NEW ORLEANS HERE WE COME!

Wednesday, June 27th
7:00 PM
Johnny and Mary Walker's house
(let someone know if you need directions)

We're going to New Orleans on a mission trip August 1-5!! Anyone who is interested in going on the trip can and should come to this meeting. We need to nail down who's going to be going on the trip. We also need to talk about some more details and fundraising options.

If you have any questions or ideas about the trip/fundraising, bring them to the meeting on Wednesday and we'll talk about them.

If you can't make it to this meeting, leave a comment here and I'll fill you in on the details later.

See you there!

British Girl Sues for Right to Wear a Purity Ring

I ran across this article over on the New York Times about a British girl who was punished in school for wearing a "purity ring" because it violated school dress codes. The student claims that the ring is an expression of her Christian faith and that she is being discriminated against. Since when can you not wear rings to school? Anyways, if you are familiar with "True Love Waits" or in her case the organization is called "Silver Ring Thing" then you get the basic gist of why she was wearing the ring. But is that really an expression of her faith? Is the government suppressing her Christian beliefs? The article raises some interesting questions...so if you have a minute check it out:

British Girl Sues for Right to Wear Chastity Ring: New York Times

Jesus Found in a Tree

Evidently some members of a Memphis church claim to have seen Jesus in a trunk of a tree. Don't believe me? Check out the article for yourself.

UMC State of the Church

The United Methodist Church has released their annual State of the Church Report. The UMC site reports:

"The annual State of the Church Report provides a detailed look at The United Methodist Church today. It encompasses the issues and concerns on the minds of the church's members and their hopes for the denomination in the future.

The report is sponsored by the United Methodist Connectional Table as a way to:

• Encourage conversation and visioning across the church.
• Identify signs of strength and weakness in the life and ministries of the church.
• Recognize the church's heritage and work."

Interested in the data? Below is a link to the research data which I found to be pretty interesting. It's crazy how much the values and beliefs vary among clergy and laity across the different regions of the US. Check it out.

2006 UMC Quantitative Research

Cookout & Pool Party

The ladies are throwing a pool party/cookout on Wednesday night for anyone who wants to come. The party will be held at Kesha Allen's house and will last from 6:30 until whenever. Hamburgers and hotdogs will be served. Bring your swimsuit and invite a friend to come out for a good time. And in case you didn't know...these ladies know how to put on a shindig...especially when it comes to food!

Click Here for directions.

Any Questions? Contact Us.

Religion as Ice Cream

Some more sad news from the Episcopal Church. It seems now that Christianity can be mixed with other religions to find the flavor of ice cream that you like. What else would make a good flavor? Christianity and Daoism? Hey, if it works for you why not? Maybe the more toppings the better. Riddleblog article. Stand to Reason article.

Excuse my sarcasm, but I do not have the mental capacity to understand this type of thinking, and it saddens me to see the Gospel of the Living God substituted for an idol. It saddens me to see people confessing to be Christians when they do not treasure Jesus. It's not saying a prayer or reciting a few doctrines that saves a person, Jesus must be your treasure, like the parable in Matthew 13, the kingdom of God is like a man finding a treasure hidden in a field and then he sells everything to buy that field so he can have the treasure. From this article, it would be the equivalent of selling everything to buy the field but then setting up an altar and worshiping Allah, at best it’s an insult to God, at worst it treats lightly the blood of Jesus, trampling it underfoot (Heb 10), and strips from the only person worthy of worship, the glory and honor that is due Him. That might be a little dramatic, but it makes me angry, and I think it makes God angry as well.

This also applies to everyone, myself included. Jesus must be treasured, and not as a means to some other treasure such as money, power, social reasons, or heaven (that could make you think). To confess to be a Christian, yet treasure the gifts rather than the giver of all things, is a contradiction in terms. Is Jesus your treasure? Or have you replaced Jesus with worldly treasures? Eternal life is not something you bargain with, you don’t get to go to heaven in exchange for one Sunday a week, you can’t say to God, “I’ll let you forgive me of my sins if you let me still treasure this over you.” Galatians 6 says, do not be deceived, God is not mocked, for what you sow you also will reap. You can’t have it both ways.

