But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are registered in heaven, to God the Judge of all, to the spirits of just men made perfect, to Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaks better things than that of Abel.

So here and now as God’s dearly loved people we have come to this city that is characterized as having God dwelling in her midst. And later we will be told that this city is comprised and inhabited not only by we who have come to it but also by the angelic host of God and all those who have gone before us. Thus, this covenant we are currently members of, this city that wherein we find our citizenship, this church in which we are numbered is a place where in some mysterious sense there remains a relation between the living and those we call dead. This relation is hinted at previously in the 1st vs. of this chapter and the fact that there is only a thin but impenetrable veil between us and our Fathers is seen in places like II Kings 6:15-19.

I mention this here only to emphasize on Memorial Day weekend that for Christians the community that we are part of includes all the faithful. It is fitting that we should remember them for we with them are citizens together in God’s Kingdom. God remains the God of the living and all who die in Christ are alive and all of us together are citizens of the same community where God dwells.

Those that we have loved, who died in Christ, that we especially remember this memorial day weekend are yet living, and could we hear their testimony we may find it is they who mourn for us who have not yet come to the real land of the living that this World deliciously anticipates just as a good appetizer promises the better meal which is yet to come. Our fellow believers that we remember on this Memorial Day should be to us not as those who have gone from the earth to the dust but rather as those who have gone from the real to the more real remembering that they and we remain together members of the same community, and the same Church.

Illustration – Narnia — Farther Up and Further In!

We often forget that God is gathering a people and not just a bunch of individuals and that because this is true we belong to the faithful in Christ who have gone before just as they belong to us. This is why Scripture can say that they being dead yet speak. They yet speak because they remain part of the community of the living Church.

Because we belong to the same community there should be lines of continuity between those who have gone before and the Saints now living. Those lines of continuity should be a reality because we share the same heroes (Hebrews 11), we’ve read the same books, we’ve heard and told the same stories, and we’ve sung the same songs. This is what is expected when one considers members of the same family. Because we belong to the same Church there should be lines of continuity that reveal similarities between their past times of worship and our current times of Worship. Those lines of continuity include hearing of God’s law, confession of sin, declaration of absolution, singing of Psalms and the proclamation and exhibition of Christ our mediator in all of His saving offices by means of Word & Sacrament. Because we are one people the faith we embrace should be largely continuous with the faith that they handed over to us — One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism. Because we belong to the same festal assembly our primary allegiance should not be diverted or diluted by other lesser allegiances. We are one with them before we are one with any other culture, country, or Government — and we are one with them because we all are one with Christ.

St. Memorial Hospital does 75,000 abortions a year. Providing readily available abortion services, regardless of what stage of pregnancy, is the official policy of the Governing Board of St. Memorial. Many of the doctors who actually perform these abortions are pro-life but when they entered into medical school they signed an agreement with the government where the government agreed to pay for their schooling in return for their commitment to provide all medical services that the government deemed legal. Breach of contract would lead to serious jail time for these young doctors.

Now many pro-lifers heard about this and suddenly came up with a slogan that would both condemn the practice while communicating their sympathy for the pro-life doctors. The slogan was…

“We condemn the policy but support the doctors.”

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Yanquiville, Maine was a burgeoning community whose spending habits outstripped their tax base. As an answer to this problem the City leaders of Yanquiville decided to create several speed traps through town and set the fines for offenders at outrageous levels. The citizens of Yanquiville were incensed at the perfidious behavior of the city leaders yet the citizens were a patriotic group who loved their police corps and so they began writing letters to the editor of the Yanquiville Yahoo complaining that,

“We condemn the policy but support the cops.”

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Memorial Day Cemetery was becoming severely dilapidated due to how the increased cost of the flags that they used to festoon the soldiers’ graves every year led to a lack of funds for cemetery upkeep the rest of the year. The governing council of Memorial Day Cemetery decided that the best way to handle this shortage of funds was to turn a blind eye to grave robbers. These grave robbers would then provide a percentage of their takings gained from the valuables they robbed from the graves to the Memorial Day Cemetery relief fund and with such financing Memorial Day Cemetery could keep the grounds according to their high specifications. The governing council only required the caretakers to not patrol the grounds at the times the grave robbers were scheduled to do their work.

Eventually news of this arrangement became known. People were, as one might expect, appropriately incensed but they felt sorry for the complicit caretakers who had become witting pawns in a much larger scandal. As such, in order to save the caretakers embarrassment, they made it known that,

“We condemn the policy but support the caretakers.”

Happy Memorial Day.

