Saturday, October 30, 2010

"The Force Be With You"


By Pastor Larry DeBruyn

“They have discovered a subatomic particle called a lepton. And the general consensus is that leptons do exist as individual subatomic particles. The only hitch is they’ve only been able to observe leptons in communities of two and three. And so they said, yes, we understand that this is a single lepton, the problem is we only find them existing in groups of two and three oneness. And so the Newtonian understanding of cause and effect has simply taken a beating with quantum physics; because you take a picture of an atom, you take a picture of the same atom a second layer; they don’t know what it’s going to do.

Well, the assumption was always there was an element of predictability at the very bedrock foundational part of the universe. But the problem is quantum physicists are just saying what when you get right down to the smallest thing, that makes a thing, that makes a thing, that makes a thing, essentially the universe at its core is unpredictable. The best we can come up with is that the universe at its core is some sort of relationship of energy.

"So you have brilliant, studied, respected research scientists saying all we can come up is the universe at its core is made up of some sort of relational energy that we simply can’t control, some of them are even starting to use words like personality. And that this energy that holds everything together, that brought everything into existence, and somehow sustains or holds everything in existence, gives life to everything, and simply has a mind of its own, we cannot conquer it or put it into a box. It is simply above and beyond what we can comprehend.

"High end particle quantum subatomic physicists are starting to sound a lot like ancient Near-Eastern Jewish poets.”
Rob Bell, “Everything is Spiritual #2"*

Dicey Design

As many know, Intelligent Design calls into question the Darwinian worldview and the academic establishment that espouses it. The anthropic principle, the idea that we live in a physical and biological universe so minutely calibrated as to enable human life to exist and survive, opposes the random philosophy of life implied by atheistic evolutionism.[55] After all, how can design exist without a Designer, the One the Bible introduces as God? (See Genesis 1:1.) Does our reality exist for reason of “chance,” or the Creator? Are we to think that an explosion (chaos) in a printing shop produced the Encyclopedia Britannica (a fractal)?

The new physics with its attendant aspects of chaos and fractal theory, views such a lucky transformation as possible. Inherent within chaos is design. The planetary junkyard we live in may morph into a new car, provided the “green movement” can first prevent our earth from becoming a graveyard. The ecological crisis must be solved in order to buy the time necessary for the environment to evolve into a higher fractal form.

When the shift between Newtonian and quantum physics took place in the last century, Albert Einstein (1879-1955), believing in the old theory but fascinated by the possibilities of the new, protested stating, “God does not play dice with the universe.”[56] Fractal-ism seems to be an attempt to account for the design in the universe absent a Designer . . . design by chance. Quantum-ism assumes that a self-originated, self-existent, and self-contained system, or universe, is also a self-creating, self-transforming, and self-evolving complexity continuously organizing from chaos into fractals. Reality is a continuum of disorder to order, order to disorder, disorder to order, and so on and so on, from infinity to infinity. The system, it is believed, possesses an inherent ability to transform itself. Order can emerge out of disorder, fractals out of chaos.

Dynamic Monism
So if hope exists, it resides in the ability of the system, in which human beings are the conscious part, to self-transform. Because of the way the universe works independent of the transcendent God, the worldview might be called, “dynamic monism.” Though God remains materialized and energized in the cosmic processes—a sort of divinity does remain in, around, and through all things—He is depersonalized. No longer considered holy, God comes to be known by dynamic monists as “the Force,” or the “It” of everything. This panentheistic and/or pantheistic view of life deny the sovereignty and providence of the Creator.

We can note the similarity of “dynamic-monism” to an ancient philosophy propounded by Anaximander (c. 610 BC–c. 546 BC). In his City of God, Augustine (354-430) noted the philosopher believed:

each thing springs from its own proper principle. These principles of things he [Anaximander] believed to be infinite in number, and . . . that [the principles] generated innumerable worlds . . . He thought . . . these worlds are subject to a perpetual process of alternate dissolution [chaos?] and regeneration [fractals?], each one continuing for a longer or shorter period of time, according to the nature of the case . . .[57]

In difference to intelligent design, Augustine noted that Anaximander did not “attribute anything to a divine mind in the production of all this activity of things.”
In the quantum view of reality, design just seems to happen, but some hypothesize that via human consciousness (presumed to be the cosmos’ intelligent-control mechanism), humans can cause it to happen.[58]

The Consciousness Connexion
According to the old physics, humans were observers of the universe. According to the new way of understanding the universe, humans are participants. The New Spirituality hypothesizes that consciousness and cosmos are connected within a holistic universe, that spirituality and science, metaphysics and physics are interdependent aspects of the monistic and dynamic One. Not only can humans watch the universe operate, they also possess the ability to affect the happening of it. The German physicist Werner Heisenberg (1901-1976) for example, was one of the first advocates of the uncertainty principle. He is quoted to have said:


After all, if perchance God be removed from the system, what, or who, is left? Only the System is left, and the New Spirituality therefore calls upon humans, as the conscious parts of the System, to exercise their consciousness and play God.


