...Another Interesting Statistic

According to the Associated Press, 16 people have died worldwide from the Swine Flu "pandemic". (That's another thing... if you are getting reports of 150+ deaths out of Mexico, that number has been debunked by the World Health Organization. Good science has reduced that statistic from a very low number to an even lower number.)

Evidence suggests that 150 people die every year from concussions sustained by having a coconut fall out of a tree and hit them on the head.

We still have 134 deaths to go before this reaches the level of the "coconut concussion crisis".

Cutting Through Bad Journalism and Irrational Fear with Simple Numbers

Number of US residents who die each year from flu-related symptoms or complications from flu:
36,000 people

Statistical daily mortality rate for the common flu:
98.6 people each day every day

Statistical hourly mortality rate for the common flu:
4.1 people each hour every hour... day after day with no news panic

Number of US residents who have died since the Swine Flu "pandemic":
0 people

Percentage of US residents who have caught the Swine Flu and are still alive:
100%

Total US population:
303,824,640

Total reported cases of Swine Flu in the US:
114

Percentage of US residents who have caught this normally nonfatal illness:
0.0000375%

Myth Alert! "I am a Poor American"

I am sure there will be many who disagree with me. This assertion that I make is as unpopular as my infamous "air conditioning is a luxury... not a necessity" statement.

The "poor" in the United States are not poor. The very idea is insulting. The wealthy here who consider themselves poor are only poor relative to the even more wealthy people around them. The vast majority of the poor in this country are far richer, live better, and live longer than the majority of the people on the planet. We play games with geographical boarders in order to make us the victims. Lets look over the facts for a few moments.

The average household wealth per adult world wide is $2,200.

If you have $61,000 in household total assets (not just your wage... everything you've got), you are among the top 10% richest people on earth.

Contrast that with the average wealth in the United States: $144,000 per person. The average American has $141,800 more in treasure than most of the rest of the world. Most Americans, blinded by their sheltered lifestyle, do not understand this.

It is even more extreme than you might think: More than 50% of the world lives on less than $2 per day. That is abject poverty even among American panhandlers.

...and the "cost of living" comparison is pure sophistry. The reason why the American cost of living is so high is because we have so many luxuries that we classify as necessities. If you remove all of the things that are available to the vast majority of Americans, the cost to live in the United States drops drastically. Our life is expensive because we throw obscene amounts of money at things that we don't need.

These are just a few things to think about when working on the budget and when confronted with money trouble. Once you have visited a ghetto in a foreign country, you understand how ludicrous the idea of the American poor is. When you learn that you are among the world's filthy rich, you have no choice but to change your world view and gear down your lifestyle.

So lets set down some ground rules:

If you can afford a worldwide communication device that you can carry with you, you are rich.

If you can afford to make the air in your house whatever temperature you want, you are rich.

If you can eat whatever you want whenever you want, you are rich.

If you own a device that does all of your walking for you and allows you to travel hundreds of miles with ease, you are rich.

Sorry to burst your bubble... you are not poor.

To over 3 Billion people on earth, you are Bill Gates. Use the vast wealth that God has given you wisely. At the very least, try to remain humble, grateful, and a little more patient.

Myth Alert! The Non-Denominational Church

If someone tells you that they belong to a non-denominational church, make sure to laugh at them good and loud.

Non-denominational churches do not exist. They cannot exist. There is real, fundamental disagreement in the church. You are either on one side of a given issue or another. The next time you find a non-denominational church, look at their statements of belief. If you read far enough you will reach an "ah-ha!" moment.

"Ah-ha!" This non-denominational church lied to me. They are covertly anabaptist. "Ah-ha!" This non-denominational church lied to me. They are covertly arminian/calvinist/methodist/emergent/etc, etc.

Alternatively, you find a place where no specific beliefs are stated. Everything is fair game. In this case, they are certainly non-denominational... but one could argue that a group without any truth is no longer the church.

Let's take this "non-denominational" church as an example.

