A failure to acknowledge His power and authority will put a man in the dog house.
Readership: All
Theme: Glory
Author’s Note: The following commentary was submitted by a reader who wishes to remain anonymous. Edited by Jack.
Length: 600 words
Reading Time: 3 minutes
Under the previous post, Glory (2023/3/1), Info brought up the story of how God revealed His Glory to Moses in Exodus 33:7-34:35 when the Covenant was renewed.
We know that leaders and teachers are judged more strictly (James 3:1). I was just wondering if Moses, who was the appointed leader of the Israelites, and to whom God revealed a part of His glory, was judged more harshly because of that revelation.
In Exodus 33:18, Moses asked to see the Glory of God, and in Exodus 33:23, God said He would show Moses His back but not His face.
In Numbers 20:2-13, when God instructed Moses to speak to the rock, he disobeyed and struck it. We assume that his disobedience was the act of striking the rock instead of speaking to it, or something about the number of times that he struck the rock. We assume that this was the reason why he was not allowed to enter the Promised Land.
But actually, Numbers 20:12 says,
And the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, “Because you did not believe in me, to uphold me as holy in the eyes of the people of Israel, therefore you shall not bring this assembly into the land that I have given them.”
The King James uses the words, “to sanctify Me” instead of the words, “to uphold Me as holy”.
So the question is, how did Moses NOT sanctify the Lord? Perhaps the answer lies in the immediately preceding verses 10-11.
And Moses and Aaron gathered the congregation together before the rock, and he said unto them, “Hear now, ye rebels; must we fetch you water out of this rock?”
Image Source: Living Passages: Rephidim and the Split Rock of Horeb in Saudi Arabia (2023)
Perhaps that is where Moses went wrong. In that moment of anger, he used the word “we” — not “the Lord God Who brought you out of Egypt”, but “we”, which may have been taken by the people to mean Moses himself and Aaron who stood beside him. Whether by intent or by a verbal faux pas of passionate anger, Moses shared or tried to share in the GLORY that was due only to God.
So perhaps Moses was punished not because of his disobedience in the way he struck the rock, but because he tried to share the glory of God — the glory of which God had given him a glimpse of in Exodus 33.
Since God will NOT share HIS GLORY with a mortal man, Moses was punished.
The takeaway is this. Glorifying God is one of the most important aspects of spiritual Humility.* That is, we must always recognize the power and authority of God in our lives and revere Him as Lord. We must be dependent on God, do things in HIS strength and for HIS GLORY. Anytime we do things in our own strength and for our own glory, we are guilty of idolatry and we will be judged for that.
It’s kind of like how important it is for women to show respect to men.* Even if a woman obeys everything her father or husband tells her to do — to a T, but she doesn’t do it with an attitude of humility and respect, then all her work is in vain. No points scored!
We need to be constantly reminded to give God the glory because it’s easy for us to forget or neglect this — just as it is easy for wives to forget or neglect to respect their husbands at all times.
* Σ Frame often talks about (1) the importance of humility and (2) the Christ : Church :: Husband : Wife analogy, so I’ve learned to see things through these lenses.
Related
- Σ Frame: Apprehending True Humility (2019/4/7)
- Σ Frame: The Glory of Submission and Humility in Helping (2022/10/6)
- Σ Frame: The D@mning Power of Humility (2023/2/15)
Σ Frame 
Pingback: Nobody’s Heroes 62 | okrahead
When you misrepresent God to a large group of people, it tends to irk Him quite a bit.
The Westboro Baptist folk are in deep trouble.
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Hey Jack, why not dedicate this month’s posts to glory?
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A fantastic suggestion! Originally, I had planned 3 posts on glory to sort out some issues of confusion on this topic. Since then, I’ve received a couple submissions and I’ve had some more ideas too. Given the importance of this topic (to God especially), I’ll run with this for as long as I have ideas, inspiration, and incoming submissions. Thanks~!
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Jack,
The Christ : Church :: Husband : Wife analogy plays throughout scripture due to headship. It starts with Adam failing at headship, when he held his tongue and ate the fruit at Eve’s behest dooming us all, and culminates with Christ’s perfect headship. Because of this, much of scripture is better understood, or only can be understood correctly, through the lens of headship.
