Separation of Church and State

This subject makes me nervous. I'm a pretty opinionated person (for those of you who have never read any of my blogs) but this subject seems to be a very controversial issue. There are Facebook groups about putting God, Christ, and prayer back in schools, and a call for us to return to our Christian roots as a nation. There is a notion that because prayer came out of school, it precipitated our great moral decline. That somehow the ten commandments being prominently displayed on the walls of our public places will transform our culture.

All of these sentiments come from people who love their country and love their Savior. They put some energy into these types of efforts, but we must be careful not to waste our precious time on things that, while full of good intentions, are not transformative in nature.

Separation of Church and State is a very controversial topic, and one that is not simple. I disagree with the rank secularists who want to put "faith" in a category completely separate from reality. Some extreme secularists want to say that your "faith" should not inform your ideas about public policy and legislation, and therefore anyone whose faith informs those things, is automatically excluded from participating in those processes. This issue gets into matters of public education and in particular the teaching of evolution and or intelligent design. The issue of public education is another issue altogether, as are the other issues that separation of church and state influences.

I also disagree with some in the religious community who see no value in the separation of church and state, or at least claim that it is harmful. While the ideas of some of the rank secularists mentioned above are harmful to liberty and religious freedom in general, the separation of church and state as instituted by our founders was not at all. Think about the circumstances under which our country was born. We were escaping religious oppression when our forefathers came to this land. In their minds it was not a good thing for the state to decide what you believe or where or when you go to church.

The Founders of our country had the idea that while the church and the state should not mix, we should also be free to allow our religious views to affect our stance on matters of public policy.

I think separation of church and state (as stated by our country's founders, and as practiced and defended by early Baptists like Roger Williams in Providence Road Island) is an excellent idea. I believe the government has a role to defend it's people and protect us against outside threats, and to provide a system of justice so that criminals can be prosecuted in a fair way. The government's job is to protect our freedom and therefore I think government should strive to allow the maximal amount of freedom to it's constituents without those freedoms impinging on others. Freedom is what our country was founded on. That includes religious, economic, and individual freedom.

The government has a responsibility and so does the church. The church's responsibility is to be the prophetic voice in the culture. The church's role in a society like ours is not to try to force our views on others, but to proclaim, persuade, and plead with those around us to turn from their sin and trust in Christ. Trying to force them to participate in our religious practices will not transform, but alienate. One of the fundamental differences between Islam and Christianity is that a Muslim can win converts at the tip of the sword, at the barrel of a gun, or at the proclamation of the state. A Christian cannot win converts at the tip of a sword, at the barrel of a gun, nor at the proclamation of the state.

The church is most effective not when we have the government in our pocket but when individual believers and churches take a stand in the public square and prophetically call other individuals to faith in Christ, and live lives that display that radical change that comes only through a vital relationship with Him.

I realize this is controversial, so if you have an opinion please feel free to share it, but try to be civil and gracious.

What say you?

When I Don't Desire God

I had someone email me the question about how to persevere through times of spiritual lethargy. To some degree we will all struggle with this daily. Until we are perfected we will have to deal with our laziness. The person who has been most helpful to me in this area has been John Piper. He writes often about it and even wrote a book called "When I Don't Desire God." You can read this online here.

Here is a little list of things you can do to fight for joy in God from Piper.

How Shall We Fight for Joy?

By John Piper January 1, 1995


1. Realize that authentic joy in God is a gift.

2. Realize that joy must be fought for relentlessly.

3. Resolve to attack all known sin in your life.

4. Learn the secret of gutsy guilt - how to fight like a justified sinner.

5. Realize that the battle is primarily a fight to see God for who he is.

6. Meditate on the Word of God day and night.

7. Pray earnestly and continually for open heart-eyes and an inclination for God.

8. Learn to preach to yourself rather than listen to yourself.

9. Spend time with God-saturated people who help you see God and fight the fight.

10. Be patient in the night of God's seeming absence.

11. Get the rest and exercise proper diet that your body was designed by God to have.

12. Make a proper use of God's revelation in nature.

13. Read great books about God and biographies of great saints.

14. Do the hard and loving thing for the sake of others (witness and mercy).

15. Get a global vision for the cause of Christ and pour yourself out for the unreached.

Love, Sex & Mammon

"We are not, we pray, on the verge of another Great Depression. Still, we see signs of economic failure all around us. Stores in the strip malls we drive past every day advertise “going out of business” sales. Those of us who are pastors know church members who have lost jobs, and we weekly see the faces of others who fear that the next pink slip belongs to them.

