The Reformation Polka

If you've never seen this, (A) you have to, (B) you'll love it, and (C) you'll thank me for it. Here is just a taste:

The Reformation Polka

by Robert Gebel

[Sung to the tune of "Supercalifragilistic-expialidocious"]

When I was just ein junger Mann I studied canon law;
While Erfurt was a challenge, it was just to please my Pa.
Then came the storm, the lightning struck, I called upon Saint Anne,
I shaved my head, I took my vows, an Augustinian! Oh...

Chorus:
Papal bulls, indulgences, and transubstantiation
Speak your mind against them and face excommunication!
Nail your theses to the door, let's start a Reformation!
Papal bulls, indulgences, and transubstantiation!

When Tetzel came near Wittenberg, St. Peter's profits soared,
I wrote a little notice for the All Saints' Bull'tin board:
"You cannot purchase merits, for we're justified by grace!
Here's 95 more reasons, Brother Tetzel, in your face!" Oh...

Chorus:....

And that's only a taste. You must go see (and sing!) the whole song over at OldLutheran.com. It's funny, it's clever, it's impossible to get out of your head -- and it actually teaches a lot of wonderful information.

We plan to sing it tonight at our Reformation Party, as we roast the papal bull and enjoy a diet of (gummy) worms.

Happy Reformation Day -- a day worth celebrating!

Hugh Hewitt, "Evangelical Roman Catholic Presbyterian"

Oh.

In the past, I shared some very specific concerns about Hugh "You Evangelicals Buy My Books Telling You How to Think and Live, Hear?" Hewitt.

Now Hewitt has clued us in to the fountainhead of those concerns, by telling Roman Catholic homosexual Andrew "Did I Mention I was a Roman Catholic Homosexual?" Sullivan that he, Hugh Hewitt, loudly-self-proclaimed evangelical author and speaker, was an "Evangelical Roman Catholic Presbyterian."

Which makes just as much sense as being a Roman Catholic homosexual.

It came in this interchange:

AS: You’re not a Catholic, are you?

HH: When we come back, we’ll continue with that. Yes, I actually am, and I will return to that when we come back to the Hugh Hewitt Show. I’m an Evangelical Roman Catholic Presbyterian, Andrew.

Okey doke.

That Hewitt can say this -- his grand testimony to this lost man and his lost hearers -- underscores all the concerns I relayed in the previous post. That Hewitt can say this tells me that he has no clue about the sharp-edged issues of the Gospel, that his move from Rome wasn't much of a move, that he's no one to help me think through the spiritual and Biblical issues of the day, that he's no evangelical spokesman.

Think it through, don't just emote it through. In saying this, Hewitt is saying that he is --

• A monergist synergist
• A Pelagian Calvinist
• A sola scriptura tradition-worshiper
• A 66-book Apocryphalist
• A monotheist idolater

I could go on and on, and perhaps smarter commenters will. But it makes as much sense as saying you're an Islamic Hindu, a Mormon Jehovah's Witness, an atheistic pantheist.

That Hewitt doesn't get that fact validates every reservation I had about his right to speak as a leader on spiritual issues. He still hasn't worked through THE issue: what must I do to be saved?

Hewitt's confession turns my yellow lights to red lights.

Parenthetically, I wonder what Hewitt will be doing next Tuesday, on October 31. Nothing? Trick-or-treating? What does he make of the Reformation? A mistake? An exaggeration? Or perhaps a correction of some minor issues that are all basically fine now? And all the Christians before and since, dead at the hands of Rome, for confessing evangelical faith? Bygones, to be let bygones?

And now I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that Hewitt plans to tell us all 10 Things Every Conservative Should Know about [Mormon] Mitt Romney. Will it turn out that Hewitt is actually an evangelical Mormon Roman Catholic Christian? I don't think so -- but logically and rationally, why not?

Now, let me be clear. Am I saying Hewitt isn't a Christian? Mercy, no; only God can make that judgment. I don't judge hearts. I can barely figure out my own, and that only vaguely and unreliably. And any saved man is saved by, in, and because of Jesus Christ -- and in spite of his own sins and inconsistencies.

But while I can't judge hearts, I can and must judge words, which flow from the heart (Matthew 12:34). Also, I'm not supposed to listen to just anyone who comes along and tells me what to think (1 John 4:1). And for his part, Hewitt should know that those who put themselves in a position to tell others how to be Christian, and witness, and serve, invite a harsh judgment on themselves (James 3:1).

Add to all that the fact that Paul's most severe language is reserved for those who get the Gospel wrong (Galatians 1:6-9). The least you have to say is that Hewitt evidently doesn't display that he shares the apostle's concern.

I'll listen to Hewitt with respect as he talks about law, and about politics. He knows these things. I'll listen to his political interviews (not his adoring Roman Catholic priest interviews, thanks). He is hands-down the best interviewer I've ever heard.

