With God on Our Side

One of Us Still Loses

Melanie Sojourner

Bob Dearing

vs

And you never ask questions 

            When God's on your side.                                           Bob Dylan 

A classic matchup. First Baptist vs. First Presbyterian. Woman vs. Man. Youth (47) vs. Age (80). Present Incumbent vs. Former Incumbent. Republican vs. Democrat. The Race for Mississippi Senate District 37.

Four years ago Republican Melanie Sojourner ousted Democrat Bob Dearing who had served since 1980. Now it appears that, in a year when the Republicans attained a super majority in the House while continuing their grip on the Senate, the old Democrat has returned the favor to the first term Republican. While the results have not yet been certified, both candidates believe Mr. Dearing won by about 50 votes. 

In the Senate Ms. Sojourner portrayed herself as one of the few real conservatives among the Republicans. She allied herself with Senator Chris McDaniel and took on an adversarial role in relation to the Mississippi Republican Party and the Senate leadership, especially the Lt. Governor, Tate Reeves, whom she frequently attacked. When Sen. McDaniel took on longtime Republican Senator Thad Cochran in 2014, Ms. Sojourner served as his campaign manager. Since Mr. McDaniel, after leading in the first primary lost in the second, when Mr. Cochran appealed to Democrats to support him, she and Mr. McDaniel have remained bitter, continuously attacked "the establishment," and declared their unmitigated hostility toward former Governor, Haley Barbour. 

As might be expected, "the establishment" primaried Sen. Sojourner. However, against two Republican opponents she won on outright majority in the Primary. After his defeat Mr. Dearing was not ready to go home to his rocking chair and await the upward call. He ran in the Democrat primary and won handily. Thus Mr. Dearing and Ms. Sojourner met again in the general election with Mr. Dearing eaking out the win. 

For Ms. Sojourner this was a contest between pure conservatism and extreme liberalism, between those who would save the Republic and those who would contribute to its destruction, between good and bad. Mr. Dearing, a politician of the older sort, seemed to have conceived the election as a more prosaic affair -reclaiming of his office, focusing on constituent services, and pledging after the election to work with the Senate leadership as much as possible. (There are rumors he has made a "deal" with the Lt. Governor and will switch parties.) 

But in one thing both candidates agree. Both believed God was on their side. When Ms. Sojourner suspected that she might lose she appealed to the almost always misused Jeremiah 29:11. When her own unofficial vote count showed her losing, the statement she issued included: 

But, let me be clear. Regardless of the final outcome, this is not the end for me. And it is not the end 

for you, my friends and supporters. Whatever plans God may have for me, I promise to continue my fight against liberalism and to restore American exceptionalism and liberty-based conservatism to the Republican Party and Mississippi.

In its article reporting the unofficial count, the Natchez Democrat, quoted Mr. Dearing saying:

When I qualified on February 22 my prayers that night were to God was for his guidance during this election campaign and with his guidance he has brought me through it. 

Their Facebook pages included many spiritual encouragements from their supporters. Mr. Dearing's supporters assured him of their prayers and quoted uplifting Bible verses. He himself several times in his his first morning post quoted, "And when I rise, give me Jesus." Ms. Sojourner's supporters also assured her of their prayers, but took on her more apocalyptic vision of her role of saving her party, state, and nation or of interpreting the contest in the context of signs of the end of the age.

Is Mr. Dearing's win an answer to his and his supporters' prayers - as it were a divine endorsement? Is Ms. Sojourner's defeat God's repudiation of her cause or a sign that the final conflict is just ahead? Whose side was God on? For whom did he cast his vote? Did God win or lose?

Even with God on your side, somebody wins and somebody loses. Where does that put God?

But I can't think for you

You'll have to decide

Whether Judas Iscariot

Had God on his side.

                           

                               Bob Dylan

Christian Calvinistic Reformed Singles Online Dating Site

When Calvinism Comes to Dating

I heard Eugene Osterhaven wonder if some take the Kuyperian world-and-life-view too far. The instance he cited was the formation of a Christian Goat Breeders Society in the Netherlands. The question is, What distinguishes a Christian goat breeder from another? 

I supposed one function of a Christian Goat Breeders Society is to breed Christian goats only with other Christian goats. And inasmuch as it is the Calvinists who form such societies, I suppose we can go a step further and say that the Society provided a service by which Calvinist Christian goats would be bred only with other Christian Calvinistic goats. 

