You’re The Decider
Vote Nov. 7
 
 
 
I’ve been struck into silence these past few days by the current scandal in the House of Representatives. To put in in a nutshell, a 52-year-old Republican congressman was caught having cybersex, among other things, with teenage pages, the Republican leadership knew about it, and tried to keep it secret. Register to vote. Vote Democrat on November 7.
One reason that I started up this blog was that I was sick of being called unpatriotic. There’s another thing that’s bothered me about the public discourse, and that’s the conflation of evangelicalism with values and the Republican party.
Evangelicalism has caused as deep a rift in American values as the split between Sunnis and Shiites amongst the Muslims. Since the late 1800s, anyone espousing what my family would call true Christian religion has been branded a heretic by evangelicals. Here’s what Rev. N.F. Ravlin, pastor at the First Baptist Church in San Jose, California said on the topic in a book called Progressive Thought, published in 1886:
Much is said concerning evangelical religion and an orthodox faith. Any type of religion that has the evangelical label is regarded as sound beyond question, and as one that will pass current, not only in this world but in that which is to come. Of course, there can be no admixture of error in that which is declared “evangelical,” even as it is impossible that there should be any truth in any system of religion not couched in evangelical forms of expression. It is assumed that everything outside of the so-called evangelical system is erroneous, schismatic, and heretical, destructive to man and dishonoring to God. But assumptions prove nothing. Words and forms of expression are often employed that convey no meaning. Truth may be rejected as error, while falsity is confirmed as truth.
We have fallen upon times when the doctrines and commandments of men are received as “Living Oracles,” and when human tradition renders the Word of God of none effect; when policy is more potent than principle, and the honor that cometh from men is sought rather than the honor that cometh from God; when systems are estimated according to set forms of speech, and human character by the outward expression of the lips. Hence all that is necessary to know of a church is the soundness of its creed. If the creed is regarded as correct, the church is termed evangelical, and no further questions are asked. Churches by a vote adopt an orthodox creed, and are therefore considered orthodox. They subscribe to doctrines called “evangelical,” and hence become evangelical churches. By a similar kind of reasoning men profess honesty, and are therefore accounted to be honest. Licentious people may avow chastity, and therefore are to be considered chaste. Corruption my assume the garb of purity, and thus be declared pure.
But any one of ordinary intelligence can see the fallacy of such reasoning. Men may assume to be honest and pure and chaste, but that does not make them so. It is the reality and not the profession that is needed. Declaring by a vote that a certain system of doctrines is “evangelical,” does not constitute it as such. The vote is merely the expressed opinion of those who have adopted the system. In fact, the doctrines may not be true. Truth is one thing, and the understanding another. Then it makes a wonderful difference whether we receive it in the intellect only, or possess it in the heart; whether it enters into the understanding simply, or into the will or affections as well. Before we can rightfully claim to be evangelical, truth must come into the understanding and thence into the will, in the supremacy of its regenerating power. The acceptance or adoption of a system of doctrine, does not necessarily effect any change in the internal stat or quality of the heart.
Hence it often happens that men who subscribe to the strictest evangelical doctrines are  both ignorant and self-willed. The doctrines do not of necessity make them such; but resting in the mere external profession of them does. This obviates the need of a personal search for truth, and in fact precludes a thorough investigation. Men are taught from childhood that a certain system of belief is evangelical. The parent inherits the idea and and transmits it to his children; and so on from generation to generation. They are taught at the same time that everything outside of that so-called evangelical creed, is non-evangelical and false.
To such an extent does this belief or impression prevail, that there are thousands of ministers who have never dared to make an independent examination of religious truth for themselves. They simply believe and teach the system in which they have been educated. I am not blaming the ministers,  but the cast-iron systems that hamper them. To cut loose from the bondage of tradition and creed, and proclaim their freedom and right of private judgement and of personal investigation of truth, is to subject themselves to social ostracism, and often to the anathemas of their brethren. Their motives are impugned, which is the worst possible form of persecution; and everything is done to destroy the public confidence in them as men of honor and veracity....
