daily java

Daily Java:

Since they thought it foolish to acknowledge God, he abandoned them to their foolish thinking and let them do things that should never be done. Their lives became full of every kind of wickedness, sin, greed, hate, envy, murder, quarreling, deception, malicious behavior, and gossip. They are backstabbers, haters of God, insolent, proud, and boastful. They invent new ways of sinning, and they disobey their parents. They refuse to understand, break their promises, are heartless, and have no mercy. They know God’s justice requires that those who do these things deserve to die, yet they do them anyway. Worse yet, they encourage others to do them, too. (Romans 1:28-32)

Sounds a lot like today, doesn’t it?

The apostle Paul was writing almost 2000 years ago about a dysfunctional culture, one in fact that for all practical purposes died in another couple of hundred years.

It doesn’t take more than a cursory reading of the paper, or of the internet to see that things are like that today.

Of course, what is funny in some ways is that someone in each culture going all the way back to fourth century BS Greece said something of the same. All cultures see themselves as bad and much worse than the one right before it.

I sure do today. Although the world was not perfect when I was young, it was a fat lot better than today. Immorality is rampant, teenaged girls are getting pregnant out of wedlock at amazing numbers, politicians are immoral and caught regularly in bad situations, crime is bad, young people’s involvement in stealing from each other and others is worse. It just seems that things are going to hell in a handbasket.

It is easy to say that it is the end times, but these things have happened before and will happen again. This culture is going down the tubes and others will come up, flourish and go down the tubes too. what is happening has happened and will happen again.

Kind of depressing, but true.

recovering the pastre

Once I was young, and now I am old. (Psalm 37:25)

1969 is 43 years ago. And I forget that because it was my life and I remember it.

But it came to mind when I was looking at something related to the Monkees. I got to thinking about them so I went to Wikipedia to see if they had anything interesting on them. And they did.

I read that Peter Tork was the first to get tired of the Monkees format and bought the four remaining years of his contract out. Mike Nesmith went next.

Their problem? Lack of any say in their music and the fact that all they could see for the next four years was more of the same: silly Monkees dancing around.

But as I read, it dawned on me that I was reading about music history. This was music history as surely as Mozart was music history.

Now the Monkees and Mozart were not necessarily equivalent, but they were both in the past and will not come up again like they did. There will be and have been imitations of both the Monkees and Mozart, but the Monkees and Mozart are gone now. The three guys that perform as the Monkees look like old versions of themselves and, quite frankly, a little pathetic.

Not long ago I read two things that really struck me. One was a young man bitterly complaining about the “cultural death grip” the boomer generation had on music. He wanted new stuff, although I cannot see what could possibly replace it from the music around today.

I am a music lover who will listen to any kind of music, at least for a few times. But there is nothing out there that they will play in grocery stores in fifty years like they play oldies now. There will be no stations dedicated to millennium music like there are to classic rock and roll.

So when the “cultural death grip” stops, so will a lot of musical quality.

I realize I say that like an older adult, like they did during our youth. But the thing was, there was a great volume of good music behind us also. 1920’s ragtime, 1930’s big band, 1940’s swing, 1950’s seminal rock and roll – it all stood behind us as good music and I still listen to it, as do many, today.

But somewhere in the early 1990’s music took a turn for the worst. The musicians and the music both became ugly.

Now I know that none of the rockers I listen to were angels, but even so, there is an ugliness to music today that seems to be purposeful. It is as if the musicians and the audience to which they play were nihilistic to the extreme.

It is no wonder so many kids are angry that music has turned from the 60’s. It is amazing at the amount of kids I see and read that want it to be the way it was then, sometimes thirty years before they were born. With all of its attendant problems, there was a sweetness and an innocence then that is gone today.

The second thing I read was in a novel. A character died, and the main character said: “And he was as dead as Napoleon.” The man had just that second died, but as far as his life went, he was in the same boat as Napoleon, Caesar, Moses, Adam. Once you die, you die.

And the same goes with history. Once it is gone, it is history. All the things I did as a young man are all in history books. The music I listened to, the clothing I wore, the food I ate.

There are whole webpages devoted to chronicling the 1960’s and 1970’s, harking back to it as a golden era. I agree, but that is because it is my golden era.

But we cannot go back to it. All we can do is press forward. As the apostle Paul said, in Philippians 3:13-14: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, I press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us.

