(Almost) Every Book I Read Last Year Part 1

  Last year I  began tracking my reading using goodreads.com, after I found out David Malki was doing it.  A lot things David Malki does (  growing beards,   making t-shirts, etc)  have turned out to be  a pretty good idea over the years, so I thought I'd give it a whirl. Looking back at it, it's oddly revealing. I re-read a lot of the same books over and over again, apparently. I continue to brazenly steal ideas from Malki by presenting to you, quick reviews of every book that I read in 2014 that was in the goodreads database. There are probably around 6 or 7 more obscure titles that aren't listed.  Here goes:

A Heresy Reconsidered: The Post-Trib, Pre-Wrath Rapture of the Church by Jeremy Nascimento
  Out of all the books I read in 2014 (including the ones I wrote), this is the one that probably has the most personal emotional involvement. Jeremy is a friend of mine and we disagree  passionately about the  subject of this book, and I disagree doctrinally with his stand on it. It's still probably the best book written on the subject.  This book ignited a bit of a firestorm in certain circles, and that fire continues to burn, apparently.
  What I learned the most from this book wasn't what Jeremy believes; I already knew that. What I learned is how petty other people can be, including me, in our disagreements.

Fragments of Faith by Gerald Sutek
  If you want to learn about living by faith, this is absolutely the book to read. I re-read it every so often, and in this case,  re-read it  so that it could be adapted for Kindle. I actually  strong-armed the author into  giving me a stack of paper copies, and  I  disperse them to people I think need them.   Long story short, Dr. Sutek and Terrel Bear had a rather unique ministry for several years; they traveled around the United States teaching public ministry.  They traveled to  all 50 states and  appeared in over a thousand churches. They did it all without asking for money or going into debt. This book is full of story after story of God's providence. It's an amazing book. 

A Biblical Course in Witnessing by James Knox
  Excellent book, probably less than  60 pages, and yet it still tells you everything you need to know to get started.  I would give you a more detailed review, but I loaned it to a guy who  first told me  he didn't like it and then  neglected to return it.

The Ministry by Gerald Sutek
  This book was originally written as an essay for one of  Dr. Sutek's degrees. In it, he  destroys  any pre-conceived notions you might have about what the ministry is, and what the ministry isn't. No matter what you think you know about this topic, I promise you that  you will learn something new.  It is  also available  on Kindle.


MORE Fragments of Faith by  Gerald Sutek
  Obviously the  sequel, it  ties up a lot of the loose ends from the previous narrative and also details how the SWAT Team for Christ traveled all over the world, once again without asking for money or going into debt.  Excellent , excellent book.

A History of the Baptists by John T. Christian
 This book arrived in my hands because a friend of mine was getting rid of a bunch of his grandfather's books.  It's  fairly decent church history, along the same lines as Trail of Blood.  The  book covers the history, not just of people who have called themselves 'Baptists', but rather of  people who have opposed the idea of infant baptism, regardless of their name.    This crowd includes Waldensian, Anabaptists and  handful of similar groups.  I personally don't hold to the idea that there has always been an unbroken line of doctrinally  correct  Christians out there, but it is interesting information.

Up From Slavery by Booker T. Washington
  This book is way more important than most people  realize. At the time of it's writing, there was a large intellectual battle going on within the black community, with the nature of that battle being the direction they would go and what they would do with their freedom. Washington represented one end of the spectrum of thought and W.E. DuBois the other.. Washington's  position was that education and entrepreneurship would guarantee them equality and prosperity as a people.  Washington warned against government entitlement programs, citing them as  just another form of slavery.   Guess whose ideas won out?  I fell in love with this book years ago and re-read it every now and then.

The Long Dark Tea-time of the Soul by Douglas Adams
  This is another on of my re-reads, having spied it on the shelf and  being a tad weary from  the previous books on this list.  I  love Douglas Adam's writing, and always have. This is the second book in the Dirk Gently series and very bizarre, and very good at the same time.

