What Evangelicals can learn from the Glenn Beck/Jim Wallis Debate — by Christopher Neiswonger

Christopher Neiswonger from Apologetics.com scores a direct hit in this analysis of the recent debate stirred up by Glenn Beck’s comments with regard to left-leaning churches using the “social justice” moniker as a euphemism for their liberal political action. Looking forward to this Friday night’s podcast!

What Evangelicals can learn from the Glenn Beck/Jim Wallis Debate

There has never been a more important time for Social Justice and political engagement. Unfortunately for Christians the terms have been largely co-opted by Left wing fanatics intent upon using the good intentions of the Church as the ground for their Statist pretensions. That doesn’t mean God doesn’t want justice; it just means they have no idea what it is.

Take the recent battles between Glenn Beck and his archenemy Jim Wallis as an example. Certainly, no one is going to argue that Glenn Beck has any amount of Christian pedigree. His theology is deplorable even if his understanding of history and political science is much better than what one would expect from someone that has a light grasp of theological dogma. Still, Jim Wallis continually claiming to be an Evangelical is at least as bizarre as Glenn Beck being held out as the answer from orthodoxy. Wallis’ theology is only a bit better than his economic thought. Neither has much business speaking to the important issues involved in a specifically “Christian” interpretation of Social Justice. What stands at the center of Wallis’ reconstruction of Evangelical faith and practice in “Social Injustice”. The motivation is greed, the source is envy, the means is institutionalized theft and the force of the state, and the end is the accumulation of wealth and control over the freedom of others.

There is perhaps no greater provocateur of injustice in American theological culture than Wallis.

The first response will be “How can you say that? Jim Wallace has dedicated his life to Social Justice?” The obvious response being, “No, he has not.” It seems that he has dedicated his life to the subversion of the Evangelical churches traditional understanding of Social Justice through the promotion of merely pagan economic and political thought.

What is Social Justice?

First, social justice is a Christian idea. The terms are not traditional terms but the idea is Christian constant. Any law against theft or murder is a rule of social justice in it’s most basic form. Social justice is not a peculiar kind of justice the way ice cream and pie are different kinds of desserts. Justice is just justice, whole and unalterable. There are some things that are just and some things that are unjust. Those can be personal or social. Institutional injustices are usually social and tend to be functions of the State. The State is another word in Christian theology for any governing authority and the Bible is replete with both advice and criticism of states, statesmen, and statecraft. Still, the church can just as easily be the source of institutional injustice and this happens all through the Bible also.

Second, for the most part, social justice through the Bible and through the entire history of Christian thought has largely meant the exact opposite of what Jim Wallis, the religious left wing, the theological liberals, the political liberals, and the Sojourners establishment say that it means. Today, Social Justice is taken to mean the platform of the Democratic National Convention and the basic principles of atheistic Communism applied as a Theonomic mandate by God, either implicitly or explicitly. This means that the State is supposedly God’s chosen means toward the dissolution of oppression and injustice.

There might be some truth in that the State is God’s means to answering injustice but it is by no means clear who the unjust ones are. People are not right because they are poor; neither are they right because they are rich; people are right when their cause is just. Some people are rich because they abused the poor, which is another way of saying they stole their money. Some people are rich because they suffered and postponed trivial and fleshly indulgence for the betterment of their families and community, and when the leftists steal their money they are certainly the oppressor. The rich are not as easy to oppress as the poor but they are the more attractive target.

Most that are poor bear their poverty as marks of oppression in the form of abuse by their respective States; the State is the primary aggressor against the peace of the people. The most common targets of oppression are children, because oppressing them costs the least in terms of investment and exertion of raw power. After the State, it would be the leftist, socialist, and communists economic schemes forced upon them from without; unjust wars; disease; flood, famine, and fire; and the economic collapses related to those uncontrollable causes that have unprecipitated effects. Still, one would need to be almost completely confused about the human condition to not accept that vanity, sloth, self indulgence, irresponsibility, and the refusal to do in the short term what is necessary for long term benefits is not a very common and much more direct cause of poverty. There are different causes of poverty and wealth, neither is value neutral, and so Justice or Injustice is something to be measured by human action in accord with sound reason and virtue.

