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If You Lived in Germany Shortly Before and During World War Two, Would You Have Sworn an Oath to Hitler?
A rule I established for my family and me as our children grew up was that we didn’t talk about television or movies in public. I had several scriptural reasons. I also made certain exceptions for myself, almost like the highway patrol that passes the speed limit sometimes. If I talk about a film that doesn’t mean I don’t give it a certain disclaimer nor give my endorsement of the movie industry. I had read about the film, A Hidden Life, from director Terrence Malick, and decided to watch it with my wife here at home in shelter-in-place, which tells the true story of Austrian peasant farmer Franz Jägerstätter. Since I had never heard of it, I would call it a little known story.Jägerstätter grew up somewhat irreligious with a wild reputation, but not after he married a very religious, Roman Catholic woman. His life changed. I don’t believe he was truly converted, an actual biblical Christian. However, his behavior and views reformed based upon his reading the Bible and studying stories of Catholic “saints” (all believers are saints in scripture). Within just a few years, he and his wife, Franziska, bore three daughters.After his marriage, Jägerstätter was instated as a requirement in the German army, trained as a soldier, but allowed to go home as a farmer. In that short experience, he ascertained the doctrines of the Nazis and their purpose of war, and he rejected it. He knew that if drafted, they would require him to take an oath of loyalty to Adolf Hitler.Jägerstätter brooded intensely over what seemed a sure future decision. His entire small, close-knit village in the mountains rejected and persecuted him and his family over his conviction. What impelled him according to his testimony was God and the truth. An oath would make his life a lie.Franz Jägerstätter weighed the probabilities. He would be executed and leave an elderly mother, a wife, and three daughters alone to survive without him. His wife urged him to capitulate. He got an appointment with his bishop, who did not support him, under pressure himself to acquiesce, so he used Romans 13 and Jägerstätter’s responsibilities as a father to persuade him to relent. He wouldn’t.The draft came, Jägerstätter reported, would not take the oath, was imprisoned, sent to Berlin, tortured, and then finally executed at age 36 by guillotine on July 6, 1943 in, as an irony for me, Brandenburg, Germany. His death was not mourned by his village. Over two decades later, only a few knew of his sacrifice for the truth, and his village still maligned him. In 2007 the pope declared him a martyr and then he was beautified as a saint in Roman Catholicism.You know I repudiate Roman Catholicism. I doubt the salvation of Jägerstätter, so why use this story? It presents a scenario I want to shift to those who profess faith in Jesus Christ. As a true Christian, would you like him have refused to swear an oath of loyalty to Hitler? It’s easy to sympathize now and embrace the story with deep empathy. Let’s not be impressed with what you feel and testify of deep feeling and without willingness to really sacrifice.The sacrifice today is just the feeling about the movie, stating that you like the story and feel sorry. You don’t like Hitler. Hitler bad. The Lord Jesus Christ calls for lesser sacrifices that shrink in comparison to Jägerstätter. You won’t sacrifice for your church. Hitler is easy to oppose in almost any environment today. It means almost nothing anymore. You barely to never even preach the gospel. You would rather sacrifice your parents than to give up your sensual, worldly pop music and immodest and androgynous dress. You can’t have the worldly, secular crowd make fun of you, and yet you would profess alliance with Jägerstätter.I wish someone had preached a true gospel to Jägerstätter. His martyrdom won’t save him from sin. However, true Christians have a cause worthy of greater sacrifice. The world doesn’t require an official oath, but it does of sorts. It requires your capitulation, so that you won’t miss any of its superficial rewards, what Paul called wood, hay, and stubble. It’s all going to burn, but you still love it more than you do a true Jesus or the Word of God. Jägerstätter held no illusion that he both could believe what he did and could also make an oath to Hitler, despite the complete rejection of his entire village, including his own priest and bishop.If you can’t even give up your wordly desires and justify them according to a perverted view of the grace of God, don’t tell me that you would die like Jägerstätter did. You already prove that you will throw godly people under the bus to keep your worldly, God-denying and blaspheming, friendships and approval. That is your god. If you had to die for those things, you would give them up too, but you don’t have to. You get their temporal rewards, that will pass away with the lust thereof. It’s much easier to appear woke and sympathetic then to actually sacrifice for the truth.Jägerstätter stood alone. This is what is required even to be a Christian. It’s not give me the world and give me Jesus too. It’s take the world and give me Jesus alone. Jesus said in John 6, labor not for meat that perisheth. That’s a requirement for salvation. You have a choice. No man can serve God and mammon. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.
