La nueva justicia (y justificacion)

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En las ultimas semanas, hemos visto a varios estados luchando con las consecuencias de la decision de la Corte Suprema Obergefell vs. Hodges. Lo mas reciente, Mississippi ha pasado una ley protegiendo las libertades de pastores, floristas, y pasteleros, quienes no quieren tener sus consciencias implicadas por la nueva realidad. Han perdido la batalla pero desean salvaguardar su derecho de disencion y de simplemente no participar. Que cualquiera que desee soportar matrimonios del mismo sexo haga como quiera, pero esta gente no quiere ser incluida. Sin embargo, eso esta atrayendo una tormenta de protesta de todos lados, desde entretenedores, a empresas grandes, a gente en oficio publico. El gobernador de Nueva York Andrew Cuomo es solamente el mas reciente en unirse a la denuncia, respaldandolo con la vara de disciplina para con sus errantes, ignorantes anti-Americanos.

Si, Obergefell vs Hodges, fue realmente un momento decisivo; pero realmente se podria haber visto acercando desde hace tiempo. La corte de opinion publica ya habia juzgado antes de que el juez Kennedy escribio su opinion de mayoria. Kennedy solo consagro en ley—por autoridad judicial, nada menos—lo que ya se habia hecho la nueva justicia de America moderna. Rasco el comezon. No el comezon por justicia real. Si, muchos pensarian que eso es lo que fue. Una America fundamentalmente buena se estaba simplemente hacinedo mejor. Esto fue Derechos Civiles revividos. Pero yo lo veo de diferente forma—America tenia comezon de justificacion.

He aqui el problema. No somos la intachable, super-limpia nacion que queremos imaginar que somos. Estamos bien depravados. Y no estoy hablando solamente teologicamente. Nuestra depravacion es actual, palpable y visceral. La enfermedad ha llegado a la piel, y las llagas apestosas estan atrayendo moscas. Se ha hecho dolorosamente obvio. Somos sucios, hasta en las uñas. Y cuando miramos en un espejo, no nos gusta lo que vemos. Queremos ser limpios. Queremos la inocencia de nuevo. Queremos desquitarnos de la voz regañona de la consciencia que suena en los oidos: “Hemos abandonado a Dios y jugado al prodigal. Hemos perdido la virginidad y ensuciado el centro de nuestros seres.” Pero eso es simplemente muy doloroso. Y asi desesperadamente buscamos soluciones cosmeticas. Buscamos una nueva justificacion, para vindicar nuestras consciencias sin confesarnos ante Dios y el mundo.

Muchos Americanos procuran proyectar su suciedad sobre otros—usando un truco psicologico. “Es realmente el politico.” Aquel que vota es inocente. Las encuestas nunca se equivocan (y el cliente siempre esta correcto)! Pero una ves que ese votador es elegido y entra a la capital, cae de la gracia. Al final de su plazo, una mayoria justa y santa quizas lo vote fuera de oficio como castigo por convertirse malo.

Pero las realidades relatan otro cuento. Divorcio sin falta es lo normal ahora. Pornografia es lo normal. Fornicacion casual es ahora lo normal. El gobernador Cuomo esta haciendo justo eso. Sexo libre sin compromisos. Que noble! Pero quisiera decir que es diferente que cualquier fulano. Niños en todos los Estados Unidos ya estan acostumbrados a ser tirados como Frisbee de casa a casa porque sus padres se portan como niños mimados. Es extraño que esta nueva generacion este tan turbada? Por lo menos han sobrevivido la epidemia del aborto.

A mi me parece obvio. Nuestra nacion se une a la mas reciente crusada para encontrar justificacion en sus propios terminos. Encuentra una nueva causa, una nueva justicia—torcida como sea. Haciendose campeones por esa nueva justicia, se restaura la dignidad. El sentido de valor regresa de inmediato. Y cuando los malos, que mantienen una justicia mas antigua, hablan sus mentes, son callados. A lo menor, son marginalizados—los que odian odiaran!