Exodus 23:3 says, “Do not show favoritism to a poor man in his lawsuit.” Exodus 23:6 says, “Do not deny justice to your poor people in their lawsuits.” Leviticus 19:15 says, “Do not pervert justice; do not show favoritism to the poor or favoritism to the great, but judge your neighbor fairly.”

Christopher Neiswonger

Tiger, Brit, Coulter, and Christianity

To those who would claim Christ, yet bemoan conservatism, Fox News, and Ann Coulter… I have a message for you — repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near! :-) For all the whining and bellyaching that leftist “Christians” do about Ann Coulter and Fox News I would love to see them stew in their own juices after Ann’s latest piece. No woman is more hated by the left (including so-called Christians who are left) than Ann Coulter… yet it’s hard to remember when a prominent female political analyst said something so accurate… AND POLITICALLY SCRIPTURALLY accurate at that (yes, it is possible I guess)!

It started with Brit Hume’s initial statement on Fox News about Tiger Woods and his recent sexual troubles:

The extent to which he can recover, it seems to me, depends on his faith. He is said to be a Buddhist. I don’t think that faith offers the kind of forgiveness and redemption that is offered by the Christian faith. So, my message to Tiger would be, ‘Tiger, turn to the Christian faith and you can make a total recovery and be a great example to the world.

Of course, as Ann says, any public mention of Christianity gets the usual liberal media elites into a crazed frenzy. Brit was wrongfully attacked… and Ann’s article not only points out the sheer idiocy of the many liberal responses to Brit, but does it while presenting the gospel (ah yes, presenting the gospel… something else Christo-leftists have a hard time doing)!!!

I agree 1,000 times with her. Feast your logical Christ-following senses on her piece, partially quoted below:

Someone mentioned Christianity on television recently and liberals reacted with their usual howls of rage and blinking incomprehension.

On a Fox News panel discussing Tiger Woods, Brit Hume said, perfectly accurately:

“The extent to which he can recover, it seems to me, depends on his faith. He is said to be a Buddhist. I don’t think that faith offers the kind of forgiveness and redemption that is offered by the Christian faith. So, my message to Tiger would be, ‘Tiger, turn to the Christian faith and you can make a total recovery and be a great example to the world.”

Hume’s words, being 100 percent factually correct, sent liberals into a tizzy of sputtering rage, once again illustrating liberals’ copious ignorance of Christianity. (Also illustrating the words of the Bible: “How is it you do not understand me when I speak? It is because you cannot bear to listen to my words.” John 8:43.)

[...]

On MSNBC, David Shuster invoked the “separation of church and television” (a phrase that also doesn’t appear in the Constitution), bitterly complaining that Hume had brought up Christianity “out-of-the-blue” on “a political talk show.”

Why on earth would Hume mention religion while discussing a public figure who had fallen from grace and was in need of redemption and forgiveness? Boy, talk about coming out of left field!

What religion — what topic — induces this sort of babbling idiocy? (If liberals really want to keep people from hearing about God, they should give Him his own show on MSNBC.)

Most perplexing was columnist Dan Savage’s indignant accusation that Hume was claiming that Christianity “offers the best deal — it gives you the get-out-of-adultery-free card that other religions just can’t.”

In fact, that’s exactly what Christianity does. It’s the best deal in the universe. (I know it seems strange that a self-described atheist and “radical sex advice columnist ——” like Savage would miss the central point of Christianity, but there it is.)

God sent his only son to get the crap beaten out of him, die for our sins and rise from the dead. If you believe that, you’re in. Your sins are washed away from you — sins even worse than adultery! — because of the cross.

“He canceled the record of the charges against us and took it away by nailing it to the cross.” Colossians 2:14.

Surely you remember the cross, liberals — the symbol banned by ACLU lawsuits from public property throughout the land?

Christianity is simultaneously the easiest religion in the world and the hardest religion in the world.

Happy New Year!

I wish everyone a joyous and blessed new year in 2010!