Jungle Doctor on the Hop by Paul White
  Yes, yes yes, I KNOW it's a kid book, but  frankly, my house is full of both kids and kid books.  This is a sort of pre-teen  Christian fiction series about  a missionary  doctor who lives in the jungles of Africa and  has to battle  diseases and superstition while trying to reach the  savages with the gospel. Interesting stuff if you're a kid.  Plus it   whet my palette for the next book of 2014.

The Man-Eaters of Tsavo by John Henry Paterson
  If you've ever seen the movie Ghost in the Darkness with  Val Kilmer, this is  the  book written by the protagonist, Col Patterson.  The incident involving the  two lions  takes up a surprisingly  small  part of the book, with most of the book being occupied with other exciting tales of  safaris on the Dark Continent. The sheer quantity of animals killed by Colonel Patterson is almost too much to be believed. It's hard to  fathom that there are any animals left in Africa, sine he and his  crew hunted everything larger than a wristwatch.  Very exciting book.

Queed: A  Novel by Henry Sydnor Harrison
  This book was  discovered in a stack of old books that someone had given to me. I  had purposed in my heart to read all of them ( a goal still left unaccomplished) and I started with this one.  I don't read much fiction, but was surprisingly engaged by this book. The books takes it's title from the main character, a socially inept professor named Queed who moved into a boarding house  to work on his  great life's work; a textbook on human behavior. He writes this despite being completely clueless about real human beings.  Over the  next several months, he has to put  more and more of his writing on hold to deal with  the real human beings in the boarding  house. It's a source of frustration to him, and by interacting with people, he  becomes a mostly functional  human being himself.
  I know it doesn't  exactly sound like a page-turner, but the author is an expert on character development and its very difficult not to get swept along in Queed's personal journey.


Dumbing Us Down:  The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling by John Taylor Gatto
   We are homeschoolers, so  this book was very much  'preaching to the choior' Most of the issues brought forth in this book we already knew, but the reason we already knew them is because Gatto has been putting this info out for years.
  The public school system isn't a failure; it is doing exactly what it was intended to do.  It was intended by it's founders to produce  unthinking little drones for  big industry and big government.
  What I've never understood about Gatto is how he  stayed in the system for so long.  He  wasn't exactly hiding his views, I mean he wrote a book after all, and  when he won his Teacher of the Year award, he blasted the system in his acceptance speech. But he still showed up for work every day, and in this book he refers to  subtle things he was doing within the system as 'throwing sand in the gears'.  If I really believed the overall system was as malicious as he does, I would have a hard time  going to work every day.
  If you want a real education,  check out the  review section on Amazon. This is one of those books that everybody either loves or hates.

King James, His Bible and It's Translators by Laurence Vance
  I manged to  secure this book at a homeschool yard sale for a whole dollar, and I enjoyed it so much I wrote Mr Vance to tell him.   Vance and I aren't  really 'friends' but we do correspond from time to time on matters of mutual interest.
  The  book is short, very readable and covers some things  glossed over  even among the KJV Only crowd (of which I am part). Vance has a great grasp of the subject matter, and Ive enjoyed his writing for years.

Batman: The Long Halloween by Jeph Loeb
  This is going to sound a little strange, but I bought this the day  my oldest son was born as a way to stave off boredom in the hospital. I read it at the time,and apparently didn't finish it, so I  finally knocked it out.  There is a killer loose in Gotham, and he is killing  criminals on  important dates on the calendar. This story takes place early on in Batman's career, before Harvey Dent  became Two-Face. it was originally 13 issues, going from one Halloween to the next. Good stuff. The mystery, at least for me, is never completely   cleared up, and the ambiguity of  the ending has been the source of more than one conversation between me and my two oldest sons.


Well there you have it. Roughly the first 14 books I read  last year, which takes me into  May-ish, if my dates are  right.  Part 2 will eventually be written. Maybe.

