Water - One Reason I Gave Up on Atheism

Water in all 3 of its miraculous forms - liquid, solid and gas

As a young man, as young men will do, I toyed with the idea of atheism. With my limited youthful logic I thought the idea of evolution and survival of the fittest a pretty smart idea as we often do in the midst of our youth and arrogance, when like Eve, we buy into the lie that we are, by nature, immortal and that, with a bit of knowledge, we can be our own gods.

Once I learned how to reason, however, some problems soon arose with the whole idea that there is nothing out there beyond our own, horrifically flawed selves. If, in fact, we are the result of a very long series of cosmic accidents, I came to realize, that then how could we trust that our minds are even capable of real rational thought. We could be thinking we have reasoned things out by cold logic, but the fact is, our accidentally constructed "minds" could well be incapable of anything other than a crippled kind of thinking influenced more by our lack of some missing kind of perceptive ability than by reason as we think of it, if we can think rationally at all. 

So, the truth is that the "logic" by which the atheist rejects the notion of God may only be the product of a limited ability to think. We could be limited in our ability to think truly rational thoughts about anything beyond what our five senses seem to perceive. In fact, there may be an entire reality beyond the limits of our perception. Perhaps God is a pan-dimensional being we can neither see nor hear nor touch nor taste nor feel because we lack the sense organs to perceive such a being. God told Moses it was impossible for him with his limited sensor equipment to see more than his "back parts".

If could be that we are only able to perceive the results of a creature outside the strictures of 3 dimensional space when He interacts with the universe and with us lower creatures. Consider, for instance, water. Without water, life could not exist. Water is a compound made of two of the simplest of elements - hydrogen and oxygen.Water has the following unique properties.

1. It is liquid in its normal state allowing us to drink it, sail on it, water crops with it, bathe with it and cook with it.
2. Water turns to gas in response not only to boiling, but to lowered humidity levels in the air at relatively low temperatures through evaporation. 
3. Were it not for evaporation, clouds would not form, nor would precipitation redistribute fresh filtered water over the land areas of the Earth where animals and plants take it in as a necessity of survival. 
4. Also, water changes to a solid (freezes) at a temperature at which animals and plants can survive. Just before it freezes and turns into a solid, unlike every other substance on the planet.
5. Just before freezing water expands rather than contracts causing its solid form to float on it's liquid form. 
6. Were water like all other substances, it would continue to contract as it cools and sink to the bottom of the body of water exposed to freezing temperatures.
7. If ice sank rather than floated, instead of protecting life below the surface of the water from freezing temperatures above, it would fill up lakes, rivers and oceans from the bottom up.
8. Ice that sinks would eventually force the fish our onto the surface of what had become a solid block of ice instead of a body of water. Sea life would die gasping. Virtually all animal life in the water would be killed after a single hard winter. 
9. Water, by all appearances, seems unlikely to be a happy accident of physics, but rather the product of some intelligent design scheme. And, where you have a design scheme, you pretty much have to have a designer. 
10. Were you to change those two very odd properties of water, life would be unable to exist. 

It turns out that it takes an incredible amount of faith in accidents or a remarkable lack of curiosity to attribute all that to chance. Over the past century or so, as science digs deeper and deeper into the nature of the universe around us it keeps discovering that life exists by a singularly complex web of factors which increasingly like they could only have occurred on their own by a string of not just improbable, but statistically impossible complex circumstances.

CS Lewis compared it to smashing a jug of milk on the floor and hoping it gives you a map of London. As unlikely as that would be to happen, no matter how many jugs you smashed to the floor, your family cat, attracted by the crashing, could hardly guess with the brain it has, whether the delightfully tasty patterns spread across the kitchen floor accidentally appeared there as a result of the crash or if this odd superior creature sitting on the drain board taking notes might have created the mess for some unfathomable reason known only to itself. The cat, with cat--like logic might assume the milk spread itself over the floor of its own accord for the cat's enjoyment.

Not having seen you smash several jugs of milk on the floor, the cat would likely accept the miracle of the milk and commence to licking it up without further thought. Me? Because I have a human's ability to reason, could look at the milk, even if someone else at broken the jugs, not me, and detect the action of some actor who was behind it. I could probably even guess which one of my kids was responsible for the milky map of London on the kitchen floor.