Dr. Ron Paul continues to draw considerable attention in his bid for the presidency. The always readable, though occasionally wrong, Jim Pinkerton writes that given his libertarian tinge, “it’s little wonder, then, that Paul is viewed dimly by top Republicans – the party loyalists, social-issue-regulators and neoconservative militarists who have come to dominate the GOP.”

Paul’s libertarianism is also a genuine concern among paleoconservatives and Christians such as my blogging cohort at Backwater Report, Bret McAtee, who is legitimately concerned that Paul is more ideological libertarian than Christian.

I myself am something of a recovering libertarian and have a suspicion that many, perhaps most, libertarians have political convictions grounded in anti-Christian presuppositions about the nature of man and sin. Thus, I too share genuine and real concern regarding zealous libertarians. Do they confess with their mouths and lives that Jesus is Lord, or do they enthrone man?

Nevertheless, libertarianism is not inherently inconsistent with a concern for Christian governance. Many libertarians, including I believe Dr. Paul, argue for smaller and more decentralized government because of a right understanding of original sin, and a fear that the unchecked state will serve as an instrument in the hands of the wicked wielded for the purpose of destroying church and family.

In discussing the meaning of theocracy, R. J. Rushdoony wrote: “Few things are more commonly misunderstood than the nature and meaning of theocracy. It is commonly assumed to be a dictatorial rule by self-appointed men who claim to rule for God. In reality, theocracy in Biblical law is the closest thing to a radical libertarianism that can be had.” In short, theocracy is the re-establishment of self-government under God, with the family as the central governing institution rather than the distant imperial regime.

Obviously Ron Paul is not a theocrat in the Greg Bahnsen mould, but his worldview is not at all incompatible with a consistent Christian worldview. He himself is a faithful and practicing Protestant, and has been married to the same woman for fifty years. Paul and his wife have also been faithful to the culture mandate, having been blessed with five children and seventeen grandchildren.

Interestingly, he has also managed to gain the support of dispensational writers such as Chuck Baldwin and Laurence Vance along with the endorsement of theonomists like Gary North and Chris Ortiz. North in fact worked in Paul’s congressional office in the 1970’s. Vigorous pro-life conservatives such as Pat Buchanan are also springing to Paul’s defense.

Not only has Paul garnered the support of many rock-ribbed Christians, he also makes the druggie, grifter, and low-life set of the libertarian movement uncomfortable. In The New Republic, Michael Crowley explains why: “But libertarians are a fractious bunch, and some hardcore activists have mixed feelings about the man now carrying their banner. For instance, libertarian purists generally support a laissez-faire government attitude toward abortion and gay marriage, as well as ‘open border’ immigration policies and unfettered free trade. Yet Paul opposes gay marriage, believes states should outlaw abortion, decries high immigration rates, and criticizes free trade agreements–though mainly on constitutional grounds.”

Dr. Paul is a fierce critic of abortion. As a specialist in obstetrics/gynecology, he has delivered more than 4,000 babies. In 2005, he introduced legislation legislation that for federal purposes defined “human life…to exist from conception.” The bill, H.R. 776, would also have removed the Supreme Court’s jurisdiction over abortion, nullifying the Roe v Wade decision, and pulled the plug on funding for abortion providers.

If you doubt Paul’s pro-life bonafides, read his comments from the House floor discussing the partial-birth abortion ban:

Whether a civilized society treats human life with dignity or contempt determines the outcome of that civilization. Reaffirming the importance of the sanctity of life is crucial for the continuation of a civilized society. There is already strong evidence that we are indeed on the slippery slope toward euthanasia and human experimentation. Although the real problem lies within the hearts and minds of the people, the legal problems of protecting life stem from the ill-advised Roe v. Wade ruling, a ruling that constitutionally should never have occurred.

The best solution, of course, is not now available to us. That would be a Supreme Court that recognizes that for all criminal laws, the several states retain jurisdiction. Something that Congress can do is remove the issue from the jurisdiction of the lower federal courts, so that states can deal with the problems surrounding abortion, thus helping to reverse some of the impact of Roe v. Wade.

Unfortunately, H.R. 760 takes a different approach, one that is not only constitutionally flawed, but flawed in principle, as well. Though I will vote to ban the horrible partial-birth abortion procedure, I fear that the language used in this bill does not further the pro-life cause, but rather cements fallacious principles into both our culture and legal system.

For example, 14G in the “Findings” section of this bill states, “…such a prohibition [upon the partial-birth abortion procedure] will draw a bright line that clearly distinguishes abortion and infanticide…” The question I pose in response is this: Is not the fact that life begins at conception the main tenet advanced by the pro-life community? By stating that we draw a “bright line” between abortion and infanticide, I fear that we simply reinforce the dangerous idea underlying Roe v. Wade, which is the belief that we as human beings can determine which members of the human family are “expendable,” and which are not.

