored even in many Christian circles.

Back Further than the Background

TDVC identifies the actual roots of the anti-Christian religion it espouses—at least TDVC has the intellectual integrity to do that (which isn’t saying much). So where did the religion of TDVC come from originally? Did it originate with the Templars? No. With the Priory of Sion? No. With the early Church? With the distorted picture of Jesus Himself (as rendered in TDVC)? No.

Page 420 of TDVC contains a paean to Nature-worship, Venus (Ashtoreth), and the Garden of Eden all rolled into one:

“The signs were everywhere. Like a taunting silhouette emerging from the fog, the branches of Britain’s oldest apple tree burgeoned with five-petaled blossoms, all glistening like Venus. The goddess was in the garden now. She was dancing in the rain, singing songs of the ages, peeking out from behind the bud-filled branches as if to remind Langdon that the fruit of knowledge was growing just beyond his reach.” [My emphasis.]

This “fruit of knowledge” is a direct reference to the forbidden fruit consumed by Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden (Gen 3). The goddess is the Serpent. Here, the character Robert Langdon is tantalized by the fruit almost within his reach—all the hidden secrets are about to be revealed to him. His eyes will be opened and he will be like God (Gen 3:5). This worldview makes the Serpent of Genesis seem honest, not like the Liar he actually is. TDVC later confirms this explanation for the fruit:

“The orb from which Eve partook,” Langdon said coolly, “incurring the Holy wrath of God. Original sin. The symbol of the fall of the sacred feminine.” TDVC p. 425.

In the end of days, we’re being reminded of the first days when humankind ever walked the earth, and the devil is trying to force the rationalization for his lies after all these years. The fall of the sacred feminine? How about the fall of humankind? In the end of the age, vehicles of the media such as TDVC, and Wild at Heart for that matter, are even applying spin to the Fall, calling it something mysteriously appealing, such as “the fall of the sacred feminine”, or outright ridiculous, such as “a loss of heart”. A more accurate way to describe the Fall is with one word: Death.

Are the sacred feminine and Humanism equal? Yes they are, according to the worldview affirmed by TDVC. In the Bible, the Serpent’s lie to humans was that by eating the forbidden fruit they would become like God. Extolling the sacred feminine by the twisting of this biblical narrative is referential exaltation of humanity. Significantly, the final words of TDVC again hearken back to Eden and the Serpent’s voice.

“For a moment, he [Langdon] thought he heard a woman’s voice…the wisdom of the ages… whispering up from the chasms of the earth.” TDVC p. 454.

This sounds remarkably like the Serpent’s beguiling voice, offering wisdom to them who partake of the forbidden fruit, wisdom that is “earthly, sensual, demonic” (James 3:15). We know that the Serpent whispered to Eve, “your eyes will be opened and you will be like God” (Gen 3:5).

Times have not changed.

2006-03-10T17:32:00.000-08:00

Another gospel: The Da Vinci Code

This is an excerpt from an article originally published at lwwdc.org
Click here to view the article in its entirety.

“Son of man, you are living among a rebellious people. They have eyes to see but do not see and ears to hear but do not hear, for they are a rebellious people.” (Ezekiel.12:2)

A person’s worldview filters information and shapes understanding. Holding a secular worldview creates a condition of misperception tantamount to the blindness and deafness spoken of in Ezekiel 12:2 and other passages of the Bible (cf. Matt. 13:13-15). Furthermore, for many who hold the popular (secular) worldview, the Gospel of Jesus Christ is a rock of offense. That is one of many reasons why false gospels are often more readily accepted than the Gospel Truth: to a person who holds the popular worldview, the false gospel just seems to make more sense.

A person’s worldview is the result of years of upbringing, schooling, and culture. It is the framework by which the person sees and understands the world. One premise of the popular worldview is the belief that all men, including Christians and the Church, are motivated only by lust for power—a postmodern perspective. It says also that truth is relative; truth is only “what works for me”. But we know as Christians that God’s Truth is absolute and universal: this is the Biblical worldview. We know that the world is fallen and sinful, but that the eternal Word of God bears glorious fruits of the Spirit contrary to the dictates of corrupt human nature. The Bible says that human wisdom “does not descend from above, but is earthly, sensual, demonic. For where envy and self-seeking exist, confusion and every evil thing are there. But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy.” Christian truth exists on a different, higher plane from human wisdom. But by appealing to human wisdom, anti-Christian lies propagate throughout the world.