I came across a video which reminded me of that story. It is one of those dramatizations based on real life events. If you have not been around the small group Calvinists who at the same time think (1) that presuppositional apologetics is essential to the true faith and (2) that they are called to work for a theonomic government, and (3) that Christian courtship means a father must vet men who want to pursue their daughters, you will feel you have entered an alien world. You have. For those who know this world or are part of it, this video will portray a world you have either (1) observed or (2) been part of.  

Meanwhile I was interested to find that the gurus of Christian patriarchy don't like the courtship ("I kissed dating goodbye") movement. It's too tame for them. No, they believe that dating and courtship are violent. They view Courtship as Warfare: "...marriage is not safe, and the wooing which leads to marriage is not safe. It is war, and the quicker our children understand this the better. It is war against sin. It is the breaking of families and established orders. It is secession and union all in one, penetration and insemination, not merely lacy ruffles and Pachelbel canons but velvet-gloved violence. All this courtship conceals."

Below is the video. Watch it, laugh, and weep.

From Calvinistic vetting services and courtship as violence, Good Lord, deliver us.

When Passion Trumps Logic

When Passion Trumps Logic

Credits: Hand Modeling by Mr. and Mrs. Smith

Persis Lorenti, who blogs at Tried by Fire, has published Meaningless Verses and Meaningless Vows. 

Mrs. Lorenti is very concerned about the matter of spousal abuse within the church. Rightly so. Concern about a very real problem leads her to the topic of divorce. She describes "three possible camps regarding divorce among Christians": 

• No divorce for any reason whatsoever. 
• Divorce only for adultery and possibly abandonment.
• Divorce for adultery, abandonment, and abuse.

Her position: "I stand firmly in the third camp." In support of her argument, she offers this scenario:

Scenario 1. A man in your congregation is emotionally, verbally, and financially abusive to his employees. They are demeaned, called names, and cursed. They are not paid on time and sometimes not paid at all. Thankfully, slavery does not exist in this country, so people have the right to quit one job and look for another. However, would you recommend that these employees continue in this man's employ even if he continues to mistreat them this way? Now let's change this scenario to a marriage. Does that change your advice?

This a classic example of comparing apples and oranges. Jobs are not marriages. An employer-employee relationship and a husband-wife relationship both, in this country, begin voluntarily. You don't have to work for The All American Widget Company. Mary does not have to marry John nor John Mary. There the comparison ends. You can walk off the job any day you want to for any reason at all or no reason. It is an entirely voluntary relationship. 

The only qualification that might apply is if the St. Peter's exhortations to servants have any application to employees:

Servants, be subject to your masters with all respect, not only to the good and gentle but also to the unjust. For this is a gracious thing, when, mindful of God, one endures sorrows while suffering unjustly. For what credit is it if, when you sin and are beaten for it, you endure? But if when you do good and suffer for it you endure, this is a gracious thing in the sight of God (1 Peter 2:18-20).

Now if that applies in any way to employees, it seems to cut against the argument by comparison Mrs. Lorenti wants to make. But let's not hang ourselves up there. Just consider the difference between employment and marriage. A marriage in a purely secular setting is a civil contract. Ending the marriage requires civil action. 

But Christians understand marriage to be a solemn covenant (Malachi 2:13-17). And our Lord does say of this covenanted relationship, "What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate" (Matthew 19:6). For Christians especially, who are bound by both civil law and God's commandments, there can be no easy path to divorce. Husbands and wives are not employees who may walk off the marriage job for reasons they deem sufficient. 

This is not to say it is never legitimate for one to separate him/herself from the other as an expedient. But, this is not what Mrs. Lorenti advocating. She is advocating divorce in the case of a person who finds him/herself in the marital equivalent of a miserable job situation.

After presenting a second scenario regarding a wife in a physically abusive marriage, Mrs. Lorenti goes on to argue that to deny divorce is to negate a portion of Scripture:

If the wife is not allowed to separate and/or pursue divorce in the case of domestic abuse, this implies that the verses that charge a man to love his wife as Christ loved the church are meaningless. (Eph. 5:25-33) He can treat his wife any way he wants, and it doesn't matter. She may be told that she must take on the Christ role and love her husband sacrificially to fill what he abdicated. But does that mean the husband's role is switched to submit? Are you kidding? Submission is still a nonnegotiable for the wife. So now it is up to her to hold up both sides of the marriage while submitting to the person who is murdering her in his heart. This puts a burden upon her that no person can bear because she is not God. No human being can be another person's savior. No human being can change a person's heart.