How Far Does Someone Need to Be “Off” About Jesus for Him Not to Be Jesus Anymore? It Is Not Good or Helpful to Accept or Approve a False Jesus
Is the Mormon Jesus, the Jesus of the Bible? The Moslem Jesus? The Roman Catholic Jesus? The Jewish Jesus? The Charismatic Jesus? Is the evangelical Jesus the biblical one?
There is only one Jesus, the One in scripture. However, the Apostle Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 11:4,
For if he that cometh preacheth another Jesus, whom we have not preached, or if ye receive another spirit, which ye have not received, or another gospel, which ye have not accepted, ye might well bear with him.
Someone may preach “another Jesus,” just like there are other “gods,” according Exodus 20:3, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” John writes in 1 John 2:18,
Little children, it is the last time: and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time.
Antichrists will exist, even as they have through history since actual Jesus Christ. The doctrine of Christ relates to knowing and believing the right Jesus unto which John again writes in 2 John 1:9,
Whosoever transgresseth, and abideth not in the doctrine of Christ, hath not God. He that abideth in the doctrine of Christ, he hath both the Father and the Son.
Just because other Christs were invented in previous ages and in different occasions of time doesn’t mean that more of them will not still come. The false Christ relates to the imagination unto which Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 10:3-5,
3 For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh: 4 (For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds;) 5 Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.
Someone can have a false Christ crafted in his own imagination. A common apostasy is the creation of an idol. The idol doesn’t need to be a physical one, but also can be a spiritual one in someone’s mind. He invents a Christ in his mind and that Christ conforms to himself, just as communicated in the warning of Romans 1:21-23:
Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man.
What are the characteristics of man to which he would turn his god or his Jesus? He would turn God or Jesus into the image of his own lust. He would create a Jesus, who not only tolerates his lust, but accepts false worship characterized by lust, which is against the nature of God or the Lord Jesus Christ. This is “another Christ.”
The perversion of Jesus into another Jesus either adds or takes away from the true Jesus. One commonality of a false Jesus is He might not completely save or cannot do so, requiring then good works to save in addition to what he has done. Many Christian denominations or religions do this. Peter, John, and Paul all three in their epistles deal with what I’m addressing here. John has much in his three epistles and in every chapter.
Just as an example, in 1 John 2:9, John writes:
He that saith he is in the light, and hateth his brother, is in darkness even until now.
The person John describes is either deceptive or deceived. He says he’s in the light. He either knows he’s not or he thinks he is and he doesn’t know that he isn’t. Two verses later (v. 11), John says this person is deceived:
But he that hateth his brother is in darkness, and walketh in darkness, and knoweth not whither he goeth, because that darkness hath blinded his eyes.
This person doesn’t even know that he isn’t walking in the light, because darkness has blinded his eyes. He thinks he’s right and he’s not. Many professing Christians think they are right for various reasons. What I’ve noticed in many of the instances is that they compare themselves with other professing Christians. They must be right, because they know other people who are like them or worse.
Is this above described hate just something arbitrary or ambiguous, just a feeling or impression? Does he detest this person? It’s not like that in verse 10:
He that loveth his brother abideth in the light, and there is none occasion of stumbling in him.
John brings two characteristics. The one who loves his brother abides in the light, that is, he abides in doctrinal and practical light. He is believing and practicing according to scripture. Second, he brings no occasion of stumbling. He doesn’t want to cause a brother to stumble. How does someone cause someone else to stumble? This is not a synonym of not walking in the light. Someone can cause someone to stumble, according to the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 8, by abusing a Christian liberty. Paul said that eating meat offered unto idols caused someone to stumble. Jesus mentions this same cause of stumbling twice in Revelation 2-3 and forbids it both times.
If someone dishonors and disobeys his parents, he is not walking in the light. By dishonoring and disobeying his parents, he could also be causing someone to stumble. Those two can overlap. Paul says that someone hates his brother by not walking in the light and then by causing someone to stumble. This is how someone hates someone.