Here is Article 7 - Baptism & the Lord's Supper:

"The Word of God enjoins... blah blah blah... pretty rhetoric... blah... baptism, is the outward sign of what God has already done in the individual's life... blah blah blah... Anabaptist jibberish... blah... Trinitarian Formula... Lord's Supper is a commemoration of the death of the Lord and is done in rememberance of Him... blah blah... Both institutions are restricted to those who are believers."

Now let's look at the SBC Faith & Message and see if it matches:

"Christian baptism is the immersion of a believer in water in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. It is an act of obedience symbolizing the believer's faith in a crucified, buried, and risen Saviour, the believer's death to sin, the burial of the old life, and the resurrection to walk in newness of life in Christ Jesus. It is a testimony to his faith in the final resurrection of the dead. Being a church ordinance, it is prerequisite to the privileges of church membership and to the Lord's Supper."

"The Lord's Supper is a symbolic act of obedience whereby members of the church, through partaking of the bread and the fruit of the vine, memorialize the death of the Redeemer and anticipate His second coming."

Ah-ah! I think we have found a winner. So much for non-denominational.

So this is what we have learned:

When a church is "non-denominational", this may be what they are saying:

1. "We are distancing ourselves from the historic view of our former denomination."

2. "We think that changing our name will better fit in with our community-based missional program."

3. "We are moving to generic American religionism."

4. "We don't want you to know our beliefs up front."

5. "We don't want to be judged on the basis of our profession."

6. "We care about our deeds (works) rather than our creeds (faith)."

7. "We are really X denomination, but we can't get that denomination to sign off on some of our beliefs and practices."

Myth Alert! A Popular (and Incorrect) Anti-CCM Argument

Myth: (A) The CCLI posts the top 25 most popular Praise and Worship songs. (B) The CCLI top 25 most popular songs are always worthless songs. (C) Therefore, they are the top 25 songs that are performed during services in church.

Fact: This argument uses non sequitur logic [A+B ≠ C]. This kind of point proves ignorance about how CCLI information is reported and gathered. As a person who has dealt with CCLI, I will present many of the mitigating circumnstances that make this assersion invalid:

1. CCLI gathers the Top 25 list using the following method. On their website they say, "For each survey period, we calculate which songs are the top 25 songs reported as being reproduced in that survey, for the Church Copyright License. The Top 25 Songs lists are updated after each royalty payout, paid on February 15 and August 15 every year." That means that it does not take into account churches who do not use CCLI or do not properly report to CCLI (which is more than you might think).

2. CCLI payouts include all non-worship oriented uses of the contemporary music including things like youth events, commercials, slide-show presentations, etc. Just because something is reported to CCLI does not mean that it was used in a worship service.

3. You do not have to report to CCLI if you have direct permission from the copyright holder through another provider. This means that if you perform an original piece written by a congregation member who grants permission, it will not be posted to CCLI. It means that if you have permission to perform the song from the artist, you do not have to post to CCLI. It means that if you do an original arrangement of a song in public domain, you do not have to post to CCLI. It means that if you report through your hymnal software (like the LSB Service Builder) you do not have to report to CCLI. With many CCM churches, that can reduce the CCLI requirement to less than half of the songs in any given service. At the very least, it points out that hymnal songs and all public domain pieces are not represented by the Top 25 (which is why Amazing Grace is never on the Top 25 even though almost everyone in the United States can hum the tune from memory.)

4. The Top 25 is based on number of reproductions and payouts, not per-capata usage. It is most popular by dollars and incidents of use not percentage of users or popularity of song.

5. There is no doctrinal test to get CCLI membership. A large percentage of the CCLI membership is made up of Oneness Pentacostals (who aren't even trinitarian) and other various heretical sects. These heterodox organizations skew the numbers in favor of their belief systems and artificially inflate the popularity of bad songs.

Myth Alert! Everyone Loves the Same Jesus

Don't think that we need to know or recite the Athanasian Creed? It is an important defense against heresy that you should arm yourself with. It is the only way to defend against the many false Jesus look-a-likes that are floating around. Sure, it is easy to know that the Jehovah's Witnesses are wrong about Jesus being an angel, but how do you know that the crypto-trinitarian error of the Latter-Day Saints is wrong? How do you know that they are in error? What makes them no different than other churches who are Christian but just have errors in doctrine and practice?