But because a system of doctrine is labeled “evangelical,” we are not therefore to conclude that it is really such, until it has been tested and proved. The Word of the Lord judges every man; and before the same court of final appeal, must all systems of religious doctrine be brought at last. The test will be searching, the judgement just, and the decision final. Men are judged according to their works, trees by their fruit, and religious beliefs by their effects upon life and character. This is what Christ meant when He said, “By their fruits shall ye know them. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?”
As every tree produces fruit according to its kind, so every system produces effects according to its own nature. If the fruit is corrupt, the tree that produced it is corrupt also. It is impossible for a good tree to produce evil fruit. The good tree of the Scriptures is the religion of Jesus Christ. If there is any discrepancy between it and evangelical religion (so-called), so much the worse for the religion. The religion of Christ may be summed up in one word, “Love.” It is all contained in that word. “God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.” (1 John iv.16) “Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not, knoweth not God; for God is love.” (v.7,8) Hence it is said again: “Love worketh no ill to his  neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the Law.” (Rom. xiii. 10) “If ye love me, keep my commandments.” (John xiv.15) “This is my commandment, that ye love one another, as I have loved you.” (xv. 12) “He that loveth me not, keepeth not my sayings.” “By this shall men know ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.” (John xiii. 35) “Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is lik unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” (Matt. xxii. 37, 38,39)
Thus we see that the religion of Christ in its essences, spirit, influence, and effects—in its internal operations and its external manifestations—is love to God and love to man. It renders to God that which is God’s own, also to Caesar that which is Caesar’s, and to every man that which is his rightful due. It inflicts no injury; works no ill; does no harm; burdens no oppressed spirit; blinds no eyes; stops no ears; hardens no heart; breathes no spite, or hatred, or wrath, or malice, or revenge; forges no fetters; establishes no dogmas; sanctions no unjust judgement of another; gives no license to to evil, to inflict pain, or to persecute. It heals the wounded spirit, helps the struggling soul, floods the understanding with the light and the heart with love.
The religion of Christ is broad and philanthropic. It is deep and comprehensive. It is minute, yet vast and infinite. It is human, yet Divine; particular, yet general; concentrated, yet diffused. It is concentrated in the heart and diffused through the life. It reforms the life or outward conduct, and regenerates the soul. It gives to every man light and life as he is prepared to receive it. It fills alike the smallest and the greatest measure of capacity. It makes no set of men its exclusive custodians, and delegates to no church the power or right to dictate the plan or extent of its operations. It can no more be put into a creed than the ocean can be bottled up and set upon the shelves of an apothecary shop. It can no more be contained in dogmatic statements than the air surrounding our globe can be contained in a Chinese bomb.
The religion of Christ is love and light. It is righteousness of life, and not a mere bundle of abstractions. It transforms character, enlightens the understanding, renews the will, purifies the heart, and permeates the whole man. It does not consist in subscribing creeds but in a life according to the commandments. It is manifested, not in words but in deeds, and consists not in professions but in possessions. In spirit, it is the golden rule. It leads us to do unto others as we would that they should do unto us. As we would not inflict an injury upon ourselves, so it makes it impossible for us to inflict an injury upon others. Christ taught his religion as recorded in the Gospels, and exemplified it in his life. His disciples drank of his spirit, and copied his example; and others took knowledge of them that they had been with Jesus. Christ was their Teacher, and thus they were taught of God.
In short, the religion of Jesus Christ reveals God, shows us his personal unity, tells us plainly of the Father, unveils eternity, brings life and immortality to light, secures the at one-ment, effects the reconciliation and the resurrection from the dead, reveals the spiritual world, the nature of the last judgement and of heaven and hell, that men might not walk in darkness, but have the light of life.
