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The SNOWMAN is a hater–systemically racist, sexist, fascist, and anti-LGBTQ+!!!!!!!
Happy Winter Solstice! I wanted to point out an important point of systemic racism in this evil United States culture of racism, sexism, and xenophobia that you may have overlooked, although it is all around you, promoting microaggressions against womyn and all people of color everywhere. After reading this article, you will have no justification for continuing use of this racist and sexist language, and you should immediately cancel anyone you know who continues to do so. You must start going into restaurants, malls, and other random places, accosting people, and finding out if they are fascists who refuse to cancel these great evils that you are now woke to. If they do not immediately agree with you, hit them in the face, vandalize their car, and take their wallet, as Antifa would explain is the ONLY proper response. What do I refer to, you ask? What could have been missed in the gazillion mandatory diversity training sessions at work, in the now ubiquitous political brainwashing everywhere? I refer to the racist, sexist, and fascist language of the SNOWMAN.
The Snowman—
universal symbol of patriarchy, bigotry,
and fascist, racist, sexist hate.
Note, first of all, the sexism here—it is the snowMAN. Snowwomen, and non-binary, LGBTQ+ snow persuns, are vastly underrepresented minorities in this cold, hard world. You must immediately cease referring to the patriarchal term “snowman” and speak, instead of “snow persuns.” Certainly children—excuse me, those who identify as being in the age group whose age assigned at birth is zero/newborn—should not be encouraged to build or play with snowmen. At the very least, all snowmen should be built with a frown instead of a smile, and with frozen tears or icicles of contrition for the sexist male privilege into which they have been ushered, and a taller, stronger, happy, Biden-Harris snowwomyn should be built next to any snowman.
The snowwoman—not sexist like the snowman, but still racist and white supremacist
Note as well, that snowmen—and even snowwomyn—are overwhelmingly white. Diversity in snowpersuns is almost entirely lacking. White snowmen should be frozen out high-level colleges and job opportunities attractive to them, whether in refrigeration, arctic travel, or ice cream sales, until snowpersuns of color, and snowpersuns of every kind of racial, gender, and sexual minority, are overrepresented in every income bracket of our systemically racist, sexist, and fascist nation, and there are equal numbers of diverse snowpersuns found in winter in North Dakota and in summer in Arizona.
Don’t try to cover your hate with the argument that snowpersuns are white because snow is white—it’s just nature. That’s the same type of old fascist argument people make against transgender rights when they claim there are only men and women—it’s just nature. No, “nature” is just a social construct, just like “men,” “women,” and the color of snow. This does not need to be proven—everyone that is woke knows it, and if you deny it you are giving in to white privilege and are just a RACIST SEXIST FASCIST. Q. E. D.
A LGBTQ+ Non-Binary, Socialist/Communist,
Snowbeing of Color Snowpersun—
the ONLY acceptable alternative for tolerant persuns.
(No picture included because there aren’t any yet.)
I hope that you are now woke to the great evil of building, encouraging children to play with, or in any way supporting the racist and sexist evil of the SNOWMAN. Dear reader, if you have every used such racist and sexist language, please send me a check of no less than $10,000 for every time you have supported patriarchy with this now cancelled term, to show that you are now fully in on diversity, inclusion and tolerance. I will donate the appropriate portion of your guilt offering to our local Antifa chapter while keeping the rest for myself. If you do not, I will burn your house down to show what tolerant people do to intolerant fascists like you.
So in conclusion: The snowman—cancel him!
What Is Trumpism? Part Two: Gospel Relations and Wokeness
Perhaps you are far enough removed from what it is to be “woke” that you don’t know what it is. It might sound familiar, because it echoes religious connotations, as very often a counterfeit does. Scripture uses “awakening” to speak of true spiritual enlightenment. The Bible calls on unbelievers to wake up, which would mean being saved, and also admonishes believers to wake up in order to stir them from some degree of apathy. In this case, however, being woke means that you have the special knowledge to see what others can’t see. You “spot” white privilege and systemic racism everywhere with x-ray style vision that others miss.
