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Literary Compositions

Before I get to this post, I want to give some updates.  A few of you wrote me about my hint at going to Israel.  I’m sorry, but I’ve postponed that at this time because of some personal reasons.  It might still happen in the future and I’ll keep you informed.  I’ve got a few series going on here, and I’m going to keep all of them going hopefully.  I will, Lord-willing come back with the second part of the review of Van Bruggen’s booklet.  I am continuing the adult children series, relationship series, the weekend Europe trip travelogue, the Frank Turk debate, and anything else.  I plan on putting everything onto the index that isn’t there yet, what has been written since I completed it.  I want to write a post on the Jordan Peterson speech I heard in San Francisco, as well as a bit of take on his book, which I’ve read.  Thanks for sticking with it.

Any one of us need to be open to the reality of personal pride.  Are we proud people?  How could a humble person say, “No”?  The meaning of humility has changed though.  Being humble no longer means what it once did.  Neither does love and other biblical words, but humility has now morphed into something that doesn’t mean humility.  The word “humility” is used as a weapon by unbelievers and by those who call themselves Christians, but it’s not actual humility, and I’m going to explain.

First though, humility itself is good.  Scripture teaches humility.  We should encourage it.  In the King James Version, “humble” is used 25 times, “humbled,” 28, “humility,” 7, and all the other forms of the word in English combined, 11.  The Greek word translated “humble” is also translated “lowly,” so there are all those instances as well.   The concept is described also in different other ways, like “poor in spirit” in Matthew 5:3 and then what Paul writes in Philippians 2:3, esteeming others better than ourselves.

Humility is required for salvation.  God gives grace to the humble, not the proud.  Someone must humble himself before God to be saved.  This is the idea of ‘humble yourself and you’ll be exalted and exalt yourself and you’ll be abased.’  You can’t come to God on your own terms.  You’ve got to subject yourself to Him in humility.  This is the thought behind Jesus saying that if you are to come to Him, you’ve got to deny yourself.  Self-denial is humility.

So how is humility being perverted?  A common idea today — it isn’t true — about humility is that it is some degree of doubt, uncertainty, capitulation, or tolerance.  This has become the new humility.  What is ironic about the perversion of humility is how certain the new humble are that you are proud if you are not their new kind of humble.  They were never more sure that you are proud.  Why?  Because you are so certain that someone is wrong.

Doubt becomes a necessity for someone who wants to live like he wants to live.  He can’t be judged as wrong anymore, so he’s at liberty to do what he wants to do.  He doesn’t want the one judging him to be sure.  If that person is sure, it’s because that person is unreasonable, not open, or he is proud.  He isn’t being humble or gracious, that is, to see it in more than one way.  Any one who doesn’t allow for more than one way is being proud, and this is how humility takes on a new definition.

In reality, humility is submitting to what God says, living by faith.  God says He is clear, so He is.  What He says is plain, because He says it is plain.  Doubt is actually a proud excuse.  This confidence isn’t focusing inward, but upward.  God says it, so I’m going to do it.  If someone else isn’t doing it, I’m going to say what God wants me to say.

What I’ve read about this apostatizing of humility has been called “espistemological humility.”  It is another form of calling good evil and evil good (Isaiah 5:20).  Epistemology is basically how one knows what he knows.  How do we know what we know?  Faith is attacked.  Certainty is opposed.  This is bad, but it is called good in a kind of counterfeit fashion.  The real humility is replaced by this faux humility, which is actually pride.

God resists the proud, gives grace to the humble.  He doesn’t give grace to the counterfeit humble or the faux humble.  That’s actually pride.  It’s somebody who doesn’t want to do what God wants him to do and he doesn’t want to hear about it.  That’s pride.

In Ephesians 5:11, God says through the Apostle Paul, “And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them.”  Reprove what?  How can anyone know with certainty what is an unfruitful work of darkness?  That sounds too ambiguous.  Who would be so proud to reprove someone?  Humility would leave it alone — too much doubt.  Don’t be fooled by this.  This is apostatizing humility.