We cannot go back, no matter how badly we want to. We cannot recover our youth, we cannot recover the culture we had, we cannot recover the music. And when we try, we look like a bunch of goofy old men trying to pretend that we are a 1960’s young, vibrant, beloved rock group.

i saw two women today, both of whom were victims of their culture

And I want women to be modest in their appearance. They should wear decent and appropriate clothing and not draw attention to themselves by the way they fix their hair or by wearing gold or pearls or expensive clothes. For women who claim to be devoted to God should make themselves attractive by the good things they do. (1 Timothy 2:8-10 NLT)

I saw two women today, both of whom were victims of their culture. And both made me sad.

The first was a young Muslim woman who was walking her child to school. She had on a veil that fully covered her hair and a long heavy coat. Her culture told her to cover up lest someone see her and lust after her. the indication is, men are such beasts that if the woman has to neutralize herself or it is her fault.

Even though the heat was rather great, she still wore the heavy clothing her culture demanded of her. She was a prisoner in her system, trapped in her culture.

The other woman was an older woman, probably around 70. She was wearing a tight, low cut t shirt and tight white pants. Her hair was teased up and she had on high heels. Even though most women at that age have learned some discernment in their dress, she obviously hadn’t.

Her culture said that a woman had to look good or she had no place in the world. If she was not desirable, she was nothing. So she wore clothing that aggressively advertised her femininity even though she was elderly. Even though there were a number of things she could wear that would be much more comfortable, especially at her age, she chose the revealing and tight things.

She, too, was a prisoner in her system, trapped inside her culture.

One said that she dare not show that she was female or no one would like her; the other said that unless she did show that she was female, no one would like her.

Jesus made a comment in Matthew 15:11 that said: It’s not what goes into your mouth that defiles you; you are defiled by the words that come out of your mouth. In other words it is not what you eat or drink or wear that matters, it is how you live.

The apostle Paul said the same basic thing in Romans 14:17-18: the Kingdom of God is not a matter of what we eat or drink, but of living a life of goodness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. If you serve Christ with this attitude, you will please God, and others will approve of you, too.

It is the internal woman that he looks at, not the external.

Neither of these women were accomplishing what they wanted to accomplish. The young Muslim woman was careful not to offend her culture because in her culture, that offense could bring death. The older woman was careful to do what she thought would bring approval in her culture, because she thought that was expected of her.

I suppose in some ways, both were right and both were wrong. To both it was a matter of survival, of being to get along and live well in their respective cultures.

If they could just dress like the godly woman in 1 Timothy 2. She dressed well and people approved of her, yet she was not ostentatious in what she wore. Because, when it comes down to it, God doesn’t care what you wear, as long as it is modest and appropriate.

Thank you, Lord.

my take on the whole koran burning episode

For what it is worth, here is my take on this whole Koran burning episode.

Three points:
1. We have the right to burn a Koran or build a mosque. This is in the Constitution whether we like it or not.
2. Both the mosque and the book-burning were stupid ideas and insensitive.
3. This was blown totally out of proportion by a news media and internet always searching for the next big thing.

First of all, we have the right to burn a Koran or build a mosque. This is America and it was founded on the privilege of self-expression.

In the past few years, we have seen a lot of self-expression that we did not like. I suppose that one of the most offensive to me is the flag-burning that was big a couple of years ago. But whether I like them or not doesn’t really matter. The fact remains that this is America and I have the right to self-expression, no matter how stupid or insensitive it may be.

The courts have recently ruled that you can swear in public and to police officers. Also at the mall you see people with patently offensive t-shirts, bumper stickers abound, both good and bad, you hear everything and see everything no matter what you may think of it.

The second amendment to the Constitution says clearly:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

That means that we can say and do whatever we want to do, as long as it is not injurious to others. That part would be implied in the other laws.

Pastor Jones has the right to burn Korans and the Ground Zero Mosque people have the right to build a mosque on Ground Zero in New York. That is in the constitution, no matter what other countries may say or feel. It is that fact that sets us apart from the rest of the world and it is that part that makes the flourishing of religious freedom possible only in America.

Second, both the mosque and the book-burning were stupid ideas and insensitive. Whether it is or not, many people feel the Koran is holy. To trample on other people’s sincerely held beliefs is not the mark of a sensitive adult.

The same goes for the Ground Zero Mosque. The proponents of this were wanting only one thing: a victory lap. We knocked down your towers so we are going to remind you of it every day of every year in the future. Like the guy who said he climbed Mount Everest because he could, they are building it because they can.