How does someone become woke? Expertise or specialization in critical theory. How does one get this knowledge? Honestly, it is something closer to competence in the use of the divining rod for locating water. It is the the bizarre knowledge of the Gnostic, moved by something extraordinary in the realm of an ecstatic experience. The more fantastical the claim the greater possibility of correctness. The Apostle Paul describes something like it among the Corinthians out of Babylonian mysticism (cf. 1 Corinthians 12:1-3).
If I were to walk up to just any white person and call him a racist, he asks, why? I answer, it’s obvious, but it’s something that you are inherently blinded to. You are not woke to its reality in you. BLM adherents have gone around doing something similar, asking random white people to admit their racism and privilege at the threat of violence. It’s like the Salem witch trials. If they don’t confess they are a witch, they are drowned. The blindness, characterized by an unwillingness to admit racism, apparently comes through a social construction imposed upon the country. All whites are so immersed in systemic racism, that they don’t know they’re all racists.
In part one, I focused on the individuality of Trumpism compared to the judgment of wokeness. I want to explore the relations of wokeness to the gospel, partly to reveal its destructiveness in nature. Woke evangelicals preach repentance of group sins in line with Marxist group identity. A whole group, white people, is guilty of systemic racism. Reparations is a legal remedy for group sin. You might say that you aren’t racist and that you’ve never harmed another race. You say that, but you don’t “know” that because you aren’t trained to see it. You aren’t woke. You haven’t swallowed the blue pill.
The undermining of the gospel comes through a collective sin that brings group guilt. The group that sinneth, it shall die, which is just the opposite of what Ezekiel and Jeremiah and everywhere else in the Bible taught related to sin and guilt. It would then require group repentance. White people are guilty. Men are guilty. Straight people are guilty. Even if a white person becomes woke, he must still be named in the class action suit. Part of wokeness is admission of group guilt. This is the only way to forgiveness.
This spiritual collectivism contradicts scripture. Jesus Christ came to save individuals, not groups. A single person is awakened to his own sin and his own need of repentance. He enters the kingdom as an individual. He stands before God as an individual. The soul that sinneth, it shall die (Ezekiel 18:4). A man must examine himself for what he has done, not his group.
The transformation of wokeness is for the collective. The change is group change. A living sacrifice submerges himself in and for the group and the expense of his individuality. This is their Jesus, another Jesus, bringing in their imagination of the kingdom.
How are people awakened to their guilt of racism, sexism, transgenderism, and perhaps Trumpism? It’s a specialized knowledge, so you can either become a practitioner of critical theory, which is akin to learning divination or you can listen to the preaching of the theorist. He’s cherry picking scripture into which he can force his theory without historical precedent. No one had ever found in the Bible what he says he has found. He goes a looking to bring critical theory into God’s Word. It’s a reinvention of Christianity as detected through a seer stone.
The individuality of Trumpism matches the gospel and is a repudiation of the collectivism of evangelical wokeness. Wokeness undermines the gospel. It is in fact a different gospel. It requires group accession and group repentance. This is adding to the gospel, which makes it legalism. The requirement is conforming to the group.
I’m not saying that Trump himself is converted, that he is saved or that President Donald Trump has believed the gospel. I don’t believe so. I’m sure that some Trump supporters think he is. They’ve heard reports of private evangelism of Trump followed by a profession of faith. I don’t see a changed individual life of Donald Trump. By the abundance of his heart, he speaks, and I hear corrupt speech, bitter waters proceeding from a bitter fountain.
Others, which might be seen as adherents to Trumpism, take the position that Trump is a blunt instrument of change, ordained by a sovereign God. One analogy, I’ve read, is that he is chemotherapy to cancer, a painful methodology for a necessary cure or at least greater postponement of death. Advocates of the chemo acknowledge the cancer. The body is cancerous. It needs chemotherapy and Trump is it. The cessation of Trump, they diagnose, bolsters the cancer.
