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Visiting John Forster(username: sturdibox)
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2015 01 11 Harris
I'm really, really grateful for all your replies and the time you are taking to interact with me. I realize at any moment, you could switch off and think, "this is not profitable, this guy is not listening, I have greater priorities" -- and that is fine, it will not affect how I think of you. You could probably guess, I am used to such responses. Besides, I can't do too much of it either.
Rest assured, however, I do interact with all your ideas, and try to integrate them into how I view Scripture and life as I am able. Hopefully, the way I make replies to you is evidence that I am reading and thinking about the ideas you send my way, and trying to make helpful responses to them.
Your writing is a great gift, it is cheap tuition, to stimulate me to understand better how to listen, wisely apply Scripture, and attempt to communicate in writing. If I have anything true, wise, or helpful to say -- it will be due to a lot of gracious people who have taken the time to communicate with me.
All of your points are evading the issue, whether deliberately or not I can't say. Let me summarize as succinctly as possible what I'm saying:
1. I don't think anybody in your church was trying to eliminate your right to come to your own convictions about the proper biblical response to the problem. Nope, just eliminating the privilege to talk about them in their company. They will be happy to talk to me again as soon as I repudiate the 'truth' of what they think is the false witness and am willing to be silent about the topic.
2. In my eyes (and apparently theirs) you are not making a case that your application of Scripture to the problem is so clear that all reasonable, godly men should agree.
Having a pretty good grasp of where our generation is on the "Reformation" meter, I know not to expect much understanding or agreement at the moment. I also have come to a more humble evaluation of how hard a work it is, and how long it takes to truly come to understand how someone else sees the problem, and what they mean by the words they are using.
In the issue at hand - there is no disagreement that theft is wrong, even that being partner with a thief is sin and crime. There is also little (but some) confusion/disagreement for the reality that increasing the quantity of money units takes away wealth/purchasing-power from the money-unit holder (depositor). We both are aware of the painful reality of our brothers in Russia and Ukraine, that in the past year, any deposits they had in the bank will now only buy a little more than half (hryvnia 54%, ruble 55%) of any imports denominated in dollars.
Am I correct in thinking that you are also in agreement on these two points?
The area of disagreement or ignorance, is if there is any relationship between "thou shalt not steal or profit from other thieves stealing for you" and increased money units in an economy.
Am I correct in thinking that you believe these are unrelated - that whatever is causing the apparent increase in money units does not cause anything the Bible classifies as theft?
Money units increase, they tell us.
But no human is responsible for stealing from anyone else, and no human profits from others that might be causing the theft, and Jesus Christ, the judge of the living and the dead, will never punish or discipline anyone who is causing or participating in the cause of this phenomena?
When I think about stuff like this, it appears that the money that exists, say, has to belong to someone at any particular time. By 'own', I am thinking the of human that has the right before God, or whatever is considered the legal right before human law, to control that money-unit and exchange it for something else in the marketplace. Someone or something has "controlled" this money unit and has effectively "cut" it in half.
I would think only the Controller of it (ie owner) would have the right or power to do this. Whom do you think owns it? The Depositor? The Civil Government? The creator of the money unit?
Since there are only 4 ways I know of to obtain ownership, maybe you could elaborate on which way (or a 5th way) people come into ownership of the additional money units
1. they create it from nothing or manufacture it from other elements
2. a prior owner gives it to them
3. they trade something else they own for the money unit
4. They 'win it' in a fair fight.
If you can offer any answers, or if you can recommend to me any others who can answer these questions we might be better able to make progress in our discussion.
3. You apparently condemned the elders of the church because their understanding did not match yours. For this they excommunicated you. NOT for your opinion, but for your condemnation of the leadership.
Is there any way a man can have these understandings of how our money mechanics work (opinion, if you like) without it condemning all people on earth (which cannot help include the elders of any particular local church) who bless the mechanism?
- that the Bible assigns the stewardship of wealth to the Family units (not Church, not King or civil government) and labeling it theft for all that violate that stewardship. The wealth belongs to the family, who has the right to control it. - that the civil government sets out to punish any who pretend increases in the imaginary money-units except that nation's central banking system.