John says much more in his epistle, but many people are deceived into thinking that have a true Jesus when they don’t. Their Jesus approves of those who don’t walk in the light and those who also cause others to stumble. Jesus is the light of the world. We walk in the light as Jesus is in the light. God is light and in Him is no darkness at all.
I see perpetual disobedience to the Word of Christ, to scripture, by professing Christians, and yet they think they are walking in the light. They are walking in darkness. This is why they have no problem with sensual, worldly, and fleshly worship. It’s not even that their Jesus accepts it. They aren’t thinking about whether He receives it, because they are thinking about what it does for themselves. They are shaping their music according to their own lust, and they think it’s good because they like it. Those singing it look and act like secular performers and their style is one that conforms to the world. This is unacceptable to the Lord (Romans 12:1-2).
If a professing Christian as a practice engages in false worship, is that walking in the light? Is that loving a brother? Is that causing others to stumble?
The only thing worse than a false Jesus to those with a false Jesus is pointing out their false Jesus. They love the Jesus they can conform to themselves, not the one in the Bible.
Self-Love Is the Most Potent Stupid Pill: The Recent Ascent of Self-Love
Scripture does not teach self love. It teaches against self love. If one trait characterizes apostasy (2 Tim 3:1-3), it is self love. When Jesus came to earth, He emptied His self (Philippians 2). At the root of the gospel is self-denial and yet self-love grows today rampant among even professing Christians. I thought perhaps new psychological studies on contemporary narcissism might flatten the curve for self-love into the foreseeable future, but it’s making a comeback like a second wave of Covid-19 with an acceleration of the number of cases.
Importantly, taking charge of our health and well being and proactively loving ourselves by engaging in self-care are radical actions for those of us with marginalized identities, especially in a nation whose leader’s bigotry is self-evident and who seems hell-bent on destroying us.
“Self-care can be described as the practice of taking an active role in taking care of and protecting your own well being and happiness during periods of stress,” Dr. Seely-Jefferson says. “This can involve saying no, prioritizing your own feelings, asking for help, spending time alone, putting yourself first, asking for what you need, setting boundaries, staying at home, forgiving yourself and taking a step back. These are different from the traditional ways we define self-care and are soul-affirming activities that can counter some of the negative insults we get on a daily basis.”
What Is Self-Love?
Self-love is the best love and the ultimate way to boost your self-esteem and become a fully healed and integrated human being. People often come to the idea backward. They look at attributes such as the way that a confident person walks or observe their traits.
But fundamentally, all radical change begins from within. You then start to really value yourself as a powerful creator of your own reality and deserving of love and respect from everybody. Self-love is the opposite of selfishness.
Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others. Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.
It’s not even good for the psyche to do this naval gazing, promoted by false teachers. Millennials especially are fed this poison, a literal stupid pill, because self-love will make you stupid, take the opposite trajectory of wisdom, which comes from above (James 3:15-17). If you can’t explain stupid behavior, many times at the root of it today is self-love. Joyce Marter titles her article, Self-Love Must Come First. Her most fundamental counsel, given in a sub-title, reads:
Self-love is a journey. It takes dedication, devotion, and practice. Resolve to love yourself each and every day and watch your best self blossom and your greatest life unfold! Self-love is an exponential force.
The emergence of social media has created a platform for self-love promotion and mental health awareness in order to end the stigma surrounding mental health and to address self-love positively rather than negatively.
Self-care is a holistic process that we all need in order to foster presence, engagement, wellness, and self-love. Self-care is not a singular skill. Instead, self-care includes a wide variety of tasks tailored to meet your diverse needs. Although there may be similarities between self-care strategies, self-care is subjective and tends to vary from person to person.
Blessed is every one that feareth the LORD; that walketh in his ways. For thou shalt eat the labour of thine hands: happy shalt thou be, and it shall be well with thee.
Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.
I know that calling it a “stupid pill” could be controversial, but the most stupid decisions arise from me-first. God-love results in God honoring decisions that are the best for others and yourself. They bring wisdom, not foolishness. Self-love brings a multiplicity of selfish decisions with mounting stupidity. It is a recipe for disaster for a person and institution.