Given his belief that human life begins at conception, Dr. Paul would surely oppose the gross violation of human dignity inherent in embryonic stem-cell research.

Paul also believes in the necessity of a vibrant and active church that zealously guards its prerogatives against the encroaching state. What GOP bigwig, or for that matter who in the increasingly ridiculous Constitution Party, would make this argument:

The notion of a rigid separation between church and state has no basis in either the text of the Constitution or the writings of our Founding Fathers. On the contrary, our Founders’ political views were strongly informed by their religious beliefs. Certainly the drafters of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, both replete with references to God, would be aghast at the federal government’s hostility to religion. The establishment clause of the First Amendment was simply intended to forbid the creation of an official state church like the Church of England, not to drive religion out of public life.

The Founding Fathers envisioned a robustly Christian yet religiously tolerant America, with churches serving as vital institutions that would eclipse the state in importance. Throughout our nation’s history, churches have done what no government can ever do, namely teach morality and civility. Moral and civil individuals are largely governed by their own sense of right and wrong, and hence have little need for external government. This is the real reason the collectivist Left hates religion: Churches as institutions compete with the state for the people’s allegiance, and many devout people put their faith in God before their faith in the state. Knowing this, the secularists wage an ongoing war against religion, chipping away bit by bit at our nation’s Christian heritage. Christmas itself may soon be a casualty of that war.

It is true that the application of unconstrained libertarian theory leads to social chaos, rootless individualism and, somewhat paradoxically, statism via the destruction of institutions that mediate between the individual and the state.

Ron Paul is neither an anarchist nor a libertine, but a constitutionalist and Christian, and in God’s common grace he grasps by-and-large the necessity of a Biblical social order. Is he perfect? Well, no. But politics is often the art of the possible, and in this election cycle to the extent that we will serve as salt and light to a dying world in the political process, Paul’s candidacy is by far the best option.

We have another holiday coming up tomorrow. The idea of a remembrance of those murdered by the ruling thugs of the State, in pursuit of its favorite game — warfare — is a good one. We should all spend such days in somber repentance of any past support we’ve given the state in its lawlessness, and in resolving to resist such lawlessness in the present and future. Of course, that’s not what our supervisors encourage; they’d rather we cheer all wars — past, present, and future — and those who “lead” us into them.

Don’t misunderstand me; I’m not actually a pacifist. I recognize, in principle, the possibility of a just war. Trouble is, I know of hardly any actual just wars. Thinking back through American history, I recognize one just war (the American Revolution) and another with some elements of justification (the War of 1812, although it could and should have been avoided).

Meanwhile, we’re all supposed to spend the Lord’s Day tomorrow in some kind of orgy of faux-patriotism. Well, to Hell with all that. If all goes according to plan, I’ll spend the morning in worshipping the Prince of Peace, and the afternoon in rest, perchance in contemplation. Meanwhile, let’s have a poem: the work of Wilford Owen, who knew what he talked about.

DULCE ET DECORUM EST

by Wilford Owen

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime . . .
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.

With that, I wish you, not a “happy” Memorial Day, but a contemplative one.

In ecclesiastical news, the United Methodist Church has installed the Rev. Drew Phoenix as pastor of St. John’s United Methodist Church in Charles Village, Maryland. Why is that a problem? Well, until recently the Rev. Phoenix was known as the Rev. Ann Gordon. You see, while Methodists allegedly draw the line with non-celibate gay clergy, they have no rules dealing with transgendered ministers.

“This is about more than me,” said Phoenix. “This is about people who come after me, about young people in particular who are struggling with their gender identity. I’m doing this for them.”

Phoenix went on to say, “The gender I was assigned at birth has never matched my own true authentic God-given gender identity, how I know myself. Fortunately today God’s gift of medical science is enabling me to bring my physical body in alignment with my true gender.”

Well, first, it isn’t science that determines gender. Historic Christianity links physicality and gender. God creates man and woman and assigns distinctive biological traits and gender roles (see Genesis 1 and 2). It is we who turn this inside-out with our misguided and sinful conceptions of the alleged fluid and subjective nature of sexual identity. Such gender confusion is called an “abomination” in Scripture (Deut. 22:5).
Is there any doubt that we are living in an era of sexual and gender confusion? In our post-modern mind, we ourselves determine what it means to be man and woman, to be human. The Author of creation is cast aside as the goddess science is enthroned and worshipped, even in the “church.”

Of course, such a comprehensive rejection of Genesis 1 and 2 begins by tossing aside biblical prescriptions concerning church leadership. That Rev. Ann was shepherding St. John’s before becoming the Rev. Drew was simply a necessary first step in undermining biblical authority.

