Why was the Law given?

A lot of Christians today struggle with the belief that we are not under the law but are under grace. While it is true that keeping the Law does not save us (Ephesians 2:8-9), we must remember that Jesus did not do away with the Law. It still continues and serves much the same purpose today as it did when God gave it to us.

There are at least 3 functions of the Law:

First, it helps us live lives that are happy, joyous, and successful (Joshua 1:8) while at the same time are pleasing to God. The Law isn’t a list of restrictions that stop us from “having fun.” Rather, it shows us the best way to live. The Psalmist said that he delights in the Law and without it he would perish in his affliction (Psalm 119:92). It’s been my experience that people who habitually live immoral lives tend to be miserable people.

Next, the Law is our judge. For the Christian, we are going to be judged for our rewards (1 Corinthians 3:11-13). The lost person will be judged by his works for salvation (Revelation 20:12). But how can God be a just Judge if He has not made known to us His standard? If I’m arrested and thrown into jail, I want to know what crime I’ve committed. If the judge just says, “We’ll I’m sending you to prison just because you’ve been ‘bad’” then he would be an unjust judge; he has not shown me how I’ve broken the law. The Law of God, then, is the standard by which we will be judged. When the Christian receives his reward, and the lost person receives his fates, they will know that God has dealt with them justly because they know what the standard was.

Finally, the Law shows us the need of a Savior. Paul said, “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” (Romans 7:24) If we do not see that we are sinners, then why would we believe we need a Savior? If you think about it, no one has kept ANY of the commandments (let alone all of them). If we stand before God in judgment, we would have no hope of salvation. But I will not stand before God alone; I have an advocate – Jesus Christ the righteous (1 John 2:1). It is only by His works that I am made righteous. I lament for that person who will stand before God thinking he’s been “good” but has rejected the only One who was good.

So, concerning the Law, remember the words of Jesus, “Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.” Matthew 5:17-18

A Case Study in Bad Arguments

Over my last few blogs, I’ve talked about the logical fallacies and weak arguments often used by critics of God’s creation - arguments like false premise, equivocation, and ad hominem. Well, lo and behold, I’ve been fortunate enough to find a recent editorial that shows all of these arguments – and even a few others – being used in a single article. So here we have a case study of bad arguments for your consideration.

I refer to the piece, “Is creationism museum good for kids?” written by James K. Willmot, in the Louisville, KY newspaper, the Courier-Journal. You can click on the link and read the entire article for yourself, but I’d like to pull out a few quotes for the purpose of demonstration. Mr. Willmot's quotes are in red and are italicized.

“There is a great educational injustice being inflicted upon thousands of children in this country.” Immediately we see an appeal to emotion, in this case fear. A favorite tactic of liberals, whenever they discuss any topic, is to make it “about the children”: the museum is a terrible place that harms children. Give me a break.

“Answers in Genesis… [is] throwing away reason and 500 years of scientific inquiry and replacing it with ignorant dogma.” Here is the logical fallacy of equivocation. I discussed this very thing in my post, “I Don’t Hate Science.” Evolutionists continually equate evolution and science as though they are the same thing. They’re not. Just because a Christian might disagree with the Theory of Evolution (ToE), it does not at all mean he has anything against science. Indeed, many scientific discoveries were made by Christians like Newton, Pasteur, and Kepler.

“If adults want to believe in a 6,000-year-old Earth… then they have the right to do so. What I object to is that thousands of children, particularly the growing number of Christian home-schooled children in this country, are visiting the museum in droves, much to the delight of the museum's founder, Ken Hamm.” (BTW, for being a former science teacher, Mr. Willmot’s analytical skills are somewhat lacking; He misspelled Ken Ham’s name.) Perhaps this isn’t a formal logical fallacy, but what Mr. Willmot displays here is a blatant case of snobbery. If we ignorant Christians want to believe the Bible, I guess he'll put up with that (like he could do anything about it anyway) but he draws the line at telling our kids the Bible is true!! See my post on the new bigotry

“These kids are learning that despite a fossil record that clearly shows a progression of simple life forms becoming more complex life forms over billions of years…” Mr. Willmot’s fact-checking skills continue to fail him – he’s probably the product of a public-school education [sorry, I couldn’t resist]. Darwin noticed a conspicuous LACK of progression in the fossil record and even commented on this in his [infamous] book, The Origin of Species: “Why is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain, and this perhaps is the greatest objection which can be urged against my theory.” He believed these “missing links” would be found as the then new discipline of paleontology matured. But even today we still have huge gaps in the fossil record while paleontologists hold out only a handful of questionable examples of transitional forms.