Somebody wants to do what he wants to do.  The person who tells him to change — that is the proud person.  Why?  He can’t know it’s wrong.  He’s got to be more humble about not knowing what’s wrong.  He’s got to have doubt, because that would be humble.  The pride is someone not wanting to change, not humbling himself under the teaching of scripture, but that is absolutely switched around.

Earlier in Ephesians 5, Paul mentions stuff that he wants reproved:  fornication, uncleanness, covetousness, filthiness, foolish talking, and jesting.  What are those?  Can we be sure?  If Paul wants those to be reproved, of course we can be certain what they are.  I know that people behave like they don’t know and they want their critics not to know either.  It makes it easier for them.  And then they get angry if someone comes at them with certainty.  They call it pride.  It’s actually humility.  The pride is calling it pride.  It is humility to obey God when he says something.

Epistemological humility is not humility.  It is unbelief.  Without faith it is impossible to please God.  God is not being pleased by this faithlessness.  It should not be expected from either party — the one criticizing or the one being criticized.  God wants us living like we know and can apply what He said — because we can.

God has given mankind a lot of liberty.  A list of non-scriptural issues is a much longer one than a list of scriptural ones.  Given enough time, I might be able to write a list in length past the distance to the moon of non-scriptural activities.

What kind of furniture polish do you use?  Do you hang landscape art instead of portrait?  What fruit variety do you add to your oatmeal?  What is the thread count of your sheets?  What type of allergy medication do you use?  Where do you take a walk?  What variety of pet do you own? What brand of car do you drive?  Is your yard grass or turf?  Do you like Target or Walmart more?  You get what I’m talking about.  However, when we either on purpose or incidentally veer into a scriptural issue, it must be what and how God says.  We don’t have options there.  We’ve got to do what God says.  We don’t have liberty on scriptural issues.

What has happened today is that scriptural issues have been shoved over into the non-scriptural category to give liberty to do what people want in scriptural issues.  This is actually sinning.  People are sinning, but they aren’t calling it sinning because they have shifted scriptural issues into non-scriptural ones.  This is the shell game being played with God.

A shell game is a lie.  It says something is there that is not.  It’s a con.  A shell game can fool people, but it can’t fool God.  It doesn’t and it won’t.  When I say it won’t, I mean at the final judgment.  God will announce in essence that it didn’t work, and there won’t be anything to say.  Living by faith requires projecting one’s self to that moment and understanding that God already makes that judgment.  The scriptural issue stays a scriptural issue, even when the shell game is being played.  God knows.

What’s the point of this shell game?  Someone doesn’t like Christianity, the one and only Christianity — in other words, what’s taught in scripture and so the practice of historical Christianity.   He’s got to move the shells around and replace the real thing with something different.  Scriptural issues are turned into non-scriptural issues.  To do this, you’ve also got to pervert the meaning of scripture.  You get a new Christianity, but not really, because it’s just playing a shell game.

Why not leave Christianity, rather than invent a new one, that’s just an empty shell?  I understand how that someone could try to bridge Christianity to something incompatible with it.  They know Christianity is true, that it is the right explanation for the world, but they also want fleshly lust and the world system.

Fleshly Lust

When someone is saved, he still possesses the flesh, an aspect of human fallenness that will be eliminated in the future when he is glorified.  Paul refers to this as the presence of sin or the law of sin in his members or body parts.  The Apostle Peter refers to “fleshly lusts” in 1 Peter 2:11, when he writes:

Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul.

“Fleshly lusts” war against the soul.  They contradict the soul of a person.  They are desires of someone that war against what God ordains.  These include all forms of rock music, lewd entertainment, immodest dress, alcohol, and foul language.  These are what are shifted like a shell game to the non-scriptural to form an acceptable Christianity to conform to the fleshly lust.  It’s not true, but it is the goal of this game.

The World

John says, whoever loves the world, the love of the Father is not in Him.  There is not a Christianity that conforms to the world, but the shell game Christianity does.  It’s a pop Christianity that accepts worldliness.  Unscriptural issues are classified as non-scriptural ones to keep the world — worldly entertainment, worldly music, worldly activities, worldly friends, an essentially worldly life.