To the new spiritualists, the universe is just “there.” Within a universe seen as self-contained and self-creating, it becomes “natural” for an environmentally conscious New Age/Aquarian spirituality to combine philosophy with physics, to link the cosmos with human consciousness, to take the “quantum leap” from the physical to the metaphysical, and to combine science with spirituality.[50] Some even label the connection between consciousness and cosmos, Quantum Spirituality.[61] In his book Soul Tsunami, Leonard Sweet states:

One of the greatest changes in perspective is the postmodern redefinition of size at both the gargantuan and the miniscule levels. Physics is increasingly becoming the study of matter so small (is it a wave? is it a particle?) as to become the study of consciousness. In other words, physics is becoming metaphysics.[62]

Generally, the existential leap involves three phases.[63]

First, any God—who is before, separate from, and therefore above the universe—is denied. Referring to the Jewish Shema which says, “Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one!” (Deuteronomy 6:4), a Rabbi explains:

My genuine experience of life is that there is nothing ‘out there.’ This is all there is. And when you see the seamlessness of it all (monism?), that’s what I mean by ‘God.’ . . . If you ask me what 9/11 really did, it made me understand the truth that, ‘Everything is one.’ Not that there’s some guy hanging out there who has it all together, who we call ‘One,’ but that it is all one.[64]

In contrast, the Bible pictures reality as dualistic. God existed before and separate from the universe which He created out of nothing (creatio ex nihilo). Therefore, “below and above” is not a “seamless whole.” The God in heaven above is separate from earth below. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1). Jesus told those authorities who were His antagonists, “You are from below, I am from above; you are of this world, I am not of this world” (John 8:23). To believe it to be otherwise, that “Everything is the One,” is pantheism; and pantheism is atheism.

God “In” Process
Panentheism (i.e., nature houses the divine Soul) is basic to The Shack’s view of God’s being. For reality to be a “mess-below-but-fractal-above,” demands belief that a divine Soul infuses the material universe; that the Soul is not only “around” everything, but is also “through” and “in” everything.[65] Thus, Jesus explains to Mack about “Papa-Elousia” in The Shack:

Being always transcends appearance—that which only seems to be. . . . That is why Elousia is such a wonderful name. God who is the ground of all being, dwells in, around, and through all things—ultimately emerging as the real—and any appearances that mask that reality will fall away (The Shack, 112).

So “the ground of all being” who is a Papa goddess, “dwells in, around, and through all things.” Though it disavows that nature is God (i.e., pantheism), panentheism believes that nature is permeated with a divine Soul. For example, if someone hugs a tree, they are not physically hugging God per se, but they are putting their arms around an object that, along with the rest of nature, houses the divine Soul. Thus, everything and everyone is endowed with an aura of sacredness. Such a worldview, so the thinking goes, will provide humanity with the spiritual basis and incentive to love one another, the creation, and thereby solve the ecological crisis.

Second, because they view reality as a monistic-seamless whole independent of “some-One-out-there,” the New Spirituality deduces the universe to be a self-originated, self-contained, self-perpetuating, self-creating and self-evolving system “which is just there.”

Third, how then, according to this systemic view of everything, are we to understand spirituality? Spirituality comes to be defined as an experience of feeling connected to and aligned with the Universe (i.e., the System, Nature, or Creation), the Source of everything that just is—as above, so below, as without, so within. One Aquarian spiritualist explains:

Knowing that there’s this interconnectedness of the universe that we are all interconnected and we are connected to the universe at its fundamental level . . . I think is as good a definition of spirituality as there is.[56]

To cultivate the consciousness of becoming and being one with the One, to feel connected to and aligned with the seamless whole of Nature, mystical experiences are necessary. Such spiritual encounters become means to that end. Something must happen to shift a person’s inner consciousness to that of feeling connected to Creation, to awaken the dormant divinity that assumedly lies within every person. Mystical experience must transform sub-consciousness (below) into consciousness (above). So as one professor of religion explains, “Mysticism constitutes a core tradition within all the world’s religions and is, above all, a positive and awesome experience of the mystery and miracle of being rather than hypothesis, inference, or mere belief about it.”[67] Another states:

