Good Grief!!
No wonder things in our culture are so upside-down.
I was warned this was futility, but I insisted on trying anyway. I have joined two online Christian dating websites. One is dominated by Reformed Baptists and the other with Seventh Day Adventists. This rant is directed at the Reformed Baptists.
I first met someone that I knew was a Reformed Baptist minister when I was finishing college. He lived in Laguana (now part of Elk Grove). He had ten children that we all home schooled by their mom. Their house was immaculate. It looked like a model home. There were no toys or books out of place, and I was amazed at the cleanliness of the place.
Several families in my current church are from Reformed Baptist backgrounds.
It would be difficult to explain the differences between a Reformed Baptist and your neighborhood Baptist church. Reformed Baptists are essentially proto-Baptists. If you froze Baptist theology in about 1,800; meaning, no fixation of futurism as presented by Scofield and Hal Lindsey or Tim LaHay, then you would be in the ballpark. In the Reformation period, Baptists were pariahs and regarded in some circles as heretics, but their image has softened over the years.
Anyway, I was on a live chat that was held last Saturday with folks from the Reformed Baptist singles site. The moderator kept trying to find topics for us to discuss. Boy was his selection, controversial. Guys, I love controversy, but I would never suggest the topics that he did. One was concerning some states passing laws to post the Ten Commandments. Several participants were against the idea, which I found curious. Another topic that he tossed out for discussion was infant baptism.
As a follow-up, one of the guys posted a poll that members were asked to vote on. The poll had four opinions on posting the Ten Commandments. The four options presented concerned having a state pass a law to post them, getting a local school board to unilaterally adopt such a policy, sit out the discussion and just home school your own kids, or concern that states mandating this for public schools would result in states issuing private schools mandates too.
Folks, I was really frustrated with the underlying assumptions that people had when discussing posting the Ten Commandments. Looking back on it, I think it was their unspoken assumption that government is neutral or should be on religious issues. As stated often on this blog, there is no such thing as neutrality. All law is by its very nature religious. The only question is which god is being promoted, and which one is being undercut.
The baptism question was also a trainwreck. While I expect Baptists to expound the virtues of “Believers Baptism”, for them to invoke the Covenant as a proof of it is simply ridiculous. Sorry, but me and God is not a Covenant formula. If a person is in covenant with God, then so are all his descendants, born or unborn. A vital part of a covenant structure in succession.
For a child to be born into a Covenant family is to experience blessing and to be outside is to experience cursing. Again, there is no neutrality. Some in the conversation argued that a child being born into a Christian family was not a blessing to the child. The assumption is that all children are reprobate pagans in diapers. Such a view is no covenant at all.
I mentioned Merideth Kline and Ray Sutton and said they need to deal with the Covenant in terms of what these men have published. All I got was crickets. The truth is that they wouldn’t know the Covenant if it bit them in the butt.
Folks if some schmuck off the street was this ignorant, I would expect that, but these guys think they are God’s gift to the Church and ready to lead the next generation of the faithful. As we used to say when reciting the Litany, “Lord have mercy”.
That they haven’t read everything is apparent, but to think they don’t need to is frightening.
The older that I get, the more I have learned that much of what is circulated in evangelical circles is just sentimental crap. Only by setting aside our preconceptions and assumptions can we really understand the Bible.
Much of modern church worship music is not. It’s just entertainment. The focus is me, myself, and I, not God, holy, righteous, and unapproachable.
Sadly, no English translation of the Bible gets everything right. Ditto for the Hebrew. Michael Heiser is on the right path with many of his explanations of mistranslation and once you understand the Bible as subverting the pagan cultures around ancient Israel, the odd parts come into sharper focus. Brian Godawa is worth reading for this very reason.
Andrew Torba, R.J. Rushdoony, David Chilton, Frances Schaeffer, and many others are seldom read today but all have things to say that should be heard.
Sorry but going to church one or two hours a week, so you can play Call of Duty the rest of the time is not a formula for successful Christian living or being a husband. Guys you need steak in your spiritual lives not warm milk.