It’s been a long time since we’ve had a Freedom Friday post here, and this one will barely count.

Warning: crass humor ahead

Gene Veith discovers Why “socialist” gets spam filtered, and proves socialism and all socialists impotent. OK, not really, but I still think it’s funny.

You may have noticed that the new blog header includes the Latin phrase Semper Reformanda. I’d like to offer a few words in explanation. Semper Reformanda means Always Reforming. It appears at the top of this page for two reasons: 1) to create the illusion of intelligence and scholarliness, and 2) to indicate my conviction that the Reformation did not end in the 16th Century.

There is some confusion these days as to what Always Reforming means. Postmodern thinkers (forgive the oxymoron) scoff at us who use the phrase. They opine that no one who holds settled opinions can claim to still be reforming. Allowing for reformation means, to them, throwing all conclusions to the wind and leaving everything open to question and doubt. The Always Reforming should be ever adapting, always uncertain.

But Always Reforming does not mean always changing, or being open to change in all things. It means continually moving from where we are towards the place we ought to be. 1 Corinthians 13 tells us, “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known.” One day we will have perfect understanding of God’s revelation; until then, we progress toward it.

The following illustration shows what that should look like, with each of us beginning at various positions of ignorance and moving, by way of God’s revealed truth — Scripture — towards understanding.

That’s what Always Reforming should look like. In reality, when our humanity is thrown into it, it looks more like the colored lines in the following illustration.

In hindsight, I would have to confess that those colored lines are much too straight to represent my own experience. Be that as it may, Always Reforming absolutely never looks like this:

Always Reforming is not “always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth” (2 Timothy 3).

The final illustration of yesterday’s post was inspired by memories of a time when I was foolish enough to argue with postmoderns. No other endeavor could be more frustrating in its futility. I cannot recall any of those discussions without the phrase “What is truth?” jumping up and down in my head like a three-year-old on a sugar high. That’s what I get for arguing with three-year-olds, I guess. Anyway, I’ve come to a conclusion about these people, and it goes, in its kindest, gentlest form, like this:

“What is truth?” is an insincere, lying question. Everyone knows what truth is. We may not know what is true — everyone knows some truth (Romans 2:14–15), and none of us know all truth (1 Corinthians 13:12) — but we know what truth is.

“What is truth?” is nothing less than the retort of rebels against truths, particular or general, and anyone — God, ultimately — who would impose truth claims on them. It is the evasion of Pilate (John 18:37–38). Rather than dealing directly with the truth, it challenges the existence of truth itself. While the serpent asked, “Did God say?” the rebel against truth asks, “What is God?”

Therefore, “What is truth?” is not a question worthy of consideration. Those who ask do not deserve the respect of an answer, and they know it. They are of their father, and he is the father of lies (John 8:44).

’Tis the season for doing as little as possible, and recycling what’s already done. Call it “regifting.” Here are a few ghosts of Christmas past:

• Something we don’t do at Christmas,
• Something we do, and
• Some songs I like (and if you missed it a couple weeks ago, some I don’t).

Bonus!

I was glad when they said to me, “Let us go to the house of the Lord.”

Hymn XLV.
Pleading for mercy. Psalm vi.
John Newton (1725–1807)

In mercy, not in wrath, rebuke
   Thy feeble worm, my God!
My spirit dreads thine angry look,
   And trembles at thy rod.

Have mercy, Lord, for I am weak,
   Regard my heavy grones;
O let thy voice of comfort speak,
   And heal my broken bones!

By day my busy beating head
   Is fill’d with anxious fears;
By night, upon my restless bed,
   I weep a flood of tears.

Thus I sit desolate and mourn,
   Mine eyes grow dull with grief;
How long, my Lord, ere thou return,
   And bring my soul relief?

O come and show thy pow’r to save,
   And spare my fainting breath;
For who can praise thee in the grave,
   Or sing thy name in death?

Satan, my cruel envious foe,
   Insults me in my pain;
He smiles to see me brought so low,
   And tells me hope is vain,

But hence, thou enemy, depart!
   Nor tempt me to despair;
My Saviour comes to cheer my heart,
   The Lord has heard my prayer.

—from Olney Hymns. Book I: On select Passages of Scripture.

The Gospel According to John

16 These things I have spoken to you so that you may be kept from stumbling. 2 They will make you outcasts from the synagogue, but an hour is coming for everyone who kills you to think that he is offering service to God. 3 These things they will do because they have not known the Father or Me. 4 But these things I have spoken to you, so that when their hour comes, you may remember that I told you of them These things I did not say to you at the beginning, because I was with you.
   5 “But now I am going to Him who sent Me; and none of you asks Me, ‘Where are You going?’ 6 But because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your heart. 7 But I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I go, I will send Him to you.”

