Providentially, a wise fool appeared as if to illustrate Paul’s point: see his lengthy sophomoric contest below the original post.
https://leeduigon.com/2015/04/28/pauls-speech-to-wise-fools/
There’s no fool like an educated fool.
Tag: God’s sovereignty
A Lesson in Democracy
Timoleon
Once upon a time, the Greek settlers in Sicily were oppressed by tyrants, who had the backing of Carthage. They sent to their founding city, Corinth, to plead for help, but no one wanted to take on such a hopeless mission. Finally someone thought to nominate Timoleon to lead it–a man who had once been something of a civic hero, but who’d been so long in retirement that most people thought he’d died. Timoleon consented to his appointment as general, and set sail for Sicily with a token force that no one ever expected to see again: for the tyrants of Sicily were fierce and powerful, and the might of Carthage stood behind them.
To make a long story short, Timoleon performed military miracles, rid the island of the tyrants, defeated the Carthaginians, and restored democracy to the city of Syracuse.
For which he himself was accused of tyranny and put on trial for it: and to which he said that he had prayed that he would live to see the Syracusans given the right of free speech. As Plutarch said, every lark must grow a crest, “and every democracy a false accuser.” Some things never change. But in Timoleon’s case, his mild reply so shamed his accusers that they dropped their charges; and the city permitted him to grow old and die in peace, honored by all.
People do have short memories and are also short on gratitude. Those were two reasons why our country’s founders gave us a republic instead of a democracy.
To say nothing of our own modern variants of folly: “Alexa, who should I vote for?”
Study history, and learn what to expect.
And pray for better–to God who is sovereign over history. The ancient Greeks did not know that, but we do. Don’t we?
September 11 – Conspiracy Theories
I was going to write about September 11 today, but The River Walk has done it better. –LD
Rushdoony on Target in 1976: ‘The Fright Peddlars’
R.J. Rushdoony wrote this little essay for The California Farmer back in 1976, and it reads like it could’ve been penned just yesterday. Man, some things never change!
https://chalcedon.edu/resources/articles/the-fright-peddlers
It’ll only take you a minute or two to read, and then you tell me: Did he nail it, or what?
My Two Cents’ Worth
As dangerous and as powerful as Satan is, I think some of us give him too much credit.
In the Book of Job we learn that Satan can only do whatever God permits him to do. God forbids him to take Job’s life, so he can’t.
St. James teaches us, “Resist the devil, and he will flee from you” (James 4:7).
Although he is sometimes referred to as “the prince of this world,” I don’t believe that means that Satan is sovereign over God’s created world, but rather, only over those who reject God for the world.
If the world really did lie under Satan’s government, the whole thing would look like certain places in New Jersey.
If God really had ceded the rulership of the world to Satan, we would have, under Satan’s direction, entirely killed ourselves off by now. I cannot see the human race surviving the 20th century without God’s intervention. Not that we would’ve ever made it to the 20th.
God’s provides us with abundant proofs–the beauties of nature, the tenderness of love, the goodness of His word: but this list could go on all day–that He is a faithful Creator who is always close to us, who loves us, and who will see us through our many trials.
So why does God permit Satan to do anything at all?
Because everything Satan does, God will turn to His own use; because we whom God made in His own image have to be endowed with moral freedom, which sadly means we have the freedom to do wrong, and very wrong indeed… And boy, if you can see clear to the bottom of God’s plan, or clear to the ceiling, you don’t need any two cents from me!
More on God’s Sovereignty
Chris Ortiz has written a Chalcedon editorial, Christian Reconstruction vs. “Social Justice Warriors” (https://chalcedon.edu/blog/christian-reconstruction-vs-social-justice-warriors), which highlights the need for, and the duty of Christians to proclaim “a clear message of the sovereignty of God against all forms of sovereignty sought by man.”
The importance of this message speaks for itself. Are we to live under the sovereign lordship of an almighty and all-righteous God, or under the cobbled-together pipe dreams of flawed, sinful, and self-deluded human beings?
If you’re having trouble making that choice, take another look at what’s going on in our streets and on our college campuses; and while you’re at it, bone up on 20th century history.
A Serious Topic: God’s Sovereignty
I have had occasion to re-visit R.J. Rushdoony’s book, Sovereignty (Chalcedon/Ross House Books: 2010). Published almost ten years after the theologian’s death, it poses an urgent question.
Who is sovereign–God or man?
There’s no such thing as “sort of sovereign.” Sovereignty is absolute and indivisible. Either God is sovereign Lord of all, or He is not. Either God is the source of law, or He is not. And if He isn’t, who is?
Oh, well, the serpent told us that–we are! “Ye shall be as gods,” Genesis 3:5. And then we have to decide whether each and every individual is to be sovereign–nah, that won’t work!–or if our sovereignty is to be collectivized in the form of an institution: a state, for instance. Yeah, that’ll work!
