MILEY CYRUS ENJOYS “THE SHACK” KIND OF CHRISTIANITY
- Teen rock star Miley Cyrus told Parade magazine (March 2010) that she is a Christian but not the “old school” type. She doesn’t define her faith by “going to church every Sunday” and she particularly hates “judgmentalism by parents.” Her words for those who don’t like her immodest clothing and sleazy “pole dancing” (during her performance at last summer’s Teen Choice Awards) are “if you don’t like it, then change the channel” and “that’s so old-school.”
Old-school, indeed. It’s as old as the Bible. Believers are forbidden to judge hypocritically (Matthew 7:1-5) or to judge in matters in which the Bible is silent (Romans 14:3), but we are commanded to “judge righteous judgment (John 7:24). In fact, the Bible says, “he that is spiritual judgeth all things” (1 Cor. 2:15). We are to judge sinning Christians (1 Cor. 5:12-13) and preaching (1 Cor. 14:29) and worldliness (James 4:4). As for every work of darkness, we are to judge it by reproving it (Ephesians 5:11). Perhaps if Miley’s Christianity were more “old school,” she would not say such foolish things.
Miley Cyrus represents the type of Christianity promoted by rock & roll since its inception. It is a Christianity that “loves Jesus” but refuses to be bound by strict scriptural precepts. It’s a live pretty much as you please type of Christianity. In reality, they do not worship the God of the Bible, who is holy and demands holiness. His grace is great and lovely, purchased at unspeakable price on Calvary, but His grace demands repentance and always leads to obedience.
This generation worships the new god presented in William Paul Young’s The Shack. Young’s god is cool, loves rock & roll, is non-judgmental, does not exercise wrath toward sin, does not send unbelievers to an eternal fiery hell, does not require repentance and the new birth, puts no obligations on people, and doesn’t like traditional Bible churches. The Shack god just wants people to “love Jesus,” be happy, and do their own thing. It’s the god of Oprah and Bono.
In one interview Young told of a woman who, after reading The Shack, determined to “divorce the old God and marry the new one.” That is what the majority of professing Christians have done since in the 1950s by heeding the sensual siren call of rock & roll. The Shack god is the god of end-time apostasy described in 2 Timothy 4:3-4.
THE ME GENERATION DOES THEOLOGY
- The Bible describes a “me generation” in the last days. “This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves...” (2 Timothy 3:1). The same prophecy warns that the me generation “will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears” (2 Timothy 4:3).
The “me generation” is upon us. It is the age of my politics (democracy), my music, my fashion, my space, my diet, an age with the theme song “I did it my way.” This has been the principle philosophy of rock & roll from its inception. “I’m free to do what I want any old time” (Rolling Stones, 1965). Not surprisingly, it is also the age of “my church” and “my theology,” which is a good definition of the “emerging church.”
This was evident in the recent “Theology After Google” conference at the Claremont School of Theology in California. Emerging leaders such as Tony Jones and Spencer Burke served up a philosophy guaranteed to tickle the ears of the me generation. They contrasted “Church 1.0” of the “old era” with “Church 2.0” of the Google era. Whereas Church 1.0 was “about top-down leadership, creeds, doctrines and literal objectives” (which sounds suspiciously like the church described in the New Testament), Church 2.0 encompasses “a bottom-up, wiki theology, subjective and ever-evolving culture” (“Emergent Christians Mull Theology in Google Era,” The Christian Post, March 16, 2010).
The conference represented a movement called “Transforming Theology,” which aims to “transform and renew the Christian Church in and for the twenty-first century.” Philip Clayton, a professor at Claremont School of Theology and a leader of Transforming Theology, said that in this day “there are no strict criteria for what is acceptable or unacceptable theology.” Conference participant Bob Cornwall observed that the movement represents a “democratization” of theology.
The Emerging Church is definitely a winning ticket for an apostate generation, and the fact that they have openly targeted the children and grandchildren of today’s fundamentalist Christ-loving, Grace-preaching, Bible-believing Christians should motivate us to double the locks and make sure that we reach and keep the heart of the next generation.