When a gospel agrees with a person’s worldview, retention of that gospel is facilitated. That is a major reason (perhaps the main reason) why the spirit of Antichrist has worked hard to shape people’s worldview with conceptual frameworks such as humanism, atheism, and paganism (i.e. Nature worship). These are all facets of a single, unified, and decidedly anti-Christian religion that prepares the mind to accept the deadly particulars of an anti-Christian “gospel” and reject the life-giving particulars of the Gospel of Christ. Just as the culture of Baal worship that infected Israel thousands of years ago was an obstacle to the appreciation of the word of the LORD, today’s popular worldview is an enormous obstacle to the appreciation of the true Gospel of Christ. The foundations of the popular worldview that facilitate acceptance of false gospels are lies, and you can be certain that the Father of Lies has been behind it all from the very Beginning.

One of the challenges of the Christian is to break through a person’s worldview, which erects barriers and prevents a listener from accepting the true Christian message. The secular worldview is so influential to perception that we must rely on the Holy Spirit and the discernment that He provides to allow for the unadulterated message of God’s word to be properly received. Otherwise, the message reaches ears that do not hear and eyes that are closed.

The Da Vinci Code (TDVC), a work of fiction by Dan Brown, is in accord with the worldview prefabricated and instilled by the instruments of the Prince of this World into the minds of a generation of readers, whose filters carefully guard against the true Gospel of Christ, but welcome pagan and humanistic deception. Only the Holy Spirit can truly penetrate this bulwark and renew the mind. TDVC coincides with the postmodern, relativistic, and politically-correct worldview. It appeals to prejudices learned in the formation of such worldview, so that its lies, fed to the mind governed by this worldview, are swallowed wholesale. Wouldn’t most people, one might ask, just write off the many assertions in TDVC as a product of fiction and nothing else? The answer is categorically “No”, for a critical element of TDVC is that it claims to contain facts, even though it is a work of fiction.

What is TDVC all about? TDVC gives readers an eyeful of a spiritual war—presented in very worldly terms and viewed through readers’ worldly filters—as it tickles readers’ itching ears and intrigues them. It then takes advantage of their interest and heightened receptivity to feed them lies that match-up with their worldview. It deftly propagates half-truths that are less detectable than its bald-faced lies and manifest errors. Although TDVC gives people a glimpse of the true spiritual battlefield on which servants of God and servants of the Devil have fought for millennia, this glimpse is full of counterfeits, smokescreens, decoys, and lies that are readily absorbed by the arrogant and prejudiced minds of those who have developed the politically-correct worldview. This popular worldview paves the way for the introduction and acceptance of arcane tenets of the kingdom of darkness that have been hidden for centuries. Most disturbingly, TDVC portrays those who adhere to such long-buried evilness as the “heroes” and those who hold fast to Biblical doctrine as the “villains”. TDVC reflects the world today where that which is good in God’s eyes is called evil, and that which is evil in God’s eyes is called good.

In previous articles, I’ve written about what I call the “Babylonian religion”, and how it is manifested today as the quintessential anti-Christian religion. TDVC offers ample illustration of many of the central ideas of such anti-Christian religion with remarkable force. This pagan religion has been around for millennia, as TDVC correctly asserts, but now its poison streams unstanched into our popular culture. This article will help show how TDVC, a piece of poor fiction, illustrates the working of the religion of ancient Babylon in the world today.

In our generation, as in days immediately following the advent of Christ, the spiritual alternatives favored over Biblical Truth include the Gnostic gospels, which are a foundation for TDVC. Books such as TDVC are just symptomatic of the clear and present danger of Gnosticism afoot today. The TDVC per se is not the problem, but Gnosticism definitely is.

Gnosticism is an outgrowth of the Babylonian religion that had a sizable following during the era of the early Church. The Gnostics took the genuine Gospel of Jesus and twisted it to suit their own religion. The end-result was a form of paganism masquerading as Christianity. The Gnostics have always claimed that their version of “Christianity” is real, authentic Christianity. But such claims could not be further from the truth.

The Apostles and their Disciples such as Polycarp and Irenaeus fought vigorously against Gnosticism, which in the cosmopolitan centers of the Roman Empire was a most fitting anti-Christian religion practiced by the sophisticated pagans, since it was agreeable to worldly philosophies and human wisdom. Gnosticism often appears today in “New Age” circles. It is clearly identifiable in TDVC.