Some Christians, on the Left and on the Right, would tell us that economic matters are of paramount concern right now. They would assert that we’ve no time for the “luxury” of “culture war” discussions about “abstinence” or divorce or “gender roles” or other such matters. Instead, they tell us, we should concentrate on tax cuts or economic stimulus projects or Wall Street bailouts or home ownership.

They’re wrong."


In this article Dr. Moore (one of my teachers in seminary) talks about priorities for families. For the rest of this great article click here.

Why Matthew Smith and Indelible Grace Represent and Important Genre

In short:

The "worship wars" are based on the faulty assumption that the church is a producer and attendees are consumers, and that the job of the church is to please the consumer by producing what they want.

There is nothing inherently sinful about traditional worship with hymns, and there is nothing inherently sinful about contemporary worship with new music and lyrics. There is also nothing inherently sinful about preferences for types of music. There is something inherently sinful about members of churches drawing lines between themselves based on externalities that are secondary to the gospel. When we create new churches or divide old churches into groups based on a style of music or even a social group, we do damage to the gospel. One of the implications of the gospel is that we can look past our skin color, our age, our socioeconomic status, and certainly our preferences to love, worship with, and fellowship with other believers. When we raise preferences to be primary (something about which we will divide from other believers), we believe and spread the lie that Jesus and His gospel lacks the ability to bring us together under His name.

All of that to say that movements, like Matthew Smith and Indelible Grace represent, that make the gospel central to our worship should be applauded and supported by Christians who are concerned with the divisions that we are so vulnerable to in our churches.

Other thoughts?

Concert Tomorrow Night at Wyatt Baptist Church!

Matthew Smith and Indelible Grace at Wyatt Baptist Church in El Dorado.

You can get directions here

We also have a Facebook Page set up for the event where you can RSVP and find out more information about the concert.

Later, I'm going to post an article about why Matthew Smith and Indelible Grace's ministry is an important response to bad philosophies that are prevalent in our churches today.

The Third Brother

This is a very interesting way of thinking about the parable of the prodigal son. Tim Keller has written a book on this parable called "The Prodigal God" exposing this wonderful parable.

Oh to be a third brother like Jesus.

Read the article here.

Why We Shouldn't Resort to Violence In the Fight Against Abortion

I had never heard this question addressed until now.
Here is the link.

http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/AskPastorJohn/ByTopic/47/3504/

I Know What You're Thinking....

"That's John Mayer!" Well, you may or may not be right. Come to Wyatt Baptist Church on February 24th at 7 PM and find out. Here is the Facebook page to RSVP.

The cost to attend will be a suggested minimum donation of $5, there will be a box at the door for those who have the means to give more.

Matthew Smith and Indelible Grace

This guy, along with the Indelible Grace band, will be playing at Wyatt Baptist Church on February 24th at 7 PM. This is one of my favorite bands. They take old hymns and set the lyrics to new music.

Visit the Facebook page and RSVP. If you are a youth leader or a pastor at a church, please tell your people about this. It is a great opportunity to bring together the younger generation and the older generation.

If you have questions please email me or call.

Thanks,

Thoughts on the Stimulus Bill

Observations from last night's television address by our President on the stimulus bill.

1. He seems to want to push this thing through without debating it much. I heard him say over and over again something like- "We must do SOMETHING. If you say we should do NOTHING, then we are never going to agree. The American people want us to do SOMETHING. We need to get this thing through. etc." It almost seemed like he wanted the Republicans to just fall in line without debate and without discussion and vote for this huge bill.
Uhhh... this is $800 Billion, you know, $100 Billion here and $100 Billion there and you're starting to talk about real money. This is an unprecedented amount of money to spend, and we need to get it right. Waiting a few days or a few weeks is not going to make or break it. Why in the world should we trust the government to spend this money responsibly? If we're going to pass something, which it looks inevitable that we will, we need to hash it out. His efforts to hurriedly push this through makes me nervous.

