Richard Ritenbaugh, reflecting on the popular song, "My Way," (popularized by Frank Sinatra) warns that God's Called-out ones should never emulate the haughty and self-willed attitude this song glorifies. God created us in His image, giving us the wherewithal to expand Eden worldwide. If Adam and Eve had followed God's instructions, they and their posterity would have accomplished this. Instead, the drives of carnal nature proved to be more important to them than obedience to their Creator, an orientation which dashed all hopes they would spread Edenic bliss worldwide. In Psalm 14, we learn that no one has of himself overcome the pulls of carnality to overt evil, rebellion and hostility toward God. Carnal human nature and Godly character are polar opposites, as Paul illustrated in Romans 7, where he bemoans the power of his carnality to compel him to do the opposite of what he knew to be God's will. Carnal pulls are easy to follow because they lead us to "go with the flow" of the world. To walk in the Spirit means swimming against the current, aligning ourselves with God's will by doing three things: (1) Becoming a living sacrifice, committing ourselves to lifelong service to God, (2) actively participating or cooperating in our transformation by adjusting our thoughts to be in sync with His and (3) employing three essential baseline attitudes—humility, clear-headed thinking, and faith. The Apostle James points out that to know what is right and to willfully go against this knowledge is sin. All of us stand guilty under that definition of sin. God wants to see striving in the battle against sin.
Richard Ritenbaugh, acknowledging that Americans have a reputation for kindness warns that we are likely more and more to see a dark underside of America, where hardness of heart supplants kindness. In this milieu, chesed (covenant loyalty and mercy, or showing loving kindness to the most aggravating sinner) cannot exist. David demonstrated chesed by displaying kindness to Jonathan's son Mephibosheth, in spite of the potential dangers doing so could bring to himself. The greater David, our Savior Jesus Christ, also exhibits chesed, loving us while we were still hostile to Him. Both Ruth and Naomi demonstrated covenant loyalty, remaining loyal to the marriage covenant long after the death of their spouses. Ruth faithfully continued to serve her mother-in-law, at what appeared to be great sacrifice to her own interests. Through her choice to become betrothed to Boaz, declining the attentions of more youthful suitors, she demonstrated a special covenant loyalty for which God blessed her by including her in the genealogy of the Messiah. Like Ruth and like Our Savior Jesus Christ, we must assume the role of a servant, obeying the marching orders of Micah 6:8: Walking humbly, justly, and demonstrating chesed.
Richard Ritenbaugh acknowledges that it is a tough time to be a parent, especially with leftist 'progressive' draconian child endangerment laws, threatening to confiscate offspring if parents dare to publicly discipline them. Recently, the University of Virginia's Institute on Advanced Culture identified four current parenting styles ,(1) the faithful, (20% of the population) sticking to religious principles, talking about religion, (2) the engaged progressives (21% of the population), focusing on teaching children responsibility and decision-making, but leaving religion out, relying on personal and subjective experience , (3) the detached-hands off, non-interfering, laisses-faire style, (19% of the population), and (4) the over-indulgent American Dreamer style (27% of the population), putting their children on a pedestal, super-inflating their egos. British Nanny Emma Jenner, explaining the failure in modern child-rearing practices, suggests that parents now (1) have a fear of their children, not wanting to upset them, (2) have lowered the expectation bar, making no demands on them, (3) have lost support from the public in terms of instilling respect for authority figures, (4) have relied on shortcuts such as television and video games instead of genuine interactive supervision, and (5) have become worn-out slaves of their children. To counteract these deleterious practices, parents must take three actions. (1) They must establish their authority—the earlier the better, realizing that the biblical line of command consists of God the Father, Jesus Christ, the husband, the wife, and the children as subjects, and not the other way around. (2) Parents must also be consistent and on the same page, refusing to be manipulated by crafty dividing tactics of their offspring. (3) Finally, parents must be involved with their offspring, staying at post all the time, supervising their maturation into God-fearing people.