Baptist Churches and the Spanish Flu, 1918-1920
The government is not the friend of churches. A conspiracy of Satan exists against the church as part of his war against God. I see religious liberty in America disappearing. Is this Covid-19 shelter-in-place, no gatherings above five or ten, a part of the overall plan to stop churches? Or is it spiritually a means by which Satan disrupts the church, the churches and their leaders sending a message that assembling isn’t essential?
Related to this concern for member’s behavior, the church returned to its old custom of having members appear in person “concerning offenses” instead of sending another person to do so. In October 1918 services were called off due to the “Spanish Influenza Situation.”
In October the meetings were held with large attendance. Just then an epidemic of Spanish influenza broke out in the city. Public places were closed, among them the tabernacle. In January 1919, it was reopened and meetings were resumed.
[A]ll the churches in the State were forced on government order to suspend services for a time because of the Spanish influenza epidemic. The McMinnville First Baptist Church conducted no services from October 17 through November 13, 1918 as was the case with other congregations for similar periods of time.
Most of the churches were closed during the epidemic of Spanish Influenza , but in spite of that, a spirit of revival has existed.
Finally, December 22, 1918, “church services resumed after being closed for 11 weeks on account of an epidemic of the Spanish influenza.”
Pray for Power! (Or pray for grace?)
expect God to do what happened with Elijah and suspend the climate over
Israel for three years and then make literal fire come down literally
from heaven (1 Kings 18)? Do we mean a sign miracle, in the sense of the Greek word
semeion? Alternatively, do we mean what Jack Hyles meant when he prayed to his dead mother, the ability to get more people to repeat the “sinner’s prayer” than would have done it without praying for power? Do we mean what Scripture
means by dunamis, exousia, etc.? If we have never studied out what the Greek and Hebrew words the Holy Spirit dictated for power mean or if we don’t care what God means by the words translated power enough to see what He has revealed on the subject, do we even
know what we are asking for when we pray for power? (Note the study here on the differences between the words for “miracle,” some of which are also rendered “power,” which is very important if we are going to say we need to pray for power.)
Testament, preached expositionally through the entire Psalter, and prays
for what the Apostles prayed for, for what Christ told His people to
pray for, but does not specifically pray for “power” because there is
not even one example of that in the NT, be missing “one of the most
basic facts of the Christian life”? Is Scripture sufficient for instruction on how to live the Christian life?
epistle begins with asking God for “grace,” sees that there are actual
commands that relate to this, e. g., “let us have grace, whereby we may
serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear” (Heb 12:28), and so
is utterly dependent upon God for grace, prays for grace, and glories in
God’s grace. However, he does not pray for “power”
because there is not a single example of prayer for it but Scripture
actually says that God’s mighty power is working in all who believe (Eph
1:19) and what we need to pray for us to have our eyes enlightened to
this fact (Eph 1:18). Is it OK to pray for grace and depend upon God’s grace instead of praying for power? (Note that by praying for “grace” we can study Scripture to see exactly what this means in relation to prayer–something we cannot do when praying for “power.”)
8.) If you pray for “power” but have never thought about the questions above–and, even worse, if you don’t care what the Biblical answers are–is the God who inspired the Bible answering your prayer?
The Pharisaism and Sedation of Woke “Christianity”: A Coronavirus to the Church
Former Treatment A Second Former Treatment
The Great Awakening in mid-18th century colonial America, influenced by the biblical preaching of George Whitefield and Jonathan Edwards, led to the American Revolution. Some say we’re now in the Great Awokening with aspirations for a different kind of revolution, perhaps something closer to that of the early 20th century Russian Bolsheviks. In 2018, Andrew Sullivan wrote in the New Yorker:
And so the young adherents of the Great Awokening exhibit the zeal of the Great Awakening. Like early modern Christians, they punish heresy by banishing sinners from society or coercing them to public demonstrations of shame, and provide an avenue for redemption in the form of a thorough public confession of sin. “Social justice” theory requires the admission of white privilege in ways that are strikingly like the admission of original sin. A Christian is born again; an activist gets woke. To the belief in human progress unfolding through history — itself a remnant of Christian eschatology — it adds the Leninist twist of a cadre of heroes who jump-start the revolution.