TDVC is a “primer” on the manifestations of the true spirit war: although it gets some of its “facts” wrong, the discerning Christian reader can plainly observe the weapons of the war, including half-truths (lies) and the politically-correct worldview. Because Brown asserts at the beginning of the book that certain presumptions in the book are facts rather than fiction, many people will be gulled into the belief that certain lies are facts. After all, Brown doesn’t leave clues as to how to distinguish between actual facts and the many fabrications that are blended into his convoluted yarn.

TDVC is not an introduction of startling new ideas, but a confirmation of explosive ideas ancient and dormant, quietly seething for centuries, poised to erupt into public consciousness in a way that the Bible prophecies. In other words, TDVC is a visible indicator of worse things occurring and yet to come.

Anyone who is familiar with the Scripture would see quickly enough that the Bible is a book that Dan Brown has opened rarely, if ever. The minimization of the Bible is the cornerstone of the Enemy's strategy in the greater Spirit War. It would have helped Dan Brown’s case if he knew a thing or two about the Bible, then he could at least pretend to be some sort of an expert, and his mouthpiece, the character Robert Langdon from TDVC, would not appear so silly. But Brown trips over his own ignorance of the Bible and its contents. Sadly however, such ignorance and silliness is imperceptible to many of the readers of TDVC since they, like Brown, are unfamiliar with the word of God.

The arguments of TDVC fall apart on their own: not only are they contradicted by the Bible, but they are internally inconsistent and fail on their own weakness. The assertions of TDVC alone, taken as a whole, just don’t add up. But unfortunately, through the postmodern filter of “relative truth”, a “half-truth” appears as good as whole. Moreover, truth and lies cannot be absolutely distinguished when the postmodern worldview holds that all facts are a matter of personal preference; the politically-correct view becomes the correct view.

There are many books and articles available to debunk the outright lies and errors in TDVC. I will focus on more subtle matters. For this discussion, you don’t need an encyclopedia or history books. You need none of those things to see the logical inconsistencies that are contained in TDVC itself—the book’s inherent contradictions. In this article, a synopsis of the novel’s plot and a frank discussion of pagan mystery religions will precede explanation of TDVC’s intrinsic contradictions. All you need to do is to think rationally in order to see the novel’s inherent contradictions. They include:

1. TDVC says that Constantine created modern Christianity, a radical new religion totally at odds with paganism, and converted the world from matriarchal paganism to his brand-new religion. But then TDVC also says that Christianity is essentially a pagan religion and that Constantine, “a lifelong pagan”, only modified paganism to make it acceptable to both “Christians” and pagans.

2. TDVC says that the Catholic Church sought to eradicate veneration of the sacred feminine, but the Catholic veneration for the Virgin Mary indicates the exact opposite.

3. TDVC says that the Church has made a concerted effort to suppress the “truth”, but then says that it is the sworn oath of a group antagonistic to the Church—the Priory of Sion—to keep the “truth” hidden. Well, which is it? More importantly, if it is vital “truth”, then what is the motive to hide it at all? It cannot be the Gospel Truth, which we are commanded to proclaim.

2006-01-15T19:06:00.000-08:00

Changing the Argument, or, Anatomy of the Dialectic

This article was originally published at
lwwdc.org/Dialectic.htm

On Capitol Hill, debate is occurring about how much you and I should continue to pay for research on human embryos that were killed in privately funded laboratories so that their stem cells could be harvested. The debate is not about whether you and I should pay at all for such research—but how much. In the meantime, there is no limit to the amount that private enterprises such as pharmaceutical companies can spend on this research. They are, and have always been, free to spend all they want. Whether they should is a question which has not recently appeared in the public debate.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist has spoken in favor of legislation to lift the Administration's limits on government funding of embryonic stem cell research. President Bush has said that he would veto this bill. If the President vetoes the bill, and thereby approves of continued “limited” public funding of embryonic stem cell research, will it be a victory for Christians? No.