The only problem is, they never anticipated that there was life left in the American people that would enable them to rebel. They were relying on something they had no love for – the Constitution of a free nation – to do what they wanted. But that same Constitution came back to bite them. The pastor of a small church in Florida had the same rights as they did.

Any time you pursue your Constitutional right to do anything at the expense of hurting someone else, you have missed the point of that freedom. That freedom was given to keep others from hurting your rights, not to enable you to hurt others feelings.

True, there are times when that is unavoidable. I believe homosexuality is wrong and preach such. I believe that because the Bible says so (Romans 1). I also believe that one has to go to God through Jesus Christ and not other ways. That may hurt your feelings because you have been told otherwise or believe otherwise, but I cannot change basic beliefs in order to not hurt your feelings.

But, on the other hand, I also have the obligation to be Christian about it all. In Matthew 23, Jesus came down hard on some people who had been abusing the power of God and his word for their own ends. There were other times when Jesus showed his mettle at such things. But in general, he was gentle about things people did wrong.

In light of his character shown in Matthew 23, Jesus would never have stepped aside and been quiet when wrong things were preached and taught. After all, he was from God and had come to bring people back to God. He couldn’t do that while being “sensitive” to other people’s belief structures. But I also do not believe he would have condoned in-your-face attitudes.

For what it is worth, in Acts 19, people who had become Christians got together and publicly burned their books on sorcery, and it gave the value as being considerable. However, they burned their own books and not someone else’s.

Third, this was blown totally out of proportion by a news media and internet always searching for the next big thing. That is the problem with our instant age. A man in south Florida who is pastor of a tiny church can make millions of people mad in a country 6000 miles away. Ten years ago, he would have done this and a few newspapers might have reported it and that would be all. Now he is given a world stage from which to preach.

And within the past few years, the Muslims have shown themselves to be increasingly intolerant of anything other than what they want. And the more we give in to their push, the more they push. The whole culture has become psychopathic insisting on its own way. And the world is suffering because of it.

They can burn Bibles, they can persecute Christians, raping and killing, as has been on many news reports lately. But if a 30 member church in south Florida burns some Korans, they go ballistic.

Everybody goes ballistic. Even the pope comes in on this. I really believe the pastor of that church had no idea he would ever generate this kind of firestorm. And he will probably suffer in the long run for it.

All because a 24 hour news media needed something to feed the fire of their news reports.

The whole thing was stupid on all sides.

mistaking cultural conditioning for biblical teaching

I read somewhere recently that Americans frequently mistake cultural conditioning for Biblical teaching.

That is true. Of course, it is hard to imagine cultures other than your own and you live in yours. You not only live in it, you are immersed in it. You think it is normal to do what you do.

For instance, we eat three meals a day in America. That is not the case in a lot of countries. Nor is it the case in much of history. It is only relatively recently that people did that.

However, if we do not get our “three hots and a cot” we get all worried. Things are out of whack and it bothers us.

The same with how we view things.

Alcohol was not viewed as a sin until in the latter part of the 19th century with the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. Prohibition came out of that and a lot of “biblical teaching” that many times was not true.

In Jesus’ day, alcohol consumption was common. The water was bad and the only way to drink it was to cut it with wine so that the alcohol killed the bacteria. Jesus himself was called a wine-bibber and the apostles were accused of being drunk. Neither denied the consumption of wine, just the charge of excess.

Much of our whole way of looking at things is based on our culture. And there is nothing wrong with that.

After all,  this is where we live.

On the other hand, other cultures are not perfect either. Public nudity is common in Europe, but that doesn’t make public nudity right. Many Muslim cultures feel honor killings – the killing of a girl because she will not obey her parents or her husband – is fine, but that is a reprehensible custom. Some of the Indian cultures in North America viewed hospitality as the lending of one’s wife to a visitor for the night. Obviously I would not care for that, in addition to the fact that adultery is always wrong.

The same with a lot of other cultures.

The thing is, because a culture has a certain custom does not make the custom right or wrong. And you cannot preach that custom, no matter how good it may be, as Christian. Biblical teaching is based on the Bible, not on what we want.

That is a mistake that many missionaries have made in the past: trying to get the “natives” to become more American in their viewpoint instead of biblical.

The word of God is a flexible, one size fits all document made to fit any culture, no matter who diverse from any other it may be. There are immutable rights and wrongs, but there is also a lot of gray area.

The Lord is God and his word is great. Remember that when you try to make others fit your idea of God.

More later.