And religious impulses, once anchored in and tamed by Christianity, find expression in various political cults. These political manifestations of religion are new and crude, as all new cults have to be. They haven’t been experienced and refined and modeled by millennia of practice and thought. They are evolving in real time. And like almost all new cultish impulses, they demand a total and immediate commitment to save the world.
Ghosting is the form of separation for the inclusivists. Anyone who rejects their profanity and corrupt doctrine is toxic. This is how physical kingdoms are brought in. It’s how the revolution succeeds. To Robespierre, one of the fanatics of the French revolution, the purveyor of the guillotine said, “On ne fuit pas d’omelette sans casser des oeufs.” Translated, “You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.” Deep down this is an angry group. You’ve seen them. They like the anonymity of masks, but they’ve got murder in their hearts for those who get in the way of their kingdoms of this world.
You Might Be Settled on God’s Love For You, But What About Your Love for God?
God doesn’t love us by sending on to us His sentimental feelings. That’s not love. He actually loves us, and so does Jesus. Jesus laid down His life. God does things. He provides. He gives. I can keep going, but it’s the length of the whole Bible.
Biblical Considerations of the Covid-19 Pandemic
Many pastors and theologians have provided their counsel, take, admonition, or encouragement on this virus that is sickening and killing people all over the world. I’ve listened to at least four sermons on it, while going about working at home while sheltered-in-place, a terminology I never remember hearing until now. It’s come up in about every one of my sermons since we knew a pandemic had begun. In addition to the offerings of Thomas Ross in the way of a gospel tract, David Warner from our church wrote one (click on the link here). Those are very good and should be utilized, if people will touch them, considering the virus might survive on the surface of the tract for twenty-four hours.
Here are ten typical subjects right now, no offense to anyone. I’ve brought them up too. They are worth meditating upon.
- God is sovereign.
- Everyone’s going to die.
- God is gracious that this isn’t worse.
- God cares for us more than many sparrows.
- All things work together for good for them who love God.
- Sin is the cause of the virus at least as a byproduct.
- We all deserve worse than this outcome.
- We know not what shall be on the morrow.
- Except we repent, we shall all likewise perish.
- It is only by God’s faithfulness that we are not consumed.
Do Separatist, Independent Baptist Churches Believe And Teach Jesus’ Love Must Be Earned?
A known person raised in an separatist, unaffiliated Baptist church in the last few months wrote on social media the following ideas (representative of them with some exact wording), broad brushing these churches as embracing the following doctrine and characteristics. He uses the word “communities” referring to churches. He said in essence:
- Their children were made to believe by their leaders, who he says were abusing them physically, verbally, and emotionally in a traumatic way (how they were made), that Jesus’ love and love in general came at the cost of earning an ever elusive acceptance.
- The people in these said communities have a tendency to take on the personality of their leaders, an unfortunate characteristic.
- It’s difficult to sort through who are the good people and who are the bad people in these communities, but there are apparently a lot of good people, despite these above described conditions.
- These communities contrast with the ones who love people unconditionally and don’t make the love of Jesus to be conditional.
I have never heard these charges about our church ever and we have had plenty of time for people to make or use them. We would have enemies with many opportunities to say these were elements of our belief and practice, but I’ve never heard it. They’ve said other things, but not this. I’ve actually heard the opposite. We’re a discipleship church that doesn’t manipulate anyone, and we love and love and love. I question the love of the one making the statement and would like to see his love credentials, how he loves his parents, his church people, the lost, those he’s discipled, what he’s actually done for them versus the multitudinous things that they have done for him.
Jesus makes people sick and die. He expects church discipline, but He also directly intervenes in his own discipline, as seen in His letters to the seven churches (Revelations 2-3). Does Jesus making sick and killing someone an extreme form of physical, verbal, or emotional abuse? These are the types of internal contradictions for a false form of Christianity represented by this young man on social media. It is rampant in evangelicalism today.
One more note on corporeal punishment. Scripture teaches it. Scripture is the Word of Christ (Colossians 3:16). If we love Jesus, we obey Him (John 14:15, 20-21). The biblical means of child-training is also love. Children who do not receive biblical child-rearing are not being loved. It’s an advocacy for hatred of children.