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… believed BY MUSLIMS to be the rock that issued forth water for the Israelites…
Fixed.
It’s enough that Muslims took over the Manosphere. Don’t let them take over the Christosphere as well.
Is this an attempt at “Abrahamic Religions” unity? I’d rather build bridges with Buddhists.
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Sure would be weird if Abrahamic religions had the same architectural sites/landmarks.
You might not be the worst troll I’ve ever seen, but you are surely in the top ten. And that is a very very high bar.
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I wrote a post about all this weirdness.
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People, learn about Islam. They say Moses (Musa) was all over Saudi Arabia. That Abraham (Ibrahim) and Ishmael built the Kaaba, and that Moses went to pray to Allah at it. Jews and Christians do not accept this. Nor do we accept that Saudi Arabia was where the rock that issued forth water was.
No wonder YouTube is full of Christians converting to Islam every second minute.
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I’ve heard there is a Muslim Mosque in the exact same location as the Jewish Temple of the Old Testament. Incredible! Jews and Christians do not accept this either.
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God specifically prevented said Temple from being rebuilt:
The Muslim Mosque is also on that exact site because God wanted to block the rebuilding of the Temple.
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Muslims love all that and use it to convert Christians.
They take it all as “signs” that the Quran talks about.
Subhanallah!
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The Dome of the Rock is one of the earliest surviving buildings from the Islamic world, but the building is not a mosque (a place of prayer). Its original function and meaning is uncertain.
The Dome of the Rock is located on an open-air platform that is the Temple Mount, the site of the Jewish second temple which Roman Emperor Titus destroyed in 70 A.D. The Temple Mount currently has several other religious buildings, including a school for Islamic instruction and the Al-Aqsa mosque.
Inside the Dome of the Rock at the center sits a large rock, which is believed to be the location where Abraham was prepared to sacrifice his son Isaac. Today, Muslims believe that the Rock commemorates the night journey of Muhammad.
The circular Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, built to enclose the tomb of Christ, and the Dome of the Rock have domes that are almost identical in size. The elevated position of the Dome of the Rock and the comparable size of its dome may possibly have been the way that Muslims proclaimed the superiority of their newly formed faith over Christianity.
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Jack,
https://www.bible.ca/archeology/bible-archeology-exodus-route-rephidim-meribah.htm
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I do wonder when so many Americans wrongfully asserted that all Monarchy where the King had True Authority it is tyranny.
That the Feminist movement that was allowed to flourish in the 1800’s and the figureheadship of the Husband over the Wife isn’t likewise Divine judgment.
Also mirroring the same argument for all True Male Headship being tyranny. And eventually even Parental Authority being called tyranny and given the same treatment as the “Patriarchy”.
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Some monarchies are tyrannical, some aren’t. Different forms of government work better or worse in different cultures. Ultimately, every form of government is doomed to fail because sinful human nature screws everything up.
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@Oscar
If there is anyone who has already done the cost-benefit analysis. It is God. Everything He commands is Good. And also every problem down the line has already been accounted for.
Given that statistically single-mothers have disproportionately more abuse in their Households than intact families. Then Patriarchy which is the complete intact family including actual Headship should have better statistics.
No to mention how Civilization is made possible by this Patriarchy:
Fish Eaters: Garbage Generation
Sinful exceptions are easier to deal with than when sin is much more common.
The best we can do is minimize evil. Not eradicate it. God will do that at the End of Human history.
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The Entire Mosaic system is not only to symbolically represent Atonement and the Sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the Cross. But also to glorify God by manifesting it in the Artwork of the Tabernacle, its Sacred Objects and the Vestments. Gold, Silver, Bronze and Precious stones all employed to this end. Manifesting the Heavenly Pattern on Earth.
And likewise when Nadab and Abihu despised their work. This is what happened:
In a related note. This is also why I don’t like a lot of Evangelical Music nowadays. It just doesn’t seem as reverent and as manifestly glorious as more Older Hymns of the Protestant Church. Or the Eastern Orthodox chants I discovered and regularly listen to.
