I know people who don’t celebrate Christmas because they think Christmas trees and other Christmas traditions are pagan–same thing with Easter. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t celebrate Independence Day/Fourth of July. Of course, that is the date the Declaration of Independence was signed. That is, political leaders in the 13 colonies told the existing government that they were no longer going to submit to them. They were forming their own new government. They were no longer going to obey the King and his laws or pay their taxes to Britain. In fact, they ended up killing British government agents and soldiers.
The patriots wrote eloquently about resisting tyranny and the God-given rights of men. The king was abusive, but only a fraction as abusive as today’s U.S. government. He charged a very small, yet still unjust tax, a fraction of what we pay today, and the colonists revolted. The way the vast majority of Americans twist Romans 13 into teaching nearly blind obedience to government would indicate that the founding fathers were in grave sin. Yet I know of zero conservative Christian Americans who aren’t proud Americans who celebrate Independence Day with vim and vigor.
When I point out that inland immigration checkpoints are wicked, and police are an unamerican, socialist institution, public schools are funded by the most evil form of taxation–property taxes, and so forth, conservatives get mad at me and say I’m the unamerican one and I should leave the country. But who is really unamerican? What is the definition of what America is and what it ought to be? Is it defined by the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bible? Or is it defined by proudly pledging allegiance to whatever it is now? If what defines a good American is how proud you are of what America currently is and saying the pledge of allegiance, then I guess they’re right. I’m unamerican. I’m not pledging my allegiance to a country that has betrayed its founding values. I’m not pledging allegiance to a country that has allowed the murder of 60 million babies and takes 50% or more of our income through all forms of taxation or that stops people as they travel through the southern U.S. to ask them what their citizenship is. By that definition I’m definitely unamerican and so are the founding fathers. However, I think the Bible, the Declaration and to a lesser extent, the Constitution define what a true American is and I’m, unfortunately one of the few true Americans left.
Here’s a frustrating conversation. This is a woman from my old church. She completely misses the point and is unable to form a rational response to anything I said. She should be rebuked by her husband and her pastor for not having the ability to think rationally.
In reality, I don’t even know why she would be offended by my original meme calling those who support cops loyalists. If she has the typical erroneous understanding of Romans 13, she should be all about loyalty to the British and calling the Revolutionary War a sinful rebellion. I think she’s just generally offended that I don’t support police and she has a very emotional connection to the police. I have found this type of arguing to be very common.
What’s even more sad is the women will argue. Their husbands are silent. That has been the case now for 4 women. I’ve had one interaction with a man, who wanted to continue the conversation offline, which I did. And 4 women whose husbands are unwilling to talk in any way.
Unfortunately, I missed copying down one of her comments where she told me to call a crackhead rather than the police, and the original post was deleted. But here’s the conversation.
When AHA started doing “Church Repent” several years ago, I thought, “How can they go to a church they’ve never been to and pick on them?” Over the years, I’ve realized that you can go to any random church and exhort them and it is a great way to tell whether they are good or bad.
When confronting an American church with abortion apathy and IVF information, the typical, bad church will say, “Why are you picking on us? Have you listened to a sermon? We love the Bible!” A good church says, “What can we do to help? We want to repent of our apathy. We want to do something.”
If they’re a good church, you can go to them. If they’re a bad church you can go to them. The object is to raise awareness of the abortion holocaust and stand up for orphans. Not to please people. Here’s an example of a typical, worthless, wicked church and pastor. Maybe you can hold out hope that they were caught off guard or need more time to consider the situation, but I don’t think so, based on my analysis. I would hold out hope that if they were humble and studied the Bible a lot more, God could change them but their errors are just so basic and egregious.
It starts out with an off-duty cop working security for the church. That’s the first problem. Cops are contrary to Scripture in many ways, which I’ve gone over in the past many times. I don’t have a problem with someone trained with the ability to use a gun roaming around the church property to protect people who are to a certain extent sitting ducks for a random gunman, but I do have a problem with hiring a cop, but that’s just a minor point so far.