Tengo poca confianza en el publico Americano, aparte de la restriccion de Dios. El Jurado esta corrupto, punto. Pero tengo toda confianza que cuando un Dios soberano oye las oraciones de su pueblo, cuando libremente escoge tener misericordia sobre quien tendra misericordia, que nada frenara la revolucion en las mentes del pueblo. Que El puede—cuando quiere—frenar la locura y restaurar a sus sentidos a una nacion prodiga en el lodo de la pocilga. El puede persuadir a America que renuncie su nueva justicia, su nueva justificacion, y que reciba la Suya por medio de Jesucristo.

The ring of truth in oddity

“Besides being complicated, reality, in my experience, is usually odd. It is not neat, not obvious, not what you expect. For instance, when you have grasped that the earth and the other planets all go round the sun, you would naturally expect that all the planets were made to match-all at equal distances from each other, say, or distances that regularly increased, or all the same size, or else getting bigger or smaller as you go farther from the sun. In fact, you find no rhyme or reason (that we can see) about either the sizes or the distances; and some of them have one moon, one has four, one has two, some have none, and one has a ring.

“Reality, in fact, is usually something you could not have guessed. That is one of the reasons I believe Christianity. It is a religion you could not have guessed. If it offered us just the kind of universe we had always expected, I should feel we were making it up. But, in fact, it is not the sort of thing anyone would have made up. It has just that queer twist about it that real things have. So let us leave behind all these boys’ philosophies-these over-simple answers. The problem is not simple and the answer is not going to be simple either.”

– C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

The new righteousness (& justification)

1280px-AuthorityOfLawIn the last several weeks, we’ve seen several states struggling to come to terms with the ramifications of the Supreme Court’s Obergefell vs. Hodges decision. Most recently, Mississippi has passed a law protecting the freedoms of pastors, florists, and bakers, who do not wish their consciences implicated by the new reality. They have lost the battle but  are hoping to safeguard their right of dissent and simple non-participation. Let anyone who wishes to support same-sex marriages do as they please, but these folk simply want left out of it. That, however, is bringing down quite the storm of righteous protest from all quarters, from entertainers, to big business, to those in public office. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is just the most recent to join in the denunciation, backing it up with the rod of discipline for his errant, backward un-Americans.

Yes, Obergefell vs. Hodges was truly a watershed moment; but really, one could see it coming miles away. The court of public opinion had already ruled before Justice Kennedy penned his majority opinion. Kennedy only enshrined into law – by judicial fiat, no less – what had already become the new righteousness of modern America. It scratched the itch. Not an itch for true justice.  Yes, many would think that’s just what it was.  A fundamentally good America was simply becoming more consistently good. This was Civil Rights redivivus. But I see it differently – America was instead itching for justification.

Here’s the problem. We are not the impeccable, squeaky-clean nation that we’d like to imagine ourselves to be. We are rather depraved. And I’m not just speaking theologically here. We are actually, tangibly, viscerally depraved. The disease has reached the skin, and the stinking wounds are drawing flies. It has become painfully obvious. We are dirty, down to the fingernails. And when we look in the mirror, we just don’t like what we see.  We want to be clean. We want innocence back. We want to be rid of the nagging voice of conscience that rings in our ears, “We have abandoned God and played the prodigal. We have lost our spiritual virginity and have defiled the core of our beings.” But that’s just way too painful. So we desperately reach for cosmetics. We look for a new justification, to vindicate our consciences short of coming clean before God and the world.

Many Americans try to project their dirtiness on to others – playing some psychological slight-of-hand.  “It’s really the politician.” The voter is innocent. The polls are never wrong (and the customer is always right)!  But once that voter becomes elected and enters the Beltway, he falls from grace. At term’s end, a righteous, holy majority may well vote him or her out of office as a punishment for going bad.

But the facts tell a different story. No-fault divorce is now the norm. Porn is now the norm. Shacking up is now the norm (if you have to Google that, you’ve proved my point). Governor Cuomo is doing just that. No commitment, free sex. How noble!  But I wish I could say he’s any different from Joe Six-pack. Children across the United States are now accustomed to being tossed around like a Frisbee from home to home because their parents act like spoiled children. Is it any wonder this new generation is so troubled? Yet, at least they’ve survived the abortion epidemic.