The wholesale rejection of biblical manhood and womanhood within the culture has largely been accepted within the institutional church. Having swallowed the egalitarian presuppositions of the Enlightenment, Christians routinely deny that there are in fact God-ordained sexual roles.

Take as one example the leadership of Willow Creek Community Church, one of America’s largest and most influential evangelical bodies. In January, 1996, John Ortberg, then a teaching pastor at Willow Creek, authored a position paper distributed to staffers at the Illinois mega church. Mr. Ortberg wrote that on the issue of gender equality, the church “has sought to insure an appropriate level of consensus on this issue with new staff members” in order to avoid a divisive environment that “would be destructive to authentic community and effective ministry.” Ortberg goes on to say that “when the Bible is interpreted comprehensively, it teaches the full equality of men and women in status, giftedness and opportunity for ministry.”

Christians who aren’t embarrassed by their Bibles might beg to differ, and can claim the authority of the Apostle Paul:

If anyone sets his heart on being an overseer, he desires a noble task. Now the overseer must be above reproach, the husband of but one wife, temperate, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not given to drunkenness, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money. He must manage his own family well and see that his children obey him with proper respect. (If anyone does not know how to manage his own family, how can he take care of God’s church?) He must not be a recent convert, or he may become conceited and fall under the same judgment as the devil. He must also have a good reputation with outsiders, so that he will not fall into disgrace and into the devil’s trap. Deacons, likewise, are to be men worthy of respect, sincere, not indulging in much wine, and not pursuing dishonest gain. They must keep hold of the deep truths of the faith with a clear conscience. They must first be tested; and then if there is nothing against them, let them serve as deacons. In the same way, their wives are to be women worthy of respect, not malicious talkers but temperate and trustworthy in everything. A deacon must be the husband of but one wife and must manage his children and his household well. Those who have served well gain an excellent standing and great assurance in their faith in Christ Jesus (I Tim. 3:1-13).

The elimination and obliteration of distinctions between the sexes is rooted in rebellion against God’s order. Indeed, such egalitarianism denies the very principle of order and attempts to arrange creation on its own terms. Equality thus becomes a philosophical and religious faith that demands the fidelity of every individual and institution. And since “conservative” evangelicals have been loath to do battle with the egalitarian ethos in our homes and churches, why are we surprised at the confusion endemic in our culture?

Where are the pastors, teachers and evangelists who will have the courage to proclaim the full counsel of God and call this confusion what the Bible deems it–an “abomination”? Where are the teachers who will call the doctrines of equality and radical individualism what they are—heresy?

Without much fanfare or hoopla from Red State Fascists, President Bush signed a directive authorizing effectively dictatorial powers in the event of a “catastrophic emergency” declared by…the president.

Commenting on the new directive, and other malfeasance, is the good Pastor Chuck Baldwin: “So, the sixty-four million dollar question seems to be, Is George W. Bush an egomaniac, without conscience or regard for his own party, or is he a bumbling, stumbling, simpleton-cowboy who is really as dumb as he talks, or is he deliberately and meticulously (with much help, of course) orchestrating America’s entrance into Daddy Bush’s “New World Order”? I personally believe the correct answer is found behind curtain number three.

In any case, President Bush has almost single-handedly superintended the destruction of the Republican Party, which by itself, is not necessarily a bad thing. America desperately needs a strong Independent party that respects America’s working men and women and submits to constitutional government. Perhaps the demise of the GOP will create a void that such a party can fill in 2008–providing that Bush has not become der Führer by then.”

On the war-front, cowardly congressional Democrats caved to Bush on the Iraq funding bill, tossing their anti-war constituency overboard. The 100-billion-dollar legislation will fund the war through September and in no way curbs Mr. Bush’s war-making “authority.”

Pat Buchanan asks, “Why did the Democrats capitulate?” His answer: “Because they lack the courage of their convictions. Because they fear the consequences if they put their antiwar beliefs into practice. Because they are afraid if they defund the war and force President Bush to withdraw U.S. troops, the calamity he predicts will come to pass and they will be held accountable for losing Iraq and the strategic disaster that might well ensue.”

This is an old story, and we’ve heard variations of it scores of times, but a new report says intelligence analysts warned the White House that the invasion of Iraq “could create instability that would give Iran and al-Qa’ida new opportunities to expand their influence [and] could increase extremist recruiting.”

Quick, someone forward the link to Rudy “There’s No Such Thing as Blowback, That’s Ridiculous” Giuliani.

Speaking of Rudy, Dr. Paul has given him a reading list.