A huge problem is that the cop, as is typical, doesn’t have any idea that a sidewalk is a traditional public forum for free speech. Anyone can stand on a sidewalk in any neighborhood with a sidewalk running along a public street and hold any kind of sign, pass out literature and speak loudly any message they want, even if it’s offensive. I think this cop is stupid and ignorant rather than knowing the law and intending to deceive. This indicates that he is poorly trained, and also that Christians aren’t out spreading their message. There may be limitations to sound amplification, and that would depend on local ordinances.
The cop doubles down on the stupidity saying that if anyone is offended by the message, it is disorderly conduct. I don’t want to be too critical of Matt, but I want to point out a couple things that he could have done better (from my armchair quarterback, 20/20 hindisight position), so that we can all do better next time. Matt should have said he was offended by the cop and by the guy that walked up on him saying he doesn’t want Matt to mess with his kids and eventually the pastor. Would the cop have written himself and those other guys tickets? No, he’d be put to shame for saying that if anyone offends someone, they can be cited for disorderly conduct.
When the cop says the church has asked him to leave, so he has to leave, I kind of suspect that he’s lying. Can anyone be that stupid? Surely he’s deceiving, but maybe he actually is that stupid. You can tell he’s quite stupid, but is he that stupid? I don’t know. You decide whether he’s extremely stupid or just that evil.
Starting at 3:12, the cop says he has to provide ID, because he’s being detained. Over and over again, there are copious examples of Texas cops demanding IDs. They can ask and they can demand all they want. No one has to provide an ID unless they’re under arrest per Texas Penal Code 38.02. In a couple of videos I’ve seen Matt, while in Texas, identify himself even though he wasn’t under arrest. Every state is different, so look up the law in your state, and generally, I’d recommend obeying the law because police, lawyers and judges are psychopaths and unpredictable. You can sue them later. But, don’t identify if you’re not required by law, either.
At 3:56, the jackass in the blue plaid shirt says, “Your rights end where mine begin.” This is just absurd retardation. No one has the right to not be offended. This is just shocking stupidity. How did we get to this point in America where people can be this stupid?
As they go on making fools of themselves, the biggest fool walks up. While the lame-brain “pastor” talks, the disorderly conduct talk is put on the back burner. I would bet that if the pastor had stood up for common sense and Scripture and said that it’s the cop’s job to protect everyone’s right to free speech, the whole thing would have been over.
If you look at this church’s website, you’ll see that this is Doug, the senior pastor. If you read his bio, you might even be impressed. He has a pretty good pedigree, suggesting he may even be reformed, which would put him in the top 10% of pastors as far as I’m concerned. The website of the church looks very good and biblical. But the shocking stupidity that comes out of his mouth in this interaction is just such basic false teaching.
As soon as the “pastor” starts talking, it’s all about him and what he’s doing and there is zero humility. Matt is there about IVF. I’d bet $10,000 right now that that church has members who have taken part in IVF and those people currently have babies frozen in test tubes, and the “pastor” knows about it and can name their names. Even if they don’t, I would bet $10,000 that he’s never preached a sermon against IVF. I’d bet another $10,000 that they are doing nothing more to fight abortion than maybe an occasional sermon and maybe donating to a crisis pregnancy center. But no one will take those bets.
One million babies are murdered by abortion every year. NO ONE has a strategy to fight abortion that is 100% effective at this point. Abolition is a glimmer of hope that the vast majority of Christians know nothing about. It is at least Scripturally correct, even if it hasn’t produced a lot of results yet. Our hearts should break and we should humbly receive any ideas or correction on this issue. Orphans are being murdered among us and no American Christian at any church has any room to receive Matt’s exhortation with the conceit this guy has. The way we treat unborn babies is heartbreaking. Keep that in mind while listening to this pompous, lost (lost as in, unregenerate, unbelieving, dead in his sin and headed to hell) “pastor”.
At 6:35, this evil “pastor” says Matt should respect the dirty, ignorant cop. He would have told Jesus to stop calling Herod a fox. He takes the Hitler hermeneutic in his interpretation of Romans 13. That is the typical, but wrong, approach towards Romans 13 among most Christians.