In certain forms of mysticism, there is an experience of identification with every life form . . . Within the deep ecological movement, poetical and philosophical expressions of such experiences are not uncommon.[68]

Thus, we observe that the New Spirituality includes pursuit of mystical experiences through which contemplators—via techniques including meditation, chanting, drumming, and taking drugs—will supposedly develop a consciousness of feeling “at-one-ment” with “the One” which is Nature, which is whatever is “there.”

Likewise, while denigrating a biblical worldview as one of unnecessary institutions, arbitrary authority, and inhibiting rules, The Shack is big on experiencing “Creation” with a capital “C”—strolling in the garden, hiking in the forests, lying on a dock and looking up at the stars in the night skies, exploring caves, walking on water, and so on.[69] Thus a reader of The Shack is introduced to the role played by consciousness in the worldview of the New Spirituality.

To be continued. . . .

55. See William A. Dembski, Intelligent Design, The Bridge Between Science & Theology (Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 1999). In this book’s “Foreword,” Michael J. Behe summarizes that physically, “the universe is fine-tuned for life, ranging from the strength of the gravitational constant to the values of the resonance levels of carbon nuclei to the frequency of supernovae.” He also points out that biologically, design lies at “the cellular basis of life, where molecular machines of stunning complexity carry out life’s most basic tasks.” (p. 11).
56. Thomas Torrance, “Reflections: Einstein and God,” Center of Theological Inquiry (,+%22dice%22&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=3&gl=us).
57. Augustine, “City of God,” Great Books of the Western World, Volume 18, Robert Maynard Hutchins, Editor in Chief (Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc,) Book VIII, Chapter 2, page 265.
58. Ibid.
59. Emphasis Mine, Werner Heisenberg quoted by Fritjof Capra, The Tao of Physics, 18. Capra also quotes Quantum physicists Julius Robert Oppenheimer and Niels Bohr with the supposition that quantum mechanics and quantum mysticism compliment one another. In other words, there is a quantum link between science and spirituality!
Philosopher Ken Wilbur on the other hand, thinks that merging particle physics to mystical spirituality is in error. Though many quantum physicists were mystics, they were not so for reason of science. Wilbur rejects the “physics-supports-mysticism” idea because of the “uncertainty” that quantum theory is science’s final view of reality. Like quantum theory has done to the old Newtonian worldview, one day it too will probably be superseded by some new theory of reality, and if this should happen, then Wilbur knows that any spirituality connected to the quantum worldview would be trumped and rendered obsolete. See Ken Wilbur, Editor, Quantum Questions, Mystical Writings of the World’s Great Physicists (Boston: Shambhala, 1985) ix.
60. J.C. Polkinghorne notes that, “Two books which survey modern physics and seek to assimilate it to Eastern thought are Fritjof Capra: The Tao of Physics (Fontana, 1976), Gary Zukav: The Dancing Wu Li Masters (Fontana, 1980).” Polkinghorne then gives his estimation of the attempt. He writes: “Personally I feel that the attempt depends too greatly on purely verbal parallels to be convincing.” The Quantum World (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1984) 97.
61. Leonard I. Sweet, Quantum Spirituality, A Post Modern Apologetic (Dayton, Ohio: Whaleprints, 1991).
62. Emphasis Mine, Sweet, SoulTsunami, 109.
63. Blackburn states notes that, “Existentialist writing . . . reacts against the view that the universe is a closed, coherent, intelligible system [i.e., that of the old Newtonian physics] . . . In the face of an indifferent universe we are thrown back upon our own freedom. Acting authentically becomes acting in the light of the open space of possibilities that the world allows.” See Simon Blackburn, “existentialism, “Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005) 125.
64. Rabbi Irwin Kula quoted by William J. Jackson, Heaven’s Fractal Net, Retrieving Lost Visions in the Humanities (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana Press, 2004) 239-240.
65. On this point Rick Warren quotes the New Century Version’s theologically errant rendition of Ephesians 4:6b, that God “rules everything and is everywhere and is in everything” (Italics Mine). See The Purpose Driven Life (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2002) 88.
66. Stuart Hameroff, M.D., What the Bleep do we know!? DVD (Beverly Hills, California: © 20th Century Fox, 2004).
67. Paul Brockelman, Cosmology and Creation, The Spiritual Significance of Contemporary Cosmology (New York; Oxford University Press, 1999) 74.
68. Ibid. 153. Quoting Arne Naess, “Identification as a Source of Deep Ecological Attitudes,” in Deep Ecology, Michael Tobias, Editor (San Diego: Avant Books, 1985) 153.
69. It can be counted that the word “creation” occurs approximately twenty times in The Shack, and is always spelled with a capital “C.” By his use of the upper case spelling contra Romans 1:25, is the author assigning divinity to nature? In the first occurrence of the word “nature,” it too is spelled with a capital “N.” (The Shack, 15) On the preceding page, Young also wrote of “the god of winter.” (The Shack, 14)

