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Labyrinthine Trap: What Are We Working For?

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By Edward Curtin

“One also knows from his letters that nothing appeared more sacred to Van Gogh than work.” John Berger, “Vincent Van Gogh,” Portraits

Ever since I was a young boy, I have wondered why people do the kinds of work they do.  I sensed early on that the economic system was a labyrinthine trap devised to imprison people in work they hated but needed for survival.  It seemed like common sense to a child when you simply looked and listened to the adults around you.  Karl Marx wasn’t necessary for understanding the nature of alienated labor; hearing adults declaim “Thank God It’s Friday” spoke volumes.

In my Bronx working class neighborhood, I saw people streaming to the subway in the mornings for their rides “into the city” and their forlorn trundles home in the evenings. It depressed me.  Yet I knew the goal was to “make it” and move away as one moved “up,” something that many did.  I wondered why, when some people had options, they rarely considered the moral nature of the jobs they pursued.  And why did they not also consider the cost in life (time) lost in their occupations?  Were money, status, and security the deciding factors in their choices?  Was living reserved for weekends and vacations?

I gradually realized that some people, by dint of family encouragement and schooling, had opportunities that others never received.  For the unlucky ones, work would remain a life of toil and woe in which the search for meaning in their jobs was often elusive.  Studs Terkel, in the introduction to his wonderful book of interviews, Working: People Talk About What They Do all Day and How They Feel About What They Do, puts it this way:

This book, being about work, is, by its very nature, about violence – to the spirit as well as to the body.  It is about ulcers as well as accidents, about shouting matches as well as fistfights, about nervous breakdowns as well as kicking the dog around.  It is, above all (or beneath all), about daily humiliations. To survive the day is triumph enough for the walking wounded among the great many of us.

Those words were confirmed for me when in the summer between high school and college I got a job through a relative’s auspices as a clerk for General Motors in Manhattan.  I dreaded taking it for the thought of being cooped up for the first time in an office building while a summer of my youth passed me by, but the money was too good to turn down (always the bait), and I wanted to save as much as possible for college spending money.  So I bought a summer suit and joined the long line of trudgers going to and fro, down and up and out of the underground, adjusting our eyes to the darkness and light.

It was a summer from hell. My boredom was so intense it felt like solitary confinement.  How, I kept wondering, can people do this?  Yet for me it was temporary; for the others it was a life sentence.  But if this were life, I thought, it was a living death.  All my co-workers looked forward to the mid-morning coffee wagon and lunch with a desperation so intense it was palpable.  And then, as the minutes ticked away to 5 P.M., the agitated twitching that proceeded the mad rush to the elevators seemed to synchronize with the clock’s movements.  We’re out of here!

On my last day, I was eating my lunch on a park bench in Central Park when a bird shit on my suit jacket.  The stain was apt, for I felt I had spent my days defiling my true self, and so I resolved never to spend another day of my life working in an office building in a suit for a pernicious corporation, a resolution I have kept.

“An angel is not far from someone who is sad,” says Vincent Van Gogh in the new film, At Eternity’s Gate. For some reason, recently hearing these words in the darkened theater where I was almost alone, brought me back to that summer and the sadness that hung around all the people that I worked with.  I hoped Van Gogh was right and an angel visited them from time to time. Most of them had no options.

The painter Julian Schnabel’s moving picture (moving on many levels since the film shakes and moves with its hand-held camera work and draws you into the act of drawing and painting that was Van Gogh’s work) is a meditation on work.  It asks the questions: What is work?  What is work for?  What is life for?  Why paint? What does it mean to live?  Why do you do what you do?  Are you living or are you dead?  What are you seeking through your work?

For Vincent the answer was simple: reality.  But reality is not given to us and is far from simple; we must create it in acts that penetrate the screens of clichés that wall us off from it.

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Worldview

Can All Religions Be True? No Way!

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by SeanMcDowell.org

Many people today believe that all religions are true. According to a recent Barna study, 58% of teens and 62% of adults agree with the statement, “Many religions can lead to eternal life; there is no ‘one true religion.’”

It would be nice if everybody could be right about their religious convictions. After all, these are beliefs we often hold dear to our hearts. Nobody likes telling others that they are wrong about their deepest convictions. Yet simple reason and common sense tell us all religions cannot possibly true.

By its very nature, truth is exclusive. It is not logically possible for all religions to be right when their core claims differ so radically. Either they are all wrong, or one is right.

Consider the following chart I often use in my talk “True for you, but not true for me”:

are all religions the same?

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Church

Where Did All This Pentecostalism Come From?