Our elected policy-makers have set the boundaries of this debate, calculated the dimensions of the playing field and have defined the rules of the game. In their construction of the current debate, the truly Christian perspective has been shut out and called “out of bounds”. They have reached the current rules of the game through cycles of previous compromise. Little more than four years ago, the debate in churches was about whether embryonic stem cell research should be performed at all. The government and the media morphed this discussion into the “debate” of whether the public should pay for this research or whether the research should by privately funded as before, thus diverting attention away from discussion of ethics and focusing more on the question of funding. The President’s compromise—limited public sponsorship of embryonic stem cell research—was viewed as a setback by many Christians only four years ago. But today, the very same policy is being touted by professing Christians as a victory. (This is precisely how the dialectic works, for those of you who have read my previous articles.) I put the word “debate” in quotes because the outcome did nothing but grease the tracks for the Administration’s desired result, which is the current “debate” in which the ethics of embryonic stem cell research is no longer in question. In fact, even the question of who should fund it has all but disappeared. Now, legislators are asking “how much” you and I should contribute to tacit endorsement of infanticide. Meanwhile, private funding on these stem cells continues unabated. It has become a “given”.

The President is portrayed as an “extremist” Christian by his opponents. However, he supports embryonic stem cell research by actions that demonstrate his unchristian belief that compromise is acceptable when it comes to research he admits can encourage infanticide. His “extreme” Christian approach is that you and I should pay for it in moderation. The President’s support for “limited” public funding of embryonic stem cell research is portrayed by the media as the “extreme” Christian point of view, as on the edge of the playing field, barely in-bounds. This is where iterative compromise has brought us. It is a consummate outrage that any public support, let alone any support, of embryonic stem cell research is presented in the media as the “Christian” view.

In March 2005, the President said that we should “err on the side of life”. But the current “debate” now takes as its premise an error on the side of death (or, more specifically, on the side of murder), and the question that has arisen is how much you and I, via our tax dollars, should be compelled to pay those who profit from the deaths.

This “debate” is introduced into the public arena in order to distract and to polarize Americans. In the meantime, the haters of God achieve a remarkable coup, unchallenged: everyone ignores the real question regarding the ethics of embryonic stem cell research. They employ the strategy of divide and conquer, divide again and continue to conquer both sides. Whether we pay for embryonic stem cell research in limited amounts, or pay for it without limitation, it will be a victory for the virulently anti-Christian elements of the nation, so why are Christians even going along with this debate?

Our political leaders are taking us rapidly down a slippery slope and we are like sheep following them when we must rather listen to the voice and the words of our Shepherd.

We now have a “Christian” President pondering just how much all Americans should be compelled to contribute to research that involves deliberate termination of human life. In his prime-time address given August 9, 2001, the President said his policies allow us “to explore the promise and [sic] potential stem cell research without crossing a fundamental moral line by providing taxpayer funding that would sanction or encourage further destruction of human embryos that have at least the potential for life.” Meanwhile, private funding for enterprises “that would sanction or encourage further destruction of human embryos that have at least the potential for life” is okay, he implies. Furthermore, the President failed to recognize that human embryos do not merely have the potential for life—they are human life!

Now, disturbingly, many Christians have rallied behind the President, ignoring the deft sleight of hand pulled on us all.

2006-01-15T18:30:00.000-08:00

The Perfect Freedom

This is an excerpt from an article originally published at lwwdc.org

Click here to view the article in its entirely.

Sometimes movies are effective illustrations of the godlessness of our own lost culture. I reference Jeff Spicoli, the perpetually stoned surfer played by Sean Penn from the 1980’s teen-movie Fast Times at Ridgemont High, who gave a profound (unintended, of course) encapsulation of a pervasive postmodern ideology. He said (with the drawl characteristic of marijuana-induced haze), to wit, “[Dude,] all I need are my tasty waves [i.e. Doritos?], a cool buzz [cold Buds?] and I’m fine”. Spicoli might have been talking about the delights of surfing, but as he gazed at his sundry food items at checkout in a convenience-store, he seemed to be referring to them. Significantly, he spoke of nature and of altered states of consciousness metaphorically as he eyed the convenience-store victuals.

Sadly, this is the attitude of many Americans today. Like the Israelites in the wilderness fondly reminiscing about life back in luxurious Egypt—“we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted” (yet were not permitted to worship the LORD)—many Americans say, “all I need are [insert consumer products, conveniences, and luxuries here] and I’m fine”.