An irony to the lack of conversion of Donald Trump by judging him as an individual, however, is that I hear the same as bad or worse corrupt speech from woke evangelicals. Trump just doesn’t receive the gospel. He’s responsible. They see themselves as covered by their group identity. They are woke, so they are absolved of group guilt, their filthy language and lascivious lifestyles notwithstanding. It is a form of left wing legalism. Their sins are covered by their “good works.”
Many white people, who aren’t woke, believe the truth about race, that it is an arbitrary distinction, not backed by scripture. The Bible doesn’t recognize race. It does acknowledge a covenantal distinction between Jew and Gentile. These white people want a color blind society. They want equal treatment, vis-a-vis James chapter two. They also eliminate covenantal distinctions in the church age. They want to be free to judge according to scripture.
Park on the last part of that last sentence of that last paragraph: “to be free to judge according to scripture.” That is true freedom, ordained by God. It also gives someone the freedom to be released as an individual from the charge of racism. Someone can actually be saved, truly converted. He’s not a racist anymore.
The movement aligned with David French, Beth Moore, and Rod Dreher distorts the gospel. Its righteousness is one of virtue signaling. It constructs modern phylacteries. They signal to everyone how righteous, actually woke, they are. The toll levied for leftist acceptance produces a false gospel. They can talk about Jesus, what He can really do, but He becomes of no affect, because He doesn’t remove the group guilt of which “Trumpists” are not woke. They won’t allow for individual redemption through their group or community sin and guilt. The Apostle Paul says concerning them, if they will add anything to the true gospel, let them be accursed.
What Is Trumpism?
Anonymous comments, some I did publish and most I didn’t, and others under my most recent post, in which I briefly mentioned President Trump, were typical of what I get when I ever say his name. They are angry, insulting, unhinged, foul, devoid of reason, and carnal. And they want me to be a better Christian, or just a Christian period, by not uttering the name, Trump. It would have been easier for me not to have written more about Trump, but I’ve chosen to double down and write something right away, because the point of putting on the pressure — they would censor if they could. I’d say at least forty percent of the Democrat party would like public religious or biblical speech illegal and punished. It starts with intimidation.
I do not believe these are days for mincing words. I’m 63 1/2 years old & I have never seen anything in these United States of America I found more astonishingly seductive & dangerous to the saints of God than Trumpism. This Christian nationalism is not of God. Move back from it.
— Beth Moore (@BethMooreLPM) December 13, 2020
I’m 58 2/3 years old and I’m pretty sure that Moore picked up the terminology “Trumpism” from her good friend, David French, when she was directed to his just published article on The Dispatch, where he is senior editor, entitled, The Dangerous Idolatry of Christian Trumpism. He’s also a columnist at Time, and was a guest this morning on the Morning Joe show on MSNBC. The Dispatch was a publication launched in October 2019 by men notoriously neoconservative and never-Trump, Stephen Hayes and Jonah Goldberg. Trump, of course, has been hated by the pure neocons, ever since he came on the scene, pummeling Governor Jeb Bush out of the 2016 primaries.
For a start, whatever Trumpism is, Beth Moore herself, her kind, and their teaching are more dangerous than it. This is not to approve of much of what French exposed in his piece, even though I do understand the thinking of those people more than I do Moore’s and French’s. A very destructive problem is this faulty thinking that Trumpism, whatever it is, is the problem. I’m saying that I don’t know what Trumpism is because it is a word that serves as a vessel to pour many different definitions that might suit the one who uses it. Whatever it is though, I would evaluate Trumpism as a net gain in the United States, compared to the absence of Trumpism. It’s not a replacement for Jesus Christ. It isn’t the formation of a new gospel. It isn’t the answer, but it is a safe space ironically to find an answer.