“What is particularly sad about this ministry is that because they are so fervent in their mission to get people to believe (or rather make believe) in their simplistic world view, many Christian scientists and secular scientists are playing catch-up to counter the damage they are doing.” The litany of pejoratives not withstanding, this is actually encouraging news. The shrill rhetoric by Mr. Willmot and groups like DefCon are evidence of the effectiveness of groups like AiG. I guess any time someone sees his side losing, he’s “sad” about it.

“Last month in England, I toured the Natural History Museum in London… They too have animatronic dinosaurs. However, that's where the similarity between this "real" museum and the AIG's creation museum ends.” Here is a textbook example of the no-true-Scotsman argument. The blatant implication is that only those museums presenting an evolutionary history are “real” museums.

“Is there not something wrong when thousands of people are flocking to Northern Kentucky and paying $20 a pop to see a Flintstones-like interpretation of pre-history…?” This is a straw-man argument. The creation museum has a lot of evidence they believe supports a young earth. Mr. Willmot doesn't rebut any of the evidence, instead he makes a caricature of creationism by calling it a “Flintstones-like interpretation of pre-history.” After all, it's a lot easier to poke fun at a cartoon than to address the evidence itself. This is a meritless argument. I could say that evolutionism is nothing more than a “Littlefoot-like interpretation of pre-history.”

“If a student is never taught the scientific method and how science is the best method we humans have of collecting unbiased, factual information about the natural world… how can this child ever expect to make informed, science-based decisions as an adult? These statues should be changed so that science education, real science education, is a requirement in all home schools.” Mr. Willmot makes the mistake of a false premise by implying home-schooled students aren’t taught the scientific method. Notice he also makes another appeal to emotion with some equivocation and no-true-Scotsman thrown in for good measure.

“AIG also believes in a literal interpretation of the Book of Revelation.” I’m curious why Mr. Willmot would mention this since it does not relate directly to the creation v. evolution debate. Perhaps this betrays the contempt Mr. Willmot holds for the Bible? In any case, it is a red herring that is, bringing up facts not relevant to the issue in an attempt to obfuscate.

One thing lacking in Mr. Willmot’s entire rant is any substance or actual evidence against a divine creation. He uses words like “3,800 millions of years,” "10 million species ," “the sciences of paleontology, evolutionary biology, astronomy, geology, physics, etc.,” and “generations of truth-seeking scientists” as though just by invoking these terms he’s making an argument. He doesn’t, for example, explain how physics might rebut divine creation. This tactic is formerly known as argumentum verbosium or, more simply, elephant hurling.

I could go on but I’ve already made this post too long. In summary, Mr. Willmot’s editorial is nothing more than an 1,000 word temper tantrum over AiG’s success in the arena of ideas. I’d like to thank him, though, for the best example of “every weak argument evolutionists make” I could have asked for. Now, here's a little reading exercise to see what we've learned. Read the feedback posted by the evolutionists at the end of the article and see how many of these same arguments you can spot.

Rendering to Caesar the things that are God's

Concerning health care, John Edwards said, “What we're going to do is cover every single American, including the 47 million who don't have coverage.” You know, I’ve always been puzzled by this: by what political theory can people justify our government giving people anything?

I don’t want to pick on Edwards because social medicine seems to be a theme among the Democrats. Clinton said, “While I will be requiring all Americans to have health care, I will be calling on employers to do their part as well.” Kucinich said, “A not-for-profit health care system is not only possible, but H.R. 676, a bill that I introduced, and a number of Congressmen, the Conyers-Kucinich bill, actually establishes Medicare for all.” And the list goes on - Biden, Dodd, and Obama all seem bent on getting more people on the public dole.