At 7:29, he says that he’ll call out Matt’s sin of judging. This is absolutely moronic. There’s no way this guy has read the Bible in decades. The Bible teaches that judging is good. Hypocritical judging is bad, but one of the main goals in Christianity is to mature to the point that you can judge properly (John 7:24, 1 Cor. 2:15, Hebrews 5:14, etc.). And, if he thinks it’s a sin to judge, then when he tells Matt that it’s a sin to judge, he’s committing the type of hypocritical judging that is forbidden in Matthew 7. I feel like I learned this stuff so long ago and I cannot believe that someone who has read the New Testament once in the last 10 years could say anything this stupid. I’m shocked.
Furthermore, the “pastor” has obviously NEVER done any type of public evangelism. If you do any type of literature distribution or public evangelism more than a couple hours, you will have the cops called on you. You will learn very quick what the law says. You will learn to stand up for your right to preach the gospel publicly. So this idiot “pastor” turns Matt over to the state. Rather than being wronged (which he wasn’t being wronged) he turns the matter over to laws created by unbelievers.
At that point, the dirty cop asks for Matt’s ID. What I would have done at this point, were I Matt, is to tell him that I’m not required to identify. As I said earlier, I would generally recommend, if there is any doubt about the legality of the situation is to avoid arrest or citation and deal with the misunderstanding via lawyers. I’d pay a lawyer if needed or I’m sure Matt has a pro-bono Christian civil liberties lawyer. I’ve had two situations where I’ve needed a lawyer, and both times Liberty Counsel helped for free, and I later made a donation. There is no shortage of lawyers who will take a case like this. In this situation where Matt was obviously right, I’d ask for the dumb cop to call a supervisor. And if the supervisor is just as idiotic, which is a real possibility, I’d be tempted to take the ticket or even be arrested. If you’re arrested, you will sue and win a lot of money quite easily. The only gray area in this case was the use of amplification, which wasn’t in the video.
I hope Matt did something about this, but he could spend a lot of time on these types of situations at the detriment of preaching the gospel as well, so I don’t blame him if he didn’t.
What’s the lesson? As far as you could tell by looking at the website, or attending the service, this would appear to be a good church. You could attend for years and be content that the Bible is being preached. Matt comes along and exposes the idolatry and stupidity in a few minutes. I support Matt and Church Repent Project in general. I oppose ministry industrial complex businesses like this one.
There are good churches out there. They would respond humbly and with sorrow for the orphans who are being led to the slaughter in our country. But you can’t tell whether the church is good or bad by looking at their website or even attending their services for years. One way you can tell is by standing in front with a graphic abortion sign. You will find out what kind of church they are very quickly.
I finally found someone with more than two brain cells to rub together to respond to my position that police is a socialist program. I posted this meme in a Tea Party group, and this conservative responded. I like this guy, even though he’s mistaken, but at least he put up a good effort.
I’ll break up his response and italicize his words.
Ok, here we go. Nothing I write here should be taken as a personal criticism of you. My observations will be about the core principle at the foundation of the meme.
The meme is a straw man argument I have seen advanced by liberals for many years. At its core is the false premise that any belief in government, and any belief in a tax, and any belief in any kind of government program is a belief in and an advocacy for socialism.
Liberals are correct when they make that point. American socialist programs don’t work, because government gets paid whether they do a good job or not. Socialism is immoral, because it is based on stealing money from people, i.e. forcing people to pay for something whether they want it or not. Scripture gives the civil penalties for all crimes, and there is no penalty for not paying taxes. It was a sin in the Old Testament to not pay your taxes, but not a crime. Scripture nowhere gives government the right to force anyone to pay for anything, much less all the programs we have today, including police.
The reason we know that to be a false premise is because we live in the real world and we are, or most of us, are students of history. The meme requires the belief that there is no distance, no daylight, between the absence of government–call it what you will–anarchy, chaos, the law of the jungle, might equals right–and socialism.