It is well established that no consumer goods of this world, durable or perishable, can save anybody (let alone satisfy), regardless of how technologically advanced or “cutting edge” the latest breakthroughs are. Many people don’t perceive their dire need for forgiveness, mercy, and deliverance from the coming wrath of God. They do not see the need for Christ, for salvation. They look at Christianity as a means of getting what they want, a way of finding personal satisfaction and fulfillment, a social club, a twelve-step program, a network through which their own desires can be met, a tool for helping them to achieve vain, mundane objectives. They do not properly see Christianity as service to God with and among members of His Body, but rather as a peripheral resource to support the fulfillment of the true focus of their lives, themselves.

Jeff Spicoli sounds like many people today: all’s well so long as someone (some god) “gives” them what their hearts desire, even if they have to jump through hoops like a circus dog for the greater part of the week, or run the figurative “rat race” like rodents scrambling through mazes looking for that cheese that somebody moved. But so long as someone (some god, Pharaoh, Caesar, whomever) provides them with their hearts desires, bread or tortilla chips, water or cold beer, manna or pasta, quail or caviar, all’s well. Although we as Christians know the everlasting LORD God already provides us with what we need such as food and clothing (Matthew 6:25-33), we are nevertheless conditioned to perceive the need to acquire the right currency to buy and sell these things (plus a great deal more), busily running after them as the pagans do, frantically foraging for currency bearing an image of its issuer (some god, Pharaoh, Caesar, whomever). Jesus clearly indicated that the denarius, a Roman coin, belonged to Caesar, a pagan among pagans.

We have been conditioned to strive to collect wealth or possessions beyond our basic needs—vanity (Ecclesiastes 2:11) —and to look to present-day Pharaohs to enable us to do so. We spend time, labor, and resources in pursuit of possessions, when we could have been using our God-given resources in service to Him instead, knowing that He is the Giver of Life and trusting in Him to provide for our needs. However, we have been encouraged to live life as the pharmacologically anesthetized, lotus-eating, robotically working, mantra-chanting consumers paying whatever prices are set by our contemporary gods, our “Pharaohs”, for the acquisition of worthless vanities (“He who has the most toys wins”), as well as for those things necessary for subsistence—food, clothing, and shelter. We make constant appeals to Pharaoh rather than to God even though the Lord taught us to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread”. It doesn’t get any simpler than that.

“You cannot serve God and Mammon” (Matthew 6:24)

In Egypt, Pharaoh forced the Israelites to labor leaving them no time to worship God. By God’s providence, they prospered in spite of Pharaoh’s lording over them. Today’s situation in the West is knottier than the plight of Israelites in Egypt because nowadays people independently choose to work (and choose not to worship) in order to acquire vanities (Ecclesiastes 2) such as expensive clothes, vehicles, and homes. The Bible tells us pointedly not to think about such wealth (Proverbs 23:4). Although we do not have the scourge put to our backs, nor do we fear for our lives, there is a great incentive unleashed by modern-day Pharaohs to subdue a captive civilization and keep it in line with the Pharaonic agenda such that no whip is needed: debt.

We neglect service to God when we prefer to toil long hours in ways that enable the collecting of things that we don’t need. Jesus said that serving God and serving wealth are incompatible goals: “No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and Mammon [Money].” (Matt 6:24 NKJV) The worship of Mammon, or the love of wealth, keeps a person in slavery because it and service to God are mutually exclusive.

Mammon competes with God for our hearts (See Matthew 6:21, Luke 12:34). Love of money comes with thirst for wealth acquisition rather than for the Word of God. We know that it triggers desire to accumulate wealth for wealth’s sake, beyond the house in the “right” zip code, the two SUVs, and the turboprop. But the void cannot be filled.

“All I need are my uptown condo and Nintendo and I’m fine.”

“All I need are my house in the burbs and the Lexus in the garage and I’m fine.”

“All I need are my chateau, stable of Thoroughbreds, and exclusive collection of Rembrandts and I’m fine.”

In our dumbed-down society people are taught that satisfaction comes from having just the right array of belongings. If that doesn’t do the trick, well, then try having more. When a person finally comes to the realization that wealth does not satisfy, he is quickly shuffled into any of a number of modes of spirituality offering to bring fulfillment and enlightenment, but which do not. Persons who “have it all” frequently find themselves seated in the full-lotus position, eyes shut, chanting “Ohm” somewhere in Nepal, or in some other exotic foreign country, such as San Francisco. Everything except the absolute Truth of biblical Christianity is offered on the glittering menu of spirituality. The media which shapes our opinions and our worldview, has a distinctly anti-Christian agenda. It peddles the latest must-have gadgets, baubles, and fads, and when all else fails, cordons people into the arena of pagan spirituality, especially the ancient Babylonian mystery religion and its varied permutations that include Egyptian Isis worship and the blasphemous feminine (popularly known as the “sacred feminine”).

