It occurred to me that our walk with God is a lot like an improvisational Jam session.    God calls us to some form of obedience, and we respond according to our particular personality, courage and faith.

Sometimes we do something exactly like he is calling us to.   Sometimes we only take a half step instead of a full one.  Sometimes we negotiate by doing something else that is kinda like what we are being asked to do.    God then responds with more beautiful music..  Be it gentle discipline, encouragement or celebration.   If we ignore him altogether, often God plays the same convicting notes over and over until we respond.

One of the dangers that comes with a lot of the Christian literature and teaching out there today is that it tries to provide us with a script — a few pages of sheet music that we can use to respond to God.  While the music may be good, we need to be careful that we are not playing a cover song of James Dobson, Dave Ramsey or Bill W..   Their song may be a good source of wisdom and may be totally sound biblical advice, but we need our song to be our song.

Moreover, Good wisdom is a distraction if it isn’t rooted in and subservient the Gospel.  We don’t follow Jesus to get a stronger family, financial peace, or liberation from addiction.  We get a stronger family, financial peace and liberation because of Jesus, who he is, and what he did for us.

It is the Gospel that changes everything, not some set of behaviors that we can follow like an actor reading a script.

So,  are you playing a cover song? Or an original?  Is your song a duet in response to God? or are you playing response songs totally irrelevant to his call?

In yesterday’s post, I mentioned that many Christians blindly support the secular state of Israel, and that this position ignores quite a bit of scripture.

The obvious retort is to go to Genesis 12:3 and point out that God’s Promise says “I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse”

My response is “who is you?” The answer is Abraham. Much of the controversy between Jesus and the Pharisee’s dealt with Jesus linking back to the promises made to Abraham. The Pharisees loved the promises to Moses, but they where a little less keen on the promises to Abraham. All of the promises made to Abraham also applied to the nation of Israel, as they where a subset of Abraham’s offspring.. But in the very same verse Gen 12:3 the promise continues “and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” God’s promise to Abraham was for Israel, but it was also for all of the peoples of the earth.

All of the people of the earth are blessed through Jesus. Jesus is the ultimate owner of the promise “I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse” This isn’t “replacement theology” as some would like to demonize it. God’s promises to Moses where generally conditional. God’s promises to Abraham where not. On a corporate level, the nation of Israel failed to keep it’s side of the Mosaic covenant, and as such, God’s promises are coming true for them. More on the curse side than the blessing side, unfortunately for them.

Thankfully however, the Abraham covenant was on a personal level, not a corporate level. Everyone who by faith submits to the rightful king is a inheritor of the promises to Abraham. (Romans 4) So there is neither Jew nor Greek in the kingdom of God. It is open to all who profess faith.

The book of Romans chapters 9-11 does indicate that the nation of Israel will come back to faith in the end. I don’t think we are there yet.

Yes, I know some people shudder every time she opens her mouth. I am not typically one of them. I see her as the presidential decoy. She takes all of the potshots for 3 1/2 years to clear the way for a guy like Tim Pawlenty to take the nomination. (Much like Hillary Clinton’s role in the 2008 election cycle) Her job is to bait the liberals into being irrationally agitated so that the mainstream of the country considers the liberals to be out of touch and delusional. She is doing a pretty darn good job of it. This role does spend your credibility however, and makes you seem nonviable in the general election.

Sarah visited Israel and provided the following quote:

“”Israel is absolutely beautiful and it is overwhelming to see and touch the cornerstone of our faith and I am so grateful to get to be here,” “

It may seem like a small error of semantics, but I think it is a very big one. “the cornerstone of our faith” refers to one thing. Jesus. The Cornerstone is the foundation for everything, everything is measured in relation to the Cornerstone, and it’s plumb line is the arbitrator between good and evil. (Isaiah 28:16-19)

To call something else “the cornerstone of our faith” is wrong. Particular when today’s pop-eschatology tend to make Israel the plumb-line, and consider anyone who questions the actions of the secular state of Israel to be un-Christian.

Jesus word’s in the The Parable of the wicked tenants called out Israel for rejecting the “Cornerstone”, and attached consequences to their actions.

Blindly supporting Israel is also blindly ignoring scripture. That doesn’t mean that Israel lacks any legitimacy — It just means that their possession of the land has always been tied to their obedience to God. The long term prospects of a disobedient secular Israeli government will be about the same as they have always been. Not good.

FYI – I taught a few years ago on the importance of “The Cornerstone” The audio is here:
Liferoads SNT: Acts 4

Choice John MacArthur quote from the Christian Post article “Influential Evangelical: Mideast Uprisings Violate Biblical Command”

But from a biblical perspective, MacArthur maintained that the protesters are in violation of the biblical command to “submit to the powers that be because they’re ordained of God.”