No matter what politicians and newsmen will tell you, the LDS faith is not Christianity. It wasn't Christianity when it was revealed to fallible men several hundred years ago and it remains a heretical belief system to this day. Here is a current LDS Statement of Faith by President Gordon B. Hinckley. You should read it with a copy of the Athanasian Creed in hand. They claim to have a Godhead, but it is not our Godhead. You will see that their Godhead is a unity of purpose of distinct individual beings; an alliance of individuals. They believe that the three persons are three beings that are one in the sense of their same purpose and cooperation. I have provided and important excerpt that draws the distinction between the LDS heresy and the one, holy, and apostolic faith (heresy is presented in red):


Three Distinct Beings


And so I believe in God the Eternal Father, and in His Son, Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Ghost.

I was baptized in the name of these three. I was married in the name of these three. I have no question concerning Their reality and Their individuality. That individuality was made apparent when Jesus was baptized by John in Jordan. There in the water stood the Son of God. His Father’s voice was heard declaring His divine sonship, and the Holy Ghost was manifest in the form of a dove (see Matt. 3:16–17).

I am aware that Jesus said they who had seen Him had seen the Father. Could not the same be said by many a son who resembles his parent?

When Jesus prayed to the Father, certainly He was not praying to Himself!

They are distinct beings, but They are one in purpose and effort. They are united as one in bringing to pass the grand, divine plan for the salvation and exaltation of the children of God.

In His great, moving prayer in the garden before His betrayal, Christ pleaded with His Father concerning the Apostles, whom He loved, saying:

“Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word;

“That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us” (John 17:20–21).

It is that perfect unity between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost that binds these three into the oneness of the divine Godhead.

Miracle of miracles and wonder of wonders, They are interested in us, and we are the substance of Their great concern. They are available to each of us. We approach the Father through the Son. He is our intercessor at the throne of God. How marvelous it is that we may so speak to the Father in the name of the Son.

I bear witness of these great, transcendent truths. I do so by the gift and power of the Holy Ghost, in the sacred name of Jesus Christ.

++++++++++++

Someone may say that this is just one Morman's personal opinion. They are wrong. Here is the official statement of the LDS church:

The Church's first article of faith states, "We believe in God, the Eternal Father, and in His Son, Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Ghost." These three beings make up the Godhead. They preside over this world and all other creations of our Father in Heaven.

The true doctrine of the Godhead was lost in the apostasy that followed the Savior's mortal ministry and the deaths of His Apostles. This doctrine began to be restored when 14-year-old Joseph Smith received his First Vision (see Joseph Smith—History 1:17). From the Prophet's account of the First Vision and from his other teachings, we know that the members of the Godhead are three separate beings. The Father and the Son have tangible bodies of flesh and bones, and the Holy Ghost is a personage of spirit (see D&C 130:22).

Although the members of the Godhead are distinct beings with distinct roles, they are one in purpose and doctrine. They are perfectly united in bringing to pass Heavenly Father's divine plan of salvation.

Myth Alert! My Bill of Rights

Apparently, modern Christians know as little about the history of their government as they do about the history of the church. As the election year draws near, I hear all kinds of Christians saying all kinds of silly things about the U.S. Constitution and the Founding Fathers. I blame inept school teachers and lazy parents for not making people read or learn from first hand sources. I will endeavor to set the record straight. Let us start with the myth that the Bill of Rights was originally intended to guarantee individual citizens these freedoms… in particular the universal right for an individual to have "freedom of religion".

Originally, the first 10 Amendments to the Constitution (aka the Bill of Rights) applied in a very limited scope. Anyone who reads the "Federalist Papers" knows that. When these amendments were written, they were limitations that only applied to the federal government. The First Amendment did not universally restrict the governments of the states and only limited Congress from establishing or forbidding religion, speech, the press, etc, etc.

In short:

You did not have these rights objectively as an individual. The Bill of Rights just said that the federal government could not deprive you of these things. Your state reserved the right to decide what your rights were as a citizen and they could freely deprive you of rights "guaranteed to you" in the Bill of Rights.