But I wish he'd shut up about spiritual matters. He doesn't seem to know what he's talking about and, what's worse, he doesn't know that he doesn't know.

Motivating evangelism

Rick Iannello discovered a... different way.

I hate Spurgeon...

...for being painfully, convictingly right:

When is the Christian most liable to sleep? Is it not when his temporal circumstances are prosperous? Have you not found it so? [DJP (grudging hiss): Yessss....] When you had daily troubles to take to the throne of grace, were you not more wakeful than you are now? Easy roads make sleepy travellers. Another dangerous time is when all goes pleasantly in spiritual matters. Christian went not to sleep when lions were in the way, or when he was wading through the river, or when fighting with Apollyon, but when he had climbed half way up the Hill Difficulty, and came to a delightful arbour, he sat down, and forthwith fell asleep, to his great sorrow and loss. The enchanted ground is a place of balmy breezes, laden with fragrant odours and soft influences, all tending to lull pilgrims to sleep. Remember Bunyan’s description: "Then they came to an arbour, warm, and promising much refreshing to the weary pilgrims; for it was finely wrought above head, beautified with greens, and furnished with benches and settles. It had also in it a soft couch, where the weary might lean." "The arbour was called the Slothful’s Friend, and was made on purpose to allure, if it might be, some of the pilgrims to take up their rest there when weary." Depend upon it, it is in easy places that men shut their eyes and wander into the dreamy land of forgetfulness. Old Erskine wisely remarked, "I like a roaring devil better than a sleeping devil." There is no temptation half so dangerous as not being tempted. The distressed soul does not sleep; it is after we enter into peaceful confidence and full assurance that we are in danger of slumbering. The disciples fell asleep after they had seen Jesus transfigured on the mountain top. Take heed, joyous Christian, good frames are near neighbours to temptations: be as happy as you will, only be watchful. (Morning & Evening, on Luke 22:46; 10/23 pm; emphases added)

This humiliating truth has been too apparent to me in recent years. It's another thing about myself I won't miss in Glory; and I strive to mortify it here.

Luther (2003): What a great movie / actors are idiots

May I just make the timely recommendation of the recent movie Luther? Of course I can -- it's my blog!

Though I've read a couple of lives of Luther, I'm not historian enough to give a detailed analysis of its accuracy. I do know that I recognize many direct quotations, and that I think it does just a dandy job of bringing out the historical context and background, and featuring Luther's preaching of the Gospel. Very dramatic, very moving. We grownups experienced chills and tears, it held the eleven-year-old very interested, and even the seven-year-old was involved through most of it.

The PG-13 rating is for some violence and intensity (a suicide; the Peasants' Revolt and its aftermath).

And, unless you want to go for yet another footnote in the ongoing Actors Are Idiots saga, don't watch the interview with leading actor Joseph Fiennes. He plays Luther very well. He seems to understand the movie not at all. To him it's about minorities, repression, blah blah blah.

What matters is that the people who made the movie evidently understood what it was about, and that Fiennes did what they told him to do, and did it well. When he ran out of script, he should have run out of words. Or talked about something he knew -- I don't know... canapes, double-decker buses, fog?

On reflection, not a bad rule for most actors.

So that aside, I enthusiastically commend this movie to you at this Reformation season.

John Stott tells us what an evangelical is

If you're a regular reader of this blog, you know I've often expressed dismay at the degradation of the term "evangelical," and wondered aloud whether it is even useful anymore.

Along comes evangelical spokesman John Stott, in that great evangelical magazine Christianity Today, to tell us:

An evangelical is a plain, ordinary Christian. We stand in the mainstream of historic, orthodox, biblical Christianity. So we can recite the Apostles Creed and the Nicene Creed without crossing our fingers. We believe in God the Father and in Jesus Christ and in the Holy Spirit.

Okay, that's not bad. But it comes from John Stott, who has written some absolutely wonderful and unquestionably evangelical books, but whose penchant for compromise is pretty extensively discussed in Iain Murray's Evangelicalism Divided -- and who denies the eternal conscious punishment of the wicked in Hell. So is Stott crossing his fingers?

And it comes in what has been often-and-well-called "Christianity Astray," a magazine with a wonderfully evangelical, increasingly-distant past, but a largely troubling present.

So... still an open question.

If Republican leaders were smart....

(NOTE FOR GREEK STUDENTS: were the title in Greek, it would be a "second-class conditional.")

I have thought this more times than I can count.