How to Be a Not-So-Best-Selling Author

"Today I made peace with the possibility that my cause of death might not be listed as 'kung fu'."-Ryan North of Dinosaur Comics

  I , among other things, write books. Let's just get that out of the way.  I  wrote a book about the 2012 election and it sold fairly well.  I wrote a commentary on Genesis, and it sold more than a few copies.  I did  a Kindle Comic reboot of an old webcomic of mine , and it...well, let's just say I've given hundreds of them away.  I've got  2 or 3 books in outline form, waiting to have flesh put on their bones.  I also , obviously, write here as the  occasion arises.
  By now we've all heard the stories about the housewife who finally  self-published the book that she'd been pecking away at for years and now she's a gazillionaire.   I  am unashamed to admit that the thought of  being self-sufficient based off of the fruit of my brain is more than just a little appealing. I'm sure some of you that read this  blog have done the same thing I've done;  skulked around all those 'how to make a fortune writing books' blogs in an attempt to figure out what the magic formula is to make it  big.
  I've  heard the old saying "Do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life".  Sounds great, doesn't it?  The problem has always been that nobody is willing to pay me to do the things I love, so I  wind up doing the things  I have to for money, and the things I love doing for free. 
  I've heard the  writing adage "write what you know" but the few things I do know seem to be of little interest to anyone but myself.  I  know that I could  write about things I don't care anything about, but I'm pretty sure my disinterest would find it's way into the writing.
  I look at all this and  I look at what sells and I look at what's popular in our culture and I am amazed at how some people manage to parlay stupidity and emptiness into  a prosperous career. There are people who are rich and famous for being rich and famous. I wasn't aware until recently that  being a woman with a large backside was considered a skill set. 
  So here I am, writing about the things that are interesting to me and  neglecting the things that aren't.  If because of this, I never make it 'big' whatever that means, I have decided I'm ok with it. Now, if somebody  backs a dump truck full of cash up to my house, I'm not going to  argue with them, but dear reader, as much as I value you, I refuse to pander to you in order to build an audience.  I hope you understand.

Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is.

 Numbers say a lot, especially when it comes to money.  How you spend, and where you spend is as clear definition of   who and what you are as anything else I can think of, especially when it comes to discretionary income.  If I were looking for some sort of snapshot of  what the heartbeat of the American people is, I would look at how they spend their money.
  For example, every January we have a Super Bowl ( always on a Sunday), and it is such a significant event that some churches cancel services over it. Over 43 million people host Super Bowl parties in their homes, and by the time  they buy team merchandise, food, drinks, red solo cups, etc, the national price tag  winds up around 14.31  billion dollars. This is  more than the Gross Domestic Product of most of the countries of the world. Having spent this money they will then look forward to the Super Bowl Ads. A 30-second advertisement during this year's game costs  $4.5 million or $150,000 per second.
  Once the Super Bowl is over, Americans will spend almost $2 billion of whatever money they have left on Valentines Day, and follow it up the next month with over 4 billion  on St. Patricks Day.  Easter  will  scoop up about $16 billion dollars , with Halloween costumes for pets consuming $30 million.  During the course of the year, they'll spend $550 million on pretzels, and wash it down with $96 billion in beer while reading $10 billion  worth of romance novels and putting 11 billion dollars into wedding and engagement rings. 
   Americans will gamble away 34 billion  big ones, while drinking 11 billion dollars worth of coffee.  They'll smell great the whole time though, because they'll spend $4.2 billion on perfume. Tattoos will get 2.3 billion  smackaroos, while tattoo removal will consume $66 million.  Americans annually will spend $1.4 billion on teeth whiteners ( to counteract all that coffee) while chewing on $16 billion dollars worth of  chocolate to go along with  $800 million worth of Girl Scout cookies. Eleven billion dollars worth of bottled water will be guzzled, while  soft drinks  will slurp up another $65 billion.
  For the  athletically inclined, there are $500 million worth of golf balls to be  bought (as well as $25.4 billion spent on professional sports in general) , while the couch potatoes will spend $17 billion  on video games.  With such poor stewardship of money going on, it's hardly surprising that Americans spend 18 billion dollars on credit card late fees and $500 million on Twinkies.  It's fair to say , if our spending habits are any indicators, Americans are possibly the most pleasure-centered and  entertainment obsessed people that have ever walked the face of the earth.
  By way of contrast, let me present you with some numbers that are mostly anecdotal, but I think prove the point.  The average independent Baptist missionary will stay on deputation for 3 years.  He will appear in about 150 churches and though the numbers vary wildly from missionary to missionary and from church to church, will receive from supporting churches  about 25 dollars a month.  To  raise this support he will stay in  prophet chambers, Sunday school rooms, RV parks, members homes, and  over 30 different hotels. He will log thousands of miles and spend  around $10,000 doing this.  He will then take his  average $3000 a month income, move his entire family to a foreign land, and watch as American churches slowly lose interest.  The word used by missionaries to describe the slowing down of funds  is 'attrition'. Oddly enough, that's a warfare term by which you slowly bleed your enemy of manpower by slow, gradual destruction.  The missionary is expected to return stateside after 3 or 4 years and do this process all over again.
 This 'Christian nation' spends more on fast food than on the gospel. We spend more on toilet paper than on missionaries. We grind good men to a powder making them jump through our  own little flaming hoops to get our 25 bucks a month. We will then leave the  church house and go  plunk down 4 dollars for a mocha cappuccino.  I don't expect the unregenerate man to understand or have any sympathy, but we as  Christians will have to give an account for how we spent our money, and it absolutely shows where our heart is.I guess my  question is  a simple one.  What in the world is wrong with us? 