Revelation 20:1-3 prophesies a mighty angel taking hold of the Devil and casting him into the bottomless pit for a thousand years. While this is not depicting Satan's ultimate judgment, Richard Ritenbaugh explains that the binding of Satan for a thousand years will relieve humanity of a huge weight of spiritual oppression.
Richard T. Ritenbaugh: We live in a self-indulgent age. Advertisers tell us to pamper ourselves and get all that we can as soon as we can. Politicians promise high-cost "freebies" that only a few years ago required ...
Martin Collins, citing statistics from the World Health Organization, identifies suicide as the third leading cause of death among 15-24 year-olds, immediately following homicide and accidents. It is the tenth leading cause of death for all ages, snuffing out 105 lives each day and 300,000 per year. Contributory factors for this evil include depression, deteriorating family life, media glorification, and the pervasive drug culture. The progressive liberal culture, promoting early sexuality, self-esteem, and self-love since the early 1950’s, have not factored in the inconvenient truth that the brain development of a young adult often does not coalesce until the age of 25. The perverse self-absorption promoted by our current culture is a major contributory cause of suicide because individuals feel they are responsible only to themselves, forgetting that God is the giver of all life and owns us totally. We are not our own; we belong to God. Suicide is a direct breaking of the Sixth Commandment. The antidote to suicide is to replace the twisted, skewed, self-absorbed mindset with a determination to serve others, taking upon ourselves the yoke of Jesus Christ, who alone is able to heal a broken heart.
Martin Collins, averring one of the major things for which we can be thankful is the marriage covenant, examines some of the chilling, corrosive, and detrimental consequences to a society which spurns the God-given marriage covenant. Radical feminism has tried to empower one gender by disabling and marginalizing the other gender, creating a pathological, dysfunctional society in which women cannot find good men to love and cherish and men cannot find good women to love and cherish. The irresponsible social engineers who have launched the ill-fated sexual revolution have damaged the family structure, polarizing men and women rather than viewing them as inseparable partners (metaphorically like two halves of the moon) as God had intended. The pattern of Eve as a help-meet to Adam was instituted before Adam and Eve sinned and was consequently not abrogated by Christ's sacrifice as some Biblical feminists have asserted. Women, to be sure, were never created as servants to their spouses but as complementary companions, sharing physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual relationships which mirror Christ's love for the church by sacrificing His very life for her. God intended husbands and wives to be one in mind and spirit, not bifurcated as Solomon's spiritual relationships with his pagan wives. Marrying outside of the faith makes it difficult to establish this spiritual connection. Daniel Lapin has summarized the pitfalls of the egalitarian marriage arrangements as encouraged by 'liberated' women. In our decadent western culture, the mortal enemies of the marriage covenant consist of (1) the pleasure seeking new-hedonism (or the 'new' morality), (2) the widespread acceptance of adultery, (3) the ease of divorce and annulment, and (4) the legalization of abortion (the equivalent of apostate ancient Israel's sacrificing children to Molech. Marriage was created for us to understand the spiritual God-plane relationship between Christ and the Church.
One of the "big questions" of philosophy asks whether human beings are by nature good or evil, and despite a long history of philosophers and theologians weighing in on the subject, people seem to be evenly split on the answer. Richard Ritenbaugh, going to the Bible for God's answer, finds that Scripture is consistent in its description of man's nature.
Martin Collins, asserting that prolonged inactivity will cause muscle mass to deteriorate, draws some compelling parallels to the equally alarming deterioration of masculine leadership, currently under attack in our culture by liberal progressive humanists and strident radical feminists. Consequently, many of our young men have become namby-pamby or self-centered, unable to provide for a family or contribute something productive to society. Although men have no moral or mental advantages over women, God has commissioned them to actively lead, providing a measure of security and stability to family and society. Man and woman are both fashioned in God's image, each gender having only a portion of the composite picture. Together, they are commissioned to be fruitful and multiply. In the family structure, man was instructed to lead the family and ardently love his spouse, while woman was commissioned to submit to his leadership, as both submitted to God's leadership. In assuming leadership roles, men need to abandon self-centeredness and adopt other-centeredness, being willing to go the extra mile as a living sacrifice. Feminism and cultural Marxism cannot give society the leadership our culture needs; only God's ordained family structure, with a man willing to be a living sacrifice, will fulfill that pressing need.
