Mission Success

Today I saw Enterprise. I have seen all remaining orbiters. Mission complete.

Space Shuttle Enterprise at the Intrepid Museum

Space Shuttle Atlantis taking off from Cape Canaveral

Space Shuttle Endeavour at the California Science Center

Space Shuttle Discovery at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum

Sacramento should mourn Orlando

After the tragic events in Orlando, the pastor of Verity Baptist Church in Sacramento, California has come under heat for a sermon he preached on how Christians should respond to the shooting. You can hear the sermon online.

I listened to portions of it. The pastor had four things Christians should do in response to the killings:

1. do not mourn the death of sodomites,
2. do not advocate the killing of sodomites,
3. do not welcome them into church, and
4. speak out against sodomites.

The pastor has expectedly, and rightly, come under a lot of heat. The counter-arguments have primarily been about how he is inciting violence and not being loving. I think it is also important to point out that the pastor too is a sinner, worthy of death.

Romans 6:23a (in the KJV as Verity believes King James Bible is the Word of God) reads "For the wages of sin is death." All of us, including the pastor, are sinners. Paul writes in Romans 3:23, "For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God." The pastor's heterosexualness doesn't make him righteous. His lack of homosexuality doesn't make him righteous. He is a sinner, worthy of condemnation and death at the hands of the god that he has sinned against. All of us are worthy of condemnation.

In the sermon, he said "If we lived in a righteous government, they should round them all up and put them up against a firing wall, and blow their brains out." That since those killed at the club were homosexuals, they were sinners deserving of death. Indeed, if we lived under a righteous god, he would round us up and put us to death and cast us into hell forever.

But does God not mourn the death of even the wicked? Ezekiel was told by God in Ezekiel 33 to prophesy against Israel and tell them of their impending doom because of their wickedness. However, God said he doesn't pleasure in their death. Ezekield 33:18 reads "As I live, saith the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live: turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die, O house of Israel?"

The goodness is that God doesn't leave us in our sins or dependent upon our own righteousness to achieve salvation. Paul tells us in Romans 5:8, "But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." Christ died not for the righteous, but the unrighteous. For the homosexual, for the liar, for the drunkard, for the abuser, for the adulterer, for the thief, for the murderer, for the sinner. Christ's death and his death alone atones for our sin. Not through the lack of ones sin, not through the strength of one's marriage, but only through the grace of God in the blood of Jesus on the cross.

In their statement of beliefs, Verity says that they believe "God wants everyone to be saved." They also state "We believe that the unsaved will spend eternity tormented in a literal hell (and eventually the Lake of Fire)." If the pastor truly believes these things, he would mourn the death of the people in Orlando. He believes they are unsaved and will spend eternity in hell, against the desires of God who longs for all to come to him. The pastor should mourn that these souls are lost. The pastor should mourn that he didn't do more to reach the lost.

Someone who knows the glories of God and the depravity of his own wickedness doesn't ignore the deaths of those who he believes are sinners. He instead longs for them to come to Christ. He gives up everything to seek after them. I fear that this pastor does not feel that way.

Child Theology 2

Recently I wrote about discussing theological issues with children. How I felt I wasn't able to simplify theological discussions to the level of my children. The other day I took a different approach and had my children reconcile a theological position with the Bible.

Our church puts out a weekly reading plan of scripture to be used by families during the week. The scriptures deal with the topic for the next Sunday's sermon. It also includes a catechism question. Last week's came from the New City Catechism.

Q 18: Will God allow our disobedience and idolatry to go unpunished? A: No, every sin is against the sovereignty, holiness, and goodness of God, and against his righteous law, and God is righteously angry with our sins and will punish them in his just judgement both in this life, and in the life to come.

I asked my kids the question, which they all answered "no." I then said they had to reconcile that answer with Romans 8:1, "There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus."

They struggle with the question. After a while, they finally answered "Jesus."

He's a good answer for just about any theological question. But they were right. Our disobedience and idolatry do not go unpunished. The punishment, however, was taken by Jesus on the cross. As Paul answers our question in 2nd Corinthians 5:21, "For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God."

See, Jesus taking on the sins of the world is easy enough for a kid to explain.