“I would have wished the American government, which has a history of Christianity, would have risen up and said ‘this is wrong, this is forbidden for people to do this, this is intolerable,” he said.

“I’m not saying Moammar Gadhafi is the best leader; I’m not saying that Mubarak is a great, benevolent and just leader, not when he’s got $70 billion in his own pockets at the expense of people,” he clarified.

But, he stressed, believers are commanded to live orderly, peaceful lives, subjecting themselves to whatever the government would be.

It will be interesting what happens in Southern California as it’s longtime Christian leaders fade into old age and questionable judgement.  (See last week’s post regarding Chuck Smith)

In thinking of such things, I am reminded of a very powerful message that Mark Driscoll delivered to the New Frontiers movement in the UK regarding the life of movements. The audio here The audio is well worth the hour if you have it.  Prophetic and pastoral on a massive scale.

Obama is proposing a high speed rail system.  It is expensive.

I like the idea of high speed rail.  Especially in some of the places I travel.   It probably wouldn’t be a boon to my hometown of Spokane. Although it would be nice to be able to jump on a train and get to Seattle or Portland in a couple of hours, I can  accomplish the same goal in a hour and a half or so right now via the airport.  I wouldn’t say that the current cost is at all prohibitive.

I can (And do) leave my house at 4:30 AM and be at work nearly anywhere on the west side of the country by 1 PM.  There may be a few cases where a high speed rail system could shave an hour or two off of that commute time, but they would tend to be the exception, not the rule.

People are selling this train as a way to avoid TSA.   I highly doubt it.

A bomb on a train going 200 miles per hour is going to be just as deadly as a bomb on a plane.  Beyond that, a train will likely be able to carry a lot more people than a plane can.

Moreover, the bomb doesn’t even need to be on the train.  If somebody where to park an oklahoma city style moving truck anwhere along the route and fire it off a few seconds ahead of the train, there would be surefire mass destruction.   Trains would be much easier to hit than airplanes because they follow a very narrow and unchanging route.

I have also heard of far more “subway shooters” than I have aircraft shooters.

I would love to be able to fly down to Fresno, jump on a train and be in Bakersfield in a few minutes.   Or work a half week in Oxnard, then take a train for 30 minutes and finish a workweek in Riverside or San Diego without having to endure several hours in LA traffic.    That is a good sales pitch.

But the idea that trains can be more secure than airplanes without any TSA scans and pat downs  seems humorously ignorant to me.  You will need the security scans of the passengers as well as security all along the route.  Security is a much bigger problem for trains than it is for Aircraft.

Quite an interesting piece in Der Speigel.  George W. Bush’s Liberal Legacy

Painful as it may be to admit, it was the despised former US President George W. Bush who believed in the democratization of the Muslim world and incurred the scorn and mockery of the Left for his conviction.

Everyone was sure — without knowing any Muslims — that the Western model of democracy could not be applied in a backward society like Iraq. Everyone knew that the neo-conservative belief in the universal desire for freedom and progress was naïve nonsense.

It is becoming quickly evident that Bush was at least half right.  What we are seeing now is beginning to  look like the domino chain that we saw in the late 80′s when the eastern block fell.

I would argue that the critical oversight in the Neocon vision was not it’s optimism for the prospects of democracy in the middle east, but an overestimation of  the virtue of democracy in the first place.

As John Adams said “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

Democracy, without a healthy and deeply entrenched respect for human life and human rights is nothing more than mob rule.   We now see the media cheering the victory of mobs of thugs over tyrants.  We see those same mobs beating and raping reporters in the streets.  It does seem like a pretty hollow victory compared to the dancing on the streets of Berlin we saw some 20 years ago or so.

John Adams again  “That the desires of the majority of the people are often for injustice and inhumanity against the minority, is demonstrated by every page of the history of the whole world”

Democracy only a tool.   True freedom comes from a moral foundation, not a political structure. This world needs a moral revival before any political revival will ever deliver any real liberty.  We can topple one tyrant only to deliver people into the hands of another tyrant.   Not all tyrants are men name Hussein, Mubarak, Castro, or Stalin.  Many of them are liberties themselves  -  addictions, lusts, intelligence, wealth, status, or fame.   We can be enslaved to whatever dream we have been delivered over to.

So moving from a tyrant who worked hard to preserve peace and stability to a new democratic tyranny bent on driving their neighbors into the sea, may not be as liberating as it seems.  Chances are good that minorities are going to be hurt no matter who is in charge, and what kind of label you put on the government.

Oddly,  the people who are the most free are actually the ones who are enslaved to the most just master.