Some of what is called Trumpism is not true. One should say that everything from the left is not true. The left lives in a world of lies or that a world that is a lie, both. Neoconservatives aren’t biblical Christians, which are the only Christians, that is, biblical ones. They are so associated with progressives now that they aren’t even liberal enough anymore to show up on Fox News. Their associations with the left annul them. They are relegated to CNN and MSNBC purgatory.
Just as an aside, who is the crowd of people that the Southern Baptist Convention or evangelicalism is going to receive and keep, who apparently accepts the gospel and this Woke thinking that accommodates the left? They think they’ll pick them up, while they ignore the deplorables? Or maybe they think they already have the people who, as President Obama put it, “cling to their guns and religion”? They don’t, but those are far more likely to consider the Bible than the ones they are attempting to impress. Those people have already sold their souls.
Trumpism has a Wikipedia page, certainly written by leftists there. You know that you’ve got make-believe when a big part of the definition is “narcisissm,” which is constitutive to critical theory. Narcissism was introduced to psychotherapy by the God-denying atheist, Sigmund Freud. Those who use it, like it’s being used today, I read apply it in Freud-like manner. It’s not what we might think, sinful pride, from scripture. The labeling of Trumpism, which includes Trump supporters, as narcissists is an aspect of critical theory through a marriage of Marxism and Freudianism.
The Trump supporter believes in liberty, which is tied to individuality, even in the definition of Americanism. For the Christian, which isn’t every Trump supporter, this is the individual relationship with God, rights God gives an individual (not a group), and individual salvation or redemption. God saves individuals, not groups. A major appeal of Trump to true believers is the individualism he represents in his beliefs, which to him probably stems from the era from which he comes, this being a far more prominent view, and then the Presbyterian church in which he grew up. It was a liberal church, but today it would look conservative.
The left puts its emphasis on the group — think group identity — and what you hear most often today, community, as in “community organizer.” Individualism is equated with narcissism. These are people so concerned for their own liberty, that they neglect the group. The practical purpose of critical theory is said to redirect individual narcissism towards collectivism. The individual lacks in critical reflection, destining for himself to act upon his own self-interests. One symptom then of this narcissism is the demonization of others, anyone different. Freud was Jewish, and especially at that juncture in history, saw this as the narcissism too in nationalistic tendencies that reject other ethnic identity, which later critical theory pointed out the need for this narcissism to find its expression in an autocratic leader.
Between the two, scripture, therefore, God, teaches individual rights: the right to life and the right to property. You don’t have true freedom if someone can play horseshoes in his neighbors front lawn or invade his refrigerator. Marxism believes that the state is God. At the root of its equality is equality of outcome, accomplished at the group level, the community. Capitalism is narcissistic because the person wants to keep what he owns instead of sharing it all with others. Anyway, you get the picture.
The protection of individual rights is the purpose of government. Trump supporters, not blind to Trump, don’t see Trump as a ruler who wants absolute power. I am a Trump supporter. I don’t see it. Trump was the de-regulator. He unchained individuals to innovate, much like we saw with the production of ventilators and then the vaccine.
The oligarchy of Big Tech is where I see autocracy. These Democrat governors closing their states for business are the autocrats. Trump was criticized during the pandemic for not “providing leadership,” which would mean a national mask mandate, something like that. Trump allowed the states the power reserved by the constitution to the states. His threat of intervention, which he didn’t really use, came with the endangerment of the citizens in Democrat run cities.
The freedom of religion is the right of the individual, as seen in the free exercise clause. Trump encouraged and supported the individual freedom to gather and worship against the Democrat instinct, like a state church, to conform to the state. The point of nationalism is the protection of individual rights again. Open borders destroys private ownership. People can’t be free if they are not protected, which is why the first role of government is protection. Protection requires borders and walls. These ideals have also been chosen to be superior to the alternative.
The left will call the individualism of Trump, not only narcissistic, but cultic. The only cultic tendency that characterizes Trumpism, that I see, yes, is taken to an extreme by some people. I don’t see it as a dangerous extreme, but I do see it as a necessary extreme right now to combat the collectivism of the left. I’ve heard the left call them black or brown shirts, which is a lie.