I think as Christians we always have to examine ourselves and our lives to see if our actions line up with what we treasure. If you have replaced Jesus as your treasure with something else, repent, ask for forgiveness, and begin to treasure and praise Him who has brought you out of darkness into his marvelous light. (1 Peter 2:9)

The next 3M Club meeting will be this Saturday, June 16th. All of those reading Wild at Heart should finish chapters 5 and 6. A detailed agenda for Saturday's meeting is listed below.



Agenda:

5:00-6:00: Book discussion at Chance and Ian's

6:00-8:00: Go out to eat at restaurant in Shelby

8:00-10:00 Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer at the theater.



Any guys of any age are welcome to come to all or part of the 3M Club meeting. If you are not reading the book feel welcome to come and sit in on the discussion anyway...otherwise meet at Chance and Ian's house at 6:00 to go out to eat. If you have any questions contact us.

Start inviting new guys to join the club!

Determinism, Chance and Freedom

Here is an excellent article by John Frame on the issue of free will and human responsibility. Frame is a brilliant reformed theologian, apologist and philosopher. Frame does a good job of presenting each side in a way that is understandable, and also does a good job (in my opinion) of pointing out the flaws in the “libertarian” view of freedom.

Determinists believe that every event (or every event in a certain category) has a cause that makes it happen exactly as it happens. Among the varieties of determinism are the views of (1) Plato, who held that one’s ethical choices are determined by his view of what is good, (2) B. F. Skinner, who believed that stimuli, dispositions and motives govern all human behavior. (3) Democritus, Hobbes, Spinoza, and many others, who have held that every event in the universe is determined by a physical cause. Of special interest to us are (4) theological determinists, who hold that all events occur exactly as God has foreordained them. These would include Calvin and others in his tradition. The classic exposition of theological determinism is Jonathan Edwards’ Freedom of the Will. Note that it is possible to be a determinist in sense (4) without being a determinist in sense (3). That seems to be the position of the Westminster Confession of Faith, which says in 3.1 that “God did… ordain whatsoever comes to pass,” but also says in 9.1 that man’s will “is neither forced, nor, by any absolute necessity of nature, determined to good, or evil” (compare 5.2).

William James, in his article “The Dilemma of Determinism,” distinguished between “hard” and “soft” determinism. On his view, soft determinists hold that all events, including human decisions, are determined, but that some kind of freedom and moral responsibility also exists. Hard determinists hold (what James thought was the more consistent position) that the determination of human decisions requires us to reject the concept of moral responsibility. Other writers, however, have used the hard/soft distinction differently, defining soft determinism as a view that is largely deterministic but that allows for some uncaused or self-caused human choices

Chance can refer (1) to uncaused events, or (2) to events of which the causes are uncertain and normally uncontrollable. When we throw dice, we often say that the result is “by chance;” but we then don’t usually mean that the result is uncaused, only that the causes are hard to ascertain or control. Laws of probability enable us to predict the results of such chance events over the long term (for example, 50% of coin flips come out tails), but not in individual cases. Chance can also be (3) a synonym of fate, conceived as an impersonal force that makes everything happen as it happens. In the first sense, chance is incompatible with determinism. In the second sense, it is compatible with determinism. In the third sense, it presupposes determinism.

Freedom is a more complicated notion. Generally speaking, a person is free when (1) he has the ability to do something, (2) there is some obstacle or barrier that might have prevented him from exercising that ability but is not now preventing him. Someone is “set free” from prison, for example, when he can go where he likes without the barriers of prison walls, bars, guards, etc. People have political freedom when they are able publish political opinions, organize political parties, etc., without government interference. So freedom is always “freedom to” and “freedom from:” freedom to do something, and freedom from some obstacle.