[Ed. Note: The title for posting this segment (Part 4) was derived from the text. Links were added to this text.]

*Rob Bell, “Everything is Spiritual #2," and This quote by Bell was added to the original text because it illustrates the points made here in Part 4. For additional interesting reading on Emergent/Emerging church leader Rob Bell's new physics, see the post at the Sola Sisters blog, October 27, 2010: "Quantum Science Proves 'Everything Is Spiritual?' Not So Fast, Says Quantum Physicist Dr. Frank Stootman," which reports that Rob Bell's science is questionable "according to Dr. Frank Stootman, a quantum physics professor in Australia who has written a paper scientifically refuting Rob Bell's attempt to make panentheism seem scientific. Dr. Stootman's paper states that Rob Bell's "science" is weak at best, and does not support his argument." ﻿﻿


Thursday, October 28, 2010

Fractal Emergence


By Pastor Larry DeBruyn

Linear Versus Non-linear Time




The Old Physics



The Time Changers



















To be continued. . . .

35. Ibid.
38. Lucas, “God, GUTs and Gurus.”
40. Hawking, A Brief History of Time, 136
48. Borders Books.
49. Sweet, SoulTsunami, 80.
51. “Yin and yang,” Wikipedia,



Monday, October 25, 2010

The “Uncertainty Principle”


By Pastor Larry DeBruyn

Whereas—viewing the universe according to largest scales of measurement (i.e., from the top down)—the old Newtonian physics saw “the system” as ordered and determined, quantum mechanics—looking at the universe from the perspective of the smallest scales of mathematical measurement (i.e., from the bottom up)—theorizes the system to be unordered and undetermined. By calculating mathematical formulas so complex that only elitist physicists can understand them, the new physics will only postulate probabilities, not absolutes. The cause-effect interaction of the smallest quantities of matter/energy (i.e., quarks, gluons, and electrons) appears to be uncertain and therefore chaotic.

Werner Heisenberg (1901-1976), a German physicist, theorized that, “we cannot localize a particle with arbitrary high precision and at the same know its exact momentum.”[24] At the tiniest level of observation, accurate conclusions are impossible, for in the same instant of time—because both are constantly moving—a particle’s position and velocity cannot be precisely measured. In the same millisecond either the position or the velocity of particles can be calculated, but not both. At the subatomic level, the flux of the one renders getting a fix on the other impossible. So just when you think you have it, you discover you don’t. For example, maybe light is particle, or maybe it is waves. Depending on the experiment and who’s observing it, light exhibits the properties of either particles or waves.

So a system, once thought to be determined, measurable, and predictable, now appears to be undetermined, immeasurable, and unpredictable. At the micro level, the random interaction of quantities of particles/energy introduces uncertainty as to how those parts might impact the “happenings” of the whole. When viewed from the bottom up, the only certainty about the universe is uncertainty. Science becomes a game, and life a bet!

So as physics morphs into philosophy, the uncertainty principle emerges as the template against which the entire spectrum of reality or life must be evaluated, including spirituality. As the Hungarian scientist-mystic Arthur Koestler (1905-1983) reportedly stated of the uncertainty worldview, “The nineteenth-century clockwork model of the universe is in shambles and, since matter itself has been dematerialized, materialism can no longer claim to be a scientific philosophy.”[25] As New Age advocate Gary Zukav sees it:

The world view of particle physics is that of a world without ‘stuff,’ where what is = what happens, and where an unending tumultuous dance of creation, annihilation, and transformation runs unabated within a framework of conservation laws and probability.[26]

A Quantum Question
According to physicist Stephen Hawking (1942- ), reconciling certainty with uncertainty—as could be compared to the theological question regarding the relationship between determinism and human free will—is one of the great challenges facing modern scientific inquiry. “One of the major endeavors in physics today . . .” he writes, “is the search for a new theory that will incorporate them both—a quantum theory of gravity.”[27]

In the chapter “A Piece of π,” God asks Mack in The Shack about how freedom and determinism relate in life.