True Christians believe in the sovereignty of God. They believe God is the author of history. They believe that God brought Trump in whatever way they compare him to other leaders in world history whom God has providentially caused or allowed to gain power. Some probably have a cult like belief in this. They’re wrong to think that way, but I see them as a necessary, even providential, deterrent to the Marxists and Communists. They have far more adherents to their wicked, dangerous, and destructive collectivist cult. They are warped and blinded in far worse ways than the simplicity of the most fervent MAGA hat wearers.
A means to an end, Trumpism allows Americans to keep being Americans. Trump hasn’t come close to living like the country he wants to allow Americans to have. He hasn’t lived it himself, but he has fought for those who believe in it. Others who have said they have believed in it wouldn’t and didn’t fight. They capitulate still. If one of them had fought like he has, we may have preferred one of them to him. This is what we got, like Israel got Samson and Cyrus in the Old Testament.
Trumpism, the word itself, is a type of critical theory tool. Words are power. David French and Beth Moore want you, Trump supporter, to be ashamed of yourself. Don’t be.
Sanctification Summary: Christian Holiness or Sanctification—A Summary from Eternity Past to the Eternal State
During the recent Word of Truth Conference at Bethel Baptist Church, I had the privilege of preaching a summary of what Scripture teaches on sanctification. It was suggested that this summary be made into a pamphlet. You can now download the pamphlet on the FaithSaves website by clicking here; it is entitled “Christian Sanctification: A Summary from Eternity Past to the Eternal State.” The video is also live at FaithSaves; it can also be watched on YouTube by clicking here; if it is a blessing, I would encourage you to “like” it on YouTube and leave a comment. I have also embedded the video below for your viewing edification.
May it be a blessing to you, and with those with whom you can share it who want to understand what Scripture teaches about sanctification.
–TDR
No Christian In the United States Is Going to Be Able to Just Ignore the Country To Serve God and His Kingdom
Well known Christian leaders today remind people that we’re not on earth to sustain America, but to serve God and His kingdom. It’s true. How does that thought change evangelistic efforts right now? Does it stop parents in churches from thinking about how they will educate their children? Does that mean ignore the deluge of sewage that comes through the media and the easy accessibility to it? What if your people don’t have a job because the economy is shot? If the church budget shrinks, what does that do to mission support? When you go to plan your week, how will you do church with the shut down or new regulations? How is hospital visitation? How does your church relate to the fast downward slide of Christianity? How will your church relate to “wokeness”?
The Gospel (The Good News of Salvation, Because We Need to Be Saved and God Can and Wants to Save Us)
My Lifetime Surprising Struggle With My Own Sin
Nobody on earth, what I say, “breathes pure, spiritual air.” Nobody has their head in some superior spiritual cloud. Everyone must struggle against sin. My life has been one of a continuous struggle with sin. When I say that, some might act like they are surprised. I was surprised too, because when I was young, I didn’t understand sanctification. Little was said about sanctification as a struggle, the latter a technical word to describe a successful Christian life.
I don’t expect believers to live a sinless life. Scripture itself informs me of this (1 John 1:7-2:2). It’s been, especially in certain seasons of my life, a real struggle, even after I became a pastor in early adulthood. Being a pastor doesn’t take away the difficulties of living the Christian life and not sinning.
To a pastor, it seems very, very important not to be sinning. It’s similar to sinning as a husband or parent though. Your consideration is that the people you are leading will not do well with your leadership if you are sinning, you are not doing right. Struggling with sin seems to be very, very incongruent with influencing people under your leadership, so you don’t want them to know that you’re struggling with it too. This tends toward this idea that you’re really not, when you really are.
Struggling with sin doesn’t sound like a good Christian life. It sounds like failure. Yet, that’s what the Bible says sanctification is, a struggle. It will be harder at different times in your life too, and it would be helpful to know that.