Thus have I briefly sketched the religion of the Lord Jesus Christ. And this is the religion we preach, the religion that purifies, exalts, ennobles, saves. Yet it has, as you all know, been declared heresy, and hence not “evangelical.” In view of which, I trust it will not be deemed uncharitable if I declare that the so-called evangelical religion is not the religion of Christ and therefore is not truly evangelical. Shall I tell you why? I will—though the task is not one in which I take any delight, and though I may, by so doing, wound the feelings of some estimable people, and incur the liability of having my motives impugned and my purpose misconstrued. But the time, I think, has arrived for plain speaking on this as on all other subjects. My reasons, then briefly stated, are the following:—
The so-called evangelical religion destroys the unity of God, robs Christ of his supreme Divinity, presents an erroneous view of the atonement and the resurrection, of the spiritual world an the life of man after death. It ignores the second coming of the Lord, or misunderstands and misinterprets the prophecies which foretell it. It is sectarian, so much so that the church which is the Lord’s body, is rent asunder, member from member—thus destroying the visible unity of the body. It is founded on diverse and conflicting creeds and commandments of men. It is proscriptive and oppressive in its spirit and methods. It is in opposition to the Saviour’s prayer for the unity of his people. It is without Divine sanction or warrant. It has been, and is, productive of unholy divisions and strife among those who should be of one mind and one heart. Its history is dark with deeds of persecution and blood. It has inspired in not a few the disposition to “Lord it over God’s heritage.” Hence the “Clerical Orders” from the Pope down to the humblest preacher that rides an appointed circuit. Its symbols are a mixture of truth and error. Great truths are falsified and corrupted, and fundamental errors are confirmed as truth. It is largely a religion of worldly policy, external grandeur, and sectarian rivalry. Denominational affairs are often manipulated by rings as unscrupulous as ever disgraced the political arena. Churches are often made seemingly to prosper by dishonest and underhanded means, of which an ordinary sinner would be ashamed. “Cunning craftiness,” smooth-tongued flattery, lying and deception, are sometimes employed on the principle that the “end justifies the means.” The commandments of Christ are ignored, and the “Golden Rule” trampled under foot. The Sacred Scriptures are rendered null and void by the creed being made the supreme test of character and Christian fellowship. The sweetest charity and the purest heart that throbs in a human breast, find but a cold welcome, if any, within the “evangelical” fold, if the dogmas of the creed are dissented from. Though you bind the Word of God upon your bosom, and cherish its sacred precepts in your heart, and obey its commandments in your life, and fail in your adherence to creed, you are turned away. There is no room for such as you within the “evangelical” fold. It is a sort of religious or ecclesiastical corral, and the Word of the Lord is not a passport of sufficient authority to pass you across the lines.
Intelligent people have long observed this state of things, and the effect has been to develop skepticism and unbelief to such an extent that the masses in Christian lands are as far removed from the influence of the Gospel as though they dwelt upon the planet Mars. In rejecting the unreasonable and unscriptural interpretations of the “evangelical” school of Christians, they have discarded Christianity itself. It is not strange they should confound the two, since form their earliest recollections evangelical religion has been proclaimed as the religion of Jesus Christ. But there is a wide difference between them, and every year the breach grows wider or more palpable.
In drawing this indictment against the so-called “evangelical religion” of our time, I would not be understood as holding or teaching that no truth is preached, or that there are no good people in the “evangelical churches.” A great deal of truth is proclaimed there, and millions of good Christian people, I doubt not, are to be found there. But I refer to the systems themselves, to the sectarian organizations, their empty boast of superior piety, the controlling forces that operate them, and the principles according to which they are generally manipulated.
There is nothing about “evangelical religion” in the Bible. It is a theological term, and churches are only human organizations. Just in so far as they are controlled by the Word and Spirit of Christ they are Christian churches, and no further.
Now, since your pastor has been declared a heretic by the Central Baptist Association of California, and you have been refused admission to that body  because of your adherence to him and his teachings, it seems proper and right, before I conclude, that I should give a brief summary of my faith, in order that you may know precisely what the alleged heresy is. I will say then.—
I believe in the Divine Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, as revealed in the Sacred Scriptures. I believe that Jesus Christ is God, and the only God of heaven and earth; that the whole of the Divine Trinity (which is a trinity not of persons but of essential divine elements in one person) is in Him; that He is the manifested Jehovah, and the only proper object, therefore, of religious worship. I believe in the Divine Incarnation, and in the atonement of Christ, but not in its vicarious nature. I believe in the resurrection and ascension of Christ as our Mediator. I believe in the resurrection of man, not in a material, but in a spiritual and substantial body. I believe in the second coming of the Lord “in the clouds of heaven,” which clouds I understand to mean the letter of the Word, which veils, and to some eyes obscures, its inner glories. I believe in a judgment to come, when every man will be judged according to his works. I believe in a heaven and a hell (not outward and material, but as inward and spiritual states of life), in one or the other of which every human being will dwell forever. I believe in the divine inspiration of the Sacred Scriptures—an inspiration far higher and deeper, too, than that attributed to them in the theologies of the “evangelical religion.” I believe a Christian life consists in living according to the commandments of God. I believe in the necessity of regeneration, and that no man can enter in to the Kingdom of God except he be born again—born from above.
