No Such Thing

as a

Liberal Christian

We seem to be hearing more and more today about liberalism or conservatism in many areas of life.  Now we are hearing the news media and others talk about liberal Christians versus conservative Christians. This view should never arise when pertaining to Christianity.

Listen carefully: There should be no such thing as a “liberal Christian”!

Even a so-called “conservative Christian’s” view could be messed up – depending on whom or what they always base their views on.

If asked what type of Christian you are, our response should be – I follow Jesus.  I believe and do just what Jesus did.

Whatever our ideas were before becoming a Christian – that was the past.  We are now required to change.
Rom. 12:2 tells us to “be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.”

We are to change and become like Christ – period!

John 12:50 – And I know that his commandment is life everlasting: whatsoever I speak therefore, even as the Father said unto me, so I speak.

This is Jesus speaking!  He wasn’t liberal in His thinking or speaking – He was one with the Father.

Do you recall what Jesus said when Philip asked Him to “show them the Father?”

John 14:9 – Jesus said unto him, have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? He that hath seen me hath seen the Father.

The same should be true of our lives.  When people see us they should know what we believe and think by what we do and say every day.  We should not waver due to what is, or is not happening in the world.

God DOES NOT change – EVER!  When we follow God and put Him first place in our lives, in all we do, then we will be blessed.  The same is true of the world.

John 14:31 – But that the world may know that I love the Father; and as the Father gave me commandment, even so I do.

If this was good enough for Jesus, then this should be good enough for us.  It does not matter what century we live in and how times have changed!  God knows just where this world stands and He knows what works to get us out of trouble.

John 14:10 – Believe thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me?  The words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself: but the Father that dwells in me, he doeth the works.

John 14:23 – Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.

We are the light of the world –our light cannot be out part of the time.  The world has to know where to come to get help – at all times!

If the airport turned its runway light out just as a jet was coming in for landing, the pilot would not know where to go.

If a lighthouse turned off its light at night, then ships may become shipwrecked.

The church (the body of believers) cannot, and must not be divided – on anything.  The Bible says that a house divided cannot stand!

Paul lets the readers of his epistles know that he worked very hard at writing down the whole will of God.  And when a person knows the whole will of God, then that should be, and must be our will also.

The world cannot get saved, healed and delivered when the church is wishy-washy, or liberal in their beliefs!

Once a person gets saved and begins coming to church, we, the church, cannot give him or her mixed signals.  Well – anything is OK – as long as you don’t hurt anyone.  NO!  The church must lead that new believer into all the good that God has for him or her.  We must teach them how to stay under the protective covering of Almighty God.

John 17:14-16 – I have given them thy word; and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. I pray not that thou should take them out of the world, but that thou should keep them from the evil. They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.

That doesn’t mean to go live on another planet, or tuck ourselves away and become a hermit.  We still live in the world, but we do not have to join in on the world’s way of believing and doing things.

When we were born again, we came out of the stinking kingdom of darkness, with all its evil, and we came into the Kingdom of God, with all its rights and privileges that Jesus, Himself, obtained for us.

Whom do we want to please – God or the world?  It’s our choice.  And remember, one day we will stand – alone without anyone else beside us and give an answer to Jesus for how we thought and conducted ourselves in this world.

So, I pose this question to you again – what kind of Christian are you?   I want each an every one of us to be a light to the world so they can see Jesus and God in us every time we respond to anything   So we should respond – I follow Jesus in everything.  What He says in the Word of God (the Bible) that is what I believe, follow and do.

Window On The Word — by Marcia Greenwood

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Newsweek magazine, one of the most influential news magazines in America, has decided to come out for same-sex marriage in a big way, and to do so by means of a biblical and theological argument.  In its cover story for this week, “The Religious Case for Gay Marriage,” Newsweek religion editor Lisa Miller offers a revisionist argument for the acceptance of same-sex marriage.  It is fair to say that Newsweek has gone for broke on this question.

Miller begins with a lengthy dismissal of the Bible’s relevance to the question of marriage in the first place.  “Let’s try for a minute to take the religious conservatives at their word and define marriage as the Bible does,” Miller suggests.  If so, she argues that readers will find a confusion of polygamy, strange marital practices, and worse.

She concludes:  “Would any contemporary heterosexual married couple—who likely woke up on their wedding day harboring some optimistic and newfangled ideas about gender equality and romantic love—turn to the Bible as a how-to script?”  She answers, “Of course not, yet the religious opponents of gay marriage would have it be so.”