So given that I would require an extremely deep sort of faith to accept that this glorious world is the accidental product of volcanoes and asteroids, I have look deeper, with an open mind and found unmistakable imprint of Him, the great designer, in even simple things like water.

Is God Giving the Churches a Nudge?

In the midst of the CoVid-19 pandemic, SDA churches all over the world have stopped having services on Sabbath. A lot of our churches have given their members weblinks and reading materials and the address to which to mail their tithes and offerings and said "See you later." However, many of our churches have, at this time and for this crisis, chosen to invested the rather modest funds needed to purchase cameras, computer and sound gear needed to livestream church services rather than simply shoving their flock over to Amazing Facts, 3ABN and the Hope Channel. While these are worthy sources for religious instruction and comfort in this difficult time, they lack the personal impact of remaining connected to your brothers and sisters.

When this emergency is over, the churches will still have the equipment to livestream services and should be able to do so economically. I wonder if perhaps God will use this crisis to nudge His churches into using this technology to reach out and provide a link to others beside those who show up each Sabbath. I'm thinking of the elderly and disabled shut-in members and those who have for one reason or another drifted away from our fellowship. Perhaps this is an opportunity for our churches to provide a more subtle way for lost and isolated Christians to rejoin the life of their churches.

In my town in Texas, they did a survey of church membership in the city by denomination. We discovered to our shock that though we have 3 churches in the city, the number of people who listed themselves as belonging to our denomination was over twice the number of people on the books and who were coming to church.

We have sadly neglected our shut-ins and strayed lambs. I've been made acutely aware of this in the past few years as my wife and I have found ourselves becoming shut-ins due to her disability. Amazing Facts has been a blessing, but it is no substitute for being able to connect with our church family. There is a huge field out there to be harvested. So many people have drifted from the church over the years simply because they missed a few weeks and nobody noticed.

With social media, live-streaming, email and telephones, a whole field of mission has opened up that we are really not reaching. Maybe you aren't confident enough to do Bible Studies or you don't have the stamina or courage to "pass out literature" to perfect strangers. But how hard is it to work with your church's website or social media page to answer messages from people who saw services on the Internet? What a great way to follow up with isolated, lonely, elderly, disabled and ill church members. How hard could it be to follow up a comment on a post on the church Facebook page with a phone call and a simple "How are you doing?"

Jesus told the story of the ninety and nine in which the shepherd turned and headed back out into the night to find a single sheep who had strayed. My God, why have we forsaken the vast flock out there who have gotten lost from our fellowship?  Perhaps God is giving us a high-tech flashlight and a shepherd's crook in all this scary pandemic in order to encourage us to gently seek out our lost sheep and bring them home - or at least to offer them a little comfort and a sense of belonging to their home church again. What a nice mission that would be and so easy to set up.

© 2020 by Tom King

Upsetting the Sanhedrin

It's been a while since I've written anything on this weblog. There's a reason for that. I haven't trusted myself to comment on the sorts of controversies rattling around in the upper rooms of church governance and in the lower chambers of the active and often outspoken laity. I got my copy of Adventist World today, opened it and there it was - Executive Committee Members Debate Proposed Compliance Action. I thought, "Well here we go again."  As I read, I quite frankly found myself in sympathy with the unions and pastors who were being threatened.


I use the word "threatened" because you can't read the article and sense anything less than a clear threat for unions and union conference presidents.  I found it odd that nothing was said about conference presidents and individual conferences that are out of compliance with the sketchy vote-down of women's ordination at the San Antonio General Conference.There have been two reactions to that decision by those unconvinced by that vote. Both reactions were discussed in the article.

One response was to ignore the edict which didn't exactly forbid women's ordination, but took power from the Union Conferences to make that decision for themselves. The vote moved the authority for deciding about ordination back to the General Conference where it was prior to the 1903 General Conference. In that conference, the unions were created. Ellen White was at that conference and said angels walked the aisle and influenced the decision to divest the GC of some of its power. Individual union conference presidents in the West Coast Unions seem destined to be publicly reprimanded as their unions have continued to ordain women as though they still had the authority to do so.