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By Tim Challies

It is impossible to consider the modern history or contemporary state of Christianity without accounting for the sudden rise, the explosive spread, and the worldwide impact of Pentecostalism. To that end, I’ve been reading several books on the subject, focused especially on the Azusa Street Revival, which most historians consider the setting in which Pentecostalism began. Here are a few key points I’ve learned about the Azusa Street Revival and the Azusa Street Mission that housed it.

Its roots were in the Holiness Movement. The roots of the Azusa Street Revival and the Pentecostalism it birthed are entwined with the Holiness Movement of the late nineteenth century. This was a renewing movement within the Wesleyan tradition that emphasized complete sanctification and taught that moral perfection is available to Christians. It was marked by a heavy emphasis on personal holiness, most often displayed through a close adherence to the law as a means of drawing near to God. In general, early Pentecostal theology took Wesleyan theology as its starting place, then added to it certain new elements.

It was led by William Seymour. The Azusa Street Mission was led by William J. Seymour, an African American son of former slaves who was born and raised in Louisiana. In his early twenties he traveled to Indianapolis where he had a conversion experience at a Methodist Episcopal church. He left that tradition, though, after becoming convinced of premillennialism and special revelation. He likely migrated to a group called Evening Light Saints where he was exposed to their policies of non-sectarianism, non-creedalism, and equality between races and genders, all of which he adopted and promoted. Though he felt the call to ministry, he battled it until he contracted smallpox and came to believe this was God’s chastisement for his disobedience.

It built upon a previous movement. Though it’s fair to say that the Azusa Street Mission marked the beginning of Pentecostalism, William Seymour had based much of his doctrine and certain of his practices on Charles Parham. Parham had become convinced that Christians needed to rediscover the miraculous spiritual gifts, especially that of tongues. These tongues would allow mission work to advance in foreign lands and help usher in the Lord’s return. Parham founded a Bible school in Topeka, Kansas, where in 1901 one of his students received the Holy Spirit and spoke in tongues. Though Parham was an unabashed racist and unorthodox in many key doctrines, Seymour studied at his college for a short time—enough to absorb his view of the ongoing spiritual gifts. Seymour was soon called to a church in Los Angeles and left Parham, whom he was soon to eclipse as the father of Pentecostalism. Parham seems never to have forgiven Seymour for this.

It began near Azusa Street. The Azusa Street Revival actually began in a small house on nearby Bonnie Brae Street. On April 9, 1906, Seymour was three days into a ten-day fast with several other people (all of whom were African American), when he laid hands on one participant and prayed he would receive the Holy Spirit. That man fell to the floor, then began to speak in tongues. They hurried to the house of Richard and Ruth Asberry on Bonnie Brae Street where others were waiting. Soon many of them had a similar experience of Spirit baptism and also spoke and sang in tongues. This drew the interest of neighbors and within days the house became so packed that they were forced to move to the nearby vacant building at 312 Azusa Street. (That building has since been torn down, but the house on Bonnie Brae Street remains as a museum.)

It was distinctly egalitarian. From its very beginning, the Azusa Street Mission permitted both men and women to fill all positions of leadership, including preaching. The revival was also racially egalitarian, so that whites and minorities worshipped together in a way that many at the time considered scandalous. Some of the early critiques of the movement ooze with malicious racism as onlookers express their revulsion with black men worshipping alongside white women. The multi-ethnicity of the earliest Pentecostals contributed to what would become Pentecostal worship, which absorbed elements of various cultural traditions. (Seymour would later amend his views to allow only men to hold certain leadership positions.)

It was a revival of a particular view of sanctification

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Ronnie Floyd
Prayer

3 Prayer Priorities for America

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by Ronnie Floyd

Dear Friends in Christ Who Will Pray for America,

Now is the time to pray for America. The year of 2019 before us yearns for God’s people from all over the world to pray for America. We are living in serious and critical times.

Call upon your church, friends, colleagues, and any leader in this nation: We need to pray for America.

Below are three prayer priorities I am asking you to agree upon with us at the National Day of Prayer. Please do all you can to forward and assist in this manner. Now is the time to pray for America.

Prayer Priority #1: Oh God, may You begin to raise up a Love One Another movement across America that forwards and advances Jesus’ words to us: Love One Another. 

“Love one another. Just as I have loved you.” John 13:34

  • Jesus tells us to love one another just like He loves us. This includes every person in America as well as every person in the world.
  • Jesus wants us to love every person sacrificially, willfully, and unconditionally because this is the same way He loves us.
  • Jesus sent the Holy Spirit to empower us to do the things that only God can do through us. Therefore, call upon God to move in our nation miraculously, replacing hate with love, division with unity, and criticism of one another with love for one another.
  • Jesus, raise up a Love One Another movement across America.

Prayer Priority #2: Our Heavenly Father, we pray we will be used of God to build up America by blessing and adding value to each town and city in our nation.