The struggle isn’t losing. It is struggling. Losing is giving in to sin, saying that you are just going to continue in sin. When someone is struggling with sin, he’s not comfortable with his sin. He’s vexed. He doesn’t like it. He’s battling, which can look ugly. It is. But he doesn’t settle and give in, to where he’s now a committed sinner, not giving it up.
One reason someone might not want to admit a struggle with sin is that someone might think he’s even unsaved. This is an important reason why to teach believers that sanctification is a struggle. It isn’t an excuse to sin. Where is this doctrine though? The classic passage is Romans 7. Romans 7 gives a lot of hope to any Christian when he finds out what it’s like to live the Christian life. It seems impossible to have assurance of salvation without a passage such as this, looking at Romans 7:7-24, but especially focusing on 7:14-23:
14 For we know that the law is spiritual: but I am carnal, sold under sin. 15 For that which I do I allow not: for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I. 16 If then I do that which I would not, I consent unto the law that it is good. 17 Now then it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. 18 For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not. 19 For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do. 20 Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. 21 I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me. 22 For I delight in the law of God after the inward man: 23 But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.
When you read it, it is pretty self-explanatory why this passage is so helpful to present the true Christian life as a struggle. This is not some novice, weak professing believer here. This is the Apostle Paul, sometimes considered the greatest Christian who ever lived. This is his describing of his own life, not someone else. It doesn’t sound possible, but it is true. Where do we get the idea that the Christian life is not a struggle if he said this about his own Christian life?
I write “surprising,” because I had the definitive impression that my Christian life wasn’t going to be like that, a struggling one. Why? I don’t remember anyone telling me it would be a struggle. Keswick theology, which was the environment of evangelicalism and fundamentalism, that I grew up with, portrayed Christians able to live in an ionosphere of near perfect Christianity. It’s not that people were doing it, but it was what was portrayed by preachers. They weren’t living this way, but they were making it look this way. I wanted what they had that they didn’t have.
How did I figure out that it wasn’t what was presented to me? It took me awhile. Ironically, it was a struggle to find out it was a struggle. I had to study the Bible. I had to reject what I heard or was taught, to sort through and understand without anyone telling me. That’s not the preferred way, which is one reason why our church has recently put so much emphasis on sanctification in our Word of Truth conference, spending four years of conferences on this subject. I’ve written on it.
Pastors are not disqualified for struggling with sin. Parents are not disqualified as parents for struggling with sin. The people we pastor are not disqualified for struggling with sin. There is disqualifying sin for a pastor. He can’t pastor any more for varied reasons, but he’s not disqualified because he sins. Paul was obviously sinning and he was the one who wrote about disqualification.
In writing this piece, I thought of pastors who are judged by a perfectionist standard, who actually don’t judge their own people in their church by a perfectionist standard. They are trying to help their people. Why are leaders judged harshly? They are going to be judged, but a big reason for harsh judgment can be that the followers want to use their leaders as an excuse for ejecting from the struggle themselves. They don’t want to live the Christian life, and they use the struggle of a leader as a reason not to struggle. This doesn’t make sense, but it happens. all. the. time. Especially young people today are harsh about their leaders. They don’t want to be judged by their leaders and then they use their own judgment of their own leaders, not to live the Christian life, but to not live the Christian life.
I’ve been careful in my leadership to give room to young people to grow and to help them to grow. I don’t excuse their ejecting from the Christian life though. I expect them to want the Bible, to love Christ, and to struggle. Just giving up on the struggle and then using whatever leader — parent, pastor, teacher — as an excuse, to give up, to forsake the assembling of ourselves together, to go out from us and discontinue with us, is inexcusable. This is apostate-like behavior. Every true believer is going to struggle and the support with that struggle needs to be there, either with the follower or the leader.
The Apostle Paul was attacked all the time for his Christian life and for his leadership. The whole book of 2 Corinthians among other chapters in other epistles accounts for this. People used Paul’s example as their basis for false teaching and bad behavior. He was regularly defending himself. Why? It was crucial for followers that they didn’t have him as an excuse.