The second response has been that of the Scandinavian and German unions in Europe. There, the men turned in their ordination credentials and both men and women are commissioned. To me that seems like a reasonable compromise on the part of the unions. It complies with the prohibition against ordaining women while achieving the conference's goal of treating women equally in terms of pay and responsibility as pastors.

Apparently not. Elder Wilson intimated in his comments that, although he hasn't used the compliance committees, he still has them holstered and ready if needs be. It was clearly a not so veiled threat and it's backed by many of the more patriarchal unions that find the ordination of women to be a threat as well.

My wife and I were watching one of the Jesus movies and something kind of jumped out at me. All was not harmonious in the time of Christ. There were factions ranging from the zealots on the right to the looser Jews like Zacchaeus, Matthew and their crowd. And in the midst was the political class of the Sanhedrin - Pharisees and Sadducees, the Democrats and Republicans of Jesus' first advent.

Many of our brethren express concern over the state of the Adventist Church at this time. The divisions within are at once spiritual, political and cultural. Could we expect anything less in the day of Jesus' second advent? The fragmented Jewish faith at the time of his first advent was unable to find unity within its diversity save through the emerging Christian faith. Jesus drew followers from tax-collectors, revolutionaries, fishermen, the rich and poor, small and great, young and old, Scribe, Pharisee and Sadducee. Rather than stuffing his children all into one ideological box, he met them where they were and set them on the road to heaven.

Perhaps after 2000 years my church should remember that we are called to save the lost. We are not called to accumulate people who perfectly reflect our own beliefs and ideas and stuff them all into a big organized box o' holy folk. We are called to love one another, not obey human authority in a hierarchy growing as complex and authoritarian as that of the Roman Catholic Church. This troubles me too.

I'm a rock-ribbed conservative, in both spiritual and political matters, yet I find myself siding on ordination with fellow Adventists who are down-right socialists. Perhaps my small government, individualistic, and respectfulness of foundation law and principles colors my thinking. In watching recent events, I find myself worried about the direction in which our leadership is taking us. We've always done Bible Conferences over issues of Bible doctrine. In this case also, we spent a good deal of church money doing a conference at Glacier View in Colorado over women's ordination. The Theology of Ordination Committee (TOC) found by a solid majority that ordination was a human construct rather than a Biblical command and that there is no evidence that women could not be ordained as pastors and ministers if the church chooses to do so. And with TOC report firmly in hand, the GC proceeded to effectively ignore the advice of the TOC, burying its findings in procedural maneuvering at the San Antonio GC in order to push toward the desired vote. The vote effectively divested the union conferences of authority to decide policy regarding ordination for the individual unions. While the union conferences that have been accused of noncompliance have yet to be summoned before the committees, the GC and Wilson in particular seemed determined to bully the unions into compliance without having to invoke the compliance committees and disband unions, especially unions that provide a significant chunk of the world budget. Compliance committees have been called the Adventist FBI and large numbers of Adventist members find this ominous.

The church is made up of individuals making their way to heaven. It's not a bus or a cruise ship. It's not a form of transport where everyone must have a ticket and sit where the conductors tell us to. The church is a gathering place where we all flock to be blessed with God's presence. Why are we worried that remembering the way the Lord has led us in the past will lead to trickle-down non-compliance? And since when is it the church's duty to enforce "compliance". Since when do we place human authority between Christians and their God that men be granted the power to make us all comply with human decisions? Yet in the end, I can say with the president of the Pacific Union Conference, "I am a Seventh-day Adventist today and I will be a Seventh-day Adventist tomorrow regardless of what this vote does."

Based on my experience with the children of God, I expect they will continue their journey toward home, whatever the Sanhedrin does. I love my church and pray for its leadership that they look beyond their fears and trust in Christ. Based on what I see on the evening news and what I read in Scripture, Jesus will soon come and once again He will take his children with Him beyond mere compliance to righteousness and eternal life.

© 2020 by Tom King

The Third World Next Door

There's a wonderful new program that trains students for missions by visiting refugee/immigrant communities in Houston, Texas where half the population speaks a language other than English. It's a great program, don't get me wrong, It's a lovely idea. I just think they can go farther with this idea.