“A city is built up by the blessing of the upright, but it is torn down by the mouth of the wicked.” Proverbs 11:11

  • Heavenly Father, we are Christians, the ones made right by You; therefore, as the upright, may we fulfill Proverbs 11:11 in every town and city in the United States. May we bless each town and city by adding value to it in any way we can.
  • Heavenly Father, Proverbs 11:11 says the wicked tear down with their words the towns and cities of our nation; but as the upright, may we choose to add value and bless them.
  • Heavenly Father, we ask You to raise up godly Christian men and women in their towns and cities who will run for local office and use their influence to add value by forwarding and blessing the future generations in these towns and cities.
  • Heavenly Father, we ask You to bless each town and city with the message and encouragement of Jesus Christ when He said, “Love one another” in John 13:34.

Prayer Priority #3: Lord, we ask You to be with the leaders in our local, state, and national governments as they work and make decisions together for the good of our nation. 

Call out their specific names to God if you have them:

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Generation Z
Church

Discipling Gen Z College Students: 3 Challenges and 3 Opportunities

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by Moses Y. Lee

Generation Z has taken over college campuses across the country. While social psychologists and authors write books analyzing this generation, college and campus ministries have been on the front lines, seeking to contextualize the gospel to this fresh generation of college students.

As a college pastor myself, I’ve thought a lot about effective discipleship for Generation Z. I believe the following six points are of increasing importance for the current generation of college students.

Three Challenges

1. Radical Individuality

We have more options than ever to find the ideal worship service. Whether through online sermons, podcasts, or apps, choosing the right “church” is only a swipe away. In the context of Christian communities on campuses, the crushing burden of individuality and declining in-person interaction due to a spike in smartphone usage has resulted in unrealistic expectations for socializing (as well as rising rates of depression and anxiety).

Students seeking raw, authentic friendships often find Christian settings wanting, especially when vulnerability is covered by a thin veneer of Christian niceness. On the other hand, radical individuality also raises unrealistic expectations for having personal needs met, pet sins untouched, and the “service” to be on par with one’s favorite restaurant or local gym—leaving little room for “dry” seasons and mistakes by other community members. Strangely enough, I’ve seen this more often with students who grew up in the church than with new believers.

Radical individuality raises unrealistic expectations for having personal needs met, pet sins untouched, and church services to be on par with one’s favorite restaurants or local gym.

  1. Unbridled Speech

I’ve lost count of the number of college students I’ve personally known who stopped coming to campus ministries and churches because of gossipy Christians, an increasingly growing problem in an age where unfiltered, dehumanizing speech via social media has become normal. This commonly plays out as either character assassination of peers or discrediting leaders, ministries, or churches through complaining to other students instead of having the courage to talk to their leaders directly (1 Tim. 5:1). Unfortunately, with ongoing revelations of misconduct by Roman Catholic priests and high-profile pastors, some of their distrust of church leaders is justified.

However, we often forget that after sexual immorality and the teaching of false doctrine, few sins are as strongly and explicitly condemned in Scripture as gossip, slander, unbridled criticism, and sowing division among believers (Prov. 6:16–19, 19:5; Ps. 101:5–7; Jas. 1:26). In addition to condemning those who spread strife and division, Scripture also chastises those who entertain or give audience to lies, gossip, slander, or divisive speech (Prov. 16:28; 17:4).

3. Hyper-Sexualized Culture

Whether due to our hyper-sexualized culture, new attitudes toward sex and gender, the solidarity and courage inspired by the #MeToo movement, or a combination of all three, I’ve observed (and heard from other leaders) a disturbing increase in the number of sexual assault crimes committed against female college students in recent years. Further, if Gen Xers introduced online pornography to the world and Millennials normalized it, Gen Zers are the true generational victims of pornography.

If Gen Xers introduced online pornography to the world and Millennials normalized it, Gen Zers are its true generational victims.

Rarely do I meet college students whose addiction to pornography began after middle school (many start in elementary school), and rarely do I meet students who haven’t at least entertained the thought of engaging in hookup culture. In my context, there are also many female students just as addicted to pornography as male students are. It shouldn’t surprise us, then, to see this generation’s confusion over sexual ethics.

Three Opportunities

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America

Legal Threats to House Churches & Bible Studies

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Those who would attack the church require only the slightest pretense. Where no basis in law exists, a legalistic pretense will be created as illustrated in two recent examples (with thanks to WND for reporting on them.)

Town Changes Rules to Ban Church

The first occurred when a town changed their rules to ban a church from the civic center.”

In this case, a misguided fear of “violating the Constitution’s establishment clause” led the city council to ban church worship services.