Looking for LA County Library Card Number (updated)

I’m looking for a library card number for the County of Los Angeles Public Library system. I actually want to use the online digital loan feature at overdrive.colapublib.org, so if anyone doesn’t use that and wouldn’t mind if I piggy-backed on their card please email me. Thanks! :-)


Okay, I don’t want anyone to get in trouble… and the library just contacted me to politely remind me that anyone sharing their card number with me is violating their user agreement.

Manhattan Declaration

I would encourage anyone who remotely claims to follow Christ (or even those who merely want to stand for what’s right) to sign the Manhattan Declaration.

Christians, when they have lived up to the highest ideals of their faith, have defended the weak and vulnerable and worked tirelessly to protect and strengthen vital institutions of civil society, beginning with the family.

We are Orthodox, Catholic, and evangelical Christians who have united at this hour to reaffirm fundamental truths about justice and the common good, and to call upon our fellow citizens, believers and non-believers alike, to join us in defending them. These truths are:

1. the sanctity of human life
2. the dignity of marriage as the conjugal union of husband and wife
3. the rights of conscience and religious liberty.

Inasmuch as these truths are foundational to human dignity and the well-being of society, they are inviolable and non-negotiable. Because they are increasingly under assault from powerful forces in our culture, we are compelled today to speak out forcefully in their defense, and to commit ourselves to honoring them fully no matter what pressures are brought upon us and our institutions to abandon or compromise them. We make this commitment not as partisans of any political group but as followers of Jesus Christ, the crucified and risen Lord, who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

EPA Employees Silenced for Exposing the Cap and Trade Sham

A pair of EPA lawyers expose the complete fraud known as the “Cap and Trade” tax. It’s really a money grab masquerading as helping the environmental. The EPA and the White House are trying to silence this opposing viewpoint.

From the article [full link]:

When Zabel and Williams released a video on the Internet expressing their concerns over the Obama administration’s plans to use a cap and trade program to fight climate change, they were told to keep it to themselves.

Laurie Williams and husband Alan Zabel worked as lawyers for the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, in its San Francisco office for more than 20 years, and they know more about climate change than most politicians. But when the couple released a video on the Internet expressing their concerns over the Obama administration’s plans to use cap-and-trade legislation to fight climate change, they were told to keep it to themselves.

Williams and Zabel oppose cap and trade — a controversial government allowance program in which companies are issued emissions limits, or caps, which they can then trade — as a means to fight climate change.

[...]

“Cap-and-trade with offsets provides a false sense of progress and puts money in the pockets of investors,” Zabel said in the video. “We think that these restrictions might not be constitutional,” he said.

“Racism” Is Liberals’ Favorite Cover For Their Own Hatred

RushLimbuaghThe left hates conservatives. They don’t just “dislike” them… they hate them. The very preachers of tolerance and anti-hate prove again to be quite the bigoted, intolerant, intellectually dishonest and hate-filled group… how ironic. I can’t even remember the last liberal I spoke to who could piece together a coherent argument about why they “hate” Rush Limbaugh.

Rush Limbaugh was recently pushed out of a bid to purchase stake in the pathetic St. Louis Rams professional football team. This was the accomplished mission of liars, hate-mongers and racists like Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and the usual cast of brainless clowns who succeeded in attributing racists quotes to Limbaugh, all of which are widely known to be pure fabrication.

If there was any “social justice” in this world, then everyone who attributed a false quote to Rush Limbaugh during October of 2009 would be sent to a work camp where they will be forced to take sensitivity and tolerance seminars during the evenings, and during the day put in several hours of landscaping at the houses of Haliburton exec.

Our free society is becoming a precarious place for dissenting viewpoints. God help us all.

From Rush’s Wall Street Journal piece on this whole tragedy:

…It didn’t take long before my name was selectively leaked to the media as part of the Checketts investment group. Shortly thereafter, the media elicited comments from the likes of Al Sharpton. In 1998 Mr. Sharpton was found guilty of defamation and ordered to pay $65,000 for falsely accusing a New York prosecutor of rape in the 1987 Tawana Brawley case. He also played a leading role in the 1991 Crown Heights riot (he called neighborhood Jews “diamond merchants”) and 1995 Freddie’s Fashion Mart riot.

