The six essential doctrines would be: the Trinity, the deity and humanity of Christ, the bodily resurrection, man’s fallenness and guilt, salvation by grace through faith by the substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ, and belief that Jesus is the Messiah. And you have a seventh doctrine that strikes me as a functional necessity, that is the ultimate authority of Scripture without which none of the other truths can be affirmed or asserted with confidence.
By the way, it’s really important that people know these doctrines because many Christians are quite kind-hearted and they end up not being very careful about drawing distinctions between truth and falsity because they don’t want to disagree. I understand that. But if you were really kind-hearted then you would be honest and straight-forward with people about the demands of the gospel on their lives. The demand of the gospel is that you believe particular things to be true. It’s not just a matter of mere belief, as if these are just some incidental details of theology that you might happen to be mistaken about. And if you just happen to be mistaken, why should you go to hell because of that?
You don’t go to hell because you just happen to mistake a doctrine. You go to hell because you have broken God’s law. It is very critical to understand that. God only judges guilty people. People get judged by God not because they mess up on their theology but because they are guilty. People who are guilty get condemned. That’s it. There is a way to get around that but you’ve to know a couple of particular things that are true before you can take advantage of the forgiveness God offers. That’s where the essential doctrines come in.
I think it’s a good thing to go back and refresh ourselves on the basics of the gospel once in a while, and this article does a pretty good job of doing that in a basic, understandable way. I’m posting this for some of the non-Christians I know who ask me questions like this rather than apologetics questions. Sometimes people just want to ask what I believe, and not how I know what I believe. Well, this is what I believe.
Cuba, long derided in international policy circles as a basket case and no threat to the U.S., has been caught smuggling weapons of war to North Korea in blatant violation of U.N. sanctions. This is a wake-up call.
Sharp-eyed Panamanian authorities, watching the North Korean freighter Chong Chon Gang since June, received intelligence it might be shipping illegal drugs, something it had been caught doing before.
As the vessel lumbered into the Atlantic side of the Panama Canal from Cuba, Panamanian authorities cornered the 450-foot rust-bucket, battled a maniacally violent crew who slashed ship lines to make it hard to unload the ship, and then watched as the ship’s captain tried to kill himself before having a heart attack.
After subduing the crew, the Panamanians found no drugs buried beneath sloppily packed brown sugar, but did find defensive RSN-75 “Fan Song” fire-control radar equipment for SA-2 surface-to-air missiles.
The discovery, and the crew’s behavior, were signs of something big the North Koreans didn’t want known — weapons smuggling, a violation of both United Nations sanctions prohibiting all sales of weapons to North Korea and Panama’s own laws governing the canal.
“You cannot go around shipping undeclared weapons of war through the Panama Canal,” declared Panamanian President Ricardo Martinelli, a U.S. ally, who tweeted a photo of the illegal shipment for the world to see.
It’s significant that the enabler of this violation of international law was none other than Cuba, which has worked hard to convince the Obama administration to drop all travel and trade sanctions against it — and which is currently negotiating a migration pact with the U.S. It’s time to stop that right now, and sanction Cuba further.
The brazen shipment of Russian-made weapons through Panama signaled that little has changed in Cuba — a state sponsor of global terror that has in fact been trying to destroy the U.S. since 1962.
“This is a serious and alarming incident that reminds us that the North Korean regime continues to pursue its nuclear and ballistic programs, and will stop at nothing in that pursuit,” said House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee Chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. “It also illustrates that the Castro tyranny continues to aid and abet America’s enemies and continues to pose a national security threat to the United States so long as the Castro apparatchik holds control over the island.”
It’s also the work of a rogue state. And at just 90 miles away, one that is as chillingly close to our shores as it is warm and friendly to North Korea.
[…]Although it’s unknown why North Korea, a major weapons exporter, is importing weapons from Cuba right now, defense analysts speculate that the weapons may be making their way back to Pyongyang for an upgrade and return to Cuba.
That would be worrisome given that North Korea has said it means to strike the U.S. on its own home turf. What better launching pad could it ask for than Cuba?
Two weeks ago, North Korea’s military commander visited Cuba to a red-carpet welcome. The visit raises questions as to what the two discussed — and, given the threat we see now, whether U.S. intelligence was aware of it.
If there is one thing that the United States definitely should not do, it’s dropping sanctions against Cuba.
Ask the Bigot first alerted me to a post by a pro-abortion male (not man, male) in which he explains why males such as himself favor abortion.