The case is not yet resolved, but will likely go in the church’s favor (with no help from the constitution’s establishment clause.) The city was inconsistent when implementing their policies: they let other groups use the civic center for similar events and rented office space in the same building to a Lutheran church. But that didn’t stop “their fears” from making up ad hoc rules to exclude the church.

If cities should implement their policies consistently, or cleverly revamp them from scratch to exclude the church, protection from the constitution’s establishment clause will be revealed to be merely rhetorical. Practically, only those with the resources to press the issue will be heard in federal court. In the meantime, ministries will be shut out or shut down until the local domains excluding them have a compelling reason to relent.

‘Constitutional’ Protection?

The federal constitution doesn’t prevent a city from making policies and ordinances. There is no agreement between these entities (fedgov and city). The state constitution might have a clause to which churches may appeal, depending on the state. Such will only be tested if churches in their domain have the will and resources to protest.

The church in this first example protested to local authorities and will likely prevail. Their victory will stem from the inconsistent policy implementation by the city.

Retired Pastor Threatened With Eviction Over Bible Study

The second case hits close to home when a “retired pastor is threatened with eviction over his Bible study meetings.

A company that runs a senior-living center in Fredericksburg, Virginia, has decided that a Bible study is a “business” and consequently has threatened to evict a retired Lutheran pastor and his wife for conducting one in their residence.

From the start, the retired pastor characterized his Bible study as a “book review” to avoid friction with the management company. Then we see another example of a private entity making ad hoc changes to their policies to justify an eviction. In this case, they recategorized the Bible study as a business.

As in the first example, the company ’s mistake was inconsistently implementing their policies. Other groups were permitted to meet in the same space to engage in activities ostensibly identical to those of the pastor’s Bible study. The company would have to show that holding a Bible in your hands when meeting others somehow makes it a business meeting to justify their eviction of the pastor.

The legal defenders of this small group say the federal housing act (FHA) may be the remedy for the pastor:

The actions by the Evergreens “violate the Fair Housing Act and its accompanying regulations,” First Liberty contended. “The FHA prohibits discrimination ‘against any person in the terms, conditions, or privileges of the sale or rental of a dwelling, or in the provision of services or facilities in connection therewith, because of … religion.”

Private Homeowners in HOA Domains

The FHA might be a remedy for church activities under its domain. But what about private homeowners? 40 million households (53% of households in America)1 are in the legal domain of a Home Owners Association and bound by the agreement that defines it.

Fortunately, four small groups recently prevailed when an aggressive atheist brought suit against the HOA of a retirement community in California to put an end to four Bible studies.

HOA agreements control the use of the home. Could the language in those agreements be changed, after the fact, to restrict Bible studies or house churches?

Of course, they could.

What if the atheist in the previous example was on the HOA board of your community? What would prevent him from making up an ad hoc rule as was done in the first two examples in this article?

Most of those who’ve signed HOA agreements have little knowledge of their contents. After the fact, homeowners may object to their restrictions. But those restrictions are clearly outlined in a document bearing an essential legal feature: the signature of the homeowner. Indeed, participation in this domain is entirely optional.

As faith-based attacks on homes in the domain of an HOA increase, believers must be mindful about their voluntary consent into these domains.

First Line of Defense

A believers first line of defense is prayer and God’s supernatural protection. However, Christians should take notice of Walter Williams’ description of the first line of defense in secular terms.

A civilized society’s first line of defense is not the law, police, and courts but customs, traditions, and moral values. Behavioral norms, mostly transmitted by example, word of mouth and religious teachings, represent a body of wisdom distilled over the ages through experience and trial and error.2

The “customs, traditions and moral values” Williams refers to came directly from the foundational document of western civilization: The Bible. So did common law, although the current legal system in America is commercial.

In other words, whereas the Bible, itself, was the primary legal document in Christendom, Americans must now appeal to its faint echo filtered through society and commercial law.

Recommendations

While not possible or righteous to avoid all persecution, we are sent out “as sheep in the midst of wolves, so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves (Mt 10:16.)” As hard as dove-like innocence may be to some, and serpentine-like wisdom to others, the fulfillment of the great commission requires both. Where one is lacking, believers are compromised.

Any justice received by Americans is limited to what they can or will afford. For ministries already entangled by legalistic pretense, it will cost money to break free. More often, what’s required is the wisdom to navigate the various domains of the territory to remain on task.