National health care is probably born out of a “helping people” attitude. OK. I agree it’s good to help people. Still, why do you think this is the duty of the government? In Mark 12, Jesus made the often cited quote, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's.” We live in a society today where people seem perfectly content to let Caesar do the work of the Church. Personally, I have a problem with letting the state become a charity.

Dr. Walter E. Williams has talked a lot about government involvement in benevolence and has a good list of quotes from some of the founding fathers and other leaders of our country which speak to this very issue. Consider President Franklin Pierce’s quote from that page, “I cannot find any authority in the Constitution for public charity. [To approve the measure] would be contrary to the letter and spirit of the Constitution and subversive to the whole theory upon which the Union of these States is founded.”

When you have someone seizing the assets from one person for the benefit of another, it’s ordinarily called “stealing.” It’s not benevolence, it’s despotism. Charity is not charity at all when it’s done under threat of arrest. It doesn’t matter how worthy the cause might be - the government should stay out of it.

Alas, there are people who absolutely refuse to see the wrong in government sponsored “charity.” I believe this is evidence of the truth in that old saying, “When you rob Peter to pay Paul, you can always count on the support of Paul.” Perhaps there are a lot of people who believe there should be national health care. Maybe it is a “good” cause. But if we allow one “good” cause, we’re saying it’s OK for the government to compel us to do whatever it thinks is “good.” So perhaps the government might think it’s OK to have federally funded abortions. Oh wait, it already does that. How about allowing embryonic stem cell research? And what about federal funding of the arts? Does anyone remember the “artwork” of a depiction of the Virgin Mary covered in elephant dung? The government still supports the National Endowment of the Arts to the tune of $121 million annually. They do all these “good” things with our tax dollars. Heck, why don’t we just let the Feds raise our kids while they’re at it?

To have a government, we give up a certain amount of our rights to them. One thing we give up is some of our money in the form of taxes. I pay taxes because I want the government to do those things it should be doing: having an army, protecting our borders, building roads, catching criminals, having fire departments, etc. But I don’t want the government to take care of every citizen from cradle-to-grave.

Some people are just plain lazy. Perhaps others think if they leave good work to “the people”, it just won’t get done. Still others might believe they know what’s best for everyone else so they’re just going to make everyone be charitable whether we like it or not. But this attitude that the government should take care of us is just plain wrong. I'll take care of my own family when they're sick. By the way, I'll also take care of my kids' college, my own groceries, and my retirement too. Thanks anyway.

My Endorsement for the Republican Primary

It’s official - I’m endorsing Mike Huckabee as the Republican candidate for President, 2008. I've looked at him, his statements, and his record and he holds the same views as I do on nearly every issue. What's more, he's consistently been conservative throughout his career. Here are some of the hot issues and where he stands:

Faith & Politics: “My faith is my life - it defines me. I don't separate my faith from my personal and professional lives."

Abortion: “I support and have always supported passage of a constitutional amendment to protect the right to life.”

Health Care: “The health care system in this country is irrevocably broken, in part because it is only a "health care" system, not a "health" system. We don't need universal health care mandated by federal edict or funded through ever-higher taxes.”

Taxes: “The FairTax will replace the Internal Revenue Code with a consumption tax, like the taxes on retail sales forty-five states and the District of Columbia have now.”

Immigration: “Governor Huckabee knows that securing our borders must be our top priority and has reached the level of a national emergency.”

The War on Terror: “I believe that we are currently engaged in a world war. Radical Islamic fascists have declared war on our country and our way of life. They have sworn to annihilate each of us who believe in a free society,… As president, I will fight this war hard, but I will also fight it smart, using all our political, economic, diplomatic, and intelligence weapons as well as our military might.”

Marriage: “I support and have consistently supported passage of a federal constitutional amendment that defines marriage as a union between one man and one woman.”

Education: “I have been a strong, consistent supporter of the rights of parents to home school their children, of creating more charter schools, and of public school choice.” [OK, so he kind of blew it on this one. Why only public school choice?]

What more can I ask for? The guy is right on. And he's even got Chuck Norris endorsing him - how cool is that? Let’s hear it for Mike. Mike Huckabee, 2008!