I actually prefer Old Liturgical Worship. But without denying the importance of personal obedience and Love of God and Neighbor. To be clean of heart which naturally manifests in a clean outside too.
[Jack: Not sure which translation you’re using. In the NKJV, the Lord speaks in the imperative!]
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The Nadab and Abihu story is one of the proof texts the Church of Christ gives as to why the precise form of worship is so important that if you get it wrong you might be struck dead for bringing a piano into the building.
That was a fun religious upbringing.
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@The Eye of Sauron
Good thing Jesus fulfilled that Priestly role. But it goes to show that God took regard for Himself as Holy and to be Glorified very seriously.
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The Berean Study Bible that is featured in the Biblehub website.
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One time I told my son,
“Moses openly disrespected God twice. Once by smashing the tablets to pieces and once by hitting the rock instead of speaking to it. And for that he never got to see the promised land.
The next time you giggle at me while I tell you to eat your peas, I will visit a similar fate upon you!”
It didn’t work.
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But at least I amuse myself with my parenting technique instead of making myself crazy and suicidal.
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Heh, odds are when he is an adult peas will be one of his favorite meals. Mike spent many hours into the night in front of a plate of cold black beans. “What Cuban won’t eat black beans?!?” His Dad was angry.
Yeah… He eats a lot of them now. LOL
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When they behave badly I refer to them in public as “these people I live with.”
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This is why punishment is necessary in some instances.
IMO, the instance you described is trivial. Ha ha.
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I’m going to try that one.
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Liturgical worship, Monty Python style.
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Things that have nothing to do with my faith:
— Whether God took 6 days or billions of years to create the universe.
— What the book of Revelation means by “1000 year” reign.
— Where the rock that sprang forth water after Moses struck it is precisely located.
— Whether or not Methuselah was really 969 years old.
— Whether or not the earth was completely covered by water during a flood 5 millennia ago.
And so on.
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Speculations. That aren’t as crucial as a the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ and the literality of the Garden of Eden story.
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You have to admit, that would be cool.
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I once ran through all the numbers in Genesis to create a timeline. I found that Methuselah died the same year as the flood. Methuselah’s name translated means, “When I die, that’s the end.”
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@Oscar
I believe it. Because Mankind has through Genetic entropy as mutations accumulate have deteriorated from their original designs.
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Personally, the thought of having another 920 something years to go is not appealing to me. Another 40 to 45 max, enough time to make sure the next 2 generations of my family have what they need to perpetuate the knowledge my dad never gave me, and then heading home seems nice to me.
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@Red Pill Apostle
Long lives aren’t appealing without God in the long term anyway. The Garden of Eden wouldn’t be a delight without God.
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Off Topic
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Also it’s important for there to be Archivists among our number. Even Roald Dahl’s books got edited to fit our current zeitgeist.
We need Old Books as they were written.
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There was a time when I was very concerned about having the correct interpretive process — and that process was based on the verbal and plenary inspiration of the original texts (low-text criticism). And I was also equally concerned that the people around me had the same understanding.
But that hermeneutic contains second and third-order syllogisms that are simply incoherent, even if you have really, really, super-duper strong faith. (Most days, mine is about 6/10, with 1 being “atheist” and 10 being, “I would martyr myself right now if they asked me to.”) They require the person to twist himself into pretzel shaped logic contortions in order to keep a grip on his sanity through suspension of disbelief.
My “journey” from there to where I am now would bore everyone here to tears. But suffice it to say, I now believe (something like) this: Those men who penned the scripture (and many other people over history including the framers of the constitution, Mozart, Da Vinci, etc.) had an encounter with the divine and for whatever reason were inspired and compelled to make a record and accounting of what they experienced.
This is not to say that Mozart’s Concerto for Flute and Harp is on the same level as the book of John, but if you can listen to pieces of music like that and NOT hear the voice of God, we just aren’t on the same wavelength. The sound of my children laughing in the backyard is similarly transcendent.
My beloved Holy Orthodoxy is VERY dogmatic about things like the 6 day creation and so forth. And part of my internal struggle is obedience to those teachings when they seem really unnecessary to the building up of the faithful among us and recruiting new believers.