Science Falsely So-Called

 It's quite common, in the discussions  and dissent of our day and hour, to refer to 'science' as some sort of  final arbiter of the disagreement.  Science is looked to as this impartial decision maker, an illuminated path by which  all of humanity can brightly see the path forward. Science is  looked to as a settled body of facts, and one need only look at these facts to decide who is and is not right.  This tactic is  handily deployed when the scientific facts appear to be on your side.  For example, Hilary Clinton recently  used science as a bludgeon (while simultaneously trying to revamp her image into some sort of matriarchal font of wisdom as opposed to a bitter, man-hating harpy) when she  tweeted "The science is clear: The earth is round, the sky is blue, and #vaccineswork. Let's protect all our kids. #GrandmothersKnowBest". See the subtlety?  She draws a comparison between two settled facts and then throws in her debatable opinion.  Mrs Clinton, and her ilk, claim to have great faith in 'science'.
  The problem is that not all  facts are equally established and while it is observable and demonstrable that the earth is indeed round (an observation validated by the Bible) and  that the sky is blue, the  jury is still out on many facets of the vaccination process.   There are  a great many very smart people that are on both sides of this issue, but before we start forcing people to  take shots, it might behoove us to look at the track record of 'science' or rather, what the Bible calls 'science falsely so-called"
  For example, it was  a commonly held belief in ancient times  that living matter could  spontaneously arise from non-living matter.  It was  a commonly held-scientific opinion, endorsed and defended  by the great minds of the time, for  hundreds and hundreds of years.  Everybody from Anaximander to Aristotle took the position that dead flesh spontaneously produced maggots, and that  buckets of grain spontaneously produced  mice.  It was such a commonly accepted idea that Shakespeare even alluded to it in Anthony and Cleopatra.  Francisco Reidi performed the first experiments in 1688 that cast  doubt on this notion. His experiment was simple; isolate rotting meat form  flies and see if maggots  develop.  They did not.    For his trouble he was ridiculed and called 'unscientific'.  The pressure was great enough to  cause him to doubt his own hypothesis, not based on the evidence, but rather on its reception in the scientific community.
  In 1745 an Englishman named John Needham performed experiments in which he boiled chicken broth, killing the microorganisms he  believed were present in it.  He sealed the broth up and when  microorganisms grew anyway, victory was claimed for the idea of spontaneous generation.  Later experiments proved that his  boiled broth was still being contaminated by the air  before it was sealed.  It wasn't until 1859 that Louis Pasteur was able to sufficiently isolate the samples to prove , by  demonstrable and repeatable experiments, that the prevailing scientific theory of the day was dead wrong.
  Another  common idea of medieval medicine was the idea of 'humours'. Humours can be loosely defined as 4 different bodily fluids (blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile) that had to be kept in balance to  assure good health.  This 'science' is a distant cousin to herbalism.  In  humour thoery different foods were assigned to different humours, and a person was supposed to treat deficiencies in their humours by consuming, for example, more pasta to bring your bile into balance or more sugar to  adjust your blood humours.  Humours were also tied  to the Zodiac and the four season.  Further study has discredited humours, but for centuries it was as firmly established a 'fact' as  the color of the sky.  No serious  medical doctor at the time would challenge it, even though it was  kind of silly.
  All the great minds of the scientific community agreed for  almost 3000 years that  bloodletting was a valid medical practice.  This  method resulted in, among other things, the death of George Washington.  
   Trepanning , where a hole is drilled into the skull to relieve pressure ( and let evil spirits out) was practiced from ancient times to the renaissance without being questioned.
  More recently,  electroshock therapy reigned nearly 50 years as a viable  method for treating a  variety of illnesses. In the  1980's a procedure called vertebroplasty was  introduced. In vertebroplasty, a sort of cement is injected into the  spinal cord to relieve pain after an injury, and this method  enjoyed a 90% success rate until  , years later, many of the recipients  began to experience a whole new set of problems, and  further studies  found it be no more effective than a placebo.
    My point in all this this that the last chapter of this has not been written, and before we charge ahead, it behooves us to look behind. Throughout history,  scientists have come up with ideas and theories and procedures that  were widely implemented  and endorsed  and defended before ultimately  proving themselves to be  useless.  Sometimes it took hundreds of years to get the truth out, and it may very well be that future generation will sit back and marvel that we were even considering  injecting people with foreign substances against their will in the interest of medicine.  Perhaps someday the vax pushers of today will be classified  with blood-letters and trepanners.