Prefatory statement: there are two kinds of people in American society. Okay, three:

1. Those who realize that the MSM (mainstream media) are, in reality, the public-relations arm of the Democratic Party
2. Those in denial about that established fact
3. Cheap kitchen appliances with no moving parts

That having been said: every election cycle, the Dems/MSM do exactly the same things. Here they are:

• Print a series of articles about how "divided" the GOP is, how "evangelicals" are drifting away, how blacks are still devoted Dem-voters (these articles always feature words and phrases like "mounting," "growing," "growing chorus," "increasing," and the like)
• Find some poll to back up the above, report on it selectively
• Find some event (preferably huge, but low-level will do just fine), and label it a "scandal" or "_____-gate"
• Report on it ceaselessly, 24/7
• Make it out as a grave threat to the Republic
• Find big names to quote to underscore how grave, serious, and unparalleled this scandal is for Republicans
• Appear unable to find anyone, anywhere, who is able to articulate an opposing view
• Experience acute and chronic state of historical amnesia as to far graver matters, usually perpetrated by Bill Clinton (or, if not, some other Democrat), and always minimized by the very same people who are "concerned" and "alarmed" by the current "crisis"
• Speak frequently and exclusively of "the GOP's woes" or "worse and worse news for the GOP," of "voters" as "unlikely" to vote for GOP candidates, and of "rising Democratic hopes" for tightening their grip on the country's throat
• Rinse, and repeat as necessary, until the last second
• Then, months after the vote, print tiny and well-hidden articles "discovering" that the previous articles were entirely bogus, thus establishing (to their satisfaction) the MSM's creds as objective and unbiased

This happens EVERY ELECTION CYCLE -- no exceptions, always, every time.

Now, I'm no rocket scientist, and I know all this. What of these six-and-seven-figure consultants and leaders the GOP relies on? None of them knows this? Not one has ever heard the expression "October surprise" up in his penthouse? The term "proactive" is absent from their lexicon?

I know no other explanation as to why this hits them as if by total surprise every single time.

Now, if the same guy built the same house on the same bank of the same river every year, and every year had that same house washed away in some moderate storm, and still he did the exact same thing the next year -- wouldn't we say he was an idiot?

So what shall we say of Republican leadership, sucker-punched by the exact same punch every single election cycle?

And so once again I say, if Republican leaders were smart, and if they could manage even a ghost of the discipline the Dems show, every Republican who speaks in public would start making this his "Carthago delenda est," from about mid-August on.

No matter what he was asked to speak on, nor in what venue, he'd be saying things like "I just wonder what the media and Dems will pick this year for their 'October surprise'"; "I just wonder what 'scandal' the media and Dems are sitting on now, so they can fixate on it in October"; "Well, as you know, Katie, the media/Democratic playbook runs the same way every election year." They'd run down my entire scenario above, again and again. They'd make it more well-known than "Apply directly to your forehead."

And then, when the MSM/Dems play their one trick, every American with a brain would say, "Yep. Just like they do every election, and just like ____ said they would." And it would fizzle like a wet firecracker.

If the Republican leadership were smart.

Postscript: too bad Hugh Hewitt's pc evidently can't get this blog. I think he'd like this.

Just... dude!

The father of one of the Columbine shooting victims made a "Free Speech" guest commentary on CBS News. Watch it.

In one minute and twelve seconds, is there anything the gentleman didn't touch on, in a hard-hitting way?

Excellent.

Random thoughts about current events: Foley, shootings

GOP Congressman Foley Resigns

1. First thought: wow. Who could have predicted that a homosexual would do something immoral, harmful, destructive, risky and foolish? Okay, I mean, besides anyone with half a moral brain?
2. Shockingly, Foley was also pro-abortion. Wow; again, who could have charted that? That someone who was okay with abusing innocent children to death should be, well, okay with abusing innocent children somewhat short of death?
3. Now, this may give you the impression that I'm suggesting that a person's moral framework may have an impact on, um, his moral framework.
4. I'm okay with you thinking that.
5. Next!

Shooting at Amish school

1. First, what a horrible thing, terrible tragedy.
2. Second, I thought what I always think of murder/suicides: if you're going to do it, do us all a favor and reverse the order. Seriously. The first thing I'd say to such a person is: get your sin-problem dealt with. Repent, believe in the Lord Jesus, and get saved from this road to Hell and destruction. If you don't, then do this: do the suicide first.
3. I am surprised to read of Amish in public school, rather than being homeschooled. Shows how much I know about the Amish.
4. How many of these school shootings wouldn't happen, or would be reduced, if more sane, responsible folks in the government indoctrination camps (aka public schools) were armed and trained?
5. I hear Roman Catholic and Jewish commenters stymied at how this could happen. The cause of their puzzlement is their ignorance of, and/or lack of faith in, their own professed Bibles. Otherwise, they'd have read, believed, and thought about God's assessment that "the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually" (Genesis 6:5). Man isn't morally neutral, let alone morally good. Left to ourselves, in our natural state, we're dead in trespasses and sins... and getting deader (Ephesians 2:1ff.). Apart from monergistic, sovereign, saving grace.
6. The further we race away from God's word, the worse it will get (Proverbs 29:18).
7. UPDATE: I knew I forgot something. Our dear sister Libbie has some characteristically apposite and well-put thoughts on this.