2. I have heard Obama come down hard on the corporate waste of Banc of America, Merrill Lynch etc., and rightly so. The ferocity of his attacks on them is fine, but for him to turn a blind eye to the Billions and Billions of dollars in pork that are in this barrell is a double standard, the likes of which can hardly be understated. He blasted John Thain for his $2 Million dollar spending spree that he actually paid back, but doesn't care that $650 million of this bill is earmarked for the switch from analog TV to digital, or the $50 million earmarked for the National Endowment for the Arts??? Please...

3. Speaking of pork, this bill has more of it than Hormel. Here is a partial list of the pet projects of the Obama Administration. By publishing this list I'm not saying that OBAMA IS USING THIS BILL AS AN EXCUSE TO PUSH HIS AGENDA!!!! but if he is truly trying to be bipartisan and enacting a new era of governmental responsibility, he is getting off to a terrible start.
Here's the list of some of the projects and their price tag:

$50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts
$300 million for grants to combat violence against women
$2 billion for federal child-care block grants
$6 billion for university building projects
$15 billion for boosting Pell Grant college scholarships
$4 billion for job-training programs, including $1.2 billion for “youths” up to the age of 24
$1 billion for community-development block grants
$4.2 billion for “neighborhood stabilization activities”
$650 million for digital-TV coupons; $90 million to educate “vulnerable populations”
$150 million for the Smithsonian
$34 million to renovate the Department of Commerce headquarters
$500 million for improvement projects for National Institutes of Health facilities
$44 million for repairs to Department of Agriculture headquarters
$350 million for Agriculture Department computers
$88 million to help move the Public Health Service into a new building
$448 million for constructing a new Homeland Security Department headquarters
$600 million to convert the federal auto fleet to hybrids
$450 million for NASA (carve-out for “climate-research missions”)
$600 million for NOAA (carve-out for “climate modeling”)
$1 billion for the Census Bureau
$4.5 billion for U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
$850 million for Amtrak
$87 million for a polar icebreaking ship
$1.7 billion for the National Park System
$55 million for Historic Preservation Fund
$7.6 billion for “rural community advancement programs”
$150 million for agricultural-commodity purchases
$150 million for “producers of livestock, honeybees, and farm-raised fish”
$79 billion for State Fiscal Stabilization Fund

By listing these I'm not saying that all of these things are bad, but this is a stimulus bill, not a "fund your pet project bill." It is supposed to create jobs, not fund Pell Grants, and fund poor artists who take pictures of crucifixes upside down in glasses of urine.

That last item, the $79 Billion dollar State Fiscal Stabilization Fund, goes to balance the budgets of states who have spent money like crazy. Basically they are taxing the fiscally responsible states and giving money to the states that spend money like John Edwards in a beauty salon. Hmmm... now which states are in financial ruin? California is the worst offender along with other left leaning states.

4. He said something like "I'm not going to take any lip about fiscal irresponsibility off of a bunch of people who Presided over the largest budget deficits in the history of mankind." As if to say "Our fiscal irresponsibility is excused by their fiscal irresponsibility." They wasted no time in balancing the books on that perceived inequity. We are set to have a $1 Trillion dollar deficit this year, which dwarfs any of Bush's deficits. It's as though I was at a strip club, pointing to the guys leering at the Victoria's Secret store to excuse my lap dance... give me a break.

5. Finally, the economics behind the proposition that spending massive amounts of money is suspect at best. I doubt even Keynes would agree that this is what we need to do in this case. Obama said that the party of spending is "over." I guess he meant after this one last party.

Needless to say, I don't think this stimulus bill is a responsible way to accomplish what they are trying to accomplish. It looks more like an effort to push an agenda. I hope I'm wrong but this is likely to either prolong the recession we are in or at least retard the rebound that is likely to happen soon. The market may recover, but I doubt it will have much to do with this bill. One reason they may want this bill to be pushed through is so that they can take responsibility for the recovery, and they will have been able to push through their spending projects. I hope I'm wrong about Obama on this and that he gets out his line item veto pen cutting hundreds of billions from this bill. I put that likelihood at about 15%.