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Because the Holy Ghost over the bent World broods with warm breast and with Ah! Bright Wings.

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November 26, 2008

Giving Thanks

From that first historic festival celebrated by a handful of Pilgrims and Indians in December of 1621, there has been a rich and constant tradition of giving thanks to God in the United States. And it is a naive and silly revisionism that somehow extracts any and all theological commitments from such a wonderful holiday. There are eight proclamations of a day of thanksgiving in the journals of the Continental Congress, and at the heart of them all is this sort of crass ignorance of what modern secularists might call the separation of church and state:

“It being the indispensable duty of all Nations, not only to offer up their supplications to Almighty God, the giver of all good, for his gracious assistance in a time of distress, but also in a solemn and public manner to give him praise for his goodness in general, and especially for great and signal interpositions of his providence in their behalf: Therefore the United States in Congress assembled, taking into their consideration the many instances of divine goodness to these States, in the course of the important conflict in which they have been so long engaged; the present happy and promising state of public affairs; and the events of the war, in the course of the year now drawing to a close…” (Journals of Continental Congress, October 11, 1782)

The first federal thanksgiving day observance was issued by President George Washington in 1789:

“Whereas it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor. . . . Now, therefore, I do appoint Thursday, the 26th day of November 1789 . . . that we may all unite to render unto Him our sincere and humble thanks for His kind care and protection.”

In 1863, during the dark and grim days the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln issued this proclamation of Thanksgiving:

“The year that is drawing toward its close has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the Source from which they come, others have been added which are of so extraordinary a nature that they can not fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever-watchful providence of Almighty God. . . . No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, Who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.” (go to the Presidency Project for more info)

Each President from Lincoln to F.D. Roosevelt called the country to a November observance of a day of Thanksgiving. In 1941 Congress passed a bill calling all States to observe Thanksgiving Day on the fourth Thursday of November.

So we all gather together, watch the parade, carve the bird, dish out the stuffing, undo our belts and nap. But most of all we give thanks. Not to one another (though you may do so as a second order thanksgiving), not to the government, not to Vishnu, Ra, or Zeus. We give thanks to Jehovah God, creator of Heaven and Earth; and to Jesus Christ our Redeemer and Lord; and to the Holy Spirit our Advocate and Comforter. As believers we give thanks for the life bestowed by our Creator and Father. We give thanks for the forgiveness of sins offered through the cross of Jesus Christ. We give thanks for the life, strength, and power poured out through the Holy Spirit.

Giving thanks is the core of the Christian life. It is the reflex of the redeemed heart. So, this Thanksgiving Holiday, worship the Triune God with gratitude and joy.

Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth!
Serve the Lord with gladness!
Come into his presence with singing!

Know that the Lord, he is God!
It is he who made us, and we are his;
we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.

Enter his gates with thanksgiving,
and his courts with praise!
Give thanks to him; bless his name!

For the Lord is good;
his steadfast love endures forever,
and his faithfulness to all generations.

 

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posted by Erik Braun

November 20, 2008

. . .with a holy kiss.

“How good and pleasant it is when brothers live together in unity! It is like precious oil poured on the head, running down on the beard, running down on Aaron’s beard, down upon the collar of his robes. It is as if the dew of Hermon were falling on Mount Zion. For there the LORD bestows his blessing, even life forevermore.”  Psalm 133

Relatively speaking, I’ve not had what you might call a turbulent go of it so far in ministry. But there is time yet.  Still, having grown up the son of a preacher man - the sort of preacher man that saw more than his fair share of pastoral hardships - I count myself lucky (in the purely Calvinist sense of the term).  Nonetheless, I’ve seen a good deal of conflict. It’s unavoidable. Occupational hazard, you might say. And if you’re a pastor that is at all worth a spit, you’re going to see a few tussles.  You can please some of the people some of the time, all of the people some of the time, some of the people all of the time, but at some point and some where some one is going to be mad at you.  If the good vicar is not careful, this can be paralyzing.  I know many that solve the problem by not saying much of anything ever.  Or, they just give it the old college try and head back to a career in vinyl repair when the proverbial poop hits the fan. 

All this to say, I struggle deeply with the conflicts attendant to shepherding, and I am often full of grief over hard words and the lost relationships they bring. I’ve been in Tallahassee for eight years now. That is plenty of time to see my share of people leave the church.  No matter the reason for their departure, my fragile ego inevitably puts itself at the center.  I see their faces about town, noting their frantic attempt to evade me. Being a pastor is a bit like being a father with a hundred prodigals.  I know that they aren’t all actual prodigals, it just feels that way.

