Heads up!

You will be tempted NOT to read this post!  Why?  It’s long and might look BORING!  It’s about things like socialism, legalism, books with long names…

Snoozeburger with a side of yawns!

Please read it anyway.  It’s so easy to read posts about food, crafts, and cute kids.  There’s nothing wrong with all those delightful things!  Celebrate them!  I do!  But we desperately need to be informed too.  Have a few blogs in your repertoire that will challenge your thinking and stretch your mind.  It will not only make you a better Christian, it will make you more interesting.

The following excerpt is taken from the late David Chilton’s book, Productive Christians in an Age of Guilt Manipulators.  It is a response to Ronald Sider’s Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger, a popular book published in the late ’70s.  (To put a familiar anchor on this author, David Chilton helped found World Magazine with Joel Belz.)

The excerpt I’ve chosen to share with you here is one of the best definitions of legalism I’ve seen.  Chilton is making the case that Sider is being a legalist by wanting to, first of all, “guilt” people…and if guilt doesn’t work…to use the State to force people into living meager lives by giving away all but the basic necessities for living.  If you know anything about history, that should sound really familiar.  And spooky.

The idea of living like paupers, and believing everyone else should do the same, in order to give to the poor, sounds really loving and “Christian”.  But what Sider was proposing in his book was simply glorified socialism.

Socialism has failed miserably in every large and small scale implementation of it.   And the bottom line is, no matter how honey sweet something “seems” (you can spin anything to sound fabulous…just watch the news.  Can anyone say “propaganda”?) if it isn’t an idea from God, it isn’t going to be successful. 

God is the author and owner of civilization.  And to the degree a civilization does things His way, it is successful.  God’s Word makes it clear that there will always be rich and poor (John 12:8).  And He also makes it clear how we Wemmicks are to handle the poor, and it isn’t to aspire to poverty ourselves.  We are to strive for productivity and fruitfulness, and out of what God entrusts to us, to give willingly, generously, cheerfully, and voluntarily, regardless of whether we consider ourselves to be rich, poor, or somewhere in between.

It is not the jurisdiction of the state to force people to give of their property and possessions to care for the poor.  This is tyranny.  And it squelches all hard work, entrepreneurship, creativity and invention.  After all, why would anyone work hard to create wealth or invent something for the good of mankind if it all gets confiscated anyway?

Our topic this month is how we, as women, can be salt and light.  One of the ways we are salt is by preserving a Godly culture.  (Salt does a lot more than just flavor things!) The only way to preserve a Godly culture is by being obedient to God’s ways of doing things as spelled out in His Word.  Not silly Wemmick wisdom.  And how can we be obedient if we don’t know what we are supposed to obey?

One thing is for sure.  God is not a legalist.  And the evangelical church is royally messed up right now when it comes to understanding what legalism really is…and what it is not.  They are also very close to getting in bed with the socialists.  It is our responsibility to study history, to study the Word of God, to be informed, and to live according to God’s rule book…not our own.

You can read this important, informative, and VERY interesting book FREE by downloading it here:  http://www.entrewave.com/freebooks/docs/a_pdfs/dcpc.pdf

Excerpt from Productive Christians in an Age of Guilt Manipulators

Man’s ethical rebellion against God inflicted disaster upon his every activity and relationship. The essence of the sin in the Garden, and ever since, was man’s attempt to be his own god, to set up his own standard in place of God’s command. “You will be like God,” the Tempter promised, “knowing good and evil.”

And how does God know good and evil? Not by referring to some external standard of justice; for God, there is no external standard.  He is the standard. He “knows” the difference between good and evil by simply determining it. His law alone is the yard stick of right and wrong.

And that was the privilege coveted by Adam and Eve. They wanted to know good and evil, not by submitting to the external standard of justice provided by God’s commands, but by usurping the prerogatives of Deity, determining for themselves the difference between right and wrong. As the Apostle John succinctly stated it: “Sin is lawlessness” ( 1 John 3:4).

“Wait a minute,” you say. “Isn’t that legalism? Didn’t Jesus and the apostles declare that we are free from all those Old Testament regulations?” It wouldn’t really be fair to reply that the strictest adherence to Old Testament law allows for much more freedom than do the more “enlightened” stipulations of our benevolent despots in the federal bureaucracy. That issue will be temporarily shelved, and I’ll answer your questions directly: NO.

Let’s begin with a working definition of legalism. Legalism cannot be defined simply as rigorous obedience to the law: after all, Jesus Christ obeyed the law fully, in its most exacting details, and He, certainly, was no legalist. The true legalist is the person who subscribes to one or more of the following heresies— ideas which are roundly condemned in Scripture:

1. Justification by Works

This is the most critical aspect of the legalistic faith. It was abhorred and refuted by the writers of both Old and New Testaments. We must note here that no one, not even in the days of Moses, was ever justified by his works. The only basis of salvation is the finished work of Jesus Christ, in fully satisfying the demands of God’s law, and suffering its penalties, in the place of all His people.