A new Christianity that corresponds to fleshly lust and conforms to the world isn’t Christianity.  It’s just a shell.

The content of this post is now available in the study of:

1.) Evan Roberts

2.) The Welsh Revival of 1904-1905

3.) Jessie Penn-Lewis

on the faithsaves.net website. Please click on the people above to view the study.  On the FaithSaves website the PDF files may be easiest to read.

You are also encouraged to learn more about Keswick theology and its errors, as well as the Biblical doctrine of salvation, at the soteriology page at Faithsaves.

Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four

According to God, relationship on earth is hierarchical, which is why all the teaching in Ephesians 5 and 6 on relationship corresponds to submitting to the Holy Spirit.  Peter said, obey God rather than men (Acts 5:29).  If submission in a relationship means disobedience to God, then we shouldn’t do it.  That severs relationships.  The relationship with God is the one that must be maintained.  Every other relationship is subservient to that one, which is where enters the following teaching of the Lord Jesus in the gospels:

In the Sermon on the Mount, in part as an antidote for a heinous, diseased practice of the Pharisees to compare themselves with others, Jesus said (Matthew 5:48):

Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.

For we dare not make ourselves of the number, or compare ourselves with some that commend themselves: but they measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves among themselves, are not wise.

The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican.

Part One, Part Two, Part Three

Some parents, after having poured heart and soul into children for eighteen to twenty-two years, especially now see them falter as adults.  They are told by many, if not most, close to all, that nothing can be done about it.  They should negotiate a surrender where maybe they can split differences and straddle the huge gap that exists.  These are after all, adults.  Furthermore, part of good negotiation with adults is to allow them to make their own choices, because if you do, the consequential good will might entitle you to some select bouts of instruction to nudge both sides closer.   Problem:  this strategy isn’t in the Bible.

Parents of adult children can let the non-scriptural belief and practice go.  That’s okay.  It’s something Christians can and should do with anyone.  Adult children can be released from the non-scriptural requirements of their childhood.  However, unscriptural positions and behavior can’t be tolerated, shouldn’t be.

Scripture does guide toward “letting things go”. . . . for unbelievers.  Jesus talked about the dusting of one’s feet of an unbelieving village.  He said not to sow pearls before swine.  Swine are not believers in that picture.  Jesus began speaking in parables so that unbelievers would not be further hardened.  That is a method of letting an unbeliever go.  I agree in a stopping point of preaching to an unbeliever.  In most instances, I give an unbeliever one shot and then I move on.  The unbeliever makes this clear.  “Stop talking to me.”  If he could put it another way:  “I don’t want to hear the truth anymore, because I’m settled in my lifestyle or life’s path.”  At that point in time a parent would be judging himself to have an unsaved adult child.

When I let go of an unbeliever, that’s not a good moment for the unbeliever.  At the moment he’s being let go, that might be finality for him.  He’s done for.  His next stop might be hell, likely is.  People who want to be let go probably don’t know what they’re asking for, and I wish they knew.

God calls the letting people go, “turning them over.”  At the time to the unbeliever, it feels like a privilege, something to rationalize as a good thing.  Adult children may think things have gotten better for them with their parents, because they don’t feel their parents looking over their shoulder and the relationship has improved, when in fact it’s just that the parents have put adult children into the unbeliever category, and turned them over.  Their delight unfettered in fleshly lust is actually a parent who has given up on them like God does with unbelievers.  Friends and sometimes relatives celebrate with and for this child.  It’s a hellish, nightmarish moment, viewed as splendid.

I was talking to a sibling of the adult child of a very prominent, godly pastor.  His church is well known.  His son is an atheist.  I understand not confronting that child any more on a regular basis.  I wouldn’t give up, but attempts at reconciliation would be diminished exponentially.