   The opening verses of this chapter contain three important utterances of Christ, which deserve our special attention.
   For one thing, we find our Lord delivering a remarkable prophecy. He tells His disciples that they will be cast out of the Jewish Church, and persecuted even to the death:—“They shall put you out of the synagogues: yea, the time cometh, that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God service.”
   How strange that seems at first sight! Excommunication, suffering, and death, are the portion that the Prince of Peace predicts to His disciples. So far from receiving them and their message with gratitude, the world would hate them, despitefully use them, and put them to death. And, worst of all, their persecutors would actually persuade themselves that it was right to persecute, and would inflict the cruelest injuries in the sacred name of religion.
   How true the prediction has turned out! Like every other prophecy of Scripture, it has been fulfilled to the very letter. The Acts of the Apostles show us how the unbelieving Jews persecuted the early Christians. The pages of history tell us what horrible crimes have been committed by the Popish Inquisition. The annals of our own country inform us how our holy Reformers were burned at the stake for their religion, by men who professed to do all they did from zeal for pure Christianity. Unlikely and incredible as it might seem at the time, the great Prophet of the Church has been found in this, as in everything else, to have predicted nothing but literal truth.
   Let it never surprise us to hear of true Christians being persecuted, in one way or another, even in our own day. Human nature never changes. Grace is never really popular. The quantity of persecution which God’s children have to suffer in every rank of life, even now, if they confess their Master, is far greater than the thoughtless world supposes. They only know it who go through it, at school, at college, in the counting-house, in the barracks-room, on board the ship. Those words shall always be found true: “All that will live godly in Christ Jesus, shall suffer persecution.” (2 Tim. iii. 12.)
   Let us never forget that religious earnestness alone is no proof that a man is a sound Christian. Not all zeal is right: it may be a zeal without knowledge. No one is so mischievous as a blundering, ignorant zealot. Not all earnestness is trustworthy: without the leading of God’s Spirit, it may lead a man so far astray, that, like Saul, he will persecute Christ himself. Some bigots imagine they are doing God service, when they are actually fighting against His truth, and trampling on His people. Let us pray that we may have light as well as zeal.
   For another thing, we find our Lord explaining His special reason for delivering the prophecy just referred to, as well as all His discourse. “These things,” He says, “I have spoken unto you, that ye should not be offended.”
   Well did our Lord know that nothing is so dangerous to our comfort as to indulge false expectations. He therefore prepared His disciples for what they must expect to meet with in His service. Forewarned, forearmed! They must not look for a smooth course and a peaceful journey. They must make up their minds to battles, conflicts, wounds, opposition, persecution, and perhaps even death. Like a wise general, He did not conceal from His soldiers the nature of the campaign they were beginning. He told them all that was before them, in faithfulness and love, that when the time of trial came, they might remember His words, and not be disappointed and offended. He wisely forewarned them that the cross was the way to the crown.
   To count the cost is one of the first duties that ought to be pressed on Christians in every age. It is no kindness to young beginners to paint the service of Christ in false colors, and to keep back from them the old truth, “Through much tribulation we must enter the kingdom of God.” By prophesying smooth things, and crying “Peace,” we may easily fill the ranks of Christ’s army with professing soldiers. But they are just the soldiers, who, like the stony-ground hearers, in time of tribulation will fall away, and turn back in the day of battle.
   No Christian is in a healthy state of mind who is not prepared for trouble and persecution. He that expects to cross the troubled waters of this world, and to reach heaven with wind and tide always in his favor, knows nothing yet as he ought to know. We never can tell what is before us in life. But of one thing we may be very sure—we must carry the cross if we would wear the crown. Let us grasp this principle firmly, and never forget it. Then, when the hour of trial comes, we shall “not be offended.”
   In the last place, we find our Lord giving a special reason why it was expedient for Him to go away from His disciples. “If I do not go away,” He says, “the Comforter will not come unto you.”
   We can well suppose that our gracious Lord saw the minds of His disciples crushed at the idea of His leaving them. Little as they realized His full meaning, on this, as well as on other occasions, they evidently had a vague notion that they were about to be left, like orphans, in a cold and unkind world, by their Almighty Friend. Their hearts quailed and shrunk back at the thought. Most graciously does our Lord cheer them by words of deep and mysterious meaning. He tells those who His departure, however painful it might seem, was not an evil, but a good. They would actually find it was not a loss, but a gain. His bodily absence would be more useful than His presence.
   It is vain to deny that this is a somewhat mysterious saying. It seems at first sight hard to understand how in any sense it could be good that Christ should go away from His disciples. Yet a little reflection may show us that, like our Lord’s sayings, this remarkable utterance was wise, and right, and true. The following points, at any rate, deserve attentive consideration.
   If Christ had not died, risen again, and ascended up into heaven, it is plain that the Holy Ghost could not have come down with special power on the day of Pentecost, and bestowed His manifold gifts on the Church. Mysterious as it may be, there was a connection in the eternal counsels of God, between the ascension of Christ and the outpouring of the Spirit.
   If Christ had remained bodily with the disciples, He could not have been in more places than one at the same time. The presence of the Spirit whom He sent down, would fill every place where believers were assembled in His name, in every part of the world.
   If Christ had remained upon earth, and not gone up into heaven, He could not have become a High Priest for His people in the same full and perfect manner that He became after His ascension. He went away to sit down at the right hand of God, and to appear for us, in our human nature glorified, as our Advocate with the Father.
   Finally, if Christ had always remained bodily with His disciples, there would have been far less room for the exercise of their faith and hope and trust, than there was when He went away. Their graces would not have been called into such active exercise, and they would have had less opportunity of glorifying God, and exhibiting His power in the world.
   After all, there remains the broad fact that after the Lord Jesus went away, and the Comforter came down on the day of Pentecost, the religion of the disciples became a new thing altogether. The growth of their knowledge, and faith, and hope, and zeal, and courage, was so remarkable, that they were twice the men they were before. They did far more for Christ when He was absent, than they had ever done when He was present. What stronger proof can we require that it was expedient for those who their Master should go away!
   Let us leave the whole subject with a deep conviction that it is not the bodily presence of Christ in the midst of us, so much as the presence of the Holy Ghost in our hearts, that is essential to a high standard of Christianity. What we should all desire and long for is not Christ’s body literally touched with our hands and received into our mouths, but Christ dwelling spiritually in our hearts by the grace of the Holy Ghost.