During my heyday, I worked with folks in what the Texas government calls "colonias". Now the term colonias has a very narrow, politician-defined meaning. It must, for instance consist of a settlement with poorly constructed houses, often with little or no insulation, no electricity except what could be stolen from nearby businesses or directly from light poles. There are lots of people killed trying to wire their shacks, especially during freezing weather. Running water is rare. Sewer service and trash pickup are often non-existent. Transportation is dependent on employers offering semi-slave jobs. AND they have to be within something like 150 miles of the border to be a colonia and receive federal and state dollars. It's not accidental that communities within 150 miles of the border tend to be the stronghold of one particular party that has encouraged the establishment and filling of these tar-paper communities for decades.

The trouble is there are a couple of dozen colonia type settlements in deep rural East Texas, a lot farther from the border. So these settlements legally defined as colonias and don't get political attention much. The Texas legislature is trying to do something about it, but they aren't getting a whole lot of cooperation from the "loyal" opposition party - especially not the ones that aren't Demoocrat strongholds. These illegal immigrant camps are a whole lot like the worker camps the railroads and mining towns used to build back in the 1800s that Tennessee Ernie Ford sang about in the song "Sixteen Tons".

Like our War on Poverty welfare programs, colonias are designed to punish anyone who tries to escape this particularly oppressive form of indentured servitude. Except with indentured servitude you had a time limit. Life in colonias is a sentence without a visible end. Try to escape and the boss man calls a friend in ICE and gets your fuzzy hindquarters sent back to Mexico. With legal refugees and immigrants, there may be a period of hard work and sacrifice, but the future in America holds promise and opportunity for them and a path to citizenship. For illlegal immigrants, especially those from Mexico, there is only a slightly better form of poverty and endless, often brutal work.

That's why we must close the border and create a legal path for guest and migrant workers to enter the USA. It will take both actions to solve the problem. Guest workers could then come in to the US under the protection of the state and federal Departments of Labor and OSHA. Of course, then the big campaign donors and corporations that exploit illegals would lose there wildly underpaid servants. 

There is a mission field out there calling out to our church, often hidden nearby in poverty-stricken towns you didn't even know were there. I worked with one nonprofit program where we quietly developed transportation to town for the mothers in those colonias to buy groceries and supplies. We used church buses. When we started, coyotes with pickups would drive the ladies to town piled in the bed of the truck. The women would buy saleable commodities with food stamps and trade them for a ride home. The going rate was $85 worth of food stamp purchases for the ride home. That way they got around the law against transferring food stamp dollars to the guy who was driving them. Typically they would shove 5-10 women in the bed of the truck, and get up to $800 or so in goods in exchange. This was being encouraged and coordinated by big flower nursery owners, chicken ranchers and processors, dairy farmers and big commercial farms.

Looking for a mission field? The colonias needs more than religious tracts in their own language. And these guys aren't just facing language barriers or cultural barriers or racial prejudice. These guys are being oppressed right here in the United States. It's an enlightening visit to a third world right next door that you probably don't know about. 

Want to help oppressed third world peoples? Take your church van to a colonia (or for that matter your own van) and offer the ladies a lift to town. Raise some money to provide heaters in winter. Perhaps pay for a light pole and breaker box to be dropped in the neighborhood. Find a spot and dig a well or deliver cases of bottled water. Set up food bank days for those living in colonias. You'll get in trouble for your kindness with the people hiding these places as their own personal slave camps, but in the process you can shine a light on the enslavement of people simply looking for a safe place to raise their kids. There are still honest people in the media and in elected office. Appeal to the good guys. They love it when you do and you'll quickly discover who the good guys aren't.

Of course, you'll probably anger the oppressors in the process and you may want to travel in pairs, go armed and check under the van for funny wires before you drive out there to the colonias.

Anybody supporting "illegal" immigration and who do not want to enforce the border must share the responsibility for the continuation of this deep level of oppression of a desperate people. Immigration must be regulated, not to keep out undesirables as the leftist media try to characterize it. Controlling the border is about making sure that what happened to my Irish ancestors or your Italian, Greek, Chinese and Japanese ancestors back in the days of the "company store" and unsafe coal mines, dangerous railroad building work and migrant abuse doesn't happen in the 21st century when we're supposed to have grown to be better as a society than that. We're supposed to be compassionate, yet we tolerate a system that pours willing slaves into the gristmills of cheap labor dependent industries. Sorry for getting on my high horse again, but my trips to the colonias were deeply disturbing and seeing the good citizens who abused these people parade their wealth in local social circles and donate millions to put their names on buildings on the backs of illegals was sickening.

