Second-Class American Citizenship

With his family by his side, Barack Obama is sworn in as the 44th president of the United States by Chief Justice of the United States John G. Roberts, Jr. in Washington, D.C., Jan. 20, 2009. More than 5,000 men and women in uniform are providing military ceremonial support to the presidential inauguration, a tradition dating back to George Washington's 1789 inauguration. VIRIN: 090120-F-3961R-919 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In the strictest sense, Biblical Christians first citizenship is that of Heaven. This world is not our home, we are just passing through, as the old song goes. Yet, in today's United States, and even a number of other countries, Christians are also being relegated to a second-class citizenship status. Look at the news stories so far this year regarding Evangelical Christians in the news.

1. Pastor Louie Giglio was scheduled to give the benediction at President Obama's second inauguration. However, gay rights groups quickly found a sermon of his from approximately 20 years ago speaking about the sin of homosexuality. Giglio was subsequently disinvited from the inauguration ceremonies. Incidentally, Giglio was invited for his work with stopping human trafficking. Now, this is a secular event, so something like this should come as no surprise. 
2. New York Jets backup quarterback Tim Tebow was scheduled to speak at First Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas later this Spring. Keep in mind that this is a church and that Tim Tebow is a Christian, scheduled to speak at a church. There was an outcry from gay rights groups about Tebow, a Christian, speaking at this church, because of statements (misinterpreted and taken out of context statements) made by the pastor of First Baptist, Dr. Robert Jeffress. Tebow turns around and cancels, issuing a statement via Twitter, and Jeffress issues a statement via his church website that Tebow will likely speak at a later date. Tebow is applauded by the "rights" groups and attacked by Christian groups, particularily the American Family Association.

So, what is my point in bringing up these incidents from over the past couple of months? As the Supreme Court hears the case regarding whether or not gay marriage is constitutionally protected or not, Christians are being excluded from the conversation. People from both sides of the aisle are arguing for the constitutional protection. What I am not seeing is any religious exemption being put forth. As well, if one is in the public eye, it is unjust and immoral to take any stand or associate one's self with any group that is "anti-gay." This is all while these groups are supposedly speaking about tolerance while being utterly intolerant of one's beliefs. Christians are being marginialized and set aside in any kind of conversation. What we say does not matter and will not matter in the future. We are officially second-class citizens, being put there by the chief himself, President Barack Obama, even though he, himself, professes to be a Christian. Does this sound bad? Not really. Christ said we would be persecuted and we would have to put up with this. He suffered so much more than the discounting of morality. The world exchanges the truth for a lie and all we can do is stand back, watch, and pray.  We cannot succumb to the world in giving in the immoral lie that homosexuality is okay. Too many "Christians" are doing such a thing. We must continue to fight for truth. America has lost it's moral compass. Let's not lose ours.

Related articles

• My Take: Christians ought to shrug off inaugural pastor rejection
• Tim Tebow Attacked By AFA For Canceling Gig At Mega Hate Church
• Jets QB Tim Tebow To Speak At Increasingly LGBT-Friendly Pepperdine
• Tim Tebow, Robert Jeffress, Queer Media, and The Gospel
• As Job Axe Comes: Tim Tebow Drops Pastor Jeffress Speaking Engagement
• NBC Sports Writer Smears Baptist Church with Tebow Ties

Forty Years of Legal Holocaust

3D Ultrasound (Photo credit: balleyne)

Today marks the 40th year of government-sanctioned legalized taking of human lives before they have even seen the light of day or taken a first breath. I make it sound horrible, because it is horrible. Amid all the hype about gun control, violence, and elementary school shootings, the death of the unborn is totally overlooked. President Obama overlooks it because he supports the killing of babies. Some may lambast me for that last argument, but if one supports "the woman's right to choose what she does with her body," then one supports the killing of babies.  But what about the cases of rape or incest? Two words...logical fallacy. Give me statistics on pregnancies in cases of rape, incest, and the abortions that follow.  More than likely, the statistics are extremely low.  But it's just tissue, or a fetus, or as I've heard the argument go, a parasite. More false arguments based on false science. You look at a live ultrasound and you tell me if that baby doesn't move it's hands, feet, suck it's thumb, wiggle around trying to avoid the ultrasound paddle. This is the great travesty of the past 40 years, that we have chosen to allow doctors to kill babies. We now have a government that has forced employers to pay for baby-killing drugs as well. If we truly want to protect our children, we will fight for the rights of the unborn. They are being killed in greater numbers each year than any gun violence statistics will show.