As long as there is the indication that one is dealing with a believing adult child, the truth should be told.  Believers respond favorably to the truth.  They don’t say, stop telling me that.  Even if they don’t want it at the moment, the truth will work to a desired end.  Telling the truth is what Jesus did.  It is what all the epistles teach, the position of the apostles.  If one stops telling someone the truth, he is admitting that he’s probably got an unbeliever now on his hands.  It isn’t loving to stop telling someone the truth if he is a believer.  Jesus said the truth is the basis for sanctification (John 17:17) and it is what sets someone free from what is nasty in his life (John 8:32).

The conflict in the short term with an adult child is worth it.  I’m saying that based upon scripture.  The battle, the clash, and the tension are painful.  “Endure hardness as a good soldier,” Paul reminded.  Spiritual warfare is warfare.  No one says war is pretty.  The northern general, William Tecumseh Sherman, said, “War is hell.”

Noah’s Adult Children

When Noah and his family exited the ark, they met complete devastation, billions of deaths and a world physically torn to bits.  As life started in the aftermath of that, God points out what was significant to Him.  Not much material is included from the beginning of the post-flood era in which we still live today, but all of what God could address, He accosted an adult sons’ treatment of his father.

In Genesis 9, Noah got drunk and naked in a shameful way.  The passage focuses on two disparate reactions from one son and then the other two in verses 22-23:

22  Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brethren without. 23 And Shem and Japheth took a garment, and laid it upon both their shoulders, and went backward, and covered the nakedness of their father; and their faces were backward, and they saw not their father’s nakedness.

“Saw,” the original use of that term, implies that Ham gazed on his father without his modesty or without dignity, without the covering that provides a boundary for fallen human relationships, with some measure of delight.  He found some pleasure, some delight in his father’s shame and in his father’s dishonor.  This is the attitude of a rebellious son, something of glee and satisfaction because somebody respected and revered and honored falls.

The passage doesn’t explain Ham’s problem with his dad, but as one works one’s way through scripture, backed then also by personal experience, Bible students would know that sons can develop resentment toward fathers for varied reasons.  A father restricts his son, says “no,” doesn’t allow him to have his way.   Ham was cooped up with his dad in a small space.  For years, he had been overseen in building the ark in the first place, hard labor with parental scrutiny.  Noah was a righteous man, not sinlessly perfect, but righteous.  Ham would have been about 100 years old at the time of this post-flood event.

When Noah got drunk and then took his clothes off in an uninhibited way in fitting with the influence of alcohol, Genesis doesn’t record his having taken responsibility for the deed.  It doesn’t mean that he didn’t.  The emphasis of the passage is the deed of Ham, his disrespect, and then the punishment skipping to the unbelieving grandson, which would have been harsh chastisement for Ham, to see what he lost and to live with that regret.

Noah’s example didn’t take away responsibility from Ham.  Children aren’t going to see perfection from their parents and this doesn’t excuse their own negative emotions.  They don’t inherit the victim card and embrace entitlement, whether real or imagined.  I would assess most to be imagined.  It’s easy for anyone to feel sorry for his first world problems, essentially his feelings hurt because he was confronted for a wrong doing.  He slouched in his chair and dad told him to sit up in front of his friends.  He can’t let it go, and now he justifies continued childish or boorish behavior because of his experience.  Children often take a myopic view of their lives, shrinking the world down to the inside of a barrel, so that everything looks like the barrel.

As a further insult, Ham went outside and told his two brothers, which is the ugly sin of ridicule or the further sin of disrespect. He should have covered his father, protecting him, but instead, he recruited his other brothers to join in the ridicule. This was an attitude of disdain, an unloving attitude in contrast to love covering.  Disdain or bitterness or animosity exposes it.  Love doesn’t want to think evil or bear evil tales. Resentment does. Ham had resentment for his father, which is a serious breach of the later fifth commandment, honor your father and your mother.

One commentator says that Ham desecrated a natural and sacred barrier. His going out to tell his brothers about it and without covering his dad aggravated the act, because of this breach of propriety.  Men care about honoring their father.  Ham dishonored his father, and God then brought shame into his family.