The view that God accepts us as His children because of our works is completely at odds with the teachings of Scripture. One who is a legalist in this sense is certainly not an orthodox Christian.

2. The Requirement of Obedience to Old Testament Laws

Before Christ came, God’s people were required to observe certain ceremonies — sacrifices, feasts, and so forth— which symbolically portrayed the way of restoration to God’s favor. These received their completion in Jesus Christ, and are no longer literally binding upon us.

There is a very real sense, of course, in which we still keep these laws: Jesus Christ is our priest, He is our sacrificial atonement, and we cannot approach God apart from Him. Thus, in their real meaning, all these laws are observed by all Christians.

But consider what a literal observance of these laws would mean, now that Christ has fulfilled these shadows: if you were to sacrifice a lamb today, you would be saying, in effect, that Christ’s atonement on the cross was insufficient — that you need an additional sacrifice to be accepted with God. That is heresy.

Before the coming of Christ, observance of the ceremonial law was obedience; after His death and resurrection, it is disobedience. The false teachers opposed by Paul in Galatians held to both of these two aspects of legalism–salvation by works and the requirement of Old Testament ceremonies.

3. The Requirement of Obedience to Man-Made Regulations

(Romans 14 and Colossians 2)  The Galatian legalists at least may be commended for their insistence upon biblical regulations. They were very wrong, but their standards were derived from Scripture. But Paul also had to contend with a host of regulations which originated from mere human prejudice, and which some Christians attempted to impose upon others. “Touch not; taste not; handle not~’ they demanded- when God had said nothing of the kind.

There are many matters of individual conscience, taste, and idiosyncrasy which should remain so. But we are all dictators at heart, and we often like nothing better than to force others to submit to our eccentricities. It is in this sense that Ronald Sider is a legalist. He comes very close — without going over the brink in many of his actual statements — to making requirements out of all sorts of non-biblical standards.

According to him, Christians should “live simply,” eat less meat and no bananas, oppose production of liquor, and give away all income above what is required for bare necessities. Does the Bible say one word about any of this? No– which is not to suggest that we must be heavy meat and banana eaters (since that isn’t commanded either).

The point is that we must never uphold as “more Christian” a standard that is not based on clear Scriptural grounds. Still less should we urge Christians (as Sider does) to support governmental taxation and redistribution programs which are in specific violation of God’s commands.

4. Confusion of Sins with Civil Crimes

There are many things the Bible condemns as sins, for which there is no civil penalty attached. For example, God certainly regards unjust hatred as a form of murder. Yet while He commanded that the murderer be executed, He made no such stipulation for the sin of unjust hatred.

In the same way, God’s word condemns the slave mentality of gluttonous consumption as a sin — yet it mentions no civil penalties (or “tax incentives”) against it. But Ronald Sider wants the structure of public policy altered to make gluttony a crime, or at least a much more costly practice than a free market would provide.

Again, it is a sin to ignore the legitimate needs of immigrants, and God threatens to destroy a nation that neglects strangers. But the Bible mandates no civil penalties for committing such a sin. In other words, some things are reserved for God’s providential judgments in history, and for the final judgment, when the very thoughts and intents of the heart will come under severe scrutiny, to be dealt with according to strict justice.

It is surely wrong for a nation to mandate any unbiblical legal structures which discriminate against certain races. But, it is also wrong for a nation to legislate against discrimination, even if that discrimination is sinful–unless it is a violation of biblical laws in the area of civil justice.

For instance, the government must not force blacks to ride in the back of a bus. But, biblically, it is just as wrong to force a bus company to integrate its passengers. Neither option is allowable in terms of Scripture. Where God has not provided examples of legislation, we may not legislate. To do so is legalism.

And it is interesting to note that, while Sider is quite anxious to legislate where God has not spoken, he is also anxious to do away with biblical penalties for such crimes as adultery and homosexuality-revealing the basic motive of legalism: antinomianism.  The antinomian is opposed to the authority of God in human affairs.

While he may cloak his humanism in a garb of extreme religiosity (as did the Pharisees) or “radical Christianity,” his primary goal is to abolish God’s law and replace it with his own laws. He wants to be “like God, knowing good and evil.” On the surface, antinomianism and legalism appear to be diametrically opposed; in reality, they are both rooted in the sinful attempt to dethrone God.

***Well, if you enjoyed THAT, you will LOVE his book!  It’s a refreshingly biblical view of economics.  Get it free and throw it on your e-reader here: http://www.entrewave.com/freebooks/docs/a_pdfs/dcpc.pdf