Related articles

• UK parents reject abortion after seeing their disabled son smile on ultrasound
• Ultrasound makes mom not abort disabled baby
• Forty Years Later, Why I Still Support Roe v. Wade

Christianity Today's January 2013 Cover Story Articles on Islam

Christianity Today's January 2013 cover story is all about Islam and more particularly Insider Movements as to how Muslim converts to Christianity can remain in Islam and still worship Christ. I offer no commentary here, but the article authors do include Phil Parshall and John Travis.

Discipleship is Messy - Editorial

How Much Muslim Context Is Too Much for the Gospel? by Phil Parshall

Why Evangelicals Should Be Thankful for Muslim Insiders by John J. Travis
Worshiping Jesus in the Mosque by Gene Daniels
The Hidden History of Insider Movements by Timothy C. Tennant

I should note that I have taken a class under Phil Parshall, so I'm "partial" to his line of thinking. Travis is the "father" of the C1-C6 spectrum in contextualization while I would consider Parshall to the "father" of modern-day contextualization. Tennant used to teach at my Alma Mater, Toccoa Falls College, but left right before I went to school there. My wife may have had him for a professor, however. Anyways, "Insider Movements" are a heated topic in missiological circles right now. Let's keep this civil.

Unstoppable: The Incredible Power of Faith in Action by Nick Vujicic

Book releases in two weeks from Waterbrook Multnomah. Watch the preview trailer below:

10 reasons to vote for Mitt Romney

1. He's not Barack Obama.
2. He's not Barack Obama.
3. He's not Barack Obama.
4. He's not Barack Obama.
5. He's not Barack Obama.
6. He's not Barack Obama.
7. He's not Barack Obama.
8. He's not Barack Obama.
9. He's not Barack Obama.
10. He's not Barack Obama.

Christian Ethics: Serving the homosexual community

Chick-fil-A (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Scenario: You work as a web developer and someone calls you up looking for a website for their  business. You give them your rates and how quickly you can have their website up and running, and they agree to everything, send you content, and you get to work. The business might be a local clothing store, for instance. You finish the website and they pay you and everything seems to be going okay. Sometime passes and the business owner calls you up again and asks about having another website built, but this one is for his upcoming nuptials. He would like a website that would celebrate his marriage to his partner, whom he tells you is also a male.

Do you:
A) Explain to him that you are a Christian and cannot work for him on this since you believe homosexuality is a sin?

B) Offer the suggestion that he might do better by uploading the photos to Flickr, Facebook, or Google+ and share them with friends and family that way?

C) Explain that you don't feel comfortable with such a request because of your belief system, but you know someone who could do the project?

D) Offer your suggestion here...


Note: this is sort of in response to the whole deal with Chick-fil-a being bullied because of what Dan Cathy did not say in his statements on Biblical marriage.

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• Muppets bash Chick-fil-A over owner's faith

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• Playing chicken: Same-sex Muppets vs. Chick-fil-A

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• Christians Say Chick-fil-A Under Siege by Militant Gays

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• Chicago Wants to Ban Chick-fil-A

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The Bible and Dan Savage

Dan Savage speaking at IWU as part of Gender Issues Week. Photo by soundfromwayout (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This past weekend, shock-jock, gay activist, anti-gay-bullying advocate, and so-called sex therapist Dan Savage took to the stage at a high school journalism conference and called parts of the Bible the excrement of a bull. Savage's scheduled topic was anti-bullying. Instead, Savage chose to go into a tirade against Christians and attempted to accuse Christians of being selective when reading their Bible. To quote Savage:

"We can learn to ignore the bull---- in the Bible about gay people," Savage told the high school students. "The same way we have learned to ignore the bull---- in the Bible about shellfish, about slavery, about dinner, about farming, about masturbation."