He’s right that my position is that even a tiny bit of force in government taxation is wrong, and is socialism. That’s not to say that a country with a 1% tax rate is just as bad as a country with a 90% tax rate. It’s just that the 1% is theft and is immoral. I’d also say that when some people are forcing other people to pay for something, because they are stronger and run in packs, that is the law of the jungle. That is more akin to the anarchy by his definition than the anarchy I espouse.
One can believe in government and in taxes, and not be a socialist. In fact, capitalism, including free market capitalism, believes in government and in the proper use of taxes to operate that government. The distinction is the perceptions on the role, purpose and function of government, and the extent and degree of government. Classical liberalism (modern conservativsm) and modern progressivism view government very differently.
Conservatives believe government is the answer to very little, whereas liberals believe government is the answer to almost everything.
How do we know what the proper roles of government are? Liberals would probably say whatever voters decide. Conservatives might say (though they don’t follow through on this belief) that the Constitution determines the proper role of government. There is some truth in that. The states made a voluntary agreement, and if the states as their corporate entities want to stick with that agreement, they’re free to do so, as long as they don’t violate our God-given rights.
God-given rights is something the founders spoke of, and Scripture is the only way we can really know what our rights are and what the proper role of government is. People are free to associate and contract together to do certain things. What they’re not free to do is force me into their contract or infringe on my rights. Our God-given rights are the corollary to God’s law. I have the right to life because God prohibited murder. I have the right to private property, because God prohibited theft. I have the right to not be cheated on by my wife because God prohibited adultery. I HAVE THE RIGHT TO DO WHATEVER ISN’T A SIN, and even additionally, government has no jurisdiction over the sins that aren’t criminal under God’s law. Anywhere government tries to stop me from doing something that isn’t a sin it is violating my rights. If they take life or property by force (unless I’ve come under their jurisdiction by committing a crime), they are violating my rights.
Conservatives are not anti-government or anti-tax. They believe government is a necessary evil because there are things that only government can do, or do well. Our Founding Fathers were such men. That is why they created a constitutional republic, rooted in federalism to curb a large centralized federal government, and a constitution which limited the federal government to limited and enumerated powers.
When he says there are things that only government can do, he’s wrong. I think what he means is that there are things only people working together can do. The only job of magistrates in Scripture is to punish evildoers (Romans 13:4). There may be many things that people ought to work together to do, such as the infrastructure projects he lists below. If the only way those things can happen is by forcing people to do them, then that’s barbarism.
The role of a federal government in a capitalist society is narrow and constrained and properly limited to such matters as the defining and defense of borders, the creation and maintenance of a military, the management of finance and economics through the creation of and supervision of sound money, the building of large infrastructure projects like roads, bridges, railways, tunnels and canals, law and order including the creation and maintenance of a judicial system to resolve civil and criminal disputes and the establishment of police and fire departments to maintain civil order including protecting private property and personal protection against violence and criminal activity, to include jails and penitentiaries.
I’d definitely disagree with several items on the list. Prison isn’t a just punishment for anything. It isn’t the proper punishment given by God for any crime, but it also punishes society by forcing them to pay for food and shelter for the criminal. Even the victim gets punished by having to pay their share for the criminal’s upkeep.
And he is just making this list up. There is no real basis for saying only government can do these things or that these are the proper roles for government, and the founding fathers would have disagreed with much of the list. There were no police until the 1840s. He’s begging the question.
All civil and orderly societies past and present recognize the legitimate powers of government in such narrow circumstances.
All civil societies? Not Old Testament Israel, and early America didn’t recognize even his short list, though their short list was much longer than Israel’s short list. In fact, any society where people are forced to pay for something isn’t a civil and orderly society at all. And I don’t care how many people are doing it wrong. We have to strive to do it right.
