prestonhite

The hardness of God is kinder than the softness of men, and His compulsion is our liberation. -- C.S. Lewis

This was the last thing @TimKellerNYC ever said to Redeemer Presbyterian Church. In God’s providence, it was scheduled to be shared with Redeemer congregants on May 19—the day he died (three years ago today).

Wow, I wish I had heard this scriptural exhortation long ago! Why should I expect to be treated fairly when Jesus wasn’t? He is my vindication. Lord, please penetrate my soul with your wisdom!

"If I have THAT, my life will have meaning. I'll have value and feel significant and secure." THAT—is the object of your worship.

God relentlessly offers his grace to people who do not deserve it, seek it, or appreciate it after they have been saved by it.

@coffeefoofa @philvischer You’re wrong about guilt tokens. They actually give you access to play repentance skeeball. When a guilt token in the coffer clings (and 100 points are scored), a repentance ticket from skeeball springs. Also known as Arminian indulgences.

@philvischer Wait, we get tokens for guilt? Is that like getting tickets for skeeball and I get to pick prizes??

That didn't take long.

Our Secretary of Defense preaching from the Pulp Fiction "Bible" is certainly a new level of... something.

I have heard it said, “God didn’t die for frogs. He died for humans, implying we were worth the sacrifice.” This turns grace on its head. We are less deserving than frogs. They have not sinned. They have not rebelled and treated God with the contempt of being inconsequential in their lives. God did not have to die for frogs. They aren’t bad enough. We are. Our debt is so great, only a divine sacrifice could pay it.

As anyone who has listened to my preaching over the years knows, I have always, incessantly, and equally critiqued the positions of the Left and the Right, not one more than the other. To claim that I am mainly a proponent of one side or the other is amply refuted by looking at my books and sermons. But I deny that this is middle-of-the-road centrism. The gospel critiques all ideologies, and all the main political platforms since the Enlightenment have been dominated by reductionism and idols. (See David Koyzis, Political Visions and Illusions.) Those who deny this are unaware of the genealogy of their own political thought. (See Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue and Whose Justice? Which Rationality?) Ideologies force “ethical package deals” on Christians. (See James Mumford, Vexed: Ethics Beyond Political Tribes.) Biblically, Christians ought to be equally and energetically concerned about guarding the life of the unborn, about racial injustice, about the plight of the poor, and about promoting sexual morality and the health of the family. We should not have to choose among these. We should not have to play down about some of them in order to promote others. But across the West, the dominant political parties call its members to do just that. Nevertheless, since Christians can and must work for the good of society as our biblically informed consciences direct, they will often have to work in or support others within the dominant political parties. But because of the ideological nature of politics and the “package deals,” we must not identify Christian faith closely with any of them nor insist there is only one truly Christian way to vote. You may disagree with the roots of my theological assumptions in Bavinck, Augustine, et al, but repeatedly mischaracterizing my position does a disservice to all.

To think the Trump-as-Jesus image depicts a doctor means you’re an imbecile. To know it doesn’t but say it does means you’re a liar. To think people would buy that means… oh, wait, they do. Wake up, Church!

Rhetoric calling for war crimes is a moral horror, under any circumstances. Using the Bible to try to justify targeting civilian populations makes it even worse. It comes from, and leads to, hell. Link below

That one can excuse or ignore this while claiming to be “pro-life” is a sign of a seared conscience. God have mercy on us all.

For those in Christ, there are no irreconcilable differences; there is only incomplete surrender to the work of the Spirit through bathing in the Word and in prayer, incomplete repentance before the Father and before our brothers and sisters, and incomplete forgiveness.

@jamesramsey23 @gracelramsey I’ve clicked the heart on virtually every tweet about the baseball team this season, but this one is infinitely greater than all the others put together.

Happy Easter! “This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!” 2 Corinthians 5:17

Jesus said, “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep” (John 10:11).    Praise God for sending his Son so that we could be redeemed from our sins, given eternal life, and brought into his presence, where there is fullness of joy and pleasures forevermore.    From John Piper’s message “Lord, Teach Us to Fight: The Double Battle in Gethsemane.”

The thread on the ‘Third Way’ has been good. A lot of the pushback from "the Left" seems confused about idolatry. Idolatry is false consciousness. The idol projects the illusion that it can heal and fix life in a way that only God can. It also leads us to reductionistic solutions that are too simplistic to work. Niebuhr writes: “Every form of modern secularism [that denies God] contains an implicit or explicit self-glorification and deification…” He names four kinds of idolatry in the modern world. 1) Liberalism deifies human reason and science. It doesn’t realize that science can only tell us what ‘is’ but not what ‘ought’ to be. It is a necessary but also an insufficient guide to life. Moderns often fail to see that science cannot give meaning, purpose, or morality. 2) Fascism deifies and idolizes the dominant race and its culture and then marginalizes and excludes all others, leading to rampant inequality and to violence. 3) Expressivism—a modern form of romanticism-- deifies the “unique and vital force in the individual." It makes inner desires definitive—I create and live my own truth. Those who stop me are toxic. Cultures where this idol is strong find their communal fabric falling apart due to the lack of shared values. (4) Socialism deifies the proletariat, seeing sin mainly in the powerful classes, underestimating the sinfulness in the downtrodden’s hearts as well. To say Niebuhr's four cultural idols are equally wrong does not mean they do equal harm. That depends on the time and place and the severity of the idolatry. Sum: “Every culture which is not confronted with the one holy God, the creator and judge of the world…ends in the sin of self-glorification." (From R. Niebuhr, “The Christian Church in a Secular Age”, in “The Essential Reinhold Niebuhr.") That's idolatry, and it's in all of us.

BREAKING: Enoch Burke’s mother and sister arrested and jailed Martina and Ammi Burke were arrested by Gardaí today at Castlerea Prison after visiting jailed schoolteacher Enoch Burke, their son and brother. Judge Brian Cregan sentenced them to two weeks in prison after they spoke out against his lies and unlawful actions in the case of Enoch Burke. Martina and Ammi Burke had been teaching in Castlebar this morning before travelling to Castlerea for their scheduled visit at 2.15pm. As they left the prison after concluding the visit, Gardaí were waiting outside to arrest them. Lies have been told from the bench since September 2022 when Enoch Burke was first taken from his teaching post at Wilson’s Hospital School and thrown into a jail cell. He refused to call a student by a new name and the “they” pronoun. He was subsequently suspended and has now spent over 600 days in prison. Ireland’s church leaders have maintained a treacherous silence on this issue. Archbishops Eamon Martin and John McDowell speak frequently about battlefields far away - Gaza, Ukraine, the Middle East - but are silent on the battlefields in the schools of Ireland, on their own doorstep. Children in the classroom are being educated in every form of sexual perversion. Martina and Ammi Burke have now been sent to Mountjoy Women’s Prison because they refused to be silent in the face of gross injustice from the bench. Parents, rise up and speak out for your sons and your daughters.

If you truly care about the truth you will want people to believe it. Say it in the most hearable way possible without compromising in the slightest. Don't say it in an unnecessarily abrasive way and then, when rejected, pat yourself on the back for being valiant for truth.

What was the tragic root of Judas Iscariot’s sin and ultimate rejection of the Kingdom of God? He followed Jesus as if Jesus’s focus was primarily political.

Do not assign a position to an opponent that they will not own. Always put their argument in the best light. Persuasion is an art in how to have a conversation with people with the hope of changing their minds.