Savage went on to call the Bible "a radically pro-slavery document" and referred to the walkout as "pansy-assed." (Source)

 According to one high school teacher, here is what was expected:

"We expected it to be about how student publications can promote anti-bullying programs on campus," said teacher Rick Tuttle of Sutter, who took six Sutter Union High School yearbook staff members to the three-day conference. "So we were surprised when it suddenly became clear it was not about that, but just a hostile torrent of obscenities and foul language that was completely inappropriate for a high school student audience and highly unprofessional."

A few things I want to point out.

1.  What is with all this apologizing after the fact? This seems to be happening all too frequently.  Somebody says something that somebody else disagrees with and the media makes some big deal about it until somebody apologizes. To be frank, the words that come out of your mouth, reflect your heart. Does anyone really think that Savage is sorry for what he said, after everything else he said, has said, or is going to say? Anyone who knows who Savage is knows he's going to say something else. That's who he is. He basically hates Christians and makes no bones about it.  Stop with the apologizing already unless you are truly sorry for what you said.
2. Savage seems to know what the Bible says about certain things, but he completely does not understand context. Yes, the Old Testament law condemned shellfish, masturbation, and homosexuality, among other things. The law was established by God to point to himself as the author of grace and truth. And no, the Bible does not condemn slavery, but it does tell us to treat fellow human beings with dignity and respect, which is not the same as affirming their sin. In the book of Acts, God shows Peter that the law is fulfilled in Christ when it comes to eating clean and unclean things such as shellfish. I guess Savage missed that part, because he likes to point out the parts that affirm his point. The fact remains that homosexuality is still a sin classified along the lines of murder and lying. Are Christians hypocritical? Sure, we are. We allow divorce in the church as common as eating fried chicken. A leader commits adultery and we look for ways to keep him in the pulpit. We allow professors in Christian universities to continue to teach even after they've fudged on their resumes. Yeah, we're guilty. But, we're also sinners. The difference is that some of us have been saved by grace through faith by Christ. He has changed our hearts, not through anything we have done, but by His grace. The problem is that people like Savage still see us as a bunch of moralists, and many of us are.
   
   [9] Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, [10] nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. [11] And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. (1 Corinthians 6:9-11 ESV)
3. Did the organizers not know who Savage was? This is a guy who started off his so-called speech about anti-bullying to teens suggesting they use birth control. Really? Is this the best the organizers of this conference could do just because Savage is the creator of the "It Gets Better" campaign? Savage is known for advocating multiple sex partners and non-monogamy in marriage. Savage is not exactly an exemplary model for teens, now is he? "It Gets Better" is a faux attempt to suggest that gay bullying among teens is an epidemic and that gay teens are killing themselves left and right. Here's a tip...calling a teen gay...and that teen commits suicide because of the bullying...does  not make that teen gay. The simple fact is that gay has been used as a bullying tactic for years before homosexuality became socially accepted. It's a word that hurts and bullies, even those who are heterosexual. Bullying is wrong, no matter what. That's a fact. Another fact is that the organizers got what they got when they invited Savage and they should have known that.

Solution?

Pray for Dan Savage. Pray that God would grab a hold of his heart, pull it out, and give him a new one, one that would love Jesus, and bring him to repentance. Christian John Shore has come out supporting Savage on this one, even continuing to push his own Change.org petition to bully Christians into affirming homosexuality. Pray for John Shore as well. He used to have some sound doctrine, but essentially has no sound doctrine anymore. We shall be persecuted, but we shall not be dismayed because Christ is our Savior and Lord.

Related articles

• BREAKING: Criticism Mounts Against Dan Savage Address To Teens (illuminati360.wordpress.com)
• Dan Savage Apologizes for Bullying During Anti-Bullying Speech (newsfeed.time.com)
• Anti-bullying advocate: 'Ignore the bullsh*t in the Bible' (alanrudnick.org)
• Organizers of teen conference apologize for Dan Savage's remarks about Bible (mercurynews.com)
• Dan Savage stands by 'bullsh-- in Bible' remark (wnd.com)