This is placed in sharp contrast to the other sons, as seen in verse 23.  They had an appropriate sense of shame. They would find no pleasure in their father’s indiscretion. This shows what kind of sons they were.  They loved their father and they showed respect for him. They put a garment over their shoulders and they backed in, covered him, and refused to be a part of Ham’s disrespect.  They rebuke Ham by their behavior.

How serious was the disrespect of Ham to God?  God cursed his son, Canaan, and we know what that meant?  The Canaanites were annihilated from the earth.  The people reading Genesis first were preparing to enter the land and they would obey God by killing the Canaanites.  The Old Testament traces the demise and destruction of Canaan.  Hid descendants were obliterated and it is tied into this event.  This provides a requirement for an adult son toward his father and offers a loving warning from God.

The story reminds me of the Old Testament proverb (Proverbs 30:17):

The eye that mocketh at his father, and despiseth to obey his mother, the ravens of the valley shall pick it out, and the young eagles shall eat it.

Part One, Part Two

Even those with a casual knowledge of scripture very often know Romans 1.  Beginning in verse 18 to the end of that chapter, the content follows that men sin as a lifestyle, not because they lack in knowledge, but because of rebellion against that knowledge of God.  They know God, but they choose their lust.  God judges them by turning them over to their own desires, and they are in the end worthy of His wrath.  They choose not to retain God in their knowledge and God turns them over to a reprobate mind (Romans 1:28).  Paul lists the characteristic things that they do, things which are not proper, not fitting with God’s expectations for the world and for the humanity that He created.

Get this.  The end of the description of the lifestyle of those who do not retain God in their knowledge, who are turned over to a reprobate mind, says (Romans 1:32):  “they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.”  Please pay attention.  “They which commit” is present tense, committing as a lifestyle or commit as a habit.  However, those who choose to keep committing these things “are worthy of death.”  It is not just those who do these things as a lifestyle, but those who have pleasure in those who do them.  Someone doesn’t even have to do them, just have pleasure in others who do them.

Since this series is about “adult children,” I will talk about just one of the characteristics, but this is one of them, and in verse 30, “disobedient to parents.”  This isn’t talking about children disobeying their parents.  These are people who choose not retain God in their knowledge.  That isn’t describing children.  These are people who have settled in this.

The Greek word “disobedient” in Romans 1:30 is apeithes, which means literally, “not be persuaded by.”  The portrayal here is an adult child, who has been taught scripture by his parents, and willfully rejects what they are teaching.  Some adult children act, and with the agreement of other adults, like this is part of what it means to be an adult, to depart from what your parents taught you as a child.

The same Greek word is used in John 3:36 and translated in the King James Version, “believeth not,” as in “believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him.”  The Greek work conveys obstinate rejection of the will of God.  Disobedience is equated with unbelief.  Haldane in his Exposition on Romans on this particular characteristic writes:

Obedience to parents is here considered as a duty taught by the light of nature, the breach of which condemns the heathens, who had not the fifth commandment written in words. It is a part of the law originally inscribed on the heart, the traces of which are still to be found in the natural love of children to their parents. When the heathens, then, disregarded this duty, they departed from the original constitution of their nature, and disregarded the voice of God in their hearts. 

Barclay in His commentary on Romans writes:

Both Jews and Romans set obedience to parents very high in the scale of virtues. It was one of the Ten Commandments that parents should be honored. In the early days of the Roman Republic, the patria potestas, the father’s power, was so absolute that he had the power of life and death over his family. The reason for including this sin here is that, once the bonds of the family are loosened, wholesale degeneracy must necessarily follow.