  • Pray for God’s supernatural guidance on every premise and decision of your ministry.
  • Look for states, counties, and cities with widely shared Christian beliefs; without a history of making ad hoc ordinances to quell irrational fears or provide temporary convenience.
  • Disabuse yourself of the false mindset that your first line of defense is the law. The legal system is the last line of defense and available only to those who can afford it.
  • Look for protection from the inconsistency of your opponent’s policy implementation or the customs and traditions of the domain of your ministry.
  • Think carefully before signing a home owner’s agreement that might one day be used as a lever of control over your Bible Study, ministry, or house church.
  • Where they don’t “receive you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet when you leave that house or town.” (Matthew 10:14)
  • Where escape is impossible, stand your ground for the truth and God’s glory. Bear your cross with steadfastness and joy and “consider this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal (2 Co 4:17–18).
  1. https://hoa-usa.com/about.aspx ↩
  2. Walter E. Williams, professor of economics at George Mason University. Copyright 2009 Creators Syndicate ↩

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Art

A Christian ‘Drudge Report’

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Adam Ford, the man behind The Babylon Bee, has started a Christian “Drudge Report” called the “Christian Daily Reporter.” If you enjoy Adam’s comics and humor on “The Bee,” you might be interested in the daily news articles Adam finds important enough to share with other believers.

At the bottom of the Christian Daily Reporter page, Adam links to a manifesto where he explains the motivation and purpose of his new website. His two headers say it all:

Stop letting Facebook and Google dictate which news and opinions you are allowed to see.

The Christian Daily Reporter is a source for the most important news and content from a Christian perspective — and it lives outside the tech-giant information choke hold.

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Believers

Transcript: The Post-Christian Future, Part 2 — Michael Heiser

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This third transcript is Part 2 of the presentation Michael Heiser gave in 2013 to Future Congress 2. It’s entitled “The Post-Christian Future, Part Two, Pop Culture as High Priest of the Post-Christian Religious Worldview.

Copyright © 2013 Michael S. Heiser

Part two is ~8500 words and includes 40 slides. All the material (and excerpts, below) is owned and copyrighted by Dr. Heiser and please consider supporting his work in creating, presenting, and posting such presentations on Youtube.

The excerpts, below, are 1/8th of the entire transcript. They are not a summary of the presentation.

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Pop Culture as High Priest of the Post-Christian Religious Worldview

MH is Michael S. Heiser

MH: What I’m going to focus on is talking about the post-Christian culture post-Christian condition. And then sort of zero in on how in the post-Christian world what you’re going to see, as far as the morphing of Christianity. And I’m not saying that the morphing is going to be good. In fact, I’m suggesting that the morphing is not a good thing. And it’s really going to morph into something that’s actually very old. And we’ll talk about that at that point. So this is going to be sort of, hey here’s what I think it’s going to look like. And it’s not really just opinion because I’m going to show you what people are saying right now okay, the Futurists scholars and religious studies scholars and pop culture that sort of thing. And we will comment on it as we go.Techno Utopian Values

MH: Techno-utopian values. The usual suspects, here: progress, purposeful evolution, human power over nature, material or technological advancement as the key to success in the future world, all that sort of stuff. Freedom really translates to don’t give me any rules or any dogma so I can be free — happiness and hedonism right in their presentation. The singularity, something we’ll talk about momentarily.

MH: But I want to zero in on this document: “A Cosmist Manifesto,” this one here, and here are the ten points. I’ve abbreviated the annotations for the cosmos manifesto, but here are the ten principles, ten points humans will merge with technology to a rapidly increasing extent. It’s a new phase of the evolution of our species.

Cosmist Manifesto

MH: You might be thinking cyborgs here, which is one think about it. But if you know anything about nanotechnology that’s an invisible integration. That’s something you never see, but it has the potential. Once you have control over every atom in your body I mean you know every molecule you can change the human species as we know it. And this is going to be and is now, I mean, you can buy whole books on the ethics of nanotechnology. I’ve read a couple of them this year again to get my head into the sequel to the novel. And they’re talking about things like elimination of disease, optimizing the human DNA for its various potentials, and they’re really ultimately talking about immortality because you’re dying cell by cell and every cell is made of molecules and at you know that sort of thing. Well if you can control and release nanobots into the body so to speak that instantly repair cellular loss you have potential immortality other than somebody you know shooting you in the head or something like that I mean you get the idea. You will not age you will not decline as a physical specimen. So this is how it’s going to be cast, but this is the sort of merging they’re talking about, too. It’s not just what we would sort of think of as a cyborg.

MH: So what’s the theological cost? Well, we become divine apart from God’s plan of glorification.

New Theology of Humanity

MH: It redefines salvation only in terms of the end, glorification, rather than it dismisses the means which is the cross and the whole reason for it which is sin.

Gnosticism

MH: I drew this from my series I did on The Da Vinci Code, someone out there may have seen.

MH: So, what is Gnosticism? The basics. Well, the Gnostics believe that there is something they refer to as the true God or the light or pneuma, which is spirit. And isn’t God a spirit, doesn’t John 4 say that? God is a spirit; he’s pre-existent, God is preexistent, uncaused, and perfect? Sounds pretty biblical, so far.