We need to cut off the flood at the border and funnel it through legal channels. Want to see exploiters of illegals wither up and die on the vine? that's how you do it. If you just look away you're abetting this evil system. If we create a legal path to work for guest workers, then they can appeal for help to government regulators the same as citizen workers can, if employers underpay them or force them to work in dangerous conditions.

 
A controlled border is about cutting off the flow of desperate human beings into the maw of thecruel third world of undocumented slave labor camps. Want to do mission work? Visit the colonias. Get your hands dirty. Don't just throw a bag of burgers out for the homeless alongside the road and rest on your unearned moral superiority. Get up on your horse and visit your representatives in government. Talk to the media. There are still honest reporters. Shine a light on the exploitation. Say something out loud about it. Organize your church. Build a food bank in an empty room and keep it stocked. Drive out to the colonias with a load of food and distribute it to the mamacitas and the children. Do something to directly help them, but don't stop there.

Vote for people who will stop this self-imposed slavery. There's a better way to get these folks jobs with dignity in jobs "Americans don't want." It's an American tradition to provide immigrants with jobs for unskilled workers. What is not a product of our uniquely American idealism, is the evil (yes evil) setting of caps on people to prevent them from rising in the world to escape their poverty. Wouldn't it be nice if rose growers, farmers, dairymen, chicken processors and such had to provide clean places to live for migrant workers and access to food and training in how to speak English and manage money. We did all that in migrant communities in East Texas when I was there. Good church people taught ESL classes. Banks sponsored classes in money management.

There's so much more we could do for the Third World next door if we'd open our eyes to it. But as Joy Behar once said, it's unpleasant to see and "deal with" and it's so much easier to shove (my word) the responsibility off on the government and tell yourself "I care about those poor people."

It's time more people like the couple who helped start the Houston program get up and go out among, not just legal immigrants and people who are okay but just foreign and unconverted. It's time we make a hard push in and among the truly oppressed. We Adventists have a history of doing that and building communities, digging wells, and teaching children. Ellen White's son shocked some of his brethren by going among Southern black communities after the civil war and preaching, teaching and helping emancipated former slaves become truly free.

It's time our church got back into that business in a big way, especially in Texas where I come from. If we were to put a stop to the exploitation of illegals and get control of the problem, Texas is the perfect place to work that change. We are a blended society. Hispanic Texans fought alongside American immigrants at the Alamo and San Jacinto. There's hardly a third generation Texan that doesn't have a Garcia or Rodriguez up their family tree. We even have a special language - Tex Mex that blends English and Spanish. Our favorite foods in Texas are blended cultural dishes.

So why aren't we out there in those dark colonias, modern-day slave labor camps, doing some good. Well, for one thing, it's hard work, but there's no reason the local churches and border conferences shouldn't be sending warriors into the slave camps to bring relief and the word of God to a people who truly need it. For another thing, your community leaders aren't going to give you permission. They'll likely discourage you, but since when do Adventists do the easy thing or ask for permission to do God's work.

Okay, getting down off my podium now. Think about it though. I challenge you all to look beyond the "Wall" and the "Open Borders" easy ideology and think about how we can solve the actual problem. We can get our crops picked without abusing the pickers. And yes, some day the pickers will want to get an education, learn some skills and rise from the fields to become more than they ever thought they could be, with homes, cars, children in college and plenty of food on the table.

Don't worry my liberal Adventist friends. There will always be a steady supply of entry level workers waiting at the border to come to del Norte where opportunity awaits even the poorest of the poor so long as they are legal. And by the way, these people have a work ethic that puts the Puritans in the shade. That's the value they bring to America if we can just keep the bosses from crushing that spirit. And helping lift people up is a huge witness for Christ by the way.

Okay, now I'm done preaching.

© 2019 by Tom King

Do Not Underestimate an Adventist Woman

Bet You Didn't Know This:

By Source, Fair use,
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=31871975

Never underestimate an Adventist woman on a mission. That's why we love them so much. They are a precious resource it is our duty to protect. In 1944, A twenty-seven year old Seventh-Day Adventist black woman, Irene Morgan, made the gutsy decision to refuse to leave the "white" section of an Interstate bus and was arrested in Virginia under state segregation laws eleven years before Rosa Parks' famous refusal to give up her seat on an Alabama local bus. She was a little more spirited than Rosa however. She kicked the Sheriff in the groin when he tried to arrest her!