Albert Barnes in his commentary on Romans writes:

This expresses the idea that they did not show to parents that honor, respect, and attention which was due. This has been a crime of paganism in every age; and though among the Romans the duty of honoring parents was enjoined by the laws, yet it is not improbable that the duty was often violated, and that parents were treated with great neglect and even contempt. “Disobedience to parents was punished by the Jewish Law with death, and with the Hindus it is attended with the loss of the child‘s inheritance. The ancient Greeks considered the neglect of it to be extremely impious, and attended with the most certain effects of divine vengeance. Solon ordered all persons who refused to make due provision for their parents to be punished with infamy, and the same penalty was incurred for personal violence toward them.” Kent‘s Commentaries on American Law, vol. ii. p. 207; compare Virg. AEniad, ix. 283. The feelings of pride and haughtiness would lead to disregard of parents. It might also be felt that to provide for them when aged and infirm was a burden; and hence, there would arise disregard for their wants, and probably open opposition to their wishes, as being the demands of petulance and age. It has been one characteristic of paganism every where, that it leaves children to treat their parents with neglect. Among the Sandwich islanders it was customary, when a parent was old, infirm, and sick beyond the hope of recovery, for his own children to bury him alive; and it has been the common custom in India for children to leave their aged parents to perish on the banks of the Ganges.

“Disobedience to parents” is no incidental thing.  Paul writes that the person who chooses this deserves death.  Later Paul writes in 2 Timothy 3:2 the exact same expression to describe apostates in last days, “disobedient to parents.”  It is the same Greek words.  Concerning these in 2 Timothy 3:4, Paul writes:

Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.

Whatever godliness they have is just a form of godliness, and the right thing to do with this person or these people is to turn away from them.

For a moment, take the teaching about “disobedience to parents” into consideration.  While an adult child disobeys his parents, that is, he rejects the scriptural teaching of His parents, turns away from their instruction from the Bible, he is accepting something else.  What is it?  What is so attractive in the world that would have him do this?  2 Timothy 3:6 says they are “led away with divers lusts.”  This is not worshiping the Creator, but worshiping the creature (Romans 1:25).

The God, the one and only true God, Who created the world, designed and created parents, and in the natural order of God is for a child to follow in his parents’ teachings.  In this, I’m not proposing that children disobey scripture, but to follow in the scriptural instruction of his parents.  It must be some clear, plain actual disobedience to scripture that would contradict the instruction of the parents.  When children have been taught the way they should go, when they are adult children, they should not depart from it, that is, they should not be “disobedient to parents.”

More to Come

I’m stepping on my Monday post with this, so I implore you read that one, and the one I posted Saturday night both.  Don’t miss those to get to this one.

This Thursday night, my wife and I will be going with two others to see and hear Jordan Peterson in San Francisco.  It is an event sponsored by the Independent Institute.  In preparation and anticipation of that event, I have been reading Peterson’s 12 Rules For Life:  An Antidote to Chaos.  I’ve brought up Peterson’s name to various ones in recent days, and some will say something like, ‘oh yes, I really like Peterson,’ even though they don’t like rules.  Peterson’s book is 12 rules.  Rules.  Some of the same ones would say ‘no on rules’.

I’ve heard or watched Peterson in podcasts, interviews, and videos, and I have a pretty good handle on a lot of what he thinks, and I’m saying the following quote comes from a pivotal part of his thinking within his book.  In that very important part of his book, Peterson writes this paragraph about a father and a son in their relationship.  I’m typing this whole paragraph verbatim (p. 192):

If a father disciplines his son properly, he obviously interferes with his freedom, particularly in the here-and-now.  He puts limits on the voluntary expression of his son’s Being* (look below for Peterson’s definition of “Being”), forcing him to take his place as a socialized member of the world.  Such a father requires that all that childish potential be funneled down a single pathway (italics mine, not Peterson’s).  In placing such limitations on his son, he might be considered a destructive force, acting as he does to replace the miraculous plurality of childhood with a single narrow actuality.  But if the father does not take such action, he merely lets his son remain Peter Pan, the eternal Boy, King of the Lost Boys, Ruler of the non-existent Neverland.  That is not a morally acceptable alternative.

*From earlier footnote from Peterson:  “I use the term Being (with a capital “B”) in part because of my exposure to the ideas of the 20th century German philosopher Martin Heidegger.  Heidegger tried to distinguish between reality, as conceived objectively, and the totality of human experience (which is his “Being”).  Being (with a capital “B”) is what each of us experiences, subjectively, personally and individually, as well as what we each experience jointly with others.”