I believe in continuous Christian living, a practice of righteousness, that is seen in 1 John and James among other places. However, not in contradiction to that is a struggle with sin. My lifetime has been a surprising, relentless struggle with sin. Losing the struggle is giving up. A true Christian will not give up. Giving up is not an appropriate response to someone who is struggling.
Someone struggling is at least struggling. Someone giving up is doing his own thing in contradiction to struggling. Endurance is a struggle. Followers of leaders should give leaders some room to struggle. They are not following their example when they give up. They can’t use the example of a struggling leader for ejecting from true Christianity.
Was the Apostle Paul a broken, useless leader because he was doing what he hated? Was he not worth listening to? We don’t want to trample and kick someone to oblivion, just because he has sinned. It’s also contradictory in someone who is living in sin without repentance because he saw others sin, and those same people have judged him or her. The question should be, is the judgment true? Isn’t the point to repent, submit to and please God, and grow as a Christian? In so many cases, it is just about not being judged. This was the case with the critics of Paul. They criticized him because they didn’t want to be judged by him and they had an agenda and life of their own they wanted to live.
Our judgment of other Christians should have as their point the desire to see repentance and growth, the actual winning of the struggle against sin. It shouldn’t be to excuse behavior. It isn’t an excuse. Everyone is going to stand before God by himself. He needs to struggle with sin and then help others with their struggle.
Raise a Godly Family in an Ungodly Area–Is it Possible?
If one is in Oklahoma, there are pages and pages of Baptist churches in the phone book. (Phone book? What’s that? But I digress.) In the San Francisco Bay Area, there are many, many fewer churches that even preach a true gospel, much less take a stand for all the truth in the Bible. Sometimes, in relation to a post like “Evangelize the Bay Area of California!,” some people say, and more people think, something to the effect: “I’m glad you are wanting to do that, but I could never do it. I want to raise my family for God, so we will live in a conservative area, try to move some place rural or stay rural if we are, and never, ever go to a place that is liberal and godless like San Francisco.” Is this a Biblical way of thinking? Do we see this sort of thinking in Scripture?
It is true that if one wants to live a comfortable and easy life, coasting along living the American Dream, doing so in a conservative and more God-and-Bible friendly area is easier. Taxes are likely to be lower; people are more likely to be friendly; everything is nice and pleasant. But where does Scripture say life is about having things nice and easy? Where do “nice and easy” and “take up the cross and follow Me” meet?
Revelation 2-3 records Christ’s commands to seven first century (Baptist) churches. One of these churches was “where Satan’s seat is,” and where “Antipas was my faithful martyr, who was slain among you, where Satan dwelleth” (Revelation 2:13). Sounds like a really, really rough place. A lot worse than San Francisco, in fact. No martyrs in San Francisco recently. So because the church was in a wicked part of the world, Christ told the congregation that they shouldn’t be in a big, bad city, where Satan’s seat was. He told them to go to some rural place and live the American Dream.
Oh wait, sorry, that isn’t in the text anywhere. Didn’t Christ want the families at that church to be able to raise their children for God? Didn’t He know that you can’t do that in a city “where Satan’s seat is”?
In the book of Acts, the Apostles and their helpers really, really wanted those who received the gospel to raise their children for God, of course. Therefore, we see the pattern that they sought out the areas that were the most likely to have Biblical values and went there first, leaving those in the big, bad cities to perish in their sin.
Oh wait, sorry, that isn’t what they did–they went to the cities first, and even when the Apostles had to flee because of riots, they didn’t tell the church members there to leave their city and go somewhere things were easier.