Today I saw one of my old friends who had left the church a few years back.  It was an especially rough departure. Some go gently into that good night and some take their pound of flesh.  I was the lighter for his leaving.  I thought as I saw him how much easier it would be if I had a better explanation for the whole thing.  How much easier it would be if I could just anathematize him.  But he didn’t walk away from Jesus, he just walked away from me.  He thought I was dead wrong; I thought he was dead wrong.  Never the twain shall meet. I’m not saying there weren’t actual wrongs involved. I am saying that we are often more wrong than we might imagine. How do we handle such things? 

I considered what heaven might be like.  He and I will be there together, and there will be a perfect friendship between us. The sweetest and most holy fellowship. We will sit at the feast together, and sing together in some other- worldly harmony that as of yet only the angels know. Could it be that we would love each other the more there because of the depth of sin here? Or would we even remember the conflict that charged our words and our hearts in these days?

These thoughts fill me with the strangest mix of hope and grief. Hope for that time to come, and grief for the reality of this present sinful exile. When God calls us strangers and aliens, it is certainly with reference to our relationship to the lost. But, the reality of sin also makes us a sad sort of stranger to one another. 

I noticed that both he and I had our Bibles out.  A strange state of affairs, indeed. Two alien brothers reading letters from their Father.  At this realization I wanted to jump out of my chair, walk up to him and greet him with a holy kiss.

“That’s all behind us, brother,” I would say.

“Of course it is, brother,” he would reply with a smile.

We would then talk about what we happened to be reading in the Word, about our families, our jobs, and all the rest of it.  We’d plan to see each other again soon enough. We would shake hands and then go about the rest of our day in peace. 

Instead, I closed my Bible and left the way I came in.

“Since you have in obedience to the truth purified your souls for a sincere love of the brethren, fervently love one another from the heart. . .”    1 Peter 1:22

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posted by Erik Braun

November 13, 2008

Connect the Dots

Last night Tori and I rented the movie Expelled, which is a great expose of the tyrranical liberal bias against true scientific inquiry in the academy and society at large. You must see this movie, and please watch all the way to the end with the amazing interview between Ben Stein (writer, narrator) and atheist Richard Dawkins.

The most striking, indeed haunting, portion of the film is when Stein displays the link between Darwinism and the natural atheistic worldview it fuels as well as the link between Darwinism and evils of the Holocaust. Here are a few choice quotes from the movie:

“If you’re going to regulate one thing that has the most potential to cause death and destruction - religion - you’ve got to start with religion.” - actor/comedian Bill Maher

“We’ve got to get to the place where religion is treated at the level it should be treated, that is, as something fun that people get together and do on the weekend and really doesn’t affect their life as it has so far.” - biologist PZ Myers

“The connection between Hitler and Darwin is of course historically a difficult connection because they were separated by a good many years; one was English, one was German. . .nonetheless, if you open Mein Kampf and read it, especially if you can read it in German, the correspondence between Darwinian ideas and Nazi ideas just leaps from the page. Of course you have to add every historical caution, not every one who read Darwin became a Nazi, obviously not, no one is making that case. Darwinism is not a sufficient condition for a phenomenon like Nazism, but I think it certainly is a necessary one.” - mathematician David Berlinski

“First of all if you take seriously that evolution has to do with the transition of life forms and that life and death are just natural processes. Then one gets to be liberal about abortion and euthanasia. All of those kinds of ideas [sic] follow very naturally from a Darwinian perspective. A de-privileging of human beings, basically. I think the people who want to endorse Darwinism have to sort of take this kind of viewpoint very seriously.” - sociologist Steve Fuller

“What we desire of tomorrow’s youth is different from what was desired in the past we must create the new man so that our race will not succumb to the phenomenon of degeneration so common in modern times.” - Adolf Hitler

“With savages the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated. We civilized men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination. We build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick. Thus, the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. Hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.” - Charles Darwin

The near religious (actually, the clearly religious) commitment to Darwinian philosophy of the media, academic, and political establishment in America is a frightening thing. There is a very short walk indeed from a ‘free’ society that lawfully and willfully destroys over one million babies every year to a ‘free’ society that eliminates any other humans deemed unnecessary, weak, or ‘unfit’ to survive. The walk grows shorter with the constant cries for statist solutions to our every economic woe and all our desires for nationalized healthcare. Let’s remember that we are asking a government and medical community that kills its babies to care for our toddlers and elderly. No thanks.

Perhaps no one better than Margaret Sanger (Planned Parenthood founder/proponent of Darwinian eugenics) can help us connect the dots:

“It is a vicious cycle; ignorance breeds poverty and poverty breeds ignorance. There is only one cure for both, and that is to stop breeding these things. Stop bringing to birth children whose inheritance cannot be one of health or intelligence. Stop bringing into the world children whose parents cannot provide for them. Herein lies the key of civilization. For upon the foundation of an enlightened and voluntary motherhood shall a future civilization emerge…

“The undeniably feeble-minded should, indeed, not only be discouraged but prevented from propagating their kind.”

 

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posted by Erik Braun

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