Consequently, states were free to limit or control the exercise of religion, gun rights, habeas corpus, and free speech as they saw fit. In fact, there were many “state churches” in the United States that held an official religion for that state in those early days. Such an idea offends most modern Americans who believe that their view of America has always been the traditional view.

As an example, Massachusetts did not disestablish its official church until 1833--more than forty years after the ratification of the First Amendment. The state had been officially Congregational until 1780. Massachusetts then moved to a system that was "more fair" which required every man to belong to a church (any church), and even permitted each church to tax its members. This system continued until it was abolished in 1833. It should be noted that the state of Massachusetts continued to have official establishments of religion in local areas for many years after that.

The Supreme Court upheld this understanding of Constitutional Law in Barron v. Baltimore (1833) which stated that freedoms granted by the Bill of Rights were restrictions upon the federal government alone (specifically the 5th Amendment in that case) and that the rights listed did not restrict the operation of state governments.

Other states had official religions:

Connecticut was officially a Congregational state until 1818
Georgia was officially Church of England state until 1789
New Hampshire was officially a Congregational state until 1790
North Carolina was officially a Church of England state until 1776
South Carolina was officially a Church of England state until 1854
Virginia was officially a Church of England state until 1786

It was also this Constitutional understanding that pro-slavery states used to forbid the printing of abolitionist literature and ban the peaceful assembly of anti-slavery organizations prior to the American Civil War.

This view of the function of the Bill of Rights had changed by 1868 with the ratification of the 14th Amendment. That is after the American Civil War for those of you who are fuzzy on the timeline. The authority of the Bill of Rights over the states was further cemented by the Gitlow v. New York decision (1925) which bound states to the First Amendment limitations of the federal government in the Bill of Rights using the 14th Amendment. These developments effectively overturned Barron v. Baltimore and reserved the restrictions listed in the Constitutional Amendments to the state governments as well. So the free exercise of religion at the individual level was not a product of the U.S. Constitution, but rather of the 14th Amendment which became law many decades later.

What does this mean? That means that the country that you live in now is not the one that the Founding Fathers created with the U.S. Constitution. The freedoms that you have always considered to be inalienable rights that are immune to all government intrusion were not originally afforded to you by the Bill of Rights, but rather by the addition of the 14th Amendment. Prior to the 14th Amendment, the Constitution offered you no assurance that your basic rights were protected from the actions of your individual state.

Thank God for the 14th Amendment and those "liberal judges" who deviated from strict interpretations of the Constitution in order to correct a tyrannical system that watched as citizens were deprived of individual liberty.

Myth Alert! Childish Arrogance

Children always think that they are the smart ones. It is one of those things on this earth that is about as dependable as gravity. Children are often too proud to listen to those who are wiser and more mature. Their excuse? No one can be as wise as they are. The world is full of adults who used to be children who believed this myth. Life usually teaches them the truth.

What is sad is when Christians behave like children and think that they know better than previous generations. This self-righteous arrogance is what gives birth to wheel reinvention and the rising din of the echo chamber. This is a horrific plague that tortures and sickens vast expanses of the modern church.

You see this all the time. The blessed virgin Mary is regularly presented as some clueless, poor waif that was totally oblivious to what was happening to her. The Apostle Paul's inerrant preaching in the epistles about gender roles is regularly presented little more than understandable sexism that sprung from the barbaric time in which he lived. The disciples are regularly portrayed as clueless fools and cowards compared to modern Christians. As Pastor Weedon so wisely points out here, even John the Baptist is assumed to be weak and ignorant. The self-righteousness and arrogance that gave birth to these slanderous claims is so thick that it makes me sick to my stomach.