Now, wait just a minute. Miller’s broadside attack on the biblical teachings on marriage goes to the heart of what will appear as her argument for same-sex marriage.  She argues that, in the Old Testament, “examples of what social conservatives call ‘the traditional family’ are scarcely to be found.”  This is true, of course, if what you mean by ‘traditional family’ is the picture of America in the 1950s.  The Old Testament notion of the family starts with the idea that the family is the carrier of covenant promises, and this family is defined, from the onset, as a transgenerational extended family of kin and kindred.

But, at the center of this extended family stands the institution of marriage as the most basic human model of covenantal love and commitment.  And this notion of marriage, deeply rooted in its procreative purpose, is unambiguously heterosexual.

As for the New Testament, “Ozzie and Harriet are nowhere” to be found.  Miller argues that both Jesus and Paul were unmarried (emphatically true) and that Jesus “preached a radical kind of family, a caring community of believers, whose bond in God superseded all blood ties.”  Jesus clearly did call for a commitment to the Gospel and to discipleship that transcended family commitments.  Given the Jewish emphasis on family loyalty and commitment, this did represent a decisive break.

But Miller also claims that “while the Bible and Jesus say many important things about love and family, neither explicitly defines marriage as between one man and one woman.”  This is just patently untrue.  Genesis 2:24-25 certainly reveals marriage to be, by the Creator’s intention, a union of one man and one woman.  To offer just one example from the teaching of Jesus, Matthew 19:1-8 makes absolutely no sense unless marriage “between one man and one woman” is understood as normative.

As for Paul, he did indeed instruct the Corinthians that the unmarried state was advantageous for the spread of the Gospel.  His concern in 1 Corinthians 7 is not to elevate singleness as a lifestyle, but to encourage as many as are able to give themselves totally to an unencumbered Gospel ministry.  But, in Corinth and throughout the New Testament church, the vast majority of Christians were married.  Paul will himself assume this when he writes the “household codes” included in other New Testament letters.

The real issue is not marriage, Miller suggests, but opposition to homosexuality.  Surprisingly, Miller argues that this prejudice against same-sex relations is really about opposition to sex between men.  She cites the Anchor Bible Dictionary as stating that “nowhere in the Bible do its authors refer to sex between women.”  She would have done better to look to the Bible itself, where in Romans 1:26-27 Paul writes:  “For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.”

Again, this passage makes absolutely no sense unless it refers very straightforwardly to same-sex relations among both men and women — with the women mentioned first.

Miller dismisses the Levitical condemnations of homosexuality as useless because “our modern understanding of the world has surpassed its prescriptions.”  But she saves her most creative dismissal for the Apostle Paul.  Paul, she concedes, “was tough on homosexuality.”  Nevertheless, she takes encouragement from the fact that “progressive scholars” have found a way to re-interpret the Pauline passages to refer only to homosexual violence and promiscuity.

In this light she cites author Neil Elliott and his book, The Arrogance of Nations.  Elliott, like other “progressive scholars,” suggests that the modern notion of sexual orientation is simply missing from the biblical worldview, and thus the biblical authors are not really talking about what we know as homosexuality at all.  “Paul is not talking about what we call homosexuality at all,” as Miller quotes Elliott.

Of course, no honest reader of the biblical text will share this simplistic and backward conclusion.  Furthermore, to accept this argument is to assume that the Christian church has misunderstood the Bible from its very birth — and that we are now dependent upon contemporary “progressive scholars” to tell us what Christians throughout the centuries have missed.

Tellingly, Miller herself seems to lose confidence in this line of argument, explaining that “Paul argued more strenuously against divorce—and at least half of the Christians in America disregard that teaching.”  In other words, when the argument is failing, change the subject and just declare victory.  “Religious objections to gay marriage are rooted not in the Bible at all, then, but in custom and tradition,” Miller simply asserts — apparently asking her readers to forget everything they have just read.

Miller picks her sources carefully.  She cites Neil Elliott but never balances his argument with credible arguments from another scholar, such as Robert Gagnon of Pittsburgh Theological Seminary [See his response to Elliott here].  Her scholarly sources are chosen so that they all offer an uncorrected affirmation of her argument.  The deck is decisively stacked.

She then moves to the claim that sexual orientation is “exactly the same thing” as skin color when it comes to discrimination.  As recent events have suggested, this claim is not seen as credible by many who have suffered discrimination on the basis of skin color.

As always, the bottom line is biblical authority.  Lisa Miller does not mince words.  “Biblical literalists will disagree,” she allows, “but the Bible is a living document, powerful for more than 2,000 years because its truths speak to us even as we change through history.”  This argument means, of course, that we get to decide which truths are and are not binding on us as “we change through history.”

“A mature view of scriptural authority requires us, as we have in the past, to move beyond literalism,” she asserts.  “The Bible was written for a world so unlike our own, it’s impossible to apply its rules, at face value, to ours.”