Rushdoony, analyzing history, saw the modern state perpetually expanding its powers. He perceived clearly that “the state” has no life in itself, but is rather the creation of flawed and sinful men: that is, an idol. And because one of the chief flaws of statists is an insatiable lust for power, the state devours its citizens’ personal liberties–because those who do not acknowledge God as God are unable to conceive of any authority higher than the state’s, to which the state and its representatives will be held accountable. For them the state, not God, is sovereign. And this, Rushdoony discovered, is a very widely-held delusion: even churches succumb to it.
So the state is sovereign, and next thing you know, they’re dragging people off to forced labor camps. First they try to punish every offense, said Rushdoony, because every offense is ultimately an offense against the state. But that’s not enough for them. From there they go on to punish all dissent.
He did not live to see them go even one step farther than that. From punishing dissent, punishing refusal or failure to hop on the bandwagon, the priesthood of the idol of the state goes on to punish at random. Like the Ontario Human Rights Commission says, you can offend against the Human Rights Code without meaning to, without even knowing that you’re doing it.
The image that comes to mind is some poor sod being hauled off to the guillotine crying, “What did I do? What did I do?”–and getting no answer.
Inalienable liberty is possible only under the sovereignty of God. Jesus Christ is King of Kings and Lord of Lords, and if we believe Him to be such, then we can only view the government as being under Him.
This is a matter to which Christians need to give more thought.
Before the state kills and eats them.
The Devil’s Crossroads
I keep coming back to the Humanist Manifesto II–why is it every pack of mountebanks and villains has a “manifesto”?–published in 1973, as the quintessential document of modern evil. Satanism, pseudo-science, statism and globalism: this is where they all come together. This is the devil’s crossroads.
They tell us in the first paragraph that belief in God must be abandoned: “Salvationism, based on mere affirmation, still appears as harmful, diverting people with false hopes of heaven hereafter.”
That’s okay, though. They’ve got an alternative.
“Using technology wisely, we can… alter the course of human evolution and cultural development…” (https://americanhumanist.org/what-is-humanism/manifesto2/) Among other things. You name it, technology will do it. Provided it isn’t busy getting hacked, updated, or just not working.
I mention this on a Sunday because we all need to be reminded, from time to time, what we’re up against.
This is spiritual wickedness in high places (Ephesians 6:12) being carried out by its slaves and servants in low places. We are seeing this twaddle played out right before our eyes. No more truth! We are, now, whatever we say we are: we create ourselves from day to day!
Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin…
God’s patience is inexhaustible, but not unlimited. He will not grow weary: He that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep. But He is righteous, and He will not have this stuff in His Kingdom when Christ comes down again to claim it on the earth.
Of course the humanists claim they want to do good things, like conquer poverty and get rid of disease, abolish war, etc. They always seem to wind up with lots of barbed wire and dead bodies cluttering the landscape, whenever they take power. Their rejection of Almighty God is profound, as anyone but a pluperfect fool can see from their document. To reject God is to reject love. Case closed.
Two death cults confront God’s people in this fallen world: humanism and radical Islam.
And of the two, humanism is by far the more dangerous.
Worship Song, ‘Sovereign’
And let’s get the day rolling with Chris Tomlin praising God’s sovereign lordship over all of His creation–Sovereign, by Chris Tomlin.
Win or lose in this election, here is the message which we must proclaim:
We have a greater King than Caesar!
And someday they will know it.
Pope: ‘The People Are Sovereign’
Anybody can be wrong, but nobody has to be a hypocrite.
Pope Francis I, asked which American presidential candidate he favored, dodged all around the issue. Well, he had to, didn’t he? He can’t endorse Hillary Clinton without endorsing abortion; and, as he would like to see America’s national borders erased, he won’t support Donald Trump. So he bobbed and weaved and finally came up with this:
“The [American] people are sovereign.” ( https://www.yahoo.com/news/study-pray-vote-pope-tells-americans-ahead-elections-221531538.html )
Aside from the fact that only God is sovereign–and only God is infallible, for that matter; but we don’t want to rub it in–here we have the Pope glibly saying a thing he doesn’t believe for one cotton-pickin’ minute.
If “the people are sovereign,” how come we’re not allowed to enforce our nation’s borders?
If “the people are sovereign,” how come the Pope chimes in with the Climate Change crowd to wipe out our freedoms ’cause it’s gotta be done to Save the Planet?
If “the people are sovereign,” how come our immigration laws don’t matter?
If “the people are sovereign,” how come any little bunch of judges can order massive changes in our lives and there’s nothing we can do about it?
Pope Francis I is one of the world’s biggest offenders when it comes to trying to set up all-powerful bureaucracies to take control of every detail of our lives.
In trying to weasel out of one embarrassing question, he only stumbled face-first into another.