MH: Gnostics imagined the true God of being both male, the Father, and also female. And the reason they thought this was because everything else that exists is produced by this God.

MH: Now, in terms of cosmology, the highest Aeon is called, in Gnosticism, the Logos. Is that a familiar term? Okay, this is the highest son of the true God, the Logos. The first aeon, the first emanation, the first act of the father, he is the entire likeness and image of the true God. And these are Gnostic statements okay. He’s the form of the formless, the body of the bodyless, the face of the invisible, the word of the unutterable and all these things. And he actually possesses the knowledge of all the eons. He is unquestionably superior. He’s the top dog, the top Eon.

Gnostic Cosmology MH: Now, the Logos right here again is the top, and together the law goes with the true God, the father and mother element in the true God, form the Triad. Let ‘s just call it a Trinity and be done with it. It’s not the same as a Trinity. If you know your trinitarianism, this is not same. But they’re using the three language.

Mutants & Mystics

MH: Last point: there’s a whole scholarly book. This is University of Chicago Press this, and this is a dense read, it’s a scholarly book called mutants and mystics science fiction superhero comics and the paranormal. And guess who wrote it? Our friend Jeffrey Kripal. He has an entire chapter if you’re into UFOs this will be shocking to you. his entire last chapter is on Whitley Strieber and communion. The whole purpose of the book is to show how comic books, and specifically the alien theme, has been a useful and wonderful and delightful vehicle for transmitting the truths of Gnosticism. I mean, they’re not secretive about this. It’s just, here it is, you know?
Mutants & Mystics 2

MH: I highly recommend that you read this. He argues that much of the recent popular culture of the u.s. Comes from what we used to be called the paranormal. He has a third book called authors of the impossible where he as an academic says academic scholars ought to own up to the fact that paranormal stuff is real. And he’s arguing in favor of paranormal stuff within the account.
Mutants & Mystics 3

MH: He even goes into Madame Blavatsky. None of this is new. The whole alien thing is just rehashed Gnosticism slash occultism slash theosophy slash whatever, fill in the blank, for a technological society. That’s all it is. And this is what’s going to reach the masses.

MH: And what I’m telling you this whole presentation comes down to this: the adaptation is going to be led by people who know what they’re doing and will control the vocabulary and teach others. They will teach others to mine the vocabulary and morph the theology, and it’s only going to take a generation before that becomes the articulation of what Christianity is.

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The Post Christian Future, Part one
Believers

Transcript: The Post-Christian Future, Part 1 — Michael Heiser

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As described in a recent post, there are all kinds of great uses for transcripts, and I’ve started creating them for video and audio materials important enough to have in text format.

The first transcript I completed is of a documentary interview with Jordan Peterson conducted by David Fuller for Rebel Wisdom entitled, “Truth in the Time of Chaos.” You can find that transcript on McGillespie.com.

This second transcript is the first part of a presentation Michael Heiser gave in 2013 to Future Congress 2. It’s entitled “The Post-Christian Future, Part One, Thinking Theologically About the Utopian Impulse as a Perversion of the Judeo-Christian Worldview.”

(Note: I’ll be posting the transcript on the forum. What follows, here, are short excerpts)

Copyright © 2013 Michael S. Heiser

The presentation was given while Mike was preparing to write the sequel to “The Facade.” Part one is ~9000 words and includes 25 slides. All the material (and excerpts, below) is owned and copyrighted by Dr. Heiser and please consider supporting his work in creating, presenting, and posting such presentations on Youtube. The transcript is merely an attempt to make video and audio material more accessible.

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Road Map

MH is Michael S. Heiser

MH: There’s always been sort of this impulse to either create the perfect society or more pertinently, force it on people. And so, I see looming on the horizon a new effort at creating a wonderful, blissful, totalitarian state and I want to sort of pursue that a little bit and talk about it. And again, for those of you here, and for those of you who listen later to the presentation, I just want to get you thinking about why it is that this always seems to rear its ugly head and why even Christians, at times, are not immune from this notion that we can make things perfect, that we can just make it alright if we did this, that, and the other thing, everything would be ok.

MH: So, I want to try to think theologically about those things, and we’ll see what happens. So, here is our roadmap for the day.Road Map

Definition & Relevance

MH: So, first part: definition and relevance. Utopia as you may or may not know, again, is this idea of a perfect human society. The term itself refers to an ideal place that actually doesn’t exist.Definition & Relevance

MH: It’s imaginary, you know, it’s conceptual. It’s this grand wish, something that can’t be real in the real world but boy we wish it was, that sort of thing.

