Finally Someone Explaining What it Means to be Christian

Too many charlatans out there.

 

Good message that everyone should adopt, whether you are a Christian or not…

 

Well said. This message need not be addressed to any particular group, but I’m compelled by the argument that the greatest and most radical thing Jesus ever counseled was to love not just our neighbors, but also our enemies. That is just so counter to our nature that it seems to represent something like the highest of our possible moral aims. Maybe it’s an aim that is so high that we can’t reach it, but it should never be an aim that we look down upon.

 

Love thy Trump.

 

Ugh.

I don’t disagree with him, but this is more blather that don’t matter.

As always, D’s so smart they squared the circle.

Caught lightning in a bottle with Obama. Emboldened to think they could take a light year step instead of being humble.

Woman? Then the Black woman? i agree that Kamala was a Hail Mary, but still, they found the only two ways to lose to a bonafide clown?

That party is a shitshow of epic proportions.

Lost to DJT TWICE!

Whoo now, that’s Doing Too Much!

 

Losers.

 

It is all too easy to see God in our own image.

 

x1000

 

Can you point me to the timestamp, in that video, where he defines the word "love"?

 

J. Gresham Machen did an excellent job of explaining this question is his book Christianity and Liberalism.

A summary by one reader on Amazon:

Machen’s Christianity and Liberalism should be read by all concerned Christians today because the same problems that Machen faced in 1923 are still with us today. The term “liberalism” should not be taken in a present day political sense, but rather in a theological sense. Machen’s book was essentially a response to a sermon by Harry Emerson Fosdick, entitled “Shall the Fundamentalists Win?” in which he labeled fundamentalism divisive and intolerant. Fosdick viewed them as backwards thinkers, quite out of step with modern thinking, so he proposed a more tolerant and more modern approach to the Bible. He argued centered on three topics primarily, Christ’s virgin birth, the inspiration and inerrancy of Scripture, and Christ’s second coming. In his sermon, he argues that the church is big enough for both conservative and liberal views. However, the liberal views are confusing at best, and heretical at worst. For instance, he states that the virgin birth was not a historical event, and that it was merely a way to show that Christ was unique. He states that the biblical writers “phrased it in terms of a biological miracle that our modern minds cannot use.” He applies the same line of arguments to the inerrancy of the Bible and the atonement. He ends his sermon with two points: one, Fosdick calls for a spirit of tolerance and Christian liberty, and second, he rebukes the church for quarreling over such petty matters when “the world is dying of great needs.” Over doctrinal verity and precision, Fosdick preferred personal piety and devotion and tolerance.

Machen did not deny that Fosdick could hold these views, but he insisted that they were not Christian, and should not be called such. Christianity was not first and foremost a life, but a doctrine, and from that doctrine followed life. To Machen, these were not little matters to be pushed to the background, but fundamental to the Christian faith. Machen did not disagree with the need for piety and devotion, but if doctrine did not matter, then to what end and to whom were we supposed to be devoted? If doctrine did not matter, and Christ’s death and sacrifice did not remove sin, then what was He doing on the cross? Machen held that when Fosdick brushed aside doctrine, he was destroying the very center of Christianity. Christianity that was not built on doctrine was living on borrowed time, and would soon degenerate into mere moralism. In the first chapter of his book, Machen stressed that there were two separate systems vying for the church: “the great redemptive religion which has always been known as Christianity” on the one hand, and on the other hand “a totally diverse type of religious belief, which is only the more destructive of the Christian faith because it makes use of traditional Christian terminology.” Essentially, Christianity is basically supernatural, from God, while liberalism elevates man and lowers Christ, and is basically a natural religion. He makes his argument in the next six chapters of the book examining six major doctrines of the church: doctrine, God and humanity, the Bible, Christ, salvation, and the church.

Christianity and Liberalism is a must-read classic, not simply for historical purposes, but because it addresses issues that are prevalent today. Fosdick was the grandfather of the seeker sensitive movement of Schuller and Warren. The view that doctrine doesn’t matter and that all we need is Jesus pervades the modern evangelical church. Many pastors, churches, and Christians use Christian terminology that is devoid of Biblical and orthodox meaning. Seeker-sensitive liberalism appeals to man, whether modern or not, because it addresses our fundamental sin, pride. Liberalism allows man to save himself using the example of Christ, rather than depending on him for our very lives. The issue may even be more pressing today, because at least in Machen’s time people still had some knowledge of Biblical doctrines and of the Bible itself. Today, however, after nearly 100 years of fluffy preaching and anti-intellectual and anti-doctrinal mamby-pamby, most people in our churches don’t even know what to believe and why.

Read this book and it will change your world. Preach this and people will call you intolerant, narrow, and divisive. Great. Christianity is what it is. Being steadfast and faithful to the Word of God and to the doctrines it contains is not popular, but it is the difference between life and death. Jesus, Peter, and Paul were not tolerant or broad-minded when it came to what Christianity was (and is) and why it was necessary to believe certain things. Too many people today who call themselves Christians believe that they are believers and love Jesus. The problem is that they don’t hold to what the Bible states, and they believe in a Jesus that is not Biblical. Machen makes this clear.​

 

Is that Tim Walz?