Not to be outdone, Jesse Jackson, whose history includes anti-Semitic speech (in 1984 he referred to Jews as “Hymies” and to New York City as “Hymietown” in a Washington Post interview) chimed in. He found me unfit to be associated with the NFL. I was too divisive and worse. I was accused of once supporting slavery and having praised Martin Luther King Jr.’s murderer, James Earl Ray.

[...]

…Numerous sportswriters, CNN, MSNBC, among others, falsely attributed to me statements I had never made. Their sources, as best I can tell, were Wikipedia and each other. But the Wikipedia post was based on a fabrication printed in a book that also lacked any citation to an actual source.

I never said I supported slavery and I never praised James Earl Ray. How sick would that be? Just as sick as those who would use such outrageous slanders against me or anyone else who never even thought such things. Mr. Wilbon refuses to take responsibility for his poison pen, writing instead that he will take my word that I did not make these statements; others, like Rick Sanchez of CNN, essentially used the same sleight-of-hand.

The sports media elicited comments from a handful of players, none of whom I can recall ever meeting. Among other things, at least one said he would never play for a team I was involved in given my racial views. My racial views? You mean, my belief in a colorblind society where every individual is treated as a precious human being without regard to his race? Where football players should earn as much as they can and keep as much as they can, regardless of race? Those controversial racial views?

The NFL players union boss, DeMaurice Smith, jumped in. A Washington criminal defense lawyer, Democratic Party supporter and Barack Obama donor, he sent a much publicized email to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell saying that it was important for the league to reject discrimination and hatred.

[...]

As I explained on my radio show, this spectacle is bigger than I am on several levels. There is a contempt in the news business, including the sportswriter community, for conservatives that reflects the blind hatred espoused by Messrs. Sharpton and Jackson. “Racism” is too often their sledgehammer. And it is being used to try to keep citizens who don’t share the left’s agenda from participating in the full array of opportunities this nation otherwise affords each of us. It was on display many years ago in an effort to smear Clarence Thomas with racist stereotypes and keep him off the Supreme Court. More recently, it was employed against patriotic citizens who attended town-hall meetings and tea-party protests.

These intimidation tactics are working and spreading, and they are a cancer on our society.

Make Congressmen Use the Same Healthcare They Vote For — House Resolution 615

Congressman John Fleming (Louisiana physician) has proposed an amendment that
would require Congressmen, Senators and their families to participate in a socialize health care system if they vote for it. Basically, they can vote for one system for average citizens while sending their families elsewhere for medical care. In blue collar circles this is called “practice what you preach”. :-)

Congressman Fleming is encouraging people to go to his Website and sign his
petition: http://fleming.house.gov

I Want to Use Nuclear Weapons on the Nobel Committee

Barack Obama in front of UN sealIs this some sick joke?

The laughable farce-of-an-award-committee that brought us the debacle of Al Gore, alarmist hypocrite extraordinaire, as a Nobel Prize winner… has set a bold, new standard of incompetence and political pandering. They awarded Barack Obama the Nobel Peace prize!? But for what?! He’s a young, first-term leader who has only served nine months and has spent those nine months losing support in the wake of his controversial, debt-laden government bailouts and his otherwise inaction and lack of change (or change for the worse, if you will).

The piece de resistance for me is the fact that the nomination cutoff for the Nobel was just 12 days after Obama took office!?! Are you frakkin’ kidding me?

From the Times Online UK:

The award of this year’s Nobel peace prize to President Obama will be met with widespread incredulity, consternation in many capitals and probably deep embarrassment by the President himself.

Rarely has an award had such an obvious political and partisan intent. It was clearly seen by the Norwegian Nobel committee as a way of expressing European gratitude for an end to the Bush Administration, approval for the election of America’s first black president and hope that Washington will honour its promise to re-engage with the world.

Instead, the prize risks looking preposterous in its claims, patronising in its intentions and demeaning in its attempt to build up a man who has barely begun his period in office, let alone achieved any tangible outcome for peace.

[full article]

From Yahoo: He won, but for what?

From Reuters: Obama wins Nobel Peace Prize to mixed reviews

Another one from Reuters: Obama Peace Prize win has some Americans asking why?

The Story of Stuff — A Critique of Leftist Propaganda (Part 4)