Now the context of this post is the Texas bill banning abortions after 20 weeks.
Here’s the point I want to focus on:
How #HB2 Hurts Straight Texas Men
Your sex life is at stake
Can you think of anything that kills the vibe faster than a woman fearing a back-alley abortion? Making abortion essentially inaccessible in Texas will add an anxiety to sex that will drastically undercut its joys. And don’t be surprised if casual sex outside of relationships becomes far more difficult to come by.
It’s clear: if the Legislature basically takes away a Texas woman’s right to choose, having sex becomes a much, much riskier proposition for women and men.
Now let’s see what AtB thinks of this. She writes:
Hey Ben. BRO! Sex is not primarily recreational and women’s bodies don’t exist to serve your every-72-hours-discharge needs. Sex has life-creating properties, and this bill will make it harder for you to separate that reality from your weekend hook-ups.
(An aside. LADIES. You are a fool to chance a lifetime connection with a man-child of this caliber. You and your future children deserve MUCH better. Free love has done so much damage to women and children. Sex without consequences makes us women exactly what we claim we don’t want to be. Objectified, disrespected and used.)
Unfortunately for you, Bro, the Texas House approved HB2 this morning. Much to the silent rejoicing of the in-utero babies created in your “relationships with women that may have lasted anywhere from a few minutes to many years,” you might now have to act like a real man by living for someone other than yourself. Or perhaps, at least, stop treating women as sperm depositories.
I know that this legislation puts your Peter Pan lifestyle at risk. But look at the bright side. If your sexual expression is limited by this legislation, you could always move to one of the 49 states where unfettered infanticide paves the way for your never-ending, hedonistic sexual “freedom and choice”.
So this post by the man-child explains why pro-abortion men are pro-abortion. They basically think that they should be allowed to have recreational sex with a woman without having to deal with the consequences of their own actions. They think that it is OK to kill an innocent child aged 20 weeks or more in order to keep the flow of consequence-free recreational sex flowing. They think it’s OK to motivate women to give then free recreational sex by using abortion as a form of birth control. Pro-abortion men think that it’s OK to legalize what Kermit Gosnell was doing to women after 20 weeks, so that women continue to give them recreational sex without having to love and serve women in a lifelong commitment. Ben Sherman is the beneficiary of Kermit Gosnell’s practice. Kermit Gosnell is Ben’s enabler.
Before I go any further, let me say that according to the latest Gallup poll, more men are pro-life than not, and more women are pro-abortion than not. Young unmarried women are especially likely to vote for abortion and gay marriage (about 75% voted for Obama). This man-child Ben Sherman is the exception to the way that men normally are, while women on the other hand are more likely to agree with his conclusions about unborn children. Most young, unmarried women vote the way Ben Sherman votes. Let’s get that clear. This man-child is the exception to the way men normally are.
My real concern about the man-child’s point of view is this. How is it even possible that a woman would come within 10 feet of a man who said such a thing? It seems to me that women ought to prefer relationships with good men who have a worldview that grounds responsibility over hedonism. Women ought to prefer men who want to take responsibility for the well-being of others over the long term. Women ought to prefer men who want to protect the innocent and the weak. That sort of moral character used to be highly prized by women. Now they just seem to want “nice” – meaning inoffensive and entertaining.
When a man like Ben Sherman says what he said, it really makes me wonder about what women who choose him for sex are thinking about. When a woman pays attention to a man, she endorses his worldview. And vice versa. If women stopped talking to selfish, immoral men like Ben Sherman, then there would be no abortion. The man thinks that babies should die so that he can have a good time with no strings attached. He doesn’t want to have to deal with the needs of others, he would rather use them for pleasure and then kill them when they stop pleasing him. Is that attractive in a man? Ben Sherman continues in his views because some women are rewarding him with sex.
Abortion plays right into the hands of men who want to use women merely for sex. Legal abortion = more casual sex for men without the inconvenience of a relationship where they might need to think of the woman as a person instead of a means to sexual pleasure. I am concerned by the trend away from formal courtship towards anonymous hook-up sex. Abortion is definitely one of the reasons why that is happening. If the group of women who give men sex without commitment grows, it will put even more pressure on women who want marriage to do things the right way. It gets harder and harder for marriage-minded women to hold out as sex without commitment leads to sex without any meaningful communication. We need to push back against the trend to treat women as objects, and women have a role to play in that: they can refuse pro-abortion men.
UPDATE: Another reaction here from my pro-life friend Neil Simpson.
WINTERY KNIGHT 