On this account, there are many different kinds of freedom, since there are many different things we can be free to do, and many obstacles we can be free from. So we speak of economic freedom, political freedom, religious freedom, freedom from illness, and many others.

The following kinds of freedom are of particular interest to theologians and apologists: (1) Moral freedom, or the ability to do good, despite the barrier of our sinful condition. God gives us this freedom by his grace (John 8:32-36, Rom. 6:7, 18-23, 8:2). When Scripture speaks of human freedom, it is almost always in this sense.

(2) The freedom to act according to our own desires. This kind of freedom is sometimes called compatibilism, because it is compatible with determinism. Scripture doesn’t describe this capacity as “freedom,” but it does ascribe this capacity to all human beings. Jesus teaches, for example, that the good person acts out of the desires of his good heart, the wicked person out of his wicked heart (Matt. 12:35). There are times, of course, when we are unable to do what we “want” to do, at some level of wanting (as Rom. 7:15). But in most of the decisions of life, we do what we want, in the face of potential obstacles.

(3) Freedom from natural necessity, the freedom to act without the constraint of natural causes. This is the freedom mentioned in my earlier reference to the Westminster Confession. Its theological importance is its implication that human choice is not necessarily or always the result of natural causes. As image of God, we have dominion over the earth and in some ways transcend the world process. And we may not excuse our sins by saying that they were forced upon us by heredity or environment.

(4) Freedom from all causation, sometimes called libertarianism. I have freedom in the libertarian sense when, no matter what I choose to do, I might equally have chosen the opposite. So my choices are not only free from natural causes (as in (3)) but also from divine causation. Indeed, my libertarian choices are also free from myself in a way, for they are not determined by my character, dispositions, or desires. These inner motives may influence a free decision in this sense, but they never determine it. So a libertarian free decision is entirely indeterminate, uncaused. Thus libertarianism is sometimes called incompatibilism, since it is incompatible with determinism.

Libertarianism has been taught by a number of philosophers from ancient Greece (Epicurus) to the present (Alvin Plantinga). It was the position of some church Fathers including Justin Martyr and Tertullian, Pelagius, the opponent of Augustine, the Jesuit Luis Molina, Fausto and Lelio Socinus, Jacob Arminius, and present-day Arminians, open theists and process theologians.
Libertarians argue that we must have this kind of freedom because (1) our intuition reveals that we have it, and (2) it is necessary for moral responsibility, for we cannot be held responsible for anything we are determined to do.

Opponents of libertarianism, however, reply that (1) Human intuition reveals that we choose among various alternatives, but it never reveals to us that any of our choices are absolutely uncaused. Intuition cannot prove a universal negative. (2) Far from teaching that libertarian freedom is essential to moral responsibility, Scripture never mentions libertarian freedom. (3) This doctrine would make it impossible for us to judge anyone’s guilt in a court of law. For to prove someone responsible for a crime and therefore guilty, the prosecution would have to take on the impossible burden of proof of showing that the decision of the accused had no cause whatsoever. (4) Law courts, indeed, assume the opposite of libertarianism, namely that people are responsible only for actions that they are sufficiently motivated to perform. If it could be shown that an accused person committed a crime without any sufficient cause or motivation at all he would most likely be judged insane rather than guilty. (5) Scripture contradicts libertarianism, by ascribing divine causes to human decisions (Exod. 34:24, Is. 44:28, Dan. 1:9, John 19:24, Acts 13:48, 16:14), even sinful ones (Gen. 45:5-8, Ps. 105:24, Luke 22:22, Acts 2:23-24, 3:18, 4:27-28, Rom. 9:17). In none of these (or many other) cases does divine causation eliminate human responsibility. In fact, these texts often mention human responsibility in the same context. (6) Scripture also contradicts libertarianism by teaching that human decisions are governed by the heart (Luke 6:45), and by teaching that the human heart itself is under God’s control (Ps. 33:15, Prov. 21:1). (7) In Scripture, the basis of human responsibility is not libertarian freedom, but (a) God’s sovereign right to evaluate the conduct of his creatures (Rom. 9:19-21), and (b) the knowledge (Luke 12:47-48, Rom. 1:18-32) and resources (Matt. 25:14-29) God has given to each person. (b) shows that in Scripture there is an important relation between responsibility and ability, but the abilities in view here do not include the absolute ability to choose opposite courses of action.