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A good rule of thumb is that Prose indicates real History. And poetic language isn’t:
Apologetics Press: Systematically Understanding the Bible Better [Part 2] (2017/3)
Genesis 2:4 onwards is Prose and therefore Real History:
Dr. L. K. Wheeler: What Are the J, E, and P Texts of Genesis? (2018/4/24) [Archive]
Much of the Bible in terms of historical events have been archaeologically proven. All the Empires once thought fictional have been proven to be true.
The sequence of Empires in the Book of Daniel from Babylon to Rome has been proven.
All the Prophecies about the doom of the Nations like Babylon were proven true. Even down to their particular details. Like that particular City Babylon being uninhabited. And so on.
The Prophecies were so accurate. There are Scholars who believe the Prophecies were written after the event.
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Yes I’m familiar with the various forms of literature in the texts.
I just find evidential apologetics and all the permutations of related ideas about the precise historical / scientific confirmation of scripture to be eye wash after decades of trying to live in that environment.
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Alright. But such evidence gives us confidence in God’s word.
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The most important empirical fact is the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. If that didn’t happen. Then Christianity is truly false. As Paul said, “our faith is in vain” (1 Corinthians 15). If Jesus didn’t historically and literally rise from death with a physical body that is able to eat. And be felt by Thomas.
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Off topic: if Don Frye isn’t “alpha” enough to keep a woman perpetually attracted to him, then neither are you.
Virtue, not attraction, keeps marriages together.
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Don is/was a badass. He has also has suffered from injuries and medical conditions through middle age. I think he’s an example of attraction — living and dying by the sword.
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In Don’s day, MMA was pretty much a bar room brawl with minimal rules, like his fight with Yoshihiro Takayama.
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I’m a little bit disappointed here, but only just a little. You know I love you, brother.
But there is no dichotomy.
What keeps marriage together is a perfect storm of variables, in a dose/formula that is very hard to control for in the current environment. Two of those ingredients are virtue and attraction.
A couple who is ONLY crazy hot for each other will eventually hit a hard time and the marriage will crumble under the weight. A couple who is committed to each other no matter what, but who have zero chemistry might stay “married” but it will be miserable and their kids will suffer for it.
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Folks in the manosphere give the romantic angle of marriage a hard time for understandable reasons. The focus on self-fulfillment in marriage has become all-encompassing over the last 150 years or so. But recall, the original purpose for marriage was two-fold.
First, God saw that it was “not good” for the man to be alone. Therefore, He created the woman (and marriage) to solve the problem of man’s loneliness. I can’t think of anything more “romantic” than that.
He also commanded them to have children. If you have the first part down, having children is a natural byproduct of that. “NowhatImean? NowhatImean?” Wink, wink, nudge, nudge, he asked knowingly.
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Ah, but you’re forgetting Oscar’s Axiom. Maximizing your LAMPS will improve your marriage…. but only if she’s already virtuous.
Attraction brings couples together. Virtue keeps them together. Proverbs 31 and The Song of Solomon complement each other. There’s no disagreement between the two.
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No one said there’s disagreement. Only that attraction and virtue are not the ONLY things involved. I don’t agree that virtue keeps people together, not today, not in 2023. At least, that’s not the ONLY thing that “keeps them together”.
There’s attraction, virtue, luck, circumstance, need, necessity, family pressure, the needs of children, money, lack of money, legacies, inheritances, appearances, keeping up with the Joneses, getting regular sex, ability / inability / desire / lack of desire to replace the one you have, and a whole host of other factors that keep people together.
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A huge part of the reason people stay together is because the one they have is the best they can do, and they know it. Another huge part of why people stay together is because not staying together would cause way, way more problems than staying together. Yet another reason is that not staying together would cause extreme financial hardship for one or both spouses.
So, no, it’s not just and only virtue.
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That’s called prudence. Prudence is a virtue.