Lest you think that Lutheranism is immune to this total contempt for those who have come before us, or that it is a relatively new problem; look at this foolish, adolescent diatribe disguised as a paper from Lutheran Observer penned by Rev. Benjamin Kurtz:

"The Fathers--who are the 'Fathers'? They are the children; they lived in the infancy of the Church, in the early dawn of the Gospel day. John the Baptist was the greatest among the prophets and yet he that was least in the Kingdom of God, in the Christian Church was greater than he. He probably knew less, and that little less distinctly than a Sunday-school child, ten years of age, in the present day.....who then are the 'Fathers'? They have become the Children; they were the Fathers when compared with those who lived in the infancy of the Jewish dispensation; but, compared with the present and advanced age, they are the Children, and the learned and pious of the nineteenth century are the Fathers. We are three hundred years older than Luther and his noble coadjutors, and eighteen hundred years older than the primitives; theirs was the age of infancy and adolescence, and ours that of full-grown manhood. They are the children; we are the fathers; the tables are turned." [Benjamin Kurtz, "The Fathers", Lutheran Observer November 29, 1849 (original emphasis)]

It never ceases to amaze me how people today can have such a low view of the men and women who met Our Savior Jesus Christ while he walked this earth. I am mystified how people will blindly trust modern men who speak recklessly as if they were prophets, but throw a jaundiced eye at the very saints that the Bible says actually spoke with members of the angelic host. I cannot help but laugh each time that a progressive radical tries to tell me that they know more about the early church than them men who were there.

It would be funny if it was not so sad that fat, lazy, safe, over-stimulated Americans presume to teach each other about finding purpose and courage. We dare to use ourselves as examples on how to deal with persecution and suffering rather than calling upon the bold, heroic testimony of the saints and martyrs who, in the days of Rome's persecutions, pulled the lions on top of their bodies to prove to the witnesses that Christ had removed their fear of death. We who shudder at the thought of not having climate controlled houses dare to talk about the struggles of poverty. We who worry about what our friends might think of our religion presume to talk about persecution when death squads all around the world continue to violate and kill Christians every year. The arrogance is sickening.

By the same token, it is perplexing that modern Lutherans would presume to know the essence of the Confessions better than the very men who wrote them.

For all of our achievements, it is folly to believe that man has progressed beyond the sinful, weak-willed creature that he has been since the Fall in the Garden of Eden. Is man more enlightened, cultured, or wise than in previous centuries? Does the modern man murder less, serve his neighbor more, or even bother to think more often? Clearly not; if anything, he is becoming worse! Historical ignorance is what fuels the confidence in our abilities.

"Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall." Proverbs 16:18

Have we forgotten what it means to be a disciple and a servant? Do we even know what humility means anymore? We act as children who presume to know better than others. While the Fathers of the church are not to be obeyed and believed as though their pious opinions are equal to the divine revelation of God, the other extreme is equally horrific and perilous.

Myth Alert! Restorationism

It is time to clear the air surrounding one of those myths that way too many Christians buy into because it makes them feel good about their belief system. This is the myth that I hate the most because I got suckered by it for decades. It breeds so much arrogance in those who espouse it that I cannot help but get hostile when this silliness hits my ears. It is time for a good ole history lesson!

Myth: "The early church that the apostles set up was hijacked by Roman Catholicism. My church is a return to that primitive Christianity. We are Biblical and you are not." You hear this tinfoil-hat conspiracy theory everywhere! It is embraced by everyone from unchristian cults to popular Christian churches like Baptists and Disciples of Christ. It is THE myth to believe if you are a big supporter of small groups and house church. This thing gets so bad that some Independent Baptists believe that they have directly inherited the teachings and practice of St. John the Baptist in some kind of bizarre mimic of apostolic succession.

It gets really bad when it comes to the Lord's Supper and Baptism. These legalists want to say that the early church was memorialist in nature and did not believe in sacraments. They will stand by this myth even in the face of all evidence to the contrary. The archenemies of common sense are those immersion-only zealots who want to give you speculation about the depth of the Jordan River and base their theology on the pictures that they saw of the Baptism of Jesus in children's books.

It is time to wake up and embrace the cold reality of facts... facts that are supported by historical evidence and documents that you can actually touch.