Over time, the United States has drifted from these principles, such as the creation of a postal service. Most believe, mistakenly, that it began with FDR, but it actually began in ernest with Woodrow Wilson. It was under Wilson that a national income tax was created. From the nation’s founding until 1913 the USA had no income tax, yet in that 150 year period we went from a small agrarian society to a world economic power. After 1913, the USA instituted social programs beyond its charter to include the FDA, Social Security, the Departments of Commerce, Agriculture, Energy and Education, to name a few.
Agreed.
Not all government programs are socialist. The difference between capitalism and socialism is not the presence or absence of government, but the degree to which government controls the society and its economy through government programs, government regulations and laws and enforcement actions.
If the government program forces you to pay for it, that is the problem, and that is what makes it socialist. That means that whatever the program is, they are claiming that you don’t own your money. Your money is collectively owned. It’s not really yours, even if it’s temporarily in your bank account. They will transfer their money out of your bank account and claim it’s not stealing, because you owe it to them. The day it comes due, you will pay them, or they will come to collect, with guns if necessary.
Socialism, as you know, is where the means of production and distribution of goods and services are collectively owned by a central government that plans and controls the economy.
Importantly, capitaism and socialism are not mutually exclusive; they can exist in a blended society on certain issues.
American programs such as police or roads or whatever program conservatives like are socialist for the reasons outlined above. You owe the tax, because that money in your possession now, isn’t really yours.
And how do conservatives know what a valid government program is? The only possible source for such information is Scripture. No one references Scripture. They just make up the list.
A modern day example of confusion on socialism are the Scandinavian countries of Sweden, Norway and Finland. They are often cited as successful examples of socialism. They are not socialist countries. They are free market capitalist countries with socialist policies on two key issues: health care and education. And they have very high taxes to pay for them, except that Finland recently abandoned its public health system because it was bankrupting the country.
He’s right on this, though I hadn’t heard the part about Finland. Some countries are more socialist than others, and some of those countries he listed rival the U.S. for economic freedom. That’s not to say their socialist programs aren’t pure evil, because they are. They just aren’t the bastions of blonde-hair, blue-eyed socialism that liberals like to think. They don’t want you to look at that icky off-white socialism in Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea, etc. Of course, they don’t reference the skin color; it’s funny how that works out.
In conclusion, an American who expects his or her taxes to be used to create and fund a government sponsored municipal police force to protect them, their family and their home is not a socialist. I am not a socialist but I expect to get the Social Security benefits promised me. Why? Because the government took my money without my consent and against my will for 47 years of my working life. I want my money back.
Again, the issue is being forced to pay for a program you don’t want. If people aren’t happy with their police service, they should be able to unsubscribe and use a different service, or even switch to a DIY solution such as carrying a gun. The free market will cause firms to innovate new solutions to more efficiently serve people. You will get way better service from the free market for less than the money you pay in taxes, because socialism doesn’t work.
I see his argument about Social Security. The problem is that the only way he’ll get his money is for it to be stolen from someone else. His money was stolen and given away to his socialist grandma. The only possible way for Social Security to come to an end is for someone to have paid into it and receive nothing in return. Who will that be? Well baby boomers will make damn sure it’s not them.
Someone who believes the government can and should provide cradle to grave services and is willing to sacrifice their freedoms and most of their earnings for those services is a socialist. Socialism and communism are a hand and glove. Socialism is an economic system, and communism is a political system that runs a socialist economy.
Some socialists want cradle to grave services. Some socialists just want to sacrifice a little bit of freedom to get government police services. Just a 7% sales tax for police isn’t too much to give up, right? Well, maybe we can bump it up to 8% for the next 20 years if they need bullet-proof vests and new cruisers. Surely sacrificing that little bit of freedom and making my neighbors pay, even if they disagree, isn’t too much freedom to surrender? Well, I for one, refuse to surrender any of my God-given rights to an evil government or my greedy, covetous neighbors.
Communism, as a political form of governance, cannot exist without an underlying socialist economy. Capitalists can and do believe in government and taxes but want them narrowly defined, controlled and exercised.
True capitalists believe that no one can force you to pay for something you don’t want. That isn’t just my opinion. That is what the Bible teaches.