MH: And again the breakdown of the term utopia: no place, a good or no place. And you’ll see it spelled either with the “e” or with the “o” forming the “u”, in either case. But it actually could have either derivation depending on who’s using it.

MH: An imaginary world where social justice is achieved, whatever that means, and the means of guaranteeing all that is secure. That’s where the control comes in. So that’s what we’re talking about. And as far as the impulse, what are the elements?

ExamplesUtopian Examples

MH: And HG Wells, of course, a lot of a lot of their thinking was influenced by eugenics. To create the ideal society you need ideal people, right? You need to sort of weed out the unfortunate or less desirable elements to the human population. So that was very common in the United States. A lot of later not-so-eugenic theory and practice was drawn from American and British writing. Those were the seed beds to some of those things that we would come later on.

MH: Marxist Leninism, of course, this would be the Lennon experiment with Marxism. Of course the Revolution of 1917. You know, again, the working class. We’re going to create the community where the worker is in power. Ostensibly, this is how it’s marketed. This is how it’s put forth.

How It’s Sold vs. Actual ResultEcological vs Neo-Paganism

MH: Nowadays we refer to eugenics as genetic engineering and genetic selection. Genetics is just the new eugenics. And I’m not here to demonize all genetic research because that would just be ridiculous too. But, once you have the power of the genome in your hand, eugenics is really easy. You know, it’s just it’s just how do we how do we accomplish this thing we can easily do now on a wide scale? That’s the only question you need to ask.

MH: Politically, of course, world peace freedom from crime which in their right mind would oppose that? Well, I’m not opposed to that. I am opposed to statist fiefdom. If you’re a statist, you are anti-individual. Think about that. That means if you’re in control you get to criminalize practically anything. Criminalize self-protection —that would be like gun laws taking guns away okay. We’re going to criminalize your ability to protect yourself. Why? Because your emphasis is on the state, the utopia, as opposed to the individual.

MH: Citizens self-sustenance, we talked about that with the food supply. You have each individual state, state being defined as country here, trying to implement their view of perfection, their view of the ideal situation. But ultimately you have a push toward global government.

Progress or Human Control?Progress or Human Control?

MH: Progress, human improvement, science & technology. Human control is what this means in our day and age. So, whereas we would call it progress human improvement through science and technology what it really means is control of people through science and technology.

MH: We have information control. In other words, we’ll fill your head with what it needs to be filled with. Knowledge is power. It’s easy to propagandize things like the political process. Eugenics, that’s progress because we’re weeding out…we’re clearing out the gene pool there and that a good thing. Police state we have to have a police state to enforce progress. Commerce comes under state control. Basically, everything you do, if it’s viewed as being an impediment to progress, then it needs to be controlled or eliminated. We have to be able to keep the progress going. We don’t want progress to stop.

MH: Now, utopian impulse as a biblical perversion. And this is where your handout comes in I’m going to go through this quickly, and I’ll tell you what the handout supplements.

MH: Here are the fundamental myths of utopianism. The idea that humans are perfectible, that’s a myth. Either on an individual level or a corporate level, it ignores human capacity for evil. It ignores you know the condition of the heart. But it’s a myth that drives utopianism. The other myth is that you can force human perfectibility. That just isn’t going to work. So enforcing an Edenic state. In other words, it would be Eden by human effort. Eden created by a ruling human elite.

Babel and Myths of UtopianismBabel & Myths of Utopianism

MH: Babel is a big deal with this because if you understand what’s going on at Babel a ziggurat, Tower of Babel, was built to bring the divine to earth. We’re going to build you a house we’re going to build you home because gods live on mountains so let’s like build our own mountain so that the deity will come here and when he comes here we can negotiate; we can we can kind of barter.

MH: It’s the same logic of idolatry. The ancient person wasn’t wasn’t an idiot he knows that this thing he just made isn’t his creator so why do they make idols? Because they believe deities can be summoned to reside there; you locate the deity. This is why Israel was forbidden to make graven images because Yahweh cannot be tamed. Yahweh will not be brought anywhere for negotiation. That’s up to him. It’s a completely different perspective on it. But you have the same thing going on with Babel. We are going to reestablish Eden we are going to bring the deity back to earth. We’re separated from the deity now we got kicked out in all that stuff we’re going to bring the deity back down to earth, and then we’re going to you know do all this stuff, all this good stuff. Well, again it’s a usurpation of God’s plan God’s punishment. Humans trying to remedy and re-kick-start what they ruined. Babel is sort of the beginning living illustration of this idea that hey let’s bring heaven to earth. Utopian thinking. Heaven is not going to come to earth until God wills it and not before. But that’s what the utopian misses or hates take your pick, one way or the other.