She landed two highly skilled lawyers on her defense team, one of whom was no less than future Supreme Court Justice, Thurgood Marshall. Irene won her case before the Supreme Court. In 1946 in a landmark decision, the Court ruled that the Virginia law was unconstitutional, as the Commerce clause protected interstate traffic. 

Irene's stubborn singular defense of her rights strengthened the WWII era U.S. anti-discrimination law prohibiting segregation on all interstate transportation and influenced public opinion against Southern racist segregation laws. Unlike Rosa, whose protest was part of a planned challenge of the segregation laws, Irene simply stood up for herself all on her own. With Irene, the NAACP was running along behind her shouting, "Wait for me I'm your leader!"

References:

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irene_Morgan
2. "Morgan v. Virginia (1946)". www.encyclopediavirginia.org. Retrieved 2015-11-04.
3. Lamb, Yvonne S. "Irene M. Kirkaldy; Case Spurred Freedom Rides," The Washington Post, 13 Aug. 2007: n. pag. Print. 
4. "Morgan v. Commonwealth (June 6, 1945)". www.encyclopediavirginia.org. Retrieved 2015-11-04.

 © 2017 by Tom King

You're Wrong - Marxist Socialism Is Not a Viable Model for Church Governance.

A recent piece in Adventist Today by Stephen Ferguson | 16 December 2018 posits that
Marxism's governance model has a lot to offer the church. Ferguson admits that "...the world is fundamentally corrupt and human nature is a long way from ideal, which is why Marxism has consistently failed from Russia, to North Korea to Venezuela." Yet throughout, he flirts with the idea that maybe the church should embrace a little Marxism, as though the church is immune from the problems of a fundamentally corrupt human nature somehow. It is not.

A link to this article was posted on Facebook and Adventist Today seems invested in defending its premise. No matter what anyone says, in the comments section, if they disagree with the author of this piece on Facebook, they are going to get Adventist Today saying "Please read the article before commenting."

I did read it and once again they pull some nonsense out about how Karl Marx's philosophy is like Jesus'. This guy's final point is that Jesus owned no property in this life. Balderdash! He owned the entire planet and he knew it and he went down fighting for a planet full of real estate and billions of people who were destined to become His. No one owning property was one of Marx's brilliant ideas and all it's every led to is starving millions.

As to Marxism being some kind of preferred style of governance for the church, I don't see it. Marx and Engels wanted to do away with religion altogether and create a human driven Utopia. There is no such thing. Man is corrupt. There is one system that will work eternally and one only. Good people harvested from the hellish challenges we face here on Earth (or spiritual bootcamp as I like to think of it), serving their God who is Himself, incorruptible. No hierarchy of authority. Just God and his people - one layer of authority. That's it..

The church on Earth will inevitably go the way of the genocidal socialist nations of the 20th century if it adopts a communist collectivist model of governance. We can see it happening in the recent shift of power to the GC administration. At Marxism's core is that somehow if we create a centrally planned and controlled collective, men through their own efforts can create some kind of Earthly utopia.

The truth is it won't. Human beings can't do that. We can be washed clean and transplanted to a place where the only ruler we need is God and where we are free indeed as God promised. There, we won't need to worry about the rich for we will all be rich. Nobody will have to send out jackbooted troops to force us to do right. We will do right because it is right.

Capitalism has a lot wrong with it, but it's one of the only systems on Earth where a good man can make himself successful and even wealthy by providing his fellow humans with something they need or want. He doesn't have to steal it from someone else as Karl Marx claims. He merely works hard and provides something other people want.  There have been communal, collectivist Christian societies, but if you notice something about groups like The Shakers, and other communistic religious societies, they tend to die out. Those who work hard wind up carrying others who have no interest in hard work. In the early American colonies there were groups that experimented with commune living. They disappeared, scattered or died off. Even early Christians did something similar. But that wasn't a permanent thing. It was designed to meet a crisis. Once the Christians scattered away from their persecuters, they went free market capitalist at once.