Ryan McClure suggests that each year the calendar is filled with meaningful events, but what we consider important is modified by maturity and experience. Eventually, we learn that the world does not revolve around us and we defer to the needs of others. Our children teach us the magnitude of the selfishness we have emerged out of, or perhaps have not yet come out of. As we mature, we have an obligation to continually readjust our priorities, designating some things as more important than others. Warren Buffett suggests assembling a list of 25 things we would like to do, circling the five most important, and discarding or ignoring all the rest. Developing a relationship with God should always occupy the first priority, with a laser-sharp focus on our part, drowning out the noise of the world. Our job and our monetary wealth should never eclipse our relationships with God and with our family. If we seek God's righteousness and His Kingdom, our financial worries or concerns will be taken care of. God the Father and Jesus Christ never wavered from their priority of building a family. As God's called-out ones, we must screen out the allure of Babylon and make sure that God is always number one on our list of priorities.
Richard Ritenbaugh, reflecting on the holiness movement of the 19th century which led to the emergence of Pentecostal and charismatic congregations, persuasions which have engulfed one-fourth of the entirety of Christian denominations and 8% of the world's population, warns that "Pentecostalism," with its emphasis on the emotions, the intuitive, the sensational as being more important than the intellectual, meditative, and reflective, carries some serious dangers to a true believer. When examining the early ministry of the prophet Elijah, it seems that he had succumbed to a kind of emotional, self-centered, charismatic "Pentecostal" mindset, petulantly assuming God would provide a cornucopia of miracles for him. Elijah really felt on top of his game after God consumed his sacrifice in the contest with the prophets of Baal, indicating (to Elijah) that God would intervene at his will and desire. Elijah needed to learn that God was in charge of the relationship, not the other way around. Our forebears on the Sinai were stiff-necked, imposing their will on God, practicing wrong-doing to see if God were watching, acting carelessly (presumptuously), assuming God was duty-bound to take care of them, all the while twisting God's word to suit their plans. Elijah evidently was up-ended by Jezebel's threatening response, and felt a compulsion to run for his life, drifting ultimately into a near-catatonic depression, evidently indifferent to God's intervention and protection. God is more interested in quietness and meekness than in bombastic displays of power.
Richard T. Ritenbaugh: Just this month, a longtime California politician, State Senator Leland Yee (D-San Francisco), who is charged with gun trafficking and corruption for allegedly accepting bribes, suggested that money for political campaigns should come from state coffers because “money just simply corrupts. ...
Back in my college days, one of my roommates was continually bemused by the football fanatics who identified with their team so closely that they would speak in the first person. ...
Most people consider the second commandment to deal with making or falling down before a pagan idol, but it has far greater scope. John Ritenbaugh shows that it covers all aspects of the way we worship, including setting ourselves up in God's place by becoming enslaved to our own desires.
The dictionary defines anger as "a strong feeling of displeasure and usually of antagonism." ...
Richard T. Ritenbaugh: How should one describe the news that the world's largest automaker and the United States' biggest corporation, General Motors (GM), will cut 30,000 jobs (17% of its 173,000-employee North American workforce) and close a dozen facilities by 2008? By all rights, Americans should consider it to be huge news. ...
Martin Collins, reflecting upon the impatience demonstrated in the world's holidays, concludes that most of mankind has a serious patience deficit. Demonstrating or developing patience, a cardinal characteristic of God, in the face of trying events is a clear indication that we are developing genuine godliness. We must learn to turn trials into positive growth opportunities, as did Jacob, who had to develop patience in the midst of myriad, frustrating delays. We must learn to endure patiently, with the help of God's Spirit, waiting for God to accomplish His purpose in us. After identifying 18 negative consequences of impatience, the sermon offers five steps to developing patience: 1) staying focused on the goal, 2) learning to think before speaking, 3) looking for ways to give our service to others, 4) working out our conflicts with others, and 5) working with God through the Spirit to develop godly patience in us, developing a calm, positive attitude and peace of mind.