The religion and the economics of ancient Babylon, which are the archetypes for those of most civilizations throughout history, are intimately tied. The mystery religion from ancient Babylon, where the roots of today’s most insidious apostasies lay, which became the religion of Egypt and then of other “advanced” civilizations such as Rome, is alive and well today even in the “advanced free world”. In every age and civilization, it rears its ugly head in an attempt to supplant God by appealing to humanity’s wisdom, creativity, intellect, covetousness, and most of all, pride. It appears in many forms and is known by many names, but always exhibits the same enmity toward God’s Truth as it has since the Beginning.

A less occult principle of the ancient Babylonian religion practiced today is the use of artificial economic constructs to compel continuous labor (the LORD God did not frivolously ordain the Sabbaths). By this means, thoughts about the true God are relegated to the remote backburner of our minds, an anti-God strategy which was employed during the religion’s implementation in ancient Egypt. Unlike the visible brutality of Pharaoh’s taskmasters, the goal is today neatly accomplished through subtler pressures transparently and expediently applied by indebtedness. Throughout most of history, including American history, debt was sternly frowned upon, even in the purchase of homes, and lenders were commonly despised as human vultures. The mortgage lender does not ask “how much house do you need”, but “how much house can you afford”. Need is irrelevant. One is reminded of a scene in a certain Chevy Chase movie where the actor, playing clueless Clark Griswold, asks a couple of car mechanics “how much will it cost?” to which the grinning mechanics reply, “All of it [i.e. ‘how much have you got?’].” Unfortunately, we’re not living in the movies where problems conveniently vanish at the end, and it’s not just a couple of grinning car mechanics in rural Nevada we’re dealing with here. It’s far worse.

We are constantly encouraged to be saddled with debt. If you are a home-debtor like myself (some people use the imprecise euphemism “home-owner”—a gross misnomer since banks hold title to the home until the loan is paid off.), then you know what I’m talking about. If you are a renter, look into the mortgage industry and you’ll see what I mean. “Home-owners” are, more accurately, serfs in a neo-feudal system of economics masquerading absurdly as “freedom and democracy”. And according to Proverbs 22:7, they are slaves: “The rich rules over the poor, and the borrower becomes the lender’s slave.” (NASB)

Today, it is considered customary to kneel at the feet of the mortgage lender. Americans have been fooled into believing that credit is wealth. They often exhibit pride when they are in debt (mortgaged) to the hilt, and highly leveraged persons such as Donald Trump are called “wealthy” even when they are in legal bankruptcy, as the debt-ridden Trump has found himself on more than one occasion.

For some bizarre reason, a lot of people are proud to be steeped in debt; they characterize their incurring onerous debt as the fulfillment of the wonderful, magical, dreams of a lifetime. They boast about the homes which they don’t own (the banks do), for which they have agreed to perform full-time labor for approximately three decades, or a good half of their adult lives. Oddly, they insist that this is a situation in which everyone would be fortunate to find themselves, calling their three-decades contract of indentured servitude “The American Dream”. And there’s no seven-year release in which debts are forgiven which was commanded of the Israelites by God (Deuteronomy 15:1). The yoke persists until the debt is paid. Interest rates are usurious—read Nehemiah 5: in most English translations of the chapter, a 1% interest charge is called “usury”. (How conditioned we have become to interest on debt that to us, a 1% charge sounds low!)

The thirty-year mortgage is a relatively recent phenomenon. If your great-grandparents, even some of your grandparents, had the good fortune to live in this great nation and to own a home, they probably purchased it with the labor of less than ten years (much less thirty years), and only one parent was required to work. By contrast, the family where two (or more) parents work is becoming the rule today rather than the exception. (I won’t get into other strange family arrangements quickly becoming popular these days.) Recently, I’ve even seen advertisements for the forty-year mortgage. Across the board, we’re trending in the wrong directions. The message our Lord gave to the Church of Laodicea: “You say, ‘I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.’ But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked” (Revelation 3:17) surely indicates spiritual and economic conditions of our day, especially in the civilized West. Although we might not need to be concerned about the national debt at this point, we will need to be concerned about it at some point, because a day of reckoning will surely come.

