Ephesians 4:14 tells us that there will be those who by trickery and cunning craftiness will lie in wait to deceive us. So we have been warned. This passage also warns us that of we do not take heed and allow ourselves to be taken in we will be unstable and blown around and thrown about by every false doctrine that comes down the pike. It is sad to see it happening.

In an old three Stooges skit, Curley is on the witness stand in court and asked by the questioning attorney to speak clearly so the jury can understand him. His immediate response is, Continue reading …

Last week Jonathan in “Whitney Houston’s Missing Will” looked at biolologist Jerry A Coyne’s view that we do not have a will. Coyne is a physicalist (we are simply a physical being) and contends that what anything we view as decisions or actions we may take are essentially preprogrammed into our genes. We don’t have a “will” and any “choices” we make are predetermined, which essentially makes us victims. We may have thought we wanted to do something different but have to ability to act differently than we do. Physicalism is not the only view that holds we are little more than victims in a culture of victims who cannot act differently than we do because we are controlled by something other than our will. Two other areas with a similar view, although the basis is different, are psychology and some segments of the church. I have no doubt that some will react strongly to what I have to say but that doesn’t mean that the following is any less true. Even as I typed this I was reminded of an incident some years ago when I was a pastor of a small church. Joy and I wrote a weekly article for the area newspaper and one of those articles was about what we called the “cry-baby boomer” generation. After if was printed a message was left on the church phone from a disgruntled reader. (By the way, has anyone met a “gruntled” reader?). She began by saying she didn’t know how old we were but why do we always pick on her generation? Joy and I chuckled that the caller was proving our point by seeing herself as the victim of the article. When I called and we talked about it she too saw the irony and was able to laugh at herself as well. But I digress. Continue reading …

Steven Tyler weighing in on the Whitney Houston tragedy said, “I hate this disease.” It seems just about every celebrity is commenting on the causes of Whitney’s downward spiral even though we won’t know the toxicology results for some time. This tells me that Whitney’s drug abuse and alcoholism have been on the mind of the A list for along time. Of course, the entertainment media have been warning of this for a while with blurry pictures of Whitney disheveled and drunk plastered up for all of us to compassionately leer at and feel better about ourselves. What I find curiously missing is any sense of responsibility. Tyler talks of her demons, conjuring up the image of some malevolent force that is responsible for her addiction. Pundits speak of the burdens and pressures of fame.  Actress and yogurt spokesperson, Jamie Lee Curtis says fame has nothing to do with it. Its a disease:

Don’t let another famous person die, participate in the media spectacle, the tearful, heartfelt farewells and the blame it on the fame game and not take it into your home and circle of life that surrounds you in your own life. It is not fame’s fault. It is no one’s fault. Do you blame cancer on fame? Do you blame diabetes on fame? It is a disease and like cancer, diabetes and depression, it is everywhere. Alcoholism and addiction is ever present and it wants you dead.

Alcoholism wants you dead. Whitney had her demons and they wanted her dead. What’s missing from these heartfelt sentiments and pleas for awareness? Whitney’s will is missing. Everything is articulated in terms of what the disease will do to you. I’m not sure that is what Tyler, Curtis, and others intend. But it is coming across that way and frankly it doesn’t surprise me. Just this January, USA Today ran a column by biologist Jerry A Coyne entitled “Why You Don’t Have a Free Will” Continue reading …

Isn’t that just like God. Nearly as soon as I wrote last week’s blog, ”Raise the Level of Discourse” Barack Obama gave his speech at the National Prayer Breakfast. God, it seems, gave me the opportunity to go back on what I wrote (in my flesh I would love to do that) or ignore the speech (which may be the coward’s way out) or comment on the issues and reserve any personal attacks. Hopefully, God will grant me success in doing the latter.

At a religious events like the National Prayer Breakfast, it seems appropriate to comment on spiritual issues and it often reveals ones worldview as they handle or mishandle the sacred texts of the group to whom one is speaking. This is true in the case of Barack Obama and this speech. As we have documented in our article, Barack and the Borg , for twenty years he attended a church that is steeped in Black Liberation Theology. Anthony B. Bradley’s article, The Marxist Roots of Black Liberation Theology defines and comments on the origins and implications of the theological view which Obama has been steeped in for over twenty years so I won’t spend much time on that here other than to say, it is this life centered and has little to do with our relationship to God or the person and work of Jesus Christ. This may sound odd since Obama stated in the speech: Continue reading …

During the 2000 presidential election race between Al Gore and George W. Bush, I was in the post office one morning. A woman at the counter was begging the postal clerk to not vote for Bush. In tears and obvious emotional distress she cried out, “He wants to kill women!” Extreme emotional claims such as this brought that election down to hand counting votes in Florida and a court ruling on the count but had little to do with the facts of the candidate’s positions.

On Monday, January 23, I was watching the Neil Cavuto Show on the FOX Business channel. He had billionaire, Leon Cooperman on the show to discuss his Open Letter to President Obama. The letter is interesting and even though he is very wealthy, Continue reading …