Houston, Texas now holds one of the world’s seven Ismaili Muslim centers
This is the first such center in the United States.
Other centers are in Vancouver, Toronto, London, Lisbon, Dubai, and Dushanbe.
Fathers must take matters into their own hands. I suggest beginning with the Westminster Shorter Catechism for teaching doctrine to your wives and children.
The proliferation of parachurch ministry is an indictment of the church.
We must return to instilling church members with rich, biblical doctrine.
This would rightly be brought forth by the elders of the church, but sadly this is not often the case these days.
The proliferation of parachurch ministry is an indictment of the church.
We must return to instilling church members with rich, biblical doctrine.
This would rightly be brought forth by the elders of the church, but sadly this is not often the case these days.
Strong disagree.
Problem 1: Your understanding of "meek" is a translation problem !!!
I hate when I see this line misquoted like this. I am going to go deep on the etymology here so I apologise in advance for the length but it's worth going into detail here.
This passage is first written using the Hebrew word "anav" which means "those bowed down" and refers to devotion to the Lord rather than capability. You can be strong and still bow down to God. This word is also used to describe Moses in Numbers. It calls Moses the meekest man on earth. Bear in mind that Moses is the man who killed an Egyptian slave driver, confronted Pharaoh to his face, and led a nation out of an empire. Whatever the Bible means by meek, it does not mean weak.
We also see how wrong the modern interpretation of "meek" is when we look at the Greek translation, "praus". This was the word Aristotle used for the virtue of controlled anger: the man who can feel anger and act on it, but keeps it under command. The Greeks used the same word for a trained animal. All the strength is still there. It just answers to a master now.
Meekness in Scripture is strength that submits to God instead of to appetite. It is the man who has power and does not use it for himself. That is why turning the other cheek is a virtue: it only counts if you could have hit back. A weak man declining a fight is not meek. He is just weak. Jesus himself is the model. He calls HIMSELF praus, and the same man made a whip and drove the money changers out of the temple, then walked into a death he could have avoided at any point. None of that is passivity. It is power held under perfect command.
Problem 2: The idea that Christianity celebrates weakness is a modern misconception.
Look at who Christians actually celebrated for 2000 yrs.
The martyrs were not killed for being harmless, in fact the opposite really.
The missionaries were not timid either. One walked into pagan Germany and cut down Thor's sacred oak in front of the tribe that worshipped it. Patrick went back to the island that had enslaved him and converted it. These men took a continent without an army.
The Church canonizes soldiers, like Joan of Arc, a teenage girl who led armies. Its most famous image of an angel is Michael with a sword at Satan's throat. Its own name for believers on earth is the Church Militant. Paul tells Christians to put on armor and fight the good fight. None of this is the vocabulary of a religion that celebrates weakness.
The modern conception of a "meek" Jesus is a modern invention. "Gentle Jesus, meek and mild" is a children's hymn from 1742. The harmless Jesus came out of the modern nursery, not the ancient Church, and Nietzsche took the nursery version at face value and built "slave morality" on top of it.
So, to Augustus' question, how do we reconcile these two things? Who has done it before?
The Medieval concept of Chivalry!
The medieval knight was the deliberate fusion of Homer and the Gospel. C.S. Lewis wrote a great essay on this (https://t.co/yWMNVCocwH). His point was that the knight is not a compromise between fierceness and gentleness, some watered down average of the two. He is maximally fierce in battle and maximally gentle at home, at the same time, in one man. That is Christian meekness in practice: the full Homeric capacity for violence, brought under command.
So the claim that no one has reconciled them because they are not reconcilable is just wrong as history. The Middle Ages did it at civilizational scale and held it for centuries.
If a woman were to spend all day long praying and chanting, her style of life would not be as agreeable to God as if she were a wife who patiently performed her duties, feeding her children, caring for them, guiding them and doing all she could to teach and train them — Calvin
The PCA clearly has effective self-regulations mechanisms. The problem is that it won’t apply them to those who err on the left.
But those to the right? Full send.
The PCA is at risk of becoming extremely irrelevant.