Yoga Pants and Other Matters of the Heart

Recently  a young wife and mother named Veronica Partridge wrote a blog post on her decision to make some changes in how she dresses. It is interesting,  movingly personal and very well written.  The blog itself starts off with a disclaimer:

I am in NO WAY trying to tell people what they can and cannot wear. What you wear is entirely your own choice.

  Apparently a good chunk of the world didn't read that, even though it is  literally the first sentence.  Now that's  quite telling, as we will explore later. She goes on to say that she had been  unaware of how much her appearance and preferences  might affect the men around her, and out of concern for her testimony and out of a concern for others, she was going to adhere to  a more Biblical standard of modesty. I say, bravo, Mrs Partidge.
  What was fascinating to me was the hailstorm of controversy.  Part of the problem is that a lot of Christian writers, including myself, are writing about 'family matters'; to wit we are discussing things intended for saved people, but because we are using the big bad internet as our medium, the whole world gets to listen in on our family discussion.  I  don't  care what the world thinks about modesty. In fact, they prove what they think of modesty by what they wear.  But a lot of unregenerate people skipped that first sentence in her blog and claimed she was 'standing up against yoga pants'.   She wasn't doing anything of the sort.  She was accused of all sorts of dictatorial whims, when the entire discussion was about the decision she had made about herself and what she was going to do.  At no point in the blog, or any subsequent interview did she even recommend what anybody else should do.  Nevertheless, the unregenerate world flipped out.  That's isn't particularly interesting or surprising considering the Bible says they walk "in the vanity of their mind, Having the understanding darkened , being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart: "
  But also weighing in were more than  a fair share of professing Christians, some of whom I know personally and some  of whom have been the  object of my prayers for  years. It is to these dear Christian folks, both those I know and those I don't know, that my remarks are addressed.
  I wont go into a discussion here on modesty. Others have done a  far better job than I can on that issue.  I wont tell you what I wear, or what my wife wears.  Besides this isn't really about modesty..  This is about your heart. The Bible says "Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life." and it also says "..for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh".  Whether you like it or not or whether you mean to or not, eventually whatever is  in your heart is going to fall out of your mouth, and in this modern age, your keyboard is an extension of your mouth.
  So let me ask you this; when you take the exact same position on this topic that  lost people take, what does that say about your heart?  When you make snide comments in person or online, what does that say about your heart? When your comments say things like "I'm a Christian too, but..." , what does that say about your heart? When you dig up some other blogger that tears Mrs Partridge to shreds and post that on social media with tags to  all the other  girls you know that agree with you, what does that say about your heart?  When you consider your desires and your liberty more precious  to you than the  fact that you may be  a stumbling block to your brother or sister in Christ, what does that say about your heart?
  It's obvious to everyone what you think about modesty. To whatever degree you can choose your own wardrobe tells the whole world what you think about this. But when you defend the undefendable, you say so much more about yourself than you probably want anyone to hear.  We can talk about 'legalism'  all you want, but the fact that you pitch your camp there, with the Bible-rejecting crowd, says volumes about you, and about your heart.
  As your brother in Christ, let me  plead with you to think about what you're thinking, think about what you're saying, think about why you're saying it, and if necessary repent.  The whole world is listening in.