Are there corrupt capitalists? You bet, but even those guys produce things like affordable goods, four dollar medications, convenient services and jobs to high school dropouts working on their GED's. There are far more corrupt Marxists too and they do far more damage these days. Marxist socialist models always put power in the hands of a few self-proclaimed smart people and therin lies the problem.

No, I don't believe absolute power corrupts absolutely. What power does is attract the corruptible who inevitably seize the reins of control over men and women so that instead of a free society of people doing good things because they want to, it all soon devolves into something like the Stanford Experiment where pretend guards became nearly as brutal as Nazi concentration camp guards. Collectivism in all its form will not work upon the Earth. We are not in any condition to make it work and as Ronald Reagan put it, "Socialism only works in heaven where they don't need it and in hell where they've already got it."

Free Market capitalism with all its flaws in both church and state is still the most effective governance strategy in nations packed to their borders with sinners. I would be very afraid to enlist Marxism as a model for church governance. If it ain't broke, should we really be fixing it. The SDA church is growing faster than anybody. Yes we are losing members, but that's always happening in any church. The point is, we're out there busily spreading the gospel to every kindred, tongue and people and some of us are trying to round up all the sheep and pen them up in some imaginary Christian worker's paradise. Then like the Roman Church, The Soviet Union, China, Vietnam, Venezuela, Cambodia too many others to list here, the leaders of "paradise on Earth" discover they are not gods and not capable of managing the vast proletariat from Washington DC (or Silver Springs for that matter). When it all goes South, then leaders inevitably start purging anyone with the temerity to point out that the system ain't workin'.

Marxisizing the church won't do anything but inhibit the church from doing the work we've been told to do. Marx has nothing good to say for the church. His theories depend on people who do not exist and a severely flawed theory that you can make people good through external force. You can't make people be good through governance systems. The best you can do in this nasty old world is protect the sheep from wolves, protect their rights and freedoms and let them take care of themselves as best they can. Plenty of them will do the decent thing if one of their number gets in trouble. It's what good sheep do and it makes them better sheep because they do it of their own free will and not because some system dictates it.

But Marxism is such a neat idea that our intellectual betters always drift back to it, fancying themselves as just the sort of "dear leaders" to lead the children of God to the promised land. They forget that not even Moses could manage that task. It was left to God to do it His own way.


Tom King -  © 2018

Jesus and The New Golden Rule

Many, who would minimize the impact of Christianity upon the world, claim that the so-called "Golden Rule", which requires one to treat others as one would wish for them to treat oneself, had its origins long before the time of Christ. While it is true that variants of the Biblical Golden Rule show up in Confucianism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism and other religions and philosophies, it is not exactly true that these prior "golden rules" were the same as the one Christ articulated. Christ articulated a new version of the golden rule.

Prior to Christ, a careful reading of ancient texts reveals a uniformly negative construct of the idea. In other words, these prior versions were more about not provoking others. These versions more closely read "Do not do to others what you wouldn't want them to do to you." There is no instruction to do good things to others for unselfish reasons. Before Jesus it was about not poking the bear. After Jesus it became about doing acts of kindness, even towards the bear.

Jesus' teaching, however, goes beyond the negative instruction to avoid doing what one would not like done to oneself. Christ's version was a positive formula that directs His hearers to actively do good to another that, if the situations were reversed, one would desire that the other would do for them. This formulation, as indicated in the parable of the Good Samaritan, emphasizes the needs for unselfish positive action that brings benefit to another, not simply restraining oneself from negative activities that hurt another person. 

The instruction by Jesus to initiate kind treatment of others rather than to simply avoid being unkind emphasized a doing version of love for one's fellow man rather than a mere feeling kind of love. We are to be proactive in loving our neighbors rather than reactive. This idea of actively doing good first to others is unique to Christ's message.

That message of proactive goodness is the thing that undergirds all Christianity. It's why Christianity outstrips virtually every other religion on the planet in doing good. It's why we have missions. It's why we build hospitals, send doctors, nurses and teachers to every corner of the planet teaching proactive kindness. Jesus told us to and in obedience, we do acts of kindness. Because we have a relationship with Christ we cannot help doing good to our neighbors.............as we would have them do unto us.

© 2018 by Tom King