PRIESTS SPEAK OUT AGAINST CELIBACY
- A growing number of present and former priests are speaking out against the Catholic Church’s dogma of celibacy. Recently Cardinal Christophy Schoenborn, one of the pope’s closest advisers, called for an examination of the issue of celibacy and has been “receptive to arguments that a celibate priesthood is increasingly problematic for the church” (“Priests with Love Lives Speak Out,” AP, March 17, 2010).
Rome’s refusal to allow priests to marry is a sin against nature that has resulted in a massive amount of immorality through the centuries, and nothing has changed today. There is a Married Priests association in Belgium and a group called Light of Day in France that includes 150 women who live with priests. The director of the latter, Dominique Venturini, says, “When you bury human nature, it figures out how to express itself in another, perverted way.”
The Catholic Church in America has spent more than a billion dollars defending itself from lawsuits stemming from the actions of pedophile priests. The aforementioned Associated Press report observed that “revelations about sexual abuse of children have convulsed Catholic leadership from the United States to Ireland to Australia and in recent weeks, Germany, the Netherlands, Austria and Switzerland.” Marriage was practiced by most of the Lord’s apostles, including Peter (1 Cor. 9:5), and it is a biblical requirement for pastors (Titus 1:5-6).
THE TRILOBITE’S DEFIANCE OF THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION
- The lowly trilobite is one of the many icons of evolution that defies evolution. The trilobite, which is found in the so-called Cambrian layer, at the earliest stages of life according to evolutionary thinking, is an amazing creature. The trilobite supposedly lived 570 million years ago, and it is considered one of the signature creatures of the Paleozoic Era. The trilobite was an anthropod, a hard-shelled, segmented creature that “lived in the Earth’s ancient seas.” Even some evolutionists admit that the trilobite “defies the theories of evolution” (“Trilobites,” Paleodirect.com).
First, the trilobite defies evolution in that it was rapidly fossilized. The incredible detail of the fossils, even to the retention of microscopic detail in the compound eyes, proves that the creature was subject to a catastrophic process of fossilization as opposed to a uniformitarian one. The fossils depict living trilobites being fossilized so quickly they were still moving!
Second, the trilobite defies evolution in that it appears suddenly in the fossil record with no evidence of having evolved from anything else. The evolutionists admit that it “appeared suddenly” in the “Cambrian explosion.”
Third, the trilobite defies evolution in that it was a highly complex creature. The trilobite had antennae, multiple, jointed legs, and gill structures. It underwent a series of life stages. And it had a compound eye that gives every evidence of being a marvelous design. Some trilobite eyes had 15,000 lenses that worked in perfect harmony to provide exceptional vision for this creature, and each lens was also a doublet made up of two lenses. Scientific research has discovered that the lenses were shaped perfectly to avoid spherical aberration and the second lens was necessary for the eye to work properly under water. In spite of evolutionary claims that “trilobites developed one of the first sophisticated visual systems in the animal kingdom,” there is no evidence that the trilobite eye or any other eye evolved. The eye appears fully formed in countless sophisticated varieties of creatures, and there is absolutely no evidence that one type of eye evolved from another. Those who claim that the trilobite eye “evolved” provide no scientific method whereby such a miracle could occur by “blind” chance.
Not only would the bewilderingly complex physical mechanism of the eye have had to evolve, but also the accompanying complex wiring in the brain with its mysterious ability to instantly receive and interpret visual signals. And all of this had to “evolve” at the DNA level. The mind-boggling complexity of creatures at every level of the fossil record disproves evolution.
The trilobite not only defies evolution, it gives evidence for the Bible’s teaching of the universal Flood. It does this, first, because it has been found in mountains and deserts throughout the world, on every continent, including the Sahara Desert and mountains in Morocco and British Columbia. Trilobites have been found on land far from the sea in Nevada, Utah, Oklahoma, Indiana, New York, Ohio, Ontario, Australia, England Czechoslovakia, Germany, Spain, Russia, Siberia, and China, proving that the whole earth was once covered with the ocean like the Bible says!
The trilobite gives evidence for the Flood, secondly, through its rapid fossilization, which we have already discussed. Only a worldwide catastrophe of biblical proportions can explain the trilobite fossils. In the trilobite God’s existence is indeed “clearly seen” (Romans 1:20).
FRIDAY CHURCH NEWS NOTES: David Cloud