Led of the Spirit

  Church life is a funny thing if you pay attention.  There is a term that was  bandied about in the charismatic/Pentecostal churches of the  1970's and 1980's.  That term was  'Spirit led' or some variation thereof.  The idea as it was presented was that the God's Spirit  speaks to a man through a sort of intuition and  tells him what is expected of him. The phraseology used when explaining how a decision was made was that "God spoke to me" or "the Spirit led me". Some people claimed to have this discernment down to the level of  being able to  grasp God's will about what to eat for breakfast or what shirt to wear that day.

 Scores of messages were preached that emphasized the idea of being 'Spirit led'.  Where the application of this became really  interesting and, in my opinion, damaging, was in church services.  It was a common thesis  that  services where not to be structured things with a clearly stated agenda and purpose. Instead , church services were to be this open-ended spontaneous affair  where the  'Spirit led' (typically the moderating pastor) were to wait and listen for God to tell them what to do next.  Maybe they would sing another song, maybe Brother So-and-So would testify, maybe it would be time to preach or maybe the congregation  would  simply sit there, basking in this intangible presence that the 'Spirit-led' claimed was in the building. 

 Once the preaching started,  the Spirit-led baton would be  passed on to whoever was preaching.  That gave him enormous liberty since his revelations were, by their very nature, extra-biblical.  He could say  pretty much whatever he wanted, and often did, while claiming that the Spirit of God had instructed him to do so.  Often his experience in the ministry was touted as his credentials as to being  able to hear God's voice so well. The meetings were loud, long, and emotional, with good people caught up in the hysteria.

     I give you the background because that spirit has migrated from one end of the church spectrum to the other, and is increasingly common in  independent Bible-believing churches.

  In practice, it's similar to what might happen when my my wife dispatches me to the  Chinese restaurant to get some food.  She knows I'm clueless and forgetful so she writes down what I am supposed to  get.  While standing in line, and gazing up at the menu, with a hand-written note in my grip, I could decide get something completely different.  It's not that her entree is unavailable, it's that I  discern, based off of our years of marriage, that I am at liberty to  substitute the thing she did want for the thing she  might possibly want.  Now, maybe I get it right, maybe I get it wrong. Maybe I get it wrong but she's a good sport and eats it anyway.  Regardless, I cannot claim that I did not have instruction.  That is exactly what happened back then, and it's exactly what is happening now.

  Even though the phrases used are Bible phrases, they are  divorced from the Bible definition, and have been reshaped  and reformed into something that is eerily reminiscent of idolatry.  The golden calf of modern Christianity is our feelings and perceptions about what God wants as opposed to what God actually wrote down.  After all, the Bible does say "There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death."

  The solution, as always, is simple. The cure for error is truth;  define words according to the Bible and then apply them as such.   Once it's defined, we can see if the modern use of the word matches up, and by doing so we can "prove all things.; hold fast that which is good."

  In Matthew 4:1, the Bible says  "Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil".     The parallel passage in Luke says "And Jesus being full of the Holy Ghost returned from Jordan, and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness," 

  Jesus, as God manifest in the flesh, had no need to try to figure out what God was thinking, since whatever Jesus was thinking was what God was thinking. If being led of the Spirit or being full of the Holy Ghost was some sort of divine GPS, I wonder why Jesus  would need  it.  There is nothing in this passage that  indicates that Jesus  was  waiting on  some sort of nudge or prompt to  decide what to do next, or that Jesus used this insight to conduct a church service in accordance with God's will.  The modern use of the term fails this initial Bible test.