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It sounds like what you are saying is something like, “Staying together (for the kids, etc. etc.)” is a virtue. And that is a moral / ethical argument that has traction and merit. However, in todays context, it does seem to run afoul of God’s intended purpose for marriage. It’s analogous to the concept of spirit vs letter of the law. It makes marriage all cost and no benefit for the man.
For example, Deti has discussed the idea of mistresses in the past. It seems many men in previous generations who were in sexless marriages had a mistress. (By the way, the clinical definition of sexless is right at about once a month or less.) The society around them may have had a lifelong monogamous ideal, but the circumstance was so ridiculous that the man went outside the marriage for the one thing he could not simply ignore, or pay for, or whatever, morally.
In those cases, everyone knew what was going on, even the wife on some level. And if she was even the least bit insightful and merciful, she understood that if she was going to constantly deny him this marital prerogative, she should not be surprised by this. But since the society around them is preaching monogamy, as long as it did not become a public humiliation for her, she did not really want to know.
Today, wives openly brag about how if their husbands don’t behave, then “He’ll be on the couch” or “He’s not getting any tonight.” That kind of marital behavior is the preached virtue in fact. It’s on sitcoms, commercials, movies, everywhere. When we hear it, we are conditioned to nod knowingly. That bad man has lost the pvssy for the night by being such a boor. Or he didn’t rub her feet for enough minutes first. Or he didn’t do the dishes or put the kids to bed. Or he forgot flowers for her birthday. Or….
Can anyone in 21st century western culture imagine a man saying, “I am not paying her car payment this month because she didn’t fvck me enough in February. If she rallies to a good 6 more times plus 4 b-jobs before the end of March, maybe I will pay it before it gets repossessed. Otherwise, she will be walking or bumming rides to the grocery store and to do her nails.”??? Cue sitcom applause!!!
However, this is the EXACT moral analogy to what happens to men, every day, in every nation from Australia to Canada and everything in between.
These marriages are a huge pain in the a$$ of suffering and misery for the men in them and although the logistical “benefits” of staying together may be virtuous on some level, the marriage itself is such an inversion of what God wants it to be that it strains credulity. The men staying in those marriages are “Boxer” from Animal Farm. “I will just WORK HARDER and then things will turn around in my marriage”, they declare. They take their cues from Matt Chandler, and are “exhausted” at the end of the day, and whoops! Headache! Cue sitcom sad trombone!
The solution to this is to have a woman who is crazy about you. Or better yet, both are crazy about each other. It’s really hard to find though.
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That’s only a solution if she’s also virtuous, as Don Frye, Tom Brady, Brad Pitt, and many others demonstrate.
It’s funny that you disagree with me about virtue, then you give me a scenario of a man married to a non-virtuous woman.
Society doesn’t get to decide what is virtuous. God does. And according to God, denying your spouse sex is sinful, not virtuous. That’s why the Puritans used to excommunicate people who denied sex to their spouses. Maybe if Christians stopped believing slanderous lies about the Puritans more churches could get back to that.
Is “staying together for the kids” virtuous?
Yes, it is. But if a couple is virtuous, they won’t stop there. If they’re virtuous, the husband will love and serve his wife, and the wife will submit to, love and serve her husband, and neither of them will deny sex to the other. And they’ll do all of that whether they feel like it or not.
That’s why virtue gets couples through the trials of life when attraction can’t.
Obviously, modern culture discourages virtue. So did first century Greek and Roman culture. That’s why the Apostles had to write about how to treat ones spouse so often. That’s also why it’s important to find a church community that reinforces virtue.
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And the part about being nuts about you is not all bad news.
It offers a glimmer of hope for the parents of daughters (especially).
We know that women tend to bond REALLY hard with their first. Therefore, it is imperative to make the argument to them that their best shot at life long crazy about each other love (at least that they have some control over) is to be very picky about that part. Get married young to a guy who sweeps you off your feet and we will be there to support you, your husband, and the formation of your new family.
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Only if he’s virtuous.
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Here’s the advice I give my kids.
Get married young to a virtuous guy/girl who is crazy about you and we will be there to support you, your spouse, and the formation of your new family, and so will our church.
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Let me sum up the EoS/Oscar dustup.
Oscar: Idealism.
EoS: Realism.
