We certainly don't disagree that the gospel alone changes hearts, but it's a matter of both-and, not either-or. Surely we should preach the gospel to liberals and pray that God converts them, but we also need to stop them from imposing their evil wickedness on society through congress, the courts, and lower legislative bodies.
2 posted on Thursday, March 22, 2012 10:06:24 AM by crghill: “Call a spade a spade...r2k is heresy.”
I can't agree, crghill. Take a look at the posts by guitarplayer1953 and gamecock. This is part of why I won't call R2K heresy — it's close enough to the old Southern Presbyterian “spirituality of the church” view that even some people here on Free Republic, who can be assumed to be right-wing politically active conservatives, are saying things which John Calvin and John Knox likely would have regarded either as anabaptist or as tending toward anabaptism.
Calvin and Knox believed in imposing not just general Christian principles but explicitly Reformed principles through civil law. I'm not advocating that for a long list of reasons, but there are issues where there can be no compromise between crystal-clear Christian values and the values of secular liberalism, and it's those issues on which I believe Christians must fight in modern America.
12 posted on Thursday, March 22, 2012 10:03:45 PM by guitarplayer1953: “Yes that is true and that is why Ben F. said you can not legislate morality.”
Benjamin Franklin was not a Christian by any evangelical definition of that word. The idea that government can't legislate morality is totally false: government will **ALWAYS** be legislating someone’s version of morality. The only question is **WHOSE** version.
Leftist liberals typically value personal choice over all else, and therefore advocate things such as homosexual marriage and women's “rights” to choose to abort their babies. They may call it “human rights” or “values” rather than morality, but there's no difference between liberals passing laws in accord with their values and conservatives passing laws in accord with our values.
Christians can't get around these issues. Either our government will say women have a right to kill their babies, or our government will say babies have a right to life and should be protected. Same for gay marriage. There is no middle ground. Christians have to either follow the anabaptists and say Christians have no need to be concerned about government (in which case, posting on Free Republic is quite inconsistent) or we have to fight against wickedness in our courts and legislatures and congress.
9 posted on Thursday, March 22, 2012 5:28:57 PM by guitarplayer1953: “One question did Christ ever speak out against Rome (government)? No He spoke out against the religious leadership.”
Jesus was not a Roman citizen and had no right under Roman law to speak out against the government. Paul, who was a Roman citizen, could and did demand his rights under the law.
Look at this, for example:
Romans 16:35-39: 35 When it was daylight, the magistrates sent their officers to the jailer with the order: “Release those men.” 36 The jailer told Paul, “The magistrates have ordered that you and Silas be released. Now you can leave. Go in peace.” 37 But Paul said to the officers: “They beat us publicly without a trial, even though we are Roman citizens, and threw us into prison. And now do they want to get rid of us quietly? No! Let them come themselves and escort us out.” 38 The officers reported this to the magistrates, and when they heard that Paul and Silas were Roman citizens, they were alarmed. 39 They came to appease them and escorted them from the prison, requesting them to leave the city.
The fact that we participate on Free Republic is proof that we want to change our government's seriously wrongheaded views and want to stop liberals from legislating their version of morality.
It's time we speak up and stop letting liberals run our government, and to the extent that they've wrongly taught our ministers that Christians can't speak up, we need to convince our ministers that the Bible not only allows but arguably requires Christian citizens to try to stop evil in the world around them.
I don't have a problem with saying that the church isn't typically the best organization to speak out officially and formally. Individual Christians are usually better equipped to do that than the church as institute. However, the leftists aren't satisfied with emasculating the church and want to stop all Christians, not just institutional churches, from speaking out against evil, and unfortunately, they're being aided and abetted by some people advocating R2K views inside some Reformed churches.