  Romans 8:14 says "For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.".  The cross-reference to John 1:12 defines New Testament 'sons of God' as people who have believed on the Lord Jesus Christ.  There is nothing in the passage to indicate that God has set aside a certain class or group of men and given them insight or discernment above anyone else.  Romans 8 does not give you the wiggle room to set up any sort of spiritual dictatorship based off the fact that you are an 'old man of God'.  Being led of the Spirit is part and parcel of being saved. It is not the result of being 'called to preach' or receiving some sort of  secondary anointing. The modern use of this term fails the second Bible test.

Galatians 5:8 is the last use of the  term when it says "But if ye be led of the Spirit, ye are not under the law."  The context of Galatians 5 meshes with the sentiment expressed in Romans in that the law, though righteous, could not  enable a man to live righteously.  It could only condemn him when he failed.  The law, in and of itself, did nothing to help anyone obey it. It was informative, not reformative in nature.  The same way a speed limit sign tells you what the law is, but  does nothing to control your vehicle, the law showed a man his shortcoming before God, but  could not help a man live according to its dictates.

  Galatians 5 is a contrast between what the law could not do contrasted with what the Spirit of God can do in the life of the believer.  You can have victory over the sin that binds you. You can live successfully for God.  You can  rebuild the shattered mess you've made.  That ability is  available to everyone that is saved.  The biblical definition of being Spirit led is a man who is able, with God's help, to walk in the John 10:10 life. It is not not some mystical ability to read the whispers of God in  hunches and chill bumps.  The modern use of the term fails the third  Biblical test, and can be confidently repented of and  discarded.

  Now, you are certainly at liberty to continue on in your well-intentioned error.  I'm not your dad, and I'm certainly not the church police. But the fact that we have so readily consumed the sort of error that  previous generations would have  laughed while claiming to  love the truth  is a sign of how far we've fallen.  Either way, you are now like the clueless husband in the Chinese restaurant.  You have instruction, will you act on it?

 