If we want to live in idealism, here’s what will happen: Around 10% of people will be able to have decent marriages. The rest will marry but live in miserable marriages.
Since we live in reality, here’s what we actually have: Around 10% of people have really good marriages: Liz/Mike, Elspeth/SAM. That’s about it. The rest just will not get married. Men will live in grinding sexual deserts. Women will have hot Chadrone sex, get knocked up, and have one or two kids who Chadrone doesn’t support.
It’s all a sh!tshow. Way to go, women!
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I wouldn’t call it a dust up.
Dude. I’m talking about doing stuff you don’t want to do in order to get through the trials of life, and you call that idealism?!
Holy crap!
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So even Oscar agrees that sexual attraction is a necessary condition precedent to a functional marriage.
Here’s the problem with that: Most men can’t attract any women at all, much less one who’s crazy about them.
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What do you mean “even Oscar”? I’ve stated a million times on this blog, DS’s, and Dalrock’s that attraction is necessary but not sufficient. How did you miss that?
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Oscar
At the end of the day, neither you nor anyone else has an answer for this part:
There’s no solution to this problem. None.
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Meanwhile, at my church there are bridal showers and/or baby showers every single weekend.
Anyway, the funny thing is that back in college I found myself on the opposite side of this argument. For some reason, a bunch of my Christian friends got it in their heads that wives need to respect their husbands, but don’t need to love them.
A mixed bunch of us were hanging out at a friend’s house when the group started arguing over that point. Finally, I said, “When I come home from a deployment or an NTC rotation, I want my wife to drag me into the bedroom, tear my clothes off and jump my bones. She’s not going to do that if she only respects me.”
Probably not the best way to express that thought in mixed company, but it got the point across.
Something similar happened at Dalrock’s.
I don’t understand how to make this any clearer. Attraction and virtue are both necessary. Attraction brings people together. Virtue keeps them together, and keeps them attracted to each other, even through the worse, poorer, sickness parts of life (i.e., the non-ideal parts).
You need both.
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Exceptions prove the rule. Your church is a tiny little enclave that will have no cultural impact at all and will do nothing to change anything. Statistically, 38% of those blushing brides and mamas will drag their husbands through divorce court because they’re not haaaaaaappy.
“But, but, but, muh church” is not an answer. Face it — you don’t have an answer. I don’t either. And neither does anyone else.
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Except, that isn’t happening.
That’s not my answer.
Sure I do. My answer is that you have three options as far as I can see.
1) Join people who are already doing the supposedly impossible.
2) Go see what they’re doing and replicate it.
3) Do nothing.
Option 1 seemed most feasible to me, so that’s what I did. My biggest regret is that I didn’t do it sooner. I should have left active duty when I returned from Afghanistan in 2008, but I didn’t understand the importance of Christian community back then.
I failed my older kids in that regard. I won’t fail the younger ones in the same manner.
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Again, Oscar: Yes, you need attraction. Glad you’ve clarified that. Thanks for admitting it.
The point is that most men can’t provide that needed part. They can’t gin up attraction in any woman. They aren’t attractive, they can’t be attractive, and they will never be sufficiently attractive for any woman.
That’s the part you have no answer for. That’s the part that can’t be solved. You have no answer and no solution. And that’s OK, because neither does anyone else.
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Oscar:
Most of the men in your church are marrying women who have had sex with at least one or two other men — and those are the men they’ll cop to.
Most of the men in your church are marrying women who aren’t sexually attracted to them. What, you think just because a woman has agreed to marry a man means she is sexually attracted to him? What, are you daft? Have you not been paying attention?
All the women in your church are still living in, and heavily influenced by, degraded, unregenerate American culture. They all have smartphones and social media accounts and emails and laptops. They all pay attention to influencers. They are all subject to the ambient culture they live in. Oh, you don’t see any of its sway on them; but it’s there. Oh, they don’t admit to any of this, but they do it/have done it.
Yes, even in your church. Yes, even in the boonies. Yes, even among “devout ‘Christian’ women”. Yes, even them.
The rot goes deep. All the way to the foundation.