Freedom is not simply being able to work as you wish, when you wish. Freedom is not having the scourge removed from our backs. Freedom is not affordable healthcare and education. Freedom is not comfort, pleasure, self-indulgence, sexual liberation, unnatural acts against nature and God, or license to commit perverse acts if “it doesn't hurt anybody”. Many of those things are just more enthralling forms of slavery. To call those things “freedom” is a lie, a fatal illusion. A person can have freedom to do all those things and still live in oppressive, unrelenting, and damning bondage. True freedom comes in the liberating power of the Lord from the bondage of sin.

“worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator” (Romans 1:25)

This wicked religion is doggedly enduring, because it elegantly exploits the existing predisposition of humankind to sin, utilizing compulsions that we already have, for example, to covet. The duress of man’s sinful nature is so strong that the taskmaster’s whip becomes superfluous. Humans are already slaves to sin, and to control them one needs only to exploit their inherent bondage, that is, to capitalize on pre-existing inclinations and weaknesses. Until we are committed to serve God, the real slave driver in all of our lives is sin. Further, a contemporary Pharaoh doesn’t use the no-straw-for-bricks scheme as did the ancient Pharaoh; a cleverer Pharaoh takes advantage of man’s sinful inclinations. It is like sailing a boat downstream. Look at how marketers make appeals to the basest of our sinful natures to motivate us (it is a cliché that “sex sells”). The sex and glamour used to foist their vain wares would make an ancient Babylonian sailor blush.

The lesser slavery of debt works like a charm because it takes advantage of the ultimate slavery of sin by appealing to covetousness, pride, and other attributes of fallen man. It thus empowers taskmasters to motivate workers without having to use the scourge; it derives its strength from man’s inexorable slavery to sin. It is a non-violent and “acceptable” means of control. But it is no less binding than bondage under the scourge. In fact, it is more powerful because it deceives us with the illusion of “freedom” so that we make no attempt to escape. Taskmasters can then turn up the heat as we bask like blithe frogs in a warming kettle of water.

Today, many people serve Mammon and “Pharaoh” simultaneously, living in the absurd illusion that they have “freedom” since they work weekdays, day and night, and weekends (not to mention the Sabbath), to make sure that the bank doesn’t take away the house and the car that are really owned by the bank. Like the biblical Pharaoh, today’s Pharaoh keeps people preoccupied with their work, simultaneously enslaving them with debt while exploiting their naturally-occurring propensity to sin. The Bible says “thou shalt not covet...anything that is thy neighbor’s”. But in spite of this, society has encouraged both parents of innocent children to work 50-hour weeks for decades just to keep up with “the Jones’s”, while discouraging them from worshipping God. Debt is a more insidious, more stealthy, and more effective way to keep people laboring than is the scourge.

the greater bondage; the perfect freedom

We should get our vocabulary straight here. “Debt” is not “wealth”. “Wealth” is not “freedom”. Those of you have might have studied Logic in school can see the deduction here suggested, which seems to have escaped some global policy-makers. Debt can enslave entire populations by capitalizing on the slavery every human has inherited since Adam and Eve.

Everyone in this world who is not saved is a slave, not of tyranny, but of their sins, including covetousness. Sin is the most oppressive slavery we face, and its consequences are eternal. Other forms of bondage end when you die, but you are not redeemed of the bondage of sin when you die unless you petition your Redeemer for salvation while you live.

When Pharaoh freed the Israelites from Egypt, gold and gilded idols of “four-footed beasts” (Rom 1:23) became their gods (Ex 32:4), the same gods that the Egyptians worshipped. The same gods that ancient Babylonians worshipped. The Israelites were set free from Pharaoh, but not yet set free by the Truth from the most binding bondage of all.

Those who hate the Truth , like Pharaoh, try to keep us enslaved with lesser forms of bondage such that we don’t even recognize the ultimate slavery in our lives, which is sin. We are kept from the Truth by those who hate the Truth because if we do not come to grips with the fact that we are slaves to sin, then we will be unable to find the Truth that makes us free indeed—the everlasting freedom in Christ. In the meantime, they pretend to free us from the lesser forms of slavery so that, like the Israelites leaving Egypt, we are deluded into believing that we are free and we fail to recognize our true taskmaster which is sin. Therefore, we do not discover true freedom which is in Christ.