The Truth: Let's set the record straight. We need to flush this mythology of a utopian church that was just like yours now. Look at the evidence. If you like the early church so much, read what they wrote about what they believed in their own words. Follow the timeline:

33 AD: Jesus dies and is raised from the dead.
57 AD: By this date, the majority of the epistles had been written.
64 AD: St. Peter, the apostle, dies in Rome. St. Paul dies within the next few years.

between 70 and 180 AD: The Didache records, ""After the foregoing instructions, baptize in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, in living [running] water. If you have no living water, then baptize in other water, and if you are not able in cold, then in warm. If you have neither, pour water three times on the head, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Before baptism, let the one baptizing and the one to be baptized fast, as also any others who are able. Command the one who is to be baptized to fast beforehand for one or two days."

110 AD: Ignatius of Antioch writes, "I have no taste for corruptible food nor for the pleasures of this life. I desire the bread of God, which is the flesh of Jesus Christ, who was the seed of David; and for drink I desire his blood, which is love incorruptible."

181 AD: Justin Martyr writes, "We call this food Eucharist, and no one else is permitted to partake of it, except one who believes our teaching to be true and who has been washed in the washing which is for the remission of sins and for regeneration [i.e., has received baptism] and is thereby living as Christ enjoined. For not as common bread nor common drink do we receive these; but since Jesus Christ our Savior was made incarnate by the word of God and had both flesh and blood for our salvation, so too, as we have been taught, the food which has been made into the Eucharist by the Eucharistic prayer set down by Him, and by the change of which our blood and flesh is nurtured, is both the flesh and the blood of that incarnated Jesus."

200 AD: Tertullian writes, "It is of no concern how diverse be their [the heretics] views, so long as they conspire to erase the one truth. They are puffed up; all offer knowledge. Before they have finished as catechumens, how thoroughly learned they are! And the heretical women themselves, how shameless are they! They make bold to teach, to debate, to work exorcisms, to undertake cures . . . "

215 AD: Hippolytus writes, "Baptize first the children, and if they can speak for themselves let them do so. Otherwise, let their parents or other relatives speak for them."

Wow! Bodily Presence in the Eucharist... Close communion... Infant Baptism... Both Immersion and Sprinkle Baptism... Trinitarian Baptism... A ban on female church leaders... all within the first 200 years of the church! All but the last couple quotes occurred in a period of time that is even smaller than the number of years that have passed between the American Civil War and today. We are not talking centuries. This is decades.

Where was the memorialism? Where is the rejection of infant baptism? Where is the great archaeological evidence of a distinct early church like the one of the silly myths? When did the Roman Catholic Church swoop in and ruin your church on these points of doctrine? Did the whole church fall into error the moment that the dust settled on the corpses of the apostles? Did the next generation of pastors turn their back on what the apostles taught them? If that is true then the early church was a total joke. It couldn't stand for even 100 years on its own without universally embracing huge errors about fundamental parts of Christian life. That is really pathetic.

The truth is that they were not pathetic. They were zealous, bold, and determined. They went to their deaths by the hundreds under the persecutions of the STILL PAGAN Roman Empire under Nero. The martyrs that were thrown to the lions did not believe the bizarre teachings that you do. Their own writings prove it. There is an unbroken chain of testimony to support alot of doctrine that your mythological churches reject. It flows through the New Testament and right onto the papers of the leaders of the church only a few decades later. If we are going to trust any opinion about the early church, we should trust their testimony since they were the people who were there, spoke the original languages, and grew up in the churches where the apostles actually taught. No modern scholar can claim the knowledge and authority that the writers that I have quoted can claim regarding what the early church was and what it believed.

Do not be deceived by lies and fables. You can reject these doctrines to your own peril, but you have no evidence to claim that your false doctrines have a link to something ancient. You cannot point to a period where the early church was like you. That period does not exist. It is a mythological period like the Middle Ages that you see in the movie theater. The only similarities that you have are the cases where you have inherited things from the orthodox church and happen to still agree with the rest of Christendom.

Believe what you want. Just understand that you are very new and different. You are a deviation from the historical church, not a return to it. You are not orthodox. You are not apostolic. You are not a reform. You are not a restoration.

You are an aberrant deviation.