I keep running into my former teachers on Facebook who say some of the most retarded things. This woman was never my teacher, but she must be a real winner, because she’s a principal currently. People with her logic skills ought to be placed in positions of authority, right?
Really, I blame pastors for being unwilling to teach on any political topics, even though Scripture speaks clearly on it. Christians are supposed to protect the weak, but when the majority of citizens vote to have government force an individual to pay for something, the individual is out of luck. The taxpayer must not be the weak person in his relationship to government. There must not be any moral principles involved in taxation and the Bible must not speak about government’s proper role.
However, I blame anyone who sends their children to a government school where the teachers are in unrepentant sin and demonstrate an atrocious level of thinking skills. Sartori is the principal of Mountain View Core Knowledge advocating that people vote for a property tax increase to pay for a swimming pool. Here’s the conversation.
Here’s my initial complicated 3-sentence argument full of supposed logical leaps.
Forcing others to pay for something you want is theft.
Voting for this is committing the sin of covetousness.
Thieves will not inherit the kingdom of God.
Where is the leap? Which proposition does she disagree with? #2 might be new information for people. #3 might be new, but I provided a Bible verse.
As far as #2, if you don’t have the right to force someone to pay for something, how did government get that right? Is government not made of humans? If a group of people don’t have the right to force someone to pay for something, how does a group of people get the right to vote for another group of humans to force someone to pay for something? There is certainly nothing in Scripture that would make it acceptable for government to force people to pay for something and the questions in the paragraph have nothing to do with Scripture.
Sentence #3 might be disagreeable to non-Christians, but I’m only here to tell people what the Bible says. Your covetousness will take you to hell, whether you agree or not.
This is the logic of someone responsible for educating hundreds of people. A greedy, covetous statist woman with extremely limited logic skills. But keep sending your kids and according to Christ, they will be like their teachers.
The bad thing about how the internet works is people can just take things down and break links, so many of the links on this site are just not viewable anymore, and even I don’t know what they were in reference to 100% of the time. I posted this video about John Macarthur’s response to Operation Rescue in the 1980s. One of the links went to an LA Times article, and the link changed. I want to post the article here for safe keeping. It will be easy to find on their website by searching any of the longer phrases.
Here is the video I made, and below that is the text of the LA Times article:
ABORTION PROTESTS IN THE SOUTHLAND : Clerics’ Views Differ Over Militant Action
BY RUSSELL CHANDLER AND JOHN DARTMARCH 25, 1989 12 AM PTTIMES RELIGION WRITERS
The militant Operation Rescue anti-abortion movement has divided the ranks of Southern California Christians and stirred moderate opposition from pro-choice clergy.
But the vast majority of religious leaders–already immersed in Holy Week activities–stayed on the sidelines, in part because of disagreement over the protesters’ tactics of civil disobedience and fundamentalist rhetoric.
Devout Roman Catholics on both sides of the emotionally charged abortion protest paraded, prayed and held signs with opposing messages Friday outside a Long Beach family planning clinic targeted by Operation Rescue.
“I’m not pro-abortion, I’m pro-choice,” declared Armida Brashears, 54, of Huntington Beach, a Catholic mother of three and a member of the Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights. Brashears was accompanied by her placard-carrying mother, 77, “a pro-choice Catholic who goes to church religiously every week,” in the words of her daughter.
But also marching back and forth in front of the clinic was Maria Famolaro, 15, of Cypress, who prayed loudly and earnestly while fingering her rosary.
“We are praying for the people so they will understand abortion is killing those who can’t speak for themselves,” she said.
Few Catholic priests apparently took part in the demonstrations, and Los Angeles Archbishop Roger M. Mahony extended only lukewarm support to Operation Rescue, giving its goals his “blessing” but questioning the effectiveness of its methods.
Norbertine Father Leo John Celano of St. Michael’s Abbey in the Diocese of Orange and a member of the Operation Rescue steering committee said he believed that more Catholic priests did not join him in Long Beach Friday because they are “the least available” just before Easter.
Clergy leadership in Operation Rescue, both nationally and in Southern California, is largely made up of theologically conservative Protestants.