Does freedom mean that you are allowed to do whatever you want to do? Or could we talk about all the limiting influences in your life that actually work against your freedom. Your genetic heritage, your specific DNA, your metabolic uniqueness, the quantum stuff that is going on at a subatomic level where only I am the always-present observer. (Italics Mine, The Shack, 95)

By her remarks it can be noted that “God” (i.e., Papa-Elousia) views her relationship to reality to be that of an observer, and not the Creator and Controller of the universe; and to be like that of a physicist, not the Sustainer of the universe. Nevertheless, the disparate chaos and fractal theories appear to be an attempt to reconcile irreconcilable aspects of quantum mechanics.[28]

Chaos Theory
A few decades ago, Edward Lorenz (1917-2008), discovered the mathematical aspect of chaos theory when,

He inadvertently ran what seemed like the same calculations through a creaky computer twice and came up with vastly different answers. When he tried to figure out what happened, he noticed a slight decimal point change—less than 0.0001—wound up leading to significant error. That error became a seminal scientific paper, presented in 1972, about the butterfly effect.[29]

As Lorenz’s discovery might seem to indicate, some scientists now believe that the random interaction between quantities of matter and energy in the micro-cosmos can affect the behavior of matter and energy in the macro-cosmos. This perturbation is known as “the butterfly effect.” In the “dynamical system” in which human beings are the conscious part, a butterfly flapping its wings in the Congo could stimulate a wave/particle disturbance causing a tropical storm in the Atlantic Ocean. Looked at in another way, the first falling of a small domino somewhere in the system could eventuate in the falling of greater and greater dominos until the whole planet finds itself in state of chaos.[30] Though in a closed system it appears that the smaller does influence the greater, the magnitude of the impact of the smaller upon the greater remains uncertain.

This is one hypothetical aspect of quantum physics known as chaos theory, the theory assuming “that small, localized perturbations in one part of a complex system can have widespread consequences throughout the system.”[31] But I call it hypothetical because as the-physicist-turned-theologian John Polkinghorne defines it, “Quantum chaology [is] . . . the not-fully-understood subject of the quantum mechanics of chaotic systems.”[32] In other words, like the weather, one cannot assuredly predict the long range effects of quantities of particles/energy interacting at the sub-atomic level, and whether that interaction might affect the greater part of the whole. A butterfly flapping its wings in the Congo does not necessarily cause a hurricane in the Atlantic Ocean.

Though the Newtonian view of the system (order above chaos) is still viewed to be a player in the physics game,

The world view of particle physics is a picture of chaos beneath order. At the fundamental level is a confusion of continual creation, annihilation and transformation.[33]

To be continued. . . .

24. Peter Schupp, “Particle Physics on Noncommutative Space-Time,” Physics in the New Millennium, 305.
25. Arthur Koestler, Research in Parapsychology 1972 (special dinner address), quoted by Dave Hunt, A Cup of Trembling (Eugene, Oregon: Harvest House Publishers, 1995) 373.
26. Gary Zukav, Dancing Wu Li Masters, An Overview of the New Physics (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, Inc., 2001) 217.
27. Stephen W. Hawking, A Brief History of Time, From the Big Bang to Black Holes (New York: Bantam Books, 1988) 12. de Laplace too surmised that, “Given for one instant an intelligence which could comprehend all the forces by which nature is animated and the respective positions of the beings which compose it, if moreover this intelligence were vast enough to submit these data to analysis, it would embrace in the same formula both the movements of the largest bodies in the universe [i.e., the old Newtonian physics] and those of the lightest atom [the new quantum physics]; to it nothing would be uncertain, and the future as the past would be present to its eyes [the concept of time becomes non-linear]. See “Science Quotes.”
28. See James Gleick, Chaos, Making a New Science (New York: Penguin Books, 1987). The terms chaos and fractal occur frequently in the book.
29. See “MIT prof Edward Lorenz, father of chaos theory, dies at 90,” News, April 16, 2008 (
30. Theoretically, the detonation of a nuclear device could lead to spontaneous and uncontrolled combustion melting down the whole planet.
31. John M. Last, “Chaos Theory,” (http://www.
32. John Polkinghorne, Quantum Theory, A Very Short Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002) 97.
33. Zukav, Wu Li Masters, 216.