Now, if the above declaration of belief is heretical, I must plead guilty to the charge of heresy. If to reject the dogmas, commandments, and creeds of men is heresy, then I am a heretic; and as such I propose to live and die. If for cherishing such a faith as this, I am persecuted, and my name is cast out as evil, I count it an honor so to suffer. It ministers to my happiness. It draws me closer to the blessed Savior, and makes me more conscious of the Divine approval.
For the past four years I have lived blamelessly among you, an have endeavored to do my duty publicly and privately, without fear or favor. Tonight, I stand in conscious freedom, and in the dignity of manly independence. No ecclesiastical bonds fetter my soul or chafe my spirit with their rusty links. No evangelical gatekeeper exacts toll of my conscience. The toll-gates where the rights of conscience are invaded, and the spirit is bled, and manhood robbed of its dignity and strength, are all on the roads beneath where hirelings and servile minions journey. The highways above are free. The air is pure. The sky is bright. The flowers are fragrant. The fruits abundant. The view is grand. The scenery magnificent, the experience of all who journey thither, delightful. There are no “evangelical” fogs up there. The mists of error are lifted. The clouds of falsity have rolled away. There are no bundles of dead abstractions and debris of decayed systems obstructing the way. They are all down below, in the museums of antiquity. No one ever gets up very high on the mount of God with a lumbering human creed upon his shoulders or across his path. Such things have no place on the king’s highway. They are cast out as hindrances and obstructions. They are as little thought of above, as a gardener thinks of a bundle of dead weeds when which he casts into the fire. Our Lord Jesus Christ reigns without a rival there. His Word is Law. His scepter, Power. His nature, Love. His revelation, Truth. And his seven-sealed book of Holy Truth is opened to such as have eyes to see, and they behold Him coming in the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory. They tread the golden streets of the New Jerusalem, drink at the crystal stream “which proceedeth out of the throne of God,” eat at will of the fruit of the “Tree of Life,” and look out without alarm upon the warring elements beneath. No rage of enemies can reach them there. No shafts of envy or malice can penetrate the solid jasper walls that encircle them. The study and the practice of the highest truth is their delightful employment. Eternal progress in all excellence and in all knowledge, their earnest desire and fulfilled hope. To approximate toward infinite perfection itself, their sublime mission. So they go on and on through the unending cycles of an everlasting existence, exploring the boundless empire of truth and love, and beholding therein more and more of the goodness and glory and mercy of the Lord, to Whom belongs ceaseless and everlasting praise. Amen.
I guess they didn’t have TV in those days. But to add my own thoughts. Basically, the Republican party now has taken on the nature of this evangelicalism from more than 100 years ago. Part and parcel of that “faith” is the mindless parroting of talking points without questioning, for the good of the party. Thus you actually have republicans attempting, with a straight face, to say this is a partisan plot. And noone takes responsibility for their actions. Because in the evangelical tradition, works don’t matter. All you need to do is say you’re a believer, and that you’ve accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, and you’re in.
This scandal is the result of such thinking, and it does me no pleasure to say it. But progressive values exist, and by their fruits shall ye know them. Works matter. Deeds matter. Love your neighbor as yourself.
 
 
Tuesday, October 3, 2006
By their fruits shall ye know them
Ye cannot serve God and Mammon.
--Luke 16:13
I have this text because I’m a fourth-generation preacher’s kid. You want progressive values? I got lots more where this comes from.
 
Now usually, we shut up about our values, and just try to live good lives, what with looking to the log in our own eyes, not our brothers.
 
But sometimes you just gotta call it like it is and let the truth set you free.
Or, why people who have developed rational faculties reject Christianity because of the loud professions of the so-called evangelicals.
And, this is why we have separation of Church and State. One may believe this, but need to exist in a system where people believe different things about the worship of God.
 
By their fruits shall ye know them. It shouldn’t matter what you profess, what religion your are, so long as you live a life of love of neighbor and inquiry into the nature of spirit.