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Social Media Battles
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How to Lose by Winning Battles on Social Media

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By Mark Ward, originally published under the title, “What Would the Author of ‘Amazing Grace’ Say about Social Media?”

John Newton wrote a beautiful letter to a friend which is called in _his collected works, “On Controversy”—because that friend was about to engage in public controversy over Christian doctrine; Newton wanted to give him some scriptural counsel. I have read it 20 times over nearly as many years, and thought of it countless more. In order to more fully get the principles into my own soul—because I, frankly, have not always lived up to them—I have taken the liberty of “transculturating” it for today’s Christian SMWs—Social Media Warriors. If Newton were to write the same letter today, this is my guess as to what he would write:_

Dear Christian Friend about to Post a Comment in a Social Media Battle,

I’ve always appreciated your love of truth—and I know that itch you’re feeling right now, the itch to jump into the fray.

I happen to agree with the position you’re about to defend. We’re together on this. And truth is stronger than fiction: our side cannot lose. Not even the gates of hell could prevail against it. So even a person without your skill with a keyboard could enter this particular social media mêlée with some confidence of coming out on top—in the end, at least.

But we must be more than conquerors. We need to triumph not just over error in others but over sin in ourselves. Some battle wounds may make us wish we had never won.

Let’s stop and think about our opponents, the internet bystanders, and ourselves.

Our social media opponents

I’m ashamed how often I myself have forgotten step one, step zero: have we prayed for our internet sparring partners? I mean prayed for them not only before pounding out a response but between every keystroke. Are we praying for them as our fingers hover over the return key? If we ask the Lord to teach them and bless them, that prayer will soften our hearts and our prose in profoundly healthy ways.

If our opponents are Christians, we can imagine the Lord saying to us what David said to Joab about Absalom: “Deal gently with him for my sake.” The Lord loves our opponents; his love for them was longsuffering long before we met them, ahem, fifteen seconds ago. If we wring their rhetorical necks, we’ll not only risk unforgiving servants, we’ll risk proving unforgiven ones (Matt 18:35).

Someday our Facebook pages will be memorial walls for whatever friends we have left—and so will be those of our (Christian, remember?) opponents. Think about what will happen then. All of us will be together in heaven, forever, and our love for each other then will be greater than our love for our best earthly friends now. Our opponents may be dead wrong, but after we’re all dead—they’ll be right again.

If our opponents are not Christians—and I try not to be too quick to come to that conclusion if they claim otherwise; before their own Master they stand or fall—the best emotion to feel toward them is compassion, not anger. “They know not what they do!” But we know who’s responsible for giving us new hearts dedicated to truth. It didn’t have to be this way. God was not required to save you and me from our sins. But for the grace of God, we’d have their list of Likes.

There is room for an Elijah mocking the prophets of Baal (1 Kings 18), an Isaiah mocking the silliness of idols (Isa 44), and a Jesus Christ mocking the Pharisees (Matt 23). But those seem to me to be exceptions to the general rule that one ought to “correct his opponents with gentleness” so that “God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth” (2 Tim 2:25). If we are writing for spiritually blind people, we must be careful not to put any trip hazards between them and the cross. God’s grace is necessary for salvation, but this is no reason to push people (humanly speaking) further away from him.

And there are mudslinging trolls out there—Christian and non-Christian—whom it is foolhardy to engage. They’ll only drag you down to their level (Prov 26:4; Matt 7:6). My rule of thumb: I do my best to avoid debating people who can never bring themselves to acknowledge that their opponents have just made a good point. (I also, by God’s grace, do my best not to be one of those people—if I can’t see the genuine strengths of viewpoints I disagree with, it’s likely my fault.)

The internet bystanders

Among those reading and liking (and trolling) will be three groups:

1. Those who disagree with you

It’s easy to forget these people when our eyes are focused on our direct opponents. But those opponents represent many, many others who hold the same opinions. Many will watch who will not comment. Regarding these I will point again to the thoughts above.

2. Those who don’t care about your religious points

But then there are people who don’t know or care about the doctrines we defend online, because they aren’t religious at all. If these people are generally indisposed to dislodge their rather shining views of their moral rectitude, that doesn’t hinder their ability to sniff out pride in us. Even those who can’t follow our arguments can read our spirits pretty well in between the pixels. And they know that religious people—particularly Christians—are supposed to be meek, humble, and loving.

Every day online the Scripture is proved true: “The anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God.” If we mix invective and scorn into our posts, we’re forgetting that the weapons of our warfare—the only weapons which, in reality, can break down strongholds of error—are “not of the flesh.” Whether we persuade anyone of anything else or not, somehow we must persuade bystanders that we wish others well. We are known by our love (John 13:35).

3. Those who agree with you

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