To me, it seems rather obvious. Our nation joins the latest crusade in order to find justification on their own terms. It finds a new cause, a new righteousness – however warped. By championing that new righteousness, dignity is restored. The feeling of worth and value comes back with a flush. And when the baddies, who hold out for an older righteousness, speak their mind, they are shouted down. At best, they are marginalized – haters gonna hate!

I have little confidence in the American public, apart from God’s restraint. The jury is corrupt, full stop. But I have every confidence that when a sovereign God hears the prayers of His people, when He freely chooses to have mercy on whom He will have mercy, that nothing will stop the revolution in the minds of the people. That He can – when He pleases – stop the madness and bring back a prodigal nation in the mud of the pigpen to its senses. He can persuade America to renounce its new righteousness, its new justification, and receive His through Christ.

“For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God; being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God; to declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus” (Romans 3:23-26)

Peter, the un-photoshopped

Rembrandt_The_Apostle_PeterSomething that often strikes me when reading the Gospels – Matthew, Mark, Luke and John – is their earthiness.  There is something raw, unpolished, and therefore real about these four eye-witness accounts of Jesus Christ.  It has the ring of the genuine.  Their portraits of Christ and the twelve apostles are absolutely not photo-shopped.

One clear instance is the un-photo-shopped Peter.  Peter was hand-picked by Jesus at the very beginning of his three-year ministry.  Peter was a common man.  A fisherman by trade.  Really, had the Savior not singled him out, he would have lived and died a nameless nobody in the backwoods of Judea.  But Jesus changed all that.

Continue reading “Peter, the un-photoshopped”

El no-retocado Pedro

Rembrandt_The_Apostle_PeterUna cosa que siempre me atrae la noticia al leer los Evangelios—Mateo, Marcos, Lucas, y Juan—es su terrenidad.  Hay una calidad cruda, no pulida, y por eso autentica de estos cuatro relatos de estos testigos actuales de Jesucristo. Tiened una calidad genuina.  Sus retratos de Crito y los doce apostoles absolutamente no estan retocados.

Una instancia clara es el no-retocado Pedro.  Pedro fue escogido personalmente por Jesus al pricipio de su ministerio de tres años.  Pedro era un hombre comun.  Un pescador por profesion.  Verdaderamente, si el Salvador no lo hubiera escogido, hubiera vivido y morido como cualquier otro en  Judea.  Pero Jesus cambio todo eso.

Continue reading “El no-retocado Pedro”

El arrepentimiento de Dios

Jacopo_Bassano_workshop_-_Animals_boarding_the_Noah's_Ark_-_Louvre“Y se arrepintio Jehova de haber hecho hombre en la tierra” (Gen. 6:6).

El arrepentimineto que aqui se atribuye a Dios no pertenece propiamente a el, sino tiene referencia a nuestro entendimiento de el. Pues porque no podemos entenderlo como es, es necesario que para nuestra ayuda, en un sentido, se transforme. Que el arrepentimiento no puede suceder en Dios, aparece facilmente de esta consideracion que nada sucede que es por el inesperado o no previsto. El mismo razonamiento, y comentario, aplica a lo que sigue, que Dios fue afectado por tristeza. Ciertamente Dios no siente pesadumbre o tristeza, pero permanece para siempre como si mismo en su reposo celestial y contento: no obstante, porque de ninguna otra manera se podria saber cuan grande es el odio y la detestacion de Dios para el pecado, el Espiritu se acomoda a nuestra capacidad. Por tanto, no hay necesidad de involucrarnos en preguntas dificiles y espinosas, cuando es obvio a que fin se emplean estas palabras de arrepentimiento y dolor; lo que es, para enseñarnos que desde el tiempo en que al hombre fue tan grandemente corrompido, Dios no lo contaba entre sus criaturas; como si dijera, ‘Esta no es mi maniobra; este no es el hombre que forme en mi propia imagen, y a quien adorne con tales dones excelentes: no me digno ahora reconocer esta degenerada y contaminada criatura como mia.’ Semejante a esto es lo que dice, en el segundo lugar, acerca del dolor; que Dios estuvo tan ofendido por la impiedad atroz del hombre, como si hubiesen herido su corazon con angustia mortal: Hay aqui, por lo tanto, un antitesis inexpresado entre esa naturaleza justa que habia sido creada por Dios, y la corrupcion que broto del pecado. En lo mientras, a menos de que queremos provocar a Dios, y causarle dolor, aprendamos aborrecer y huir del pecado. Ademas, esa bondad y ternura paternal debe de, en forma no leve, sojuzgar en nosotros el amor al pecado; puesto que Dios, para mas efectualmente penetrar nuestros corazones, se viste de nuestros afectos. Esta figura, que representa a Dios como transferiendo a si mismo lo que pertenece a la naturaleza humana, se llama anthropopatheia.