I grant that in the case of physical abuse a wife may separate for the sake of self-protection and may eventually be judged by the church to have grounds for divorce. But we think Mrs. Lorenti's argument from Ephesians 5 proves too much. The text clearly teaches that a husband must love his wife (1) as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her and (2) as he loves his own body. The text also clearly teaches that a wife must submit to her husband in all things as the church submits to Christ. (I am not familiar with the position that a wife must take on both roles if the husband fails, which is a preposterous thing to teach.)

It has to be noted that no husband has ever loved his wife by the standard Paul holds before us, nor has any wife by like standard ever submitted to her husband. At what point does the failure become grounds for divorce? If the argument is that it must be a very serious failure on the husband's part to love, as is evidenced by physical abuse, is there a similarly serious failure on a wife's part to submit that would justify divorce?

Each person is under an obligation. Each husband is obligated to love his wife, and each wife is obligated to love her husband. Each ought to do all possible to discover before marriage whether the other has the capacity to live up to his or her obligation. But "breach of love" or "breach of submission" are not grounds for divorce. A husband is obligated to love his wife regardless of whether she is submissive to him, and a wife is obligated to submit to her husband regardless of whether he loves her. Historically many Christian husbands have lived with shrews and many Christian wives have lived with real SOBs because they understood themselves bound by Christian marriage and Christian duty to remain. (See 1 Peter 3:1-7). 

Mrs. Lorenti goes on to argue that not to grant a wife the right to divorce is to make the marriage vows meaningless:

Likewise this response also implies that the vows to love and cherish are meaningless. An abuser can break these vows with no consequence to the marriage but with grave consequences for the victim. Why even bother exchanging vows, if keeping them is unnecessary? 

Again, Mrs. Lorenti's argument proves too much. Who has ever kept the marriage vows? Not the best husband or best wife. Marriage does not work very well if there is not forbearance, long-suffering, repentance, and forgiveness. Of course, keeping vows is necessary, but the truth is they are never more than more or less kept. Why exchange them? Because they testify to to couple and all that marriage involves not just or primarily romance, but solemn obligations undertaken in the face of God and the congregation. Marriage is not a job taken today and quit tomorrow but a covenant established, and marriage is a relationship from which God intends there to be very nearly no opportunity for escape.

One more question: What if a woman took the traditional wedding vow that was in use in many Protestant services till the 1928 Book of Common Prayer omitted it - "to love, honor, and obey"? What if she doesn't obey? Is that breach of vows? Is it ever a ground for divorce? 

Abuse of any kind is not excusable. Physical abuse is reprehensible. A person who is put in physical danger has a right to protect herself. She can leave and go anywhere it is safe. She can call the police before or after leaving in which case the abuser will be without exception arrested. She can make use any other civil protections available. If she is a Christian a church member she may and should report it to the church. The church can investigate and can censure the husband. It can require and provide counseling or therapy. The church can report the abuse to the police. After sufficient inquiry the church may approve obtaining a civil divorce. It may well be the case that a physically abusive husband whose wife leave may be judged himself in effect to have deserted her, leaving her no safe option except to live separate from him : 

Although the corruption of man be such as is apt to study arguments unduly to put asunder those whom God has joined together in marriage: yet, nothing but adultery, or such wilful desertion as can no way be remedied by the Church, or civil magistrate, is cause sufficient of dissolving the bond of marriage wherein, a public and orderly course of proceeding is to be observed; and the persons concerned in it not left to their own wills, and discretion, in their own case (Westminster Confession of Faith, XXIV:6). 

Mrs. Lorenti is passionate, and understandably so, about abusive marriages. Passions joined to facts and sound logic can make for effective oral or written argument. But passions alone skew facts and make for bad logic. The problem with bad logic is that it makes arguments, which it advances as compelling, that are not compelling. Compelling arguments do not run roughshod over sound interpretation of Scripture or right reason.