Living Branches on Dead Roots

A student of mine recently wrote in a paper: "The rejection of miracles is the cornerstone of Deism. Not coincidentally, miracles are the cornerstone of Christianity, considering that the miracle of the resurrection is what sets Christianity apart from all other religions."

Thus Deism's effort to redefine Christianity as a religion of mere morals is a gutting of the Faith. No wonder every mainline Christian denomination is dying. They are dying simply because they try to reduce Christianity to the moral code it has in common with all other religions.  You can't put a living branch on a dead root and expect life.

Black and White and Grey Matters

Rene Descartes famously said "Cogito ergo sum" ( I think, therefore I am). The mind was undoubtable.  The universe was matter but man ruled it with his mind. It was mind over matter. What could be the matter with that?

Well the modernists said mind is nothing more than matter, that is "grey matter." The mind is merely a function of the brain. In fact, as Carl Sagan famously said, "The Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be."

If this is the fact of the matter, then nothing really is the matter with anything. Mind, will, and emotions are the secretions of matter that's subject to the laws of the material universe. You can't hold someone accountable for following the laws of the universe, unless there's something else in the universe and beyond it. If we're reduced to grey matter, there's no black or white.

C. S. Lewis once said something like: you cannot posit evil in the world unless there's a Good beyond it. When a man calls a line crooked he must know what a straight line is. When we complain about this world we must be comparing it to something.

So if man is more than matter in motion, where do we get our transcendent standards?


Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.
(Genesis 1:24-27 ESV)

Nature and Gay Marriage

Marriage begins in a wedding, which implies the bringing together of two people who fit together. God is the God of nature and he has left in nature a testimony of what goes together and what doesn't. We don't need a degree in anatomy to see the obvious.

Nature has not equipped people of the same sex for sexual union. Do we need further proof? Those unions don't have the "innate" ability to reproduce. In other words, reproduction isn't natural to those unions. The receiving of children to those unions is artificial and thus not endorsed by nature or nature's God.

Now what state would have a problem recognizing that nature of things? Maybe a state separated from nature and nature's God. The two go together, don't they. If we reject God we lose our common sense grip on the nature of things. We start thinking that we can make nature conform to us, instead of conforming ourselves to the nature of things.

This is not to deny that same sex attraction is a real thing. But when we start thinking that any desire we have is natural, we can justify anything. We cannot lose sight of the fact that we are fallen. Something has gone wrong with our sexuality, and nature and nature's God stand as a testimony to that fact. Our desires need to be directed toward the Good as defined by nature. What state cannot recognize this fact? Our state? I hope not.


Righteousness exalts a nation,
but sin is a reproach to any people.
(Proverbs 14:34 ESV)


Now therefore, O kings, be wise;
be warned, O rulers of the earth.
Serve the LORD with fear,
and rejoice with trembling.
Kiss the Son,
lest he be angry, and you perish in the way,
for his wrath is quickly kindled.
Blessed are all who take refuge in him.
(Psalm 2:10-12 ESV)