These considerations lead to the conclusion that the Bible teaches theistic determinism, one that is “soft” in James’s sense. Scripture renounces chance in the first and third senses above, but not in the second. And it teaches that human beings sometimes have moral freedom, usually have compatibilist freedom, never have libertarian freedom. Scripture may imply that we have freedom from natural causation as well. Certainly it doesn’t deny that, but I don’t know of any passage that clearly affirms it.

The Foundation @ DSBC Sunday

We will be leading the worship service over at Double Springs Baptist Church this Sunday(10th) at 10:50am. Justin Webb will be preaching and Jonny's House will be playing in full force. Aaron and the gang will be doing some remixes of good hymns which will definitely rock as well as a couple new songs...so don't miss out.

If you need directions to DSBC click here.
If you have questions contact us.

Service Work Opportunity Saturday

Who: The Foundation and Martha Mason

What: Painting a storage building.

When: Saturday, June 9th.

Where: Breakfast at Snackshop- 8am Martha Mason's house Lattimore)-9am

Why: Martha is a wonderful lady who has been living in an Iron Lung for around 60 years and last year we were able to help her by tearing down an old shed behind her house.


If you need directions or more information please contact us.

3M Club- June 9th

The next 3M Club meeting will be this Saturday, June 9th. All of those reading Wild at Heart should finish chapters 3 and 4. A detailed agenda for Saturday's meeting is listed below.




Agenda:

5:00-6:00: Book discussion at Chance and Ian's

6:00-8:00: Go out to eat at restaurant in Shelby

8:15-10:30 Ocean's Thirteen at the theater.



Any guys of any age are welcome to come to all or part of the 3M Club meeting. If you are not reading the book feel welcome to come and sit in on the discussion anyway...otherwise meet at Chance and Ian's house at 6:00 to go out to eat. If you have any questions contact us.

Winning Souls One Burger at a Time

I found a satirical article today that in some ways resonates with the philosophy of our newly formed 3M Club. Men love food and they love eating it even more.

Tominthebox reports:

Goodbye Minister of Education. Goodbye Evangelism Coordinator. The two positions have been replaced by one Culinary Chef at South Fork Baptist Church in West Creek, Mississippi, a mid-sized town north of I-20, just east of Jackson. "The transition was as smooth as chocolate. The chef's salary is a little less than the other two combined," said Mike Johnson, Personnel Committee chairman. Though he himself claims to be agnostic, Henry Thomas, a 2002 graduate of the Culinary Institute of America in San Antonio, appears to have greased the evangelistic pan down in West Creek.

"There's an old adage that goes something like, 'The way to a man's heart is through his stomach'. That's our goal. We want to get Jesus into the hearts of people. We're doing it by going through their stomachs," said Tom Bardwell, head deacon. Bardwell went on to discuss how the deacons in the Bible were originally chosen to wait on tables. "At South Fork, we're simply fulfilling our designated Biblical duties. We wait on tables and we feed the hungry."

Princeton Moore, pastor, says "What we are doing is breaking from blind tradition of just telling people to ask Jesus into their heart. We used to get so many suspicious looks. Now, we are showing them with food. The stomach is just another passageway by which Jesus gets to the hearts of people. Women have won husbands in this way for centuries. Isn't it time that we let Jesus start winning hearts through the stomach?"