Juan Calvino (1509-1564)

No margin of error

In our morning message, we considered Genesis 7, the ancient story of the Flood. On that day of reckoning, sinners saw God for what He is – God.  And then they breathed their last. All this fell out just as God predicted, with zero “margin of error.” Here’s a short clip:

To listen to the complete sermon, click here.

 

 

God’s repentance

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“And  it  repented  the  Lord  that  he  had  made  man  on  the  earth.”

The repentance which is here ascribed to God does not properly belong to him, but has reference to our understanding of him. For since we cannot comprehend him as he is, it is necessary that, for our sakes he should, in a certain sense, transform himself. That repentance cannot take place in God, easily appears from this single considerations that nothing happens which is by him unexpected or unforeseen. The same reasoning, and remark, applies to what follows, that God was affected with grief. Certainly God is not sorrowful or sad; but remains forever like himself in his celestial and happy repose: yet, because it could not otherwise be known how great is God’s hatred and detestation of sin, therefore the Spirit accommodates himself to our capacity. Wherefore, there is no need for us to involve ourselves in thorny and difficult questions, when it is obvious to what end these words of repentance and grief are applied; namely, to teach us, that from the time when man was so greatly corrupted, God would not reckon him among his creatures; as if he would say, ‘This is not my workmanship; this is not that man who was formed in my image, and whom I had adorned with such excellent gifts: I do not deign now to acknowledge this degenerate and defiled creature as mine.’ Similar to this is what he says, in the second place, concerning grief; that God was so offended by the atrocious wickedness of men, as if they had wounded his heart with mortal grief: There is here, therefore, an unexpressed antithesis between that upright nature which had been created by God, and that corruption which sprung from sin. Meanwhile, unless we wish to provoke God, and to put him to grief, let us learn to abhor and to flee from sin. Moreover, this paternal goodness and tenderness ought, in no slight degree, to subdue in us the love of sin; since God, in order more effectually to pierce our hearts, clothes himself with our affections. This figure, which represents God as transferring to himself what is peculiar to human nature, is called anthropopatheia.

– John Calvin (1509-1564)

 

Of spectators and combatants

“Perhaps you wonder, ‘Why are the wicked joyous? why do they live in luxury? why don’t they have to strive like I do?’

“The reason is that they who have not signed up to strive for the crown are not required to undergo the labors of the contest. Those who haven’t gone down to the track don’t smear themselves with oil, nor get covered with dust. Trouble comes only to those on their way to glory. The perfumed spectators prefer to watch, not to join in the struggle, nor to endure the sun, the heat, the dust, and the rain.

“So those who have devoted themselves to pleasures, luxury, robbery, gain or honors are spectators rather than combatants. They have the profit of labor but the not the fruits of virtue. They love their ease. By cunning and wickedness they heap up riches. But they will pay the penalty of their iniquity, though it be late in coming. Their rest will be in hell, yours in paradise. Thus, Job said beautifully that they watch in the tomb (see Job 21:32), for they cannot have the calm of quiet rest that he enjoys who shall rise again.”

-Ambrose of Milan (337-397 A.D.)