Sunday
Nov222009
Who Said That?
Sunday, November 22, 2009 at 09:53PM 
"Christians don't steal or lie, they don't get divorced or have abortions. If the Ten Commandments were followed by everyone we would be able to fire half the police force and in six months the prisons would be all half empty."
Leave your guess in the comments section below. Please, no google searches or cheating. Answer to follow next week.
Update on Saturday, November 21, 2009 at 05:59PM by
Kim Riddlebarger
Kim Riddlebarger
This is a quote from a 2007 interview with John Hagee. Hagee's pelagianism is readily apparent when he mistakenly assumes that since God commands something, after the fall we still have the ability to obey it. We also see Hagee's perfectionism in his notion that Christians no longer sin. Christian's should not do these things, but they do.
Reader Comments (37)
Phoenix is the fifth largest city in the U.S. I would venture to say that our law inforcement is vastly superior to the large city in your state--Detroit.
By the way, have a great Thanksgiving. Every year we celebrate our blessings and our Turkey dinner on our back patio, where it is usually about 75 to 80 degrees. Ditto for Christmas! (Good beer drinking weather.)
You are hitting on the important issues here. Our modern day "civic righteousness" consists of conservative talk radio and moralistic therapeutic deism. It has worked itself out in American politics and how they govern the courts and criminal justice system. This is a long way off of what the reformers had in mind I believe. You get a lot of confusion in how to make just laws and in how to deal with law breakers. You either deal with law breakers in a hard core conservative manner like they do in Arizona or you make the prison system like a decent hotel like they do in Minnesota (the liberal approach). The homeless and poor do not mind spending time in prison in Minnesota- the food is not that bad either. You are right Zrim- the masses eat it up.
I'm an elder at St. Thomas in Goodyear. 16260 W. Van Buren St. Keep us in your prayers, we are growing, but are having some rough financial times. We are a mission church in the WELS, almost five years old