—J. C. Ryle, Expository Thoughts on the Gospels (Baker Books, 2007) [Westminster (PB) | Amazon (HC)].

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Most of us are still in holiday mode, and will be, to some extent, through New Year’s Day (or even Epiphany, for church calendar devotees). However, I’ve had a couple of non-holidayish thoughts this morning that I might as well dump here.

1. George Bailey is no hero.
   So you give loans to individuals who are not really good risks. Unless you have a good scriptwriter, a good share of them default on their loans. The bright side is that George Bailey’s Building and Loan is way pre-21st Century, so Congress and the President don’t jump to stick the taxpayers with the tab.

2. Aren’t black and white colors?
   I know, black and white are not technically colors, but when we use them to describe people, skin tone is in mind.
   I watched an old episode of Law & Order last week in which a murder was committed to cover the alleged fact that a man who had passed for white was actually black. Notice: I do not say to cover the fact that he had black ancestry, but that he was black. Well, I looked at him and concluded that he was, in fact, white. Yet throughout the program, it was insisted that he was black. Why is that?
   We all know that if a black African marries a fair-skinned, blond Swede, their children will be black, regardless of the fact that one parent fairly glows in the dark. They are actually half black and half white, so why do we call them black? Because of their skin color, of course, and no other reason. In fact, if each of those children, their children, and all successive generations, marry fair-skinned Swedes, it will take a few generations before a white child is born. That child — according to the Law & Order writers, at least — will only be said to “pass” for white.
   Again, why is that? The first generation, a full half white is not merely said to pass as black, but is said to be black. Yet generations later, the child who is white in appearance, and retains only a trace of African blood, is not really white, but only passing?
   My question, the one I really want to ask, is this:

Is this how people — black, white, violet, or turquoise — think? Is there anyone in the real world (Hollywood and Berkeley are not real world places) who thinks like this? And a second question, one of those rhetorical ones of which you are expected to see the answer self-contained: isn’t this just more proof that it’s way past time to drop the language of race and acknowledge that there is but one race, that all of our different ethnicities and cultures are united in one blood?

As Christians — speaking now only to those whose faith rests solely on the Christ of the Bible — it should be so for us. We should recognize only one division among men: the division between those who are united in Christ, and those who are not. Christ came to redeem multitudes from all the peoples of the world, different in many superficial ways, but all sinning sons and daughters of Adam.

Maybe this is Christmasy after all.

In a melancholy mood today, I am. In an attempt to lighten the load, brighten the day, and so on and so forth, I’ve written a light-hearted poem. I hope it cheers you as it did me.

Trudging Inexorably toward Death
(in postmodern metre)

The year is passing
Many things still left undone
Like the year before

January came yesterday
Now it is December
Where the in between-time went
No one can remember

Twenty-ten
Is gone, my frien’

December was cold and got colder
The snow just got bolder and bolder
Day after day
It fell just to say
“I’m not so much fun, now you’re older”

Time
passes like
seconds and minutes
and hours and days
and weeks and months and
years

Are we there yet?
No. go back to sleep.