Things have been going great since South Fork implemented their new "Food Evangelism" program. FE (for short) appears to have replaced the less appetizing EE program of the last century. "Food effects people," said Pastor Moore as he bit into a cross-shaped cookie with red icing. "This cookie is an evangelism miracle. When I hold this cookie in front of a kid and ask him if he wants Jesus in his heart, the answer has never been 'No'. They always say 'Yes'. I saved four kids just this morning using simple cookies just like these. With old programs such as EE, we had to go through a much longer explanation and I'm not so sure the kids were honest as they reluctantly prayed the closing prayer after me. Now I'm sure they're saved because you can see the eagerness on their faces when we use the cookies."

Apparently the food acts merely as a subliminal stimulant, leaving the individual to choose. The cross-cookies are designed to operate below the threshold of consciousness. Yet, the sensations they create are just intense enough to influence mental processes so the children can say "yes" to Jesus on their own.

"I found Jesus just last week in a cute little doughnut," said Dottie Martin, 13, as she straightened her Walk-through-the-Bible Jelly Belly bracelet. "The doughnut hole was heart-shaped. Pastor Moore explained that something was missing in the doughnut. It was my heart. He told me to give my heart to the Lord. He said I should ask Jesus to be Lord of my life. Just like the pamphlet says the Bible says, 'Just ask Jesus into your heart and you'll be saved.' That's what I did as I ate the doughnut."

"This program is not just for kids," said janitor Wesley Richards, who just received a raise with the recent increase in hours spent cleaning the fellowship hall. "The Try Jesus Layer Cake is my favorite." Tominthebox representatives were given a piece of this cake along with a business card explaining the meaning of the layers. The outer dark frosting represents sin. As your utensil cuts through the frosting, you immediately notice the red of the red velvet cake, representing blood. Beneath this red layer is a bottom coating of white frosting representing that cleansing has taken place. "After the first bite, we encourage people to drink water or Blueberry Koolaid to signify baptism," said Moore. "They then wipe their mouth with a green napkin to remind them that they need to grow before scraping the final crumbs from the golden plate clean."

"Unfortunately, there has been some unintended growth," Alexis McDonald, 22, admitted. "When I joined Food Evangelism, I was not exactly thin, but I was healthy and was careful about what I ate. After inviting Jesus to come into my heart last month with the seven layer Lasagna, I've had to get a new larger wardrobe. But, how can I not eat? It's evangelism."

Chef Thomas prefers to do his own designs. "Little Dottie Martin actually tried to garnish one of my meringues with flowers. It grated on my nerves as I saw her place a tulip on the table. I was quite steamed when I told her, 'there is no room for tulips around here.' I'm happy that I simmered down quickly." Fortunately, no one was left battered.

Praying in Tounges and the SBC

I found this article from the Baptist Press to be pretty interesting as I have thought about this topic in detail in the past few years. The article deals with speaking in tongues both in public and private places and the percentage of SBC pastors that believe in this spiritual gift. To be honest the results are higher than I expected. The majority (barely) of SBC pastors believe in the gift of tongues and that it is still given today. Definitely read the article and check out the diagrams if you are interested in the topic.

While I was in college I attended a pentecostal church for a couple years and that is where I had my first experience with a biblical teaching on tongues. Since then I have changed my thoughts (which I'd be glad to share if asked) on the subject many times as I have experienced times when someone was speaking in "tongues" and I felt it was being used in a biblical way and no doubt genuine, but there have also been other times when I felt people speaking in tongues were doing so in a non-biblical way. In those instances the people speaking were doing so in public before a congregation in a way that I felt did not edify the church.

So I know most of our readers are from a SBC background so what are your thoughts? Do you believe in a private prayer language? Do you believe that people are still given the gift of tongues in public? Or are you unsure because you haven't heard or experienced yourself someone speaking in tongues?

Biblical passages on tongues- 1 Corinthians, Acts 2

The Agony of Deceit: An interview with Mike Horton

Here is an excellent three part interview with Michael Horton. He is part of the White House Inn crew and teaches at Westminister Seminary. The interview covers a broad range of topics including recent movements, the Gospel, Pastors, apologetics, etc. It is definately worth the read if you get the chance.



Part 1
Part 2
Part 3