Posted on 10/27/2020 9:06:32 AM PDT by Kaslin
Evangelical thinker, author, and Christian pastor John Piper stirred the Christian community and a larger public intrigued with how Christians may vote in the this election with his recent essay, “Policies, Persons, and Paths to Ruin: Pondering the Implications of the 2020 Election.”
Piper concludes: “I will not develop some calculus to determine which path of destruction I will support.” After rejecting the sin of boastfulness with a terminology diagnosed in the Greek with the term “eristikos,” he is willing to forswear voting on or in the Presidential election of 2020. Piper’s critique of leadership character is one of several made by other major evangelical thinkers like Max Lucado and Beth Moore. Piper’s thesis cannot be reconciled to the rhetoric and arguments of basic Biblical hermeneutics.
Piper complains early in the essay: “I find it bewildering that Christians can be so sure that greater damage will be done by bad judges, bad laws, and bad policies than is being done by the culture-infecting spread of the gangrene of sinful self-exaltation, and boasting, and strife-stirring (eristikos). How do they know this? Seriously! Where do they get the sure knowledge...” Piper is condescendingly stunned that Christians might vote in the current election given the tragic political character flaw of boasting that for him obviously precludes the task of voting for President. Piper does not provide biblical examples to support his thesis and offers only the well-worn hermeneutic that all sin is of equal offense in the eyes of God so boasting will be as “deadly” as abortion, according to Piper. In reality, the Bible is replete with human beings plagued with boasting character flaws and yet assigned to not only leadership but political sovereignty.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Doesn’t get much more vain and boastful than John Piper.
It’s not “boasting” if you can actually do it, Karen.
“Not voting is, in effect, burying his vote. He should review how that works out.”
IMO, at the very least by not voting one surrenders their right to complain about the election’s outcome.
Piper is being used as a willing tool of The Great Deceiver in order to take Christians out of the battle next Tuesday.
Note that Piper never said vote for Biden.
This is because The Deceiver KNOWS that the Christian would actually have to think about the real policies of the fake "Catholic" POS, and how these policies affect the Christian movement.
Wisely, Lucifer would have Piper whispering in the ranks behind the lines to bleed off dedicated troops at the decisive moment.
The Pious Piper has done his task for his Master VERY WELL.
Yeah I’m sure for him Joe Biden and the fam walk off the pages of Hebrews 11....
“What a moron. “
__________________
He’s not a moron.
What he is, however, is most likely **extremely** compromised with something in his personal life.
Yes, it’s likely something that would cost this man his career and he values that more than America.
He wouldn’t be the first man (or woman) to cast his lot with evil to hide a serious secret.
a house divided against itself cannot stand.
Truer pablums were never uttered...
BS. Piper is a lying tool of the left.
Many have already made the points that those flaws are simply not on the same level as such things as infanticide or the point made in this article of how very flawed various people in the bible were. But let's examine these allegations. Are they actually true? I don't know that he does any boasting about himself. He has boasted about some things, mainly the pre-Covid economy under his administration. He has not done so in a self aggrandizing way, which is what Piper seems to think. It's normal for a politician to call attention to his accomplishments. I don't know of anything he has said that constitutes "self-exaltation". It would help if Piper would give some examples.
The "strife-stirring" accusation is a real head scratcher. What strife specifically did he stir and how did he do that? He has not stirred any strife that I know of. His opponents have stirred unbelievable amounts of strife. Is Piper delusionally blaming Trump for that?
His assumption that Trump's perceived personal flaws are in some way "infecting" the culture is idiotic. If he can give a detailed explanation of that I'd like to hear it, but of course Piper doesn't elaborate. It appears to me that he's another lunatic who starts with the idea of opposing Pres. Trump and works backwards from that premise, and then concocts vague abstract reasons for doing so.
The author of this article is a damn fool. To anyone who has ever been around actual men, Trump is not boastful. He is simply defending and promoting himself and his positions. This is what men do, especially leaders.
When your opponents call you an idiot (or a racist or a puppet, etc.) you can either roll over, as most recent Republicans have done, you can counter-attack (where you say “Ha you suck more than me”) or you can defend yourself with positivity, which is to say that you talk about how great a job everyone is doing, how awesomely your ideas have worked, etc. If you contrast your successes against the failures of your critics, so much the better. This inspires people.
By way of contrast, Obama went around the world for 8 years talking about how flawed the USA was and how everything about us sucked. He inspired no one, not even his own followers. He merely demoralized them.
< Rahab had her issues >
- - - - - -
In Matthew’s list, all the women listed had issues.
Tamar — incest with her father-in-law, a Canaanite
Rahab — a prostitute, a Canaanite
Ruth — slept with an unmarried man, a Moabitess
Bathsheba — adultery, actually a Jew but considered to be a Hittite
Mary — pregnant without being married, a Jew
The lesson: The promise was that *all* the nations would be blessed. The Lord’s DNA was multi-national.
One would suppose, by their name, that fundamentalists would be the ones walking closest to biblical truth. If one assumes that, they would be wrong. They are among the chief Bible correctors of this Laodicean age. This is why I prefer to refer to myself as a Biblicist. I take God at His Word, literally. And I hold to the King James Bible as His perfect word to the English-speaking people. As such, it is important that one rightly divides the word of truth so as to distinguish where the subject is the Jew, the Gentile, or the Church of God.
Sounds like Mr Piper is falling for the old tactic by Democrat surrogates of trying to suppress the votes of Christians by shaming the opposition as “not perfect.” I hope this guy wakes up and realizes he is being suckered.
“Jesus isn’t on the ballot this time. Who’s your second choice?”
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To some extent, Jesus *is* on the ballot.
2 John 1:8ff The context is that some Christians were amenable to approve others who had very questionable actions — i.e. sinners/evil.
v11: For he that biddeth him [the evil person] God speed is partaker of his evil deeds.
In Hebrews 10:25, we learn about willful sin. Forgiveness for willful sin is very “touchy”; but one can repent. Were I to vote for one of our candidates, I would feel I willfully decided to vote for and partake of the dark side.
I can see situations in which a voter might decide to not vote at all because all choices were bad.
Not the case this year.
I agree with you about living in the age of the Laodicean apostasy; however, I fail to see where fundamentalism differs from a conservative Biblicist approach. I would argue that careful expositors of Scripture (Vernon McGee, Adrian Rodgers, Chuck Smith, Chuck, Missler, Harry Ironside, Dwight Pentecost, John Walvoord, David Jeremiah) were all fundamentalists.
I think a bunch of these guys are in love with their degrees and their cult of personality.
No he’s playing “lead the cat with the laser dot”. He doesn’t want you to see that the other guy is just as vain and boastful. To truly full embrace this ‘clown’s” premise no Christian should be voting at all since all politicians by their nature are a proud, vain and boastful lot!
His premise is wrong and deceitful.
He’s Satan’s sockpuppet.
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