- that the nation's central banking system then creates multiples of the reckoned money-units by loaning and legitimately (by human law) earning income (they own) thereby on those loans, which process takes away/diminishes the purchasing power of all previously "issued" money units among the depositors or money-unit-holders of the nation.
If so, I am open to it....
4. You could have avoided excommunication by taking the more humble stance, "I believe I ought to act this way, but I am in agreement that good men can disagree without being clearly in disobedience to God. Therefore I will not censure the church, but rather will enter into debate to try to persuade. And if I don't persuade, I will remain faithful and not divisive."
If a man thinks he believes he ought to act a certain way because of a universal principle, say, due to the centuries of the creeds of the Christian Church, is there a way to think that other men would not be wrong to violate that same principle? What are you asking for here? Good men, maybe even better men than I, will disagree about this point. They may well be better men measured on a thousand other points -- would it matter here -- if there is an objective truth that exists about the moral issue? How would it be possible to hold the opinion that such a principle exists, without communicating that the existence of that principle would condemn violators of the principle? What would it mean to remain faithful and not divisive? Won't people be described and being 'divided' because they think opposite things are true, no matter how many warm fuzzies are exchanged among the participates of any kind of association or relationship?
Of course we enter into communication and try to persuade of what we think is true, right, and relatively important? Is there not a covenantal obligation to do so with love and confidence and grace? Are you thinking that 'grace' requires needs to contradict the premise you are advancing or denies there objective, absolute truth exists (however we might be deficient in knowing that truth)?
5. If your elders were engaged in adultery and trying to justify it, and you had made a similar stance and had been excommunicated for it, I would be celebrating your courage and faithfulness to the word of God. So this is no call for backing off from taking stances on crystal clear biblical admonitions (as many are doing in our corrupting mainline churches every year). Your issue is not so clear, or else in your eyes you are the only true expositor of Scripture among them.
I thought the whole point of our diligent study, diligent communication, and diligent effort to obey the covenantal obligations is to attempt to clarify the issue by informing (if ignorance is the problem) or persuading (if application/logic is the problem).
You implied there is broad agreement in the church about how adultery and homosexual behaviors ought to be condemned (I said, "good luck"). So those are clear issues (at least that they are 'wrong' in some way). Morality of fiat currency/fractional-reserve banking is not nearly so clear. Should I risk misunderstanding & excommunication in order to benefit the Church (at least the part I can touch) by helping Her clarify Her grasp of the application and obedience of the Scriptures? Or should we protect the lack of clarity?
As to me being the only one....you forgot the substantial quotes in the "fathers and brothers" appeal where I am open about other Reformed Bible teachers who taught me much of the mechanics (although you do not need to go to Christians to get the mechanics, the Federal Reserve will tell you) and all of the applications of moral principles. Which one of them do you think is a false witness, dividing and troubling the Church and retarding our corporate sanctification?
6. If you felt so strongly that your censure of the elders was correct, then I wonder why you would even want to stay in that church anyway. Perhaps leaving would have been the best, since you were obviously not being persuasive.
It may be true, that the two contradictory viewpoints cannot coexist in the same brain or the same local church unless people are willing to humbly acknowledge that they are unfaithful hypocrites with a lack of faith to obey to the level of their understanding, but yet -- refuse to turn away from the truth, but to still move toward the Lord, and His Word, and what applications and risks they are willing to try to obey. Per I Samuel 12:
20 Samuel said to the people, “Do not fear. You have committed all this evil, yet do not turn aside from following the Lord, but serve the Lord with all your heart.21 You must not turn aside, for then you would go after futile things which can not profit or deliver, because they are futile
7. If you have not been able to persuade people whose camp is closer to yours than an extremely high percentage of all true Christians in the USA, then I don't know where you will find a home.
Last I checked, the Bible gives us no imperative that we have an earthly "home", or that we retain physical life at all costs? Are you willing to be shot dead because your are unwilling to testify out loud to others, that king or pope or Electorate has greater authority in law (which is the area we are talking about: double-restitution for the crime of theft) than what the Bible claims for the Word of God, recorded from Jesus, Moses, and Paul. The demographic news is trying to persuade me that if Christians are not willing to risk an honest answer to their generation's equivalent question, they will soon face the challenge to....
testify out loud to others, that there is only one God - Allah, and Muhammad is His true prophet.
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