The Rev. Randy Adler, 43, pastor of the nondenominational Stone Mountain Church in Laguna Hills, stressed God’s judgment upon a disobedient nation–a theme heard often in fundamentalist and charismatic church groups.
“The babies are secondary,” Adler, who was arrested during Thursday’s Operation Rescue sit-in in Cypress, said in a brief interview Friday.
“God has always judged nations that have destroyed classes of people. . . . (Abortionists) are brutally murdering the defenseless and innocent. . . . We’ve got their blood on our hands.”
But not all conservative Protestants agree with that interpretation of Scripture.
Grace Community Church in Panorama City, whose senior pastor, John MacArthur, is influential among evangelicals and fundamentalists, explained its opposition to Operation Rescue and civil disobedience in general in an article distributed to its nearly 10,000 churchgoers.
The statement noted that no government authority is requiring abortions to be performed and that the Apostle Paul said that civil law must be obeyed.
While opposing all forms of abortion, MacArthur’s church facetiously chided Operation Rescue for not preventing gays from going into bathhouses, parents from abusing children or otherwise stepping into other situations where “any of God’s laws (are) being broken.”
“The church has never been called to prevent sin by force or intrusion but to proclaim the Gospel to sinners,” the church statement said.
Operation Rescue’s approach provoked opposite responses from two popular Southern California evangelical talk-show hosts.
Rich Buhler of KBRT participated in Friday’s Long Beach demonstration and said he saw nothing wrong with Rescue’s civil disobedience.
“If we really believe it’s a human life in the womb, then we have to do more than print pamphlets and march in front of clinics,” he said.
However, KKLA’s John Stewart said in an interview he remains convinced that day-to-day “sidewalk counseling” by anti-abortion workers outside clinics is much more effective than the dramatic attempts to close down clinics for a day or two.
“God bless the people putting themselves on the line, but this seems almost like a frustrated reaction to the fact that abortion laws have not changed,” Stewart said.
Meanwhile, in a Friday morning news conference at Hollywood United Methodist Church, several pro-choice religious leaders emphasized that religious people within all denominations have differing views on abortion.
“But we disagree in a friendly way . . . rather than this circus attitude that Operation Rescue has brought to Los Angeles,” said the Rev. Ignacio Castuera, pastor of the Hollywood church.
Two Reform Jewish rabbis and Lisa Desposito, the six-months-pregnant state director of Catholics for Free Choice, challenged the tactics of Operation Rescue and defended the “choice” stance on abortion as morally justified.
Judaism has always recognized that when pregnancy threatens the life of the mother, an abortion is permissible, but rabbinical opinion differs on other difficulties surrounding giving birth, said Rabbi Janet Marder, assistant regional director for Reform Jewish congregations in Southern California.
Referring to the protesters, Desposito said: “I don’t see Martin Luther Kings. . . . I see bigots, moral absolutists.”
The Rev. E .V. Hill of Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church in Los Angeles disagreed. In a telephone interview, the pastor said there is a valid comparison between the Rescue operation and the arrest-drawing civil rights movement led by King.
However, Hill and most other prominent Southern California ministers have neither been involved in Operation Rescue nor issued public statements about it.
But on Good Friday, some clergy who did take a stand appealed to the scriptural model of Jesus for support.
“We would honor (Jesus) most this day by following his example,” said the Rev. Martha Siegel, who chairs the Los Angeles Episcopal Diocese Commission on Theology and Human Sexuality.
“In this holy season, we remember Jesus Christ, who did not coerce belief or intimidate people into improper behavior but drew them through his example of self-giving love,” Siegel said at the Hollywood news conference.
And in the crowd Friday, the Rev. Dusty Pruett, 42, pastor of the homosexual-oriented Metropolitan Community Church in Long Beach, declared:
“I think Jesus would be here for women holding up a sign saying, ‘I’m for pro-choice.’ He had a heart for the oppressed.”
