Tag Archives: Culture

The Judicial System Witnesses Worldview Failures

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A harmful theme in American culture that I frequently iterate is the failure to admit to a worldview. It’s not easy to determine the dominant American worldview because there are many competing ones. Those competing worldviews are being used by Satan and his slaves to cause destruction, but I think what we see most often is the prideful worldview that says that they are neutral to all worldviews.

Image by succo from Pixabay

We see this destruction going on in often subtle ways in the American Judicial system. One of the ways I witnessed this recently was in this article in which a man was convicted of a double murder of his pregnant girlfriend.

Man given life term for murdering unborn son

It’s a horrible thing to have to think about, but the according to the article, the court actually had no witnesses. It merely used circumstantial evidence to convict a man of a double murder!

The Bible says that without at least two witnesses, the matter cannot be established:

“ One witness shall not rise up against a man for any iniquity, or for any sin that he sins. At the mouth of two witnesses, or at the mouth of three witnesses, shall a matter be established.” Deuteronomy 19:15

Because the judicial system has been departing from the Christian worldview, they no longer hold to obvious Biblical law. What happens when a judicial system decides to be a law unto itself? I think the answer is obvious: tyranny.

When a government rules the people by its own will, the people are enslaved to another man. If men would choose to abide by God’s law, then they would be enslaved to no man, but only to God. That’s how important and fundamental a Biblical-Christian worldview is to the concept of liberty.

This man was convicted of a double murder and he may not have even done either one. Why is this so important to get right? It’s because kidnapping and slavery are also wrong in the Bible. Kidnapping is what a man does if he wrongfully takes a man and forces him to do his will. Kidnapping is also a capital crime in the Bible.

““Anyone who kidnaps someone and sells him, or if he is found in his hand, he shall surely be put to death.” Exodus 21:16

If the courts were wise, and they clearly are not, they would realize that they are heaping the wrath of God upon themselves and our country because of their tyrannical worldviews, but as you probably noticed at first, this isn’t the last of their violations.

They also admitted in their ruling that abortion is murder and that they, by implication, get to decide which lives are worth living and which lives may be exterminated.

This means that the court is also guilty of murder. The 10 Commandments makes that one easy.

““You shall not murder.” Exodus 20:13

If you want to sum up the Christian worldview’s description of a government’s duty, it’s found in holding people accountable for this verse. If a government fails to protect this law, they fail completely as a government and really cannot be assumed to be one. That’s how Satan uses a shift in our worldview to bring about destruction. He makes us sin and then God is obligated to discipline our rebellious culture.

All courts have a worldview and if they think they are worldview-neutral, they have one of the worst worldviews possible.

Day 18: What We See and What Will Be

Lamentations 4:1-6 :

How the gold has become dim!
The most pure gold has changed!
The stones of the sanctuary are poured out
at the head of every street.

The precious sons of Zion,
comparable to fine gold,
how they are esteemed as earthen pitchers,
the work of the hands of the potter!

Even the jackals offer their breast.
They nurse their young ones.
But the daughter of my people has become cruel,
like the ostriches in the wilderness.

The tongue of the nursing child clings to the roof of his mouth for thirst.
The young children ask bread,
and no one breaks it for them.

Those who ate delicacies are desolate in the streets.
Those who were brought up in purple embrace dunghills.

For the iniquity of the daughter of my people is greater than the sin of Sodom,
which was overthrown as in a moment.
No hands were laid on her.

When I look at my world today, it appears that most popular entertainment assumes that God isn’t there. TV shows, movies and even the commercials promote things that go against God’s word. It’s as if there’s this assumption that Christianity is just a silly little pretend thing that some people like to do. At the same time, everyone seems to be getting and staying quite wealthy as if they are right in what they are thinking. What we read here in Lamentations, reminds us that what we see now, could disappear completely.

What Jeremiah witnessed was the fall of a great civilization and he lived to write about it. The expensive and great buildings of Jerusalem were turned into broken down slums. The children of this once great culture were lacking food and milk so badly that they were worse off than the wild animals around them. Those who used to live confidently in their wealth were now living in what I would probably call “crap” today. Jeremiah called it “dunghills.” It may have seemed, at one time, like the people were secure in their wealthy self-sufficient lives, but they weren’t.

Jeremiah writes, and God affirms, that “the iniquity of the daughter of my people is greater than the sin of Sodom.” Even though the people of Judah and Jerusalem appeared to be doing quite well without following God’s rules, they were actually setting themselves up for complete destruction. What we can learn from this is that what we see may not be even close to the reality of what is coming. It all depends on what God is preparing and that depends on how we treat His word. If a culture chooses to deny God’s word and follow their own way, they are building up wrath, but if they choose to repent and turn to God, they find His favor, even if they are poor. It’s important for us to not to assume that what we see here, represents the truth about a culture. In our current age, things can be turned upside down in a very short period of time.

Day 85: God May Change His Mind about a Nation

Jeremiah 18:1-10

The word which came to Jeremiah from Yahweh, saying, “Arise, and go down to the potter’s house, and there I will cause you to hear my words.”

Then I went down to the potter’s house, and behold, he was making something on the wheels. When the vessel that he made of the clay was marred in the hand of the potter, he made it again another vessel, as seemed good to the potter to make it.

Then Yahweh’s word came to me, saying, “House of Israel, can’t I do with you as this potter?” says Yahweh. “Behold, as the clay in the potter’s hand, so are you in my hand, house of Israel. At the instant I speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to pluck up and to break down and to destroy it; if that nation, concerning which I have spoken, turns from their evil, I will repent of the evil that I thought to do to them. At the instant I speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to build and to plant it; if they do that which is evil in my sight, that they not obey my voice, then I will repent of the good with which I said I would benefit them.

This is something that we can understand quite easily because we are all made in God’s image. We all know what it’s like to decide to make something and then choose to make something different instead. Perhaps you were making a craft of some kind. Perhaps you were creating a recipe. When something didn’t go quite the way you expected, you probably changed your mind and made something else. In the software world, this is definitely true. We may start out making what we think is the perfect piece of software, only later to find out that there’s something better or more realistic that we end up making instead.

God reminds Israel and us, that He is in charge of His creations. He can always change His mind if He wants to. In this passage, God is talking about nations. God is the creator of nations, just as a potter is the creator of his pottery. There’s a big difference in the way that God changes His mind, though. God is never wrong about things and can always see the future perfectly. God changes nations based on how they respond. When they do wrong, then He may stop the blessings that He had planned for them. When they do right, He may restore the blessings that He had planned to remove. It’s really quite simple. God expects nations to obey and if they don’t, things will change.

An important thing for us to understand about this is that nations do have a responsibility to obey. In a sense, we can say that culture is important to God. If the culture of a nation turns against God and His word, then punishment results. If culture changes back to obedience, then things get better. Culture is a subject that the church should involve itself in, because God Himself obviously does. Another thing we learn is that God is always in complete control. Clay doesn’t have much to say about things other than to respond to God’s hand. If an imperfection is found in the clay, God will be the one to decide what happens next, not the clay. We don’t have to worry about mankind running away with the show. God’s hand is always on it and nothing will happen that He doesn’t ultimately control.

Day 84
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