There is no answer and no solution. At least, not one that anyone really wants.
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No one has an answer or solution to this, because there isn’t one. And there never will be one. Which is why Western Civ is f_cked.
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Deti,
I’ve been 100% consistent on that point since I was a teenager. Thanks for finally noticing.
As I’ve said many, many, many times, because I’m not an idealist, I’m not trying to save Western Civilization. All I’m trying to do is give my kids and future grandkids the best chance I can with the resources available.
Because I’m not an idealist, I’ve never claimed to know what’s going on behind other couples’ closed doors, much less in their hearts or minds, nor do I want to know.
Here’s what I do know. The dating / marriage market is mostly a hellscape. But here, kids marry young, stay married, and make lots of babies. Here, 50 high school couples attended a cello concerto in formal attire and impressed the heck out of the non-church-goers. Here, the church ladies busy themselves every weekend baking for baby showers and bridal showers. That’s my kind of place.
You’re free to do what you think is best. I’m busy planting trees whose shade I’ll never sit under.
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It seems to me the two most disrespectful things you can do to God are…
1– Declaring (in His name) that something is true, but it is not. (Taking the Lord’s name in vain.) This is like, “I swear to God that XXX.” He really doesn’t like that one. It was many years after grade school that I realized uttering the word “sh!t” does not violate this rule, no matter how many times the principle of your school or the local Ned Flanders says it does.
And…
2– Assigning the cause or reason for something He did to the Devil. (Blasphemy of the Holy Spirit.) It seems He doesn’t like it when Satan gets credit for something He did. You can actually lose your soul over that one.
Looking at His character, or works, or plans, or rules, and critiquing the rationale is not disrespectful (at least not in and of itself). It might not get you anywhere, or you may find that the answers are not what you expected. But it doesn’t seem reasonable for God to make sentient creatures who cannot ask questions about their own existence.
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Also, it seems like placing stumbling blocks (like in the Ned Flanders example) is a big one.
Or, my favorite, using the “you are causing me to stumble” argument when in fact you are using your own weak mindedness to crap on some other Christians different view of a thing to make them question their faith.
This used to happen (again, in the Church of Christ) every time older prudish friends who were Christians for a bazillion years would come to my house and tell me that I was “causing them to stumble” because I had a beer with dinner. Or said the F word. Or smoked a cigar. Or…
If you have been a Christian for literally 80% of your life, how is watching me (at 23) drink a beer causing your faith to be shaken?
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Hint: If you are accusing a less mature Christian of “causing you to stumble” you are probably doing it wrong.
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Prohibitionist women are like this too:
Image Source: Fine Art America: Lips That Touch Liquour Shall Not Touch Ours (2017/1/27)
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Re: Lips That Touch Liquour Shall Not Touch Ours
These were the same women who spearheaded women’s suffrage (early Feminism).
One look at those old battle axe biddies makes me want to start drinking just to make sure it never happens.
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I doubt those people are born again. Such that they are stuck up on the letter of the Law but miss the Spirit of the Law.
One can be good at following rules all they like. But not being born again will make you quite likely to end up at sinful extremes contrary to God’s intention.
There Jesus said:
That is according to the testimony of Pastor David Pawson:
That Water Baptism still has this Sacramental effect if done in conjunction with Prayer as in asking for the Holy Spirit.
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I have no opinion on the state of their faith. Charity demands that I just let them (and most people for that matter) work it out over time with themselves.
But I did have to separate myself from the legalism of the Bible Belt faith traditions so I could tend to my own growth.
Most people in those churches seem deeply insecure about their own faith and that is why they sit in judgment like that. It has nothing to do with me.
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If you can recognize such people as being less mature in faith than you are, then what they’re saying is kinda true. You have a responsibility to put on your best face for them. (Romans 14:13-23) However, there are a couple glitches here to watch out for.
1– Less mature people would probably not be that self-aware of how such things affect their spiritual state.
2– Usually, people like this will make themselves out to be the more spiritually mature ones. This is confusing to someone who is stronger in faith, but not self-aware enough to know how such things work. Thus, there is the potential for the legalists to cause the stronger faith person to stumble in doubt.