Richard T. Ritenbaugh: Most of us have heard country singer Lee Greenwood's most famous song, "Proud to Be an American. ...
Understanding our obligation to Christ leads to a deeply held, personal loyalty to Him. John Ritenbaugh explains that our redemption by means of Christ's sacrifice should make us strive to please Him in every facet of life.
We all have low days on occasion, but when our despondency turns to self-pity, we have a problem. The "woe is me" attitude can mire us in stagnation and severely hamper our growth because self-pity is just another form of self-centeredness.
Maybe the most basic impediment to overcoming is our innate selfishness. Our goal, however, is to bear the character of our God, whose primary characteristic is love or outgoing concern for others.
We can easily slide quickly down the path of spiritual self-destruction when self-will becomes dominent in our lives. Our goal is to live by God's will, not our own!
Richard Ritenbaugh, citing the African Proverb, 'It takes a village' asserts that this principle more aptly applies to the church, specifically designed to serve as a support for those in need. In this era of 'going it alone' or 'cocooning,' we as a people like to be self-sufficient without any support from others. Consequently we become self-centered, self-absorbed, showing little concern for others. As Christians, especially in our current scattered condition, we need to fight this pervasive trend, forming warm, productive, quality relationships with our brethren, actively ministering to the needs of one another. The ministry functions to equip members to become other centered (or family centered), serving one another and applying righteousness for the good of others. If we refuse to apply this practical knowledge, actively serving one another as interdependent joints, we miss the mark of coming to the unity of Christ.
Are birthday celebrations as harmless as they seem? Do they help or hinder the growth of a child's character? This article advances a spiritual principle concerning birthdays that many do not consider.
Faith and fidelity to God and His way of life should be a major part of our character. In this fourth article on the weightier matters, it details what faith and fidelity are, how to recognize a lack of them in our lives and how to develop them so we can grow into the image of Jesus Christ.
What does God see in Israel that so affronts Him that He has to swear "by His holiness"? Israel had every opportunity that the Gentiles did not have: His calling, His promises, His Word, His laws. He gave the Israelites these gifts to help them develop into His sons and daughters, but God sees them as diametrically opposite of Himself. Should not God expect to see some of His characteristics in His sons?
John Ritenbaugh insists that the reprobate mind God consigned to nonbelievers (a mind incapable of moral judgment) constitutes the basis for the world's dubious standards of morality and idolatry. Discernment of right and wrong comes exclusively from doing the will of God. Idolatry derives from worshiping the work of our own hands or our own mental fabrications (imposing our own will against God's) rather than the true God (to be worshiped only in spirit and truth). Whatever consumes our thoughts and behavior (motivated by lust or covetousness for something forbidden by God's law) has become our god or our idol.
John Ritenbaugh observes that the over-riding motivation for the individuals bringing to Jesus the woman caught in adultery was to trap Him, impaling Him on the horns of a dilemma. (Condemning the woman to death would have brought Him into conflict with Roman law; not condemning Her would have brought Him into conflict with the law of Moses.) Jesus, when He wrote in the dirt, perhaps listed instances in which the spirit of the law was violated in the thoughts or behaviors of the accusers, exposing the cruel, condemnatory attitude of the Pharisees. God's approach to authority is that it should be used to serve, and that the chief function of judging (from the stance of humility, mercy, and understanding) is to evaluate and to gently correct and reclaim rather than to condemn. Jesus, claiming to be the light of the world (drawing on a familiar temple ceremony involving candelabras), emphasizes His function as the Messiah, the embodiment of truth, giving form, shape, and substance to our lives, guiding us around or through life's difficulties. Believing that Jesus is God will motivate us to submit to Him in every aspect of our lives, providing an antidote to enslaving fears common to all of mankind, freeing us from the bondage of sin.