Friday, October 22, 2010

Quantum Physics and the New Spirituality


By Pastor Larry DeBruyn


(Emphasis Mine, Colossians 2:8, KJV)


The Shack




But just what are fractals? Sarayu informs Mack:



The Seeker











The Old Theory of Physics (a clock)


The New Theory of Physics (a game)


The Universe Described














“I am the Alpha and Omega”










To be continued....

11. Ibid. (
14. Ibid. quoting Von Goethe, 135.


Tuesday, October 19, 2010

“Half-Baked” Christianity

A Meditation Upon Hosea 7:8

By Pastor Larry DeBruyn

Hosea 7:8-10, KJV

In a previous generation, a churchman observed of the church's relationship to the surrounding culture of that era and said: "I looked for the church and found it in the world. I looked for the world and found it in the church." In the history of American Christianity there perhaps has never been a time when the criticism uttered by that Englishman against the church of his day is not also an apt indictment of Christianity in our culture today.

Admixing faith with culture--something we might call the Canaanitization of Christianity--is something that both testaments warn against. The Apostle Paul warned the Corinthians against allowing it to happen. He wrote: "Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you, And will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty" (2 Corinthians 6:17-18; Citing Isaiah 52:11.). About allowing themselves to become blended with the culture, to become culturized by Corinth, the Apostle Paul called upon true believers to separate themselves from those who, by their actions and beliefs, violated the covenant of faith. He admonished, "Do not be bound together with unbelievers; for what partnership have righteousness and lawlessness, or what fellowship has light with darkness? Or what harmony has Christ with Belial, or what has a believer in common with an unbeliever? Or what agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God . . ." (2 Corinthians 6:14-16a).

Using an interesting metaphor, the prophet Hosea warned that, "Ephraim, he hath mixed himself among the people; Ephraim is a cake not turned" (Emphasis mine, Hosea 7:8). Hosea describes that Israel had violated God's call for them to remain a distinct people from the pagan nations around them (See Exodus 34:12-16.). Because Israel was in clear violation of God's command, Hosea compares Israel to an unturned pancake, an ancient version of fast food! Cooked upon hot coals, the cake had to be turned from one side to the other at just the right moment, else the downside, the side closest to the fire, would become scorched and burnt, while the upside, the side away from the fire, would remain unbaked, doughy, and odious. That is how the prophet likened the northern nation of Israel just before their captivity. Their courting of and alliances with the pagan nations, as exhibited by the men of Israel marrying pagan women and their gods, caused the prophet to picture the nation as a "half-baked" pancake fit only to be discarded into the fire of God's judgment.

The question must be asked, is there a sense in which, whether corporately or individually, we like Ephraim, are cakes not turned? The question is not irrelevant. In comparing the sins of Northern Israel--fraud, lying, adultery, alcohol consumption, unresolved anger and outbursts of rage, unfaithful leadership and prayerlessness--can it not be discerned that the sins which plagued ancient Ephraim are also evident in today's professing church? In short, the same sinful influences upon Ephraim in Hosea's day are observable in and amongst Christians today.

For allowing itself to become culturized, the consequence is that the church loses her credibility. What the church is (or is not) speaks so loudly that the culture cannot hear what she says, her prophetic voice as it were. In trying to reform society, the church finds itself in the hypocritical posture of first needing to reform itself; of needing to clean herself up before she attempts to clean up others. "We've met the enemy" Pogo says, "and he is us!" Such is the way worldliness impacts the church. It causes the church to be half-baked.

In the 70s and early 80s, Edward Dobson worked with Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority. Admitting that the cause was neither moral nor a majority, Dobson is recorded to have assessed the movement, striking at the nerve of the problem. From the movement's inception it was doomed to fail because as he stated: "It was an attempt to change values in the world at large when those values haven't even been changed in the community of faith."[1]

I fear for the Religious Right during 2010 and in the years beyond, that if its own values have not changed, any positive change foisted on America in the upcoming election will be short lived, and in the end prove to be "chump change." A culturized church cannot change the culture.


[1] Edward Dobson quoted by John Seel, "Nostalgia for the Lost Empire," No God But God, Os Guiness and John Seel, Editors (Chicago: Moody Press, 1992) 74.

Used with permission. The original article is posted here: Be sure to see the other excellent articles posted at Pastor DeBruyn's website