According to my own personal experience, this kind of talk is little more than hypocritical churchianese virtue signaling and/or heavy handed social control. It is more likely that such people would cause you to stumble by pressing you into a works mentality. So whenever they say you’re “causing others to stumble”, it may very well be interpreted as a red flag of what they themselves do to others. (I want to call this a coded psychological projection, but I’m not sure that’s the right term.)
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Prohibition was about violence. Same in India. There are a few areas in India that are “dry”. This is because alcoholism and its accompanying crimes like domestic abuse, murder and gambling away one’s own children’s food money had reached such levels that it had to be outlawed. If you research our own prohibition movements, it was the same thing.
Nobody was worried about having a glass of wine with dinner.
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Violence was certainly both a cause and an effect of Prohibition, but that wasn’t the purpose. The purpose was about political control and maneuvering. I don’t even know where to begin to set this one straight. And it’s off topic, so I’m not going to worry about it.
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Again, if people were drinking responsibly, like a glass of wine at dinner, nobody would’ve been bothered.
The ban on alcohol is one of the few things I appreciate about Islam actually. Only because too many people in the world cannot, or will not, drink responsibly. They make alcohol the most dangerous drug known to mankind and the cause of much of the world’s suffering.
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@The Eye of Sauron
True. The Fruits of the Spirit manifests itself over time. But so far it’s not forthcoming.
If they remain stuck on legalism. They aren’t saved. May they be truly born again so they understand the Spirit of the Law.
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Look, everyone.
I think we need to admit that most men and most women are simply not going to get what they want from here on out. Most men are not attractive enough to attract any women; much less virtuous women. Most men just don’t have what it takes.
Most women are attractive enough for most men; but they don’t want the men they can keep; and can’t keep the men they want. And virtue? Ha! Most women wouldn’t know what virtue is if it came up and smacked them on the a$$ like Chadrone does. Most Christian women have had premarital sex. Most “conservative” women (whatever that means) are living just like any other women in the world.
It’s a complete mess, and it’s time to admit that. In fact I said that 3 years ago here in a now-deleted post.
It’s time to admit failure. It’s time to admit that it’s just not going to work out for most people. It’s time to admit that most men are f_cked, and not in a good way. It’s time to admit that most women aren’t wives, aren’t trained to be wives, and don’t really want to be wives.
It’s time to admit that this whole thing, this entire SMP/MMP/social experiment, has failed. It’s time to salvage what can be salvaged, and move on.
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We need to admit this to ourselves.
Everyone posting or reading here:
Most of your kids will not marry. Most of your kids who do marry will divorce, or will have marriages that are difficult slogs at best. The absolute best that most of your children can hope for is that they won’t get divorced but will remain married to someone who settled hard for them and would frankly have preferred marriage to someone else.
Most of your sons will not marry. If they marry at all it will be to a woman with at least 7 prior men under her belt and who really didn’t want him. She will treat him poorly and he’ll put up with it because he has no other choice if he doesn’t want to live in his car for a year.
Most of your daughters will have a lot of premarital sex hoping to lock Chadrone down. When they fail (and they WILL fail), they’ll settle hard for a man who has no idea how to be a husband to any woman, much less the damaged woman who’s picked him. He will have no clue what he’s doing or what he’s getting himself into, or how to run even his own life, much less someone else’s.
Sorry, but that’s where we are.
How does this relate to “glory” or “disrespecting the Lord”? Well, that’s women’s part here — they’re the ones disrespecting God.
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By the way, when’s the last time you heard anything about Saeed Abedini?
Literally the moment he stepped off the plane after gaining his freedom from 3 years imprisonment in Iran for evangelism there, Abedini’s ex wife accused him of “abuse” consisting of him allegedly looking at p0rn and him having a loud argument with his wife which got him busted on stupid trumped up DV charges.
And what happened? All of Christianity (except Dalrock) threw Saeed under the bus.
On the word of a woman. On almost no proof at all, save his getting angry and then a stupid DV charge.
Abedini did everything exactly right according to Biblical doctrine. And we abandoned him.
It’s over, guys. It’s over.
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