The Rev. Joseph Foreman, 34, of the Presbyterian Church in America and national field director of Operation Rescue, also thought that Christ would have been in Long Beach.
“This is Good Friday, when Jesus led the first ‘rescue,’ ” he said, referring to the Christian belief that Jesus saved humanity from sin by his death on the cross.
At least one banner-carrying demonstrator Friday thought the uproar over abortion was beside the point. Premarital sex, insisted Stephen Christian of Los Angeles, is the culprit making abortions necessary.
You may remember Rodney King. He was badly beaten by a few cops, whose trial was moved from LA and a jury of Rodney’s peers to Simi Valley, which is about 90% white. The jury found the cops not guilty, and that sparked the LA riots in 1992. Rodney’s beating was video taped from afar by a guy with a big VHS video camera. If it weren’t for that guy’s video, no one would have ever known about those evil cops.
Today, a lot of cops wear a body camera, and people have video cameras in their pockets, and carry them everywhere. It has led to hundreds of cops being exposed as evil, crooked, power-tripping, dirt bags. However, just as with Rodney King, prosecutors (who are on the same side as the cops) manage to get cops off for the crimes they commit, even when there is video.
For example, several cops have been caught planting drugs by their body cam. Cop apologists say that is the 1% of bad cops they’re talking about. I have a couple of questions about that. Did the police departments in these cases volunteer this video to the defense or the media? Wouldn’t the real measure of the effectiveness of body cams be the rate at which the “good” cops voluntarily use the footage to pursue justice against cops who do bad things? How often, when a cop sees another cop doing something wrong has the good cop requested the footage or taken his own footage of the incident and sought justice for the wrongdoing, or even made an arrest? Are the relatively small proportion of body cams catching bad cops due to defendants, prosecutors or media requesting footage? How hard is it for people to get the footage of any given incident, and are we sure the footage isn’t doctored?
I have no doubt that cops love body cams when they’re falsely accused, and they spread the footage far and wide. I also have no doubt that people have often falsely accused them, and “good” cops ought to love body cams.
All of that is interesting, but the big question this meme raises is: By what standard do we measure “good”? Greg Bahnsen wrote books on that topic, one of which is titled “By What Standard?” I vehemently reject that the standard for what makes a good cop can be found in man’s law. A cop that goes through his career having never abused any citizens, but strictly enforcing unjust laws is not a good cop. The standard for goodness must come from Scripture. God owns the terms good, bad, evil, wicked, righteous and just. Those are terms only he can define.
So what is the biblical definition of a good cop? First of all, socialist-funded security services wouldn’t be permitted in Scripture. Second, individuals having executive power to arrest people on the spot is also biblically prohibited. Third, forgetting the first two issues, the definition for good government would come from Romans 13 (among other places). That chapter teaches that rulers are supposed to be God’s servants to carry out His wrath against evildoers. Every level of U.S. government is prohibited from seeking to be a servant of the God of the Bible. It is unconstitutional.
Did you catch that? It is unconstitutional for our government to be good by God’s definition. There are no good cops, judges, street sweepers, TSA agents, bureaucrats, etc., unless they are somehow sabotaging the system, disobeying orders or refusing to do the sinful things they may be asked to do.
So, body cams have shown that there are plenty of bad cops. And for a Christian to post this meme only goes to show the sad state of the American church.
Body cams are great, because even though they may not be effective all the time, and may be tampered with, they have exposed many dirty cops. I would also think that police would be less likely to abuse people with their body cams on. Ultimately, the only thing that will improve police behavior is if they’re prosecuted and treated under the same law as everyone else. Having cops commit a crime on body cam and then having the prosecutor not prosecute or throw the case is useless.
I’ve discussed the general error of this meme before, but I ran across it again, and thought I would point out another error it puts forth.
When discussing government, many Christians will quote Romans 13 to you as if that is an argument in itself. Romans 13 defines the purpose of government. Biblical government has one purpose and that is to punish criminals. It’s not the government’s job to protect anyone.
For a knowledgeable Christian to espouse an unbiblical purpose for government shows the level of knowledge among American Christians.