So this idea that you can’t raise your children for God in areas that are hostile to the Bible is not in Revelation 2-3 and not in the book of Acts. Is it in the epistles? Nope. In the Gospels? Nope. So does it have any basis in the Bible? None at all. It is just made up. The closest you can get to it is that if someone is actively trying to kill you or cause you bodily harm Christ teaches that you can run away. Also, if you go to a wicked place for worldly purposes unconnected to the glory of God and leave godly influences behind to go there (Genesis 18-19), you should expect bad things to happen. Those are both totally different than refusing to go to a liberal part of the United States to help a strong church or plant a church because there is more open evil in the world than in some nice, rural, conservative, Bible-friendly area, maybe in the Bible belt or in the heavily Republican South.
What does matter to raising a godly family is having a strong church that is seeking to obey all of Scripture for the glory of God, and where both parents are actively serving. If you want to raise your family for God, make sure that you have a church like that. Make sure that you have your kids in a strong Christian school or homeschool that is actively seeking to disciple them with close parental involvement, and that you and the school are consistent in the use of the rod and of reproof. If you think you can put your kids in public school because you live in a conservative area, so everything will be fine, you are bonkers. Do the above to raise a godly family. If God is giving you the desire to help evangelize for the purpose of seeing new churches established in a part of the USA that actually needs them really, really badly–in other words, those liberal parts where nobody or almost nobody is preaching the gospel–do not refuse to go because of this made-up idea that you can’t raise a godly family there. It isn’t true. It is a lie, a Satanic lie to confuse people on what is necessary for godly child-rearing and to prevent the Great Commission from being fulfilled. Certainly someone in a weaker church in a more conservative part of the country is more likely to lose his children to the devil than someone in a stronger church in a more liberal part of America.
At least in my experience, people who have adopted this non-Biblical idea usually limit their restriction on moving to liberal areas to the United States. Going to a mission field is OK, even if the place is very wicked. If they were consistent, they would apply this idea to foreign countries as well, which would be the end of world missions. The large majority of the world is more corrupt and with less Biblical influence than remains even in San Francisco, Massachusetts, and other parts of the USA where we still have First Amendment protections and other constitutional privileges as citizens that are not present in the overwhelming majority of the world.
It would be great if some of the people in the Baptist churches on every corner in the Bible belt and in other nice, Bible-friendly areas would get out of their holy huddle and move to parts of the USA and to the rest of the world where the vast majority of the population has never heard the gospel even one time. They should be earnestly desiring to move to places like that and start preaching the gospel to those that have never heard it (Romans 15:20). Maybe the default position should be to help there, and only stay in their nice and comfortable place if it is clearly God’s will that they stay instead of going.
So if you have it in your mind that you would never go somewhere like the San Francisco Bay Area because it is liberal with little Biblical influence, you are not thinking Scripturally. Instead of wanting to avoid going there because of a made up idea that raising a family for God is impossible in such a place, ask the Lord of the harvest what He would have you to do and where He would have you go, knowing that as you actively take up your cross and follow Christ you will have the best chance possible to raise the next generation to do the same.
Oh, and by the way, while the idea that you can’t raise children for God in a liberal area is not in the Bible, at least you have the Catholic philosophy of monasticism and Ellen White, the cult leader and prophetess of Seventh-Day Adventism, on your side. In her allegedly “inspired” book Country Living, Mrs. White made statements such as:
“[God] wants us to live where we have elbow room. His people are not to crowd into the cities. He wants them to take their families out of the cities, that they may better prepare for eternal life” (17.1).
“Get out of the cities as soon as possible, and purchase a little piece of land, where you can have a garden, where your children can watch the flowers growing” (17.3).
Aww, isn’t that sweet. Too bad it isn’t in the Bible anywhere. If you follow the Bible instead of Ellen White, take up the cross, follow Him, and help to preach the gospel to everyone in the areas where nobody is doing it. God will help you raise your family for Him there. –TDR
A Love-O-Meter: Love Does Not Rejoice In Iniquity And Does Rejoice In the Truth
In a very important passage, in 1 Corinthians 13 the Apostle Paul shines love through a prism that refracts into fifteen different colors or hues. Two of them are in verse 6, which reads:
[Love] rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth.
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