Creation: Let’s Cool it

A Short Review of the Past Week

Ever since March of 2009, I have been serving in or around the US Military in the nation of Afghanistan 8,000 miles from home and hearth, far from my wife and family, with very few visits and very few breaks in that entire time.  By God’s grace my beloved bride and I were able to spend the past week together in Kuwait while I was there for training.

While here, for whatever reason, I received numerous emails and comments on my creation posts ranging in tone from somewhat reasonable all the way to snotty, pompous, condescending, and insulting. Some of the emails I received were also rather helpful, calling me all kinds of names, the most mild being “retard” which, I so enjoyed and displays a high degree of maturity and intellect.

Being a human being, and being that I have only so many hours each day to dispense very carefully, I am choosing to abide in my wife instead of this intended strife.  Therefore, I deleted a lot of the negative comments.  I deleted comments that had absolutely nothing to do with the topic under discussion and existed only to create additional strife.   I deleted my own comments where I, being a human being, lost my temper as well.  In addition, I have turned off comments to my most recent posts.  I want to be clear that if your feelings are (or were) hurt because I deleted your comment — I do not care.  I really don’t.  And I absolutely mean that.

The bottom line is that this is my wife’s blog, not mine.  This is her house.  Her blog even has a mission statement.  Here it is:

BLOG for the Biblical Woman. To provide encouragement and support for women who are homemakers or who are seeking and desiring to expand and strengthen their roles as homemakers in their families; to encourage women in their spiritual journeys so that they can have a positive affect on their husbands and their families; to encourage women who are taking a traditional and Biblical role in their home in the face of this world; to provide a source of education and enlightenment for cooking and kitchen tips; to share the joy that is in raising children; to share the joy and passion that is in loving your husband; to glorify and magnify  God the Father, Jesus the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Rules of Engagement

Next week, I will continue the series.  I will open comments back up, and I commit to you that I will publish every single comment that meets this blog’s commenting criteria.  But moving forward, anything that is inconsistent with the above mission statement or the commenting policy will not be published or debated here.

But don’t despair.  There are literally thousands of websites where you are free to call people names, assassinate their characters, condescend, and insult the intelligence of others.  While I am CERTAIN that any or all of those sites will welcome such activity, this is not one of those sites.  So, if that is your agenda, you are not welcome here.  Period.  Please go away. And I absolutely mean that.

If, however, you are interested in debating points of discussion in a logical, respectful, and polite way, and would like to be treated with respect and answered logically and with politeness yourself, please make yourself at home and feel free to come back again and again.  You are more than welcome here just as you would be more than welcome to come into my actual home, break bread at my table, have a cup of coffee or tea or whatever wets your whistle, and discuss those same points in person — with respect and understanding in a quest for knowledge.

The Truth

Jesus is speaking in Luke 18:10-14 and says; “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood and prayed saying, ‘God, I thank You that I am not like other men-extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I possess.’

“And the tax collector, standing afar off, would not so much as raise his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me a sinner!’

“I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

On a Christian gossip website devoted to pointing out splinters she finds in the eyes of many popular ministries today, the owner accused Hallee of “preaching” a Levitical diet and me of proselytizing a literal biblical account of creation — to the point of stating that we believe that if others do not do as we do, that they are then doomed to perdition, don’t know God, and that we are “self-righteous” in our beliefs such that we are grateful that we are “not like those” who do not believe or express in worship exactly as we do.

To restate the obvious, none of this is our actual position.  We have only ever documented what WE believe and how WE express our beliefs.  This blog and the opinions we express here does not amount to an indictment of any other Christians who believe or worship differently.  It is merely an explanation of our beliefs and why we worship as choose to worship.  It is also an effort to bring unbelievers into the fold, to save them from eternal damnation by showing how God’s love transcends the strife of this fallen world.

The irony is that in flaming us on her gossip site she intentionally and grossly misrepresented our actual and publicly stated beliefs while self-righteously thanking God that she doesn’t choose to worship as we do.  In other words, the gossiping and misrepresenting Pharisee with a beam in her own eye accused we two sinners over here on Hallee the Homemaker of being Pharisees.

The truth is I have very specific reasons for believing what I believe, as does my bride.  I did not come to my beliefs by accident.  Nor did I come to them via inheritance. I was not raised in a Christian home.  Hallee was.  I did not come to my beliefs via special revelation, but rather after extensive and ongoing study on the subject.   Hallee came to them as a young woman early in life and has matured in her spiritual walk ever since.  The truth is that we jointly arrived at our diet in a very similar manner of concentrated study and prayer.  The truth is that we are imperfect people and if it were not for God’s grace, we would be doomed to perish (John 3:16-17).  We are sinners and absolutely no better or worse than any other person on this planet.

But none of that should be a stumbling block to anyone, anymore than anything in the secular world should be a stumbling block, on the path of anyone’s faith journey.  The truth is that God, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit are sovereign and reign over all of creation.  How you arrive at that truth as an individual is a very personal journey of which we would like to be a part.

May God Richly Bless You,

Gregg