I’ve visited, watched, or read the kind of “communities” with the unconditional love and there are lots of the same types of persons. Sentimental. Touchy feely. Pandering. Manipulative. Sensual. Worldly. Being a real man means alcohol and salty language (profanity). Everyone speaks freely about their entertainment and popular music. They have the hand raising, the eye-clinching fake sincerity with the affected vocals. They’re like goths, trying to be different, and yet they all still looking the same. All of those churches look the same. Casual is the dress code. It must be. Conformity all over the place. They’re like business franchises. They are mass produced out of the same church growth manuals with identical websites in most cases with identical wording.
We have five different men who preach in our church, all five with different personalities, not even one of them is even that close to the same. Who are the good ones? Who are the bad ones? The young man says these churches have good people and bad people. The good people, I reckon, are those who might be more likely to overlook his sin and not admonish or rebuke him for it, that is, give him “unconditional love.” I’m assuming that the good people are those who don’t drink the koolaid. Paul wrote that in the great house there are vessels unto honor and vessels unto dishonor. For someone to judge, he must rely on scripture, with the goal of reconciliation to God and to others. It’s not arbitrarily picking out who is bad and who is good.
Why Do People Have Such A Low View of the Law?
The Internal Revenue Code alone has 3.4 million words and 7,500 pages. There are 20,000 laws governing just the use and ownership of guns. I can keep going. Now, that is intrusive. That is onerous. That is prohibitive. That is repressive. That is burdensome. That is overwhelming. I should hate the laws of the United States. I can’t learn all those laws. And who wrote them anyway? Who are the authors?
I know that people take city, state, and federal law seriously. They don’t want the short-term penalties, fines, courts, lawsuits, imprisonment, and other punishments. They don’t think about how restrictive that all is.
17 Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. 18 For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. 19 Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.
There is no place in the New Testament where Jesus didn’t follow the actual Old Testament law, not to be confused with His insubordination to faulty interpretations of religious teachers. On top of not committing murder, He said, don’t even hate a brother. Further than not committing adultery, He said, don’t even think about it. The best way to look at this was not His adding to what had already been written, but giving the Divine spirit of the law. It was intended to be supported, to be kept inside and out.
Psalm 40:8, I delight to do thy will, O my God: yea, thy law is within my heart.
Psalm 119:77, Let thy tender mercies come unto me, that I may live: for thy law is my delight.
Psalm 119:97, O how love I thy law! it is my meditation all the day.
Psalm 119:113, thy law do I love.
Psalm 119:163, thy law do I love.
Psalm 119:165, Great peace have they which love thy law: and nothing shall offend them.
Even when someone wants to continue doing what he wants, the threat of promised bad consequences might and should check those desires. However, he’s got to believe in the reality of the consequences, which is a matter of faith. Does He believe the Bible? Does He believe God? People don’t take the Bible seriously, which is not taking what God said seriously. If God says He will kill you for something, then you should expect to die for it, even if He might withhold that punishment in the short term.
Today the Bible is too embarrassing for people, who even call themselves Christians, to say something like, homosexuality is an abomination. A test comes when the law runs up against conventional thinking. I read someone I know quite well recently use the terminology, “core human sensibility.” Those three words are a rorschach ink blot that someone could pour about anything. What are “core human sensibilities”? People trust “core human sensibilities” more than they do God. What are called “core human sensibilities” most often — verging on one hundred percent of the time — contradict the laws of God that are the most difficult or clash the most with the culture.
“Core human sensibilities” do not clash with the particular laws of God that society still favors. That’s the sweet spot where their invented perversion of Christianity lies. Those with a low view of the law of God, yet still want to be a Christian for whatever benefits they try to convince themselves they’ll still receive, land all of their Christianity exactly where the world says it is permissible. God controls through laws, so God isn’t really in control, the world is.
The low view of God’s law that voids laws of God that clash with “core human sensibilities” is actually a low view of God Himself. It is a view of God that doesn’t fear God, doesn’t even want to be afraid of anything, resents that. It is a view of God that doesn’t trust God. “God can’t be right about all this,” which is finally a view that doesn’t love God or truly think that God loves us. Loving conventional thinking is loving the world. You don’t trust God when you don’t trust the “hard parts,” which are the “clashing parts,” really what it means to be a Christian, a lover of God. The low view of the law proceeds from this.
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