Social Media and the Gospel

 I don't know how long you have to live to feel like everything has changed, but I can tell you that I  am there.   I  was saved in 1995 and way back then the internet was  just finding it's feet.  Cell phones  existed, but  required a credit check and a chunk of cash, and 'clouds' were these white puffy things in the sky.  There was no 'wi-fi', although there was 'hi-fi' (that's a joke, you're supposed to laugh).  Back then there were certain assumptions about how you conduct a ministry for the Lord Jesus Christ.
  An interesting phenomena has come to my attention in the last few years; internet ministries. I'm not talking about  where a church records a sermon and makes it available online, I'm talking about people whose entire ministry consists of making videos or commentary and publishing them on the internet via Youtube or  Facebook or some other entity.  In considering this, I  have tried not to have a knee-jerk reaction that 'everything new is bad'  and I have also tried not to  put undue honor on 'the old time ways' or 'the way we used to do it' as if that was some sort of standard.
  We live in a  world where  men invent things, and those things, by and large, can improve our lives.  For example, I use indoor plumbing and  have every intention to continue.   Some of this technology can even make us more able and effective ministers of the gospel. The Roman Empire built roads and those roads enabled the gospel to spread more quickly.  Someone  invented a printing press, and that enabled more people to have Bibles than before. Radio came on the scene and to this day  enables remote peoples to hear the  gospel.  Television ministries have taken  encouragement and edification to shut-ins.  Blogs and the internet have enabled people who have something to say to say it without having to seek permission or be part of the religious hierarchy.  Technology in and of itself is amoral, but I do have some concerns about the idea of an internet ministry as a stand-alone work, since it's apparent that  literally millions of Christians over the last two thousand years have led happy, successful,  fruitful Christian lives without ever once turning on a computer.
   The Bible says in 1 Cor 13, speaking of  the judgment seat of Christ that "Every man's work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man's work of what sort it is ."  It's interesting that the issue isn't the quantity or size or the perceived success of the work; the issue is what sort it is.  Quality appears to trump quantity with God.  As we  use whatever tools technology puts at our disposal to  obey the Bible, we should be careful as to what sort of work we are doing.
  I'll use as an example a fictitious fellow named Joe.  Joe  buys a webcam, and sets up a Youtube account, and from the  privacy of his  mom's basement  records bible study videos which he then makes available for free, to the whole world.  He hasn't harmed anyone with this, and people can watch or not watch as they see fit.  After all, the Bible says 'Let all things be done to edifying" and "..notwithstanding, every way, whether in pretence, or in truth, Christ is preached ; and I therein do rejoice , yea, and will rejoice ."  I would rather Joe make these videos than do nothing, but if all Joe does is make videos, he has missed the boat.
  God designed us to interact with real human beings, as opposed to thumbnail pictures with  goofy screen names.  God told us "Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel" .  Obeying that command by necessity means you get out of your mom's basement, and you interact with the flesh and blood people in your town.  If you have  5,000 followers on Twitter and no one in your apartment building has heard the gospel, I would say that your ministry isn't of a very good 'sort'.
  Paul used the technology of letter writing to reprove, rebuke and exhort the churches he had started, but he says an interesting thing in 1 Thess 1. He says  "For our gospel came not unto you in word only, but also in power, and in the Holy Ghost, and in much assurance; as ye know what manner of men we were among you for your sake.  And ye became followers of us, and of the Lord, having received the word in much affliction, with joy of the Holy Ghost:  So that ye were ensamples to all that believe in Macedonia and Achaia.  For from you sounded out the word of the Lord not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but also in every place your faith to God-ward is spread abroad ; so that we need not to speak any thing.  For they themselves shew of us what manner of entering in we had unto you, and how ye turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God;"  Paul preached to them the  gospel, but that gospel was  under girded by the day to day life he lived among them.  They knew he spoke the truth  by the life he lived in front of them.  I submit to you that anybody can switch on the webcam and  pretend to be super-spiritual for the duration of a web video.  It is an entirely  different sort of work to  try to live your life as an example to people who eventually will see you at your worst.
  In 1 Cor 11, Paul says "For if we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged .  But when we are judged , we are chastened of the Lord, that we should not be condemned with the world.  Wherefore, my brethren, when ye come together to eat , tarry one for another.  And if any man hunger , let him eat at home; that ye come not together unto condemnation. And the rest will I set in order when I come . "  As I said before, Paul wasn't afraid to use the technology at hand , but some things apparently can only be handled in person.
  One of the interesting observations I've made about online ministries is that commentators, some of whom hide behind  screen names and avatars are "contentious , and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, indignation and wrath".  Anonymity  emboldens the scoffer, and  if you aren't careful, you can  get drawn into 'debates' , which according to Romans 1 is a work of the flesh.  You can lose your focus spin your wheels arguing with  the lost or the apostate, instead of speaking "sound speech, that cannot be condemned" to the world around you.  You can convince yourself that you are contending for "the faith once delivered to the saints", but the faith it speaks of was delivered face to face to people that could see your life and the example behind it. Arguing with stupid people on the internet is not a ministry nor is it the sort of thing you want to have to give account of since "every idle word that men shall speak , they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment. "  There will always be one more idiot out there that  wants to vent and frankly, you don't have time to waste.
   I have a public ministry, and that  ministry serves as the foundation for every other way in which I minister.  I  taught a Sunday school class for many years, and the boldness and patience I learned in street work colored the class. I write quite a bit, but my writing would be of no power without real-life examples to draw from. I  teach the Bible, but most of my Bible  has been learned in messy  dealings with messy people.  Your primary  ministry should be one of looking men and women in their flesh and blood faces and dealing with them about their souls. Beyond that, you ought to have a ministry of encouraging and edifying real life flesh and blood believers to whom you can be an example.  Once you have all that in place, and have a good sort of work, I think it's certainly commendable to want to reach people the next street over or the next town over or the next country over and I see no scriptural prohibition against using every tool at your disposal to do so.  My advice to Joe is that he turn off the webcam, and walk outside. Engage people. Let them  laugh at you, and let them lie to you. Let them disappoint you. Let you disappoint yourself.  Let God mold you and shape you in the  way he has chosen, and when you finally do turn the web camera back on (if you do)  you will  have a ministry of a whole different sort.