All this comes together when Miller writes, “We cannot look to the Bible as a marriage manual, but we can read it for universal truths as we struggle toward a more just future.”  At this point the authority of the Bible is reduced to whatever “universal truths” we can distill from its (supposed) horrifyingly backward and oppressive texts.

Even as she attempts to make her “religious case” for gay marriage, Miller has to acknowledge that “very few Jewish or Christian denominations do officially endorse gay marriage, even in the states where it is legal.”  Her argument now grinds to a conclusion with her hope that this will change.  But — and this is a crucial point — if her argument had adequate traction, she wouldn’t have to make it.  It is not a thin extreme of fundamentalist Christians who stand opposed to same-sex marriage — it is the vast majority of Christian churches and denominations worldwide.

Disappointingly, Newsweek editor Jon Meacham offers an editorial note that broadens Newsweek’s responsibility for this atrocity of an article and reveals even more of the agenda:  “No matter what one thinks about gay rights—for, against or somewhere in between —this conservative resort to biblical authority is the worst kind of fundamentalism,” Meacham writes.  “Given the history of the making of the Scriptures and the millennia of critical attention scholars and others have given to the stories and injunctions that come to us in the Hebrew Bible and the Christian New Testament, to argue that something is so because it is in the Bible is more than intellectually bankrupt—it is unserious, and unworthy of the great Judeo-Christian tradition.”

Well, that statement sets the issue clearly before us.  He insists that “to argue that something is so because it is in the Bible is more than intellectually bankrupt.”  No serious student of the Bible can deny the challenge of responsible biblical interpretation, but the purpose of legitimate biblical interpretation is to determine, as faithfully as possible, what the Bible actually teaches — and then to accept, teach, apply, and obey.

The national news media are collectively embarrassed by the passage of Proposition 8 in California.  Gay rights activists are publicly calling on the mainstream media to offer support for gay marriage, arguing that the media let them down in November.  It appears that Newsweek intends to do its part to press for same-sex marriage.  Many observers believe that the main obstacle to this agenda is a resolute opposition grounded in Christian conviction.  Newsweek clearly intends to reduce that opposition.

Newsweek could have offered its readers a careful and balanced review of the crucial issues related to this question.  It chose another path — and published this cover story.  The magazine’s readers and this controversial issue deserved better.

‘There are many different versions; I don’t see why we can’t have one’

A filmmaker who recently released an independent project about a formula that turns all heterosexuals into “gays” now has announced he’s working on “The Princess Diana Bible” in which “God” ordains homosexuality as the better lifestyle.

“There are many different versions of the Bible; I don’t see why we can’t have one,” stated Max Mitchell in a statement on a website for his new project.

The “gay Bible,” produced by the New Mexico-based Revision Studios, states God instructs “it is better to be gay than straight.”

Mitchell said he developed the idea for the “Bible” from his new movie project, called “Horror in the Wind,” in which an airborne substance “reverses the world’s sexual orientation.”

He said it’s named “The Princess Diana Bible” because of Diana’s “many good works.”

The website offers a preview of the project, which is forecast to be available in 2009.

In Mitchell’s version, Genesis talks about Aida and Eve:

“And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Aida, and she slept: and he took one of her ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; and the rib, which the Lord God had taken from woman, made he another woman, and brought her unto the first. And Aida said, ‘This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of me. Therefore shall a woman leave her mother, and shall cleave unto her wife: and they shall be one flesh.’ And they were both naked, the woman and her wife, and were not ashamed.”

The new version continues:

And Eve conceived, and bore Cain, and said, we have created a child in God’s image. And God said the male was different than the woman because he was fathered by the serpent. … And Eve again conceived with the serpent and bore Cain’s brother Abel. And Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground.

According to the pro-homosexual website Queerty.com, Mitchell has described his work as divinely inspired.

“Jesus was gay. In Biblical times homosexual relationships were so commonplace that no one gave it a second thought. It was heterosexuality that was considered sinful,” he told the website.

On the website’s comment page, one participant said, “Aida and Eve are a breath of fresh air upon the face of repressed homosexulity (sic) in America. Finally, a version of the bible everyone can relate to.”

At Belieftnet.com, a commentator expressed opposition to the project.

“Every once in a while, art doesn’t transcend truth as much as it distorts it, and that’s where I draw the line. Hence my opposition to the upcoming ‘Princess Diana Bible.’

“This book is inspired by a political agenda and one person’s desire to contort not only the text but the very context of it to suit his own perspective. That, you may say, is what commentators do – and perhaps even translators – but this guy is making himself an ‘author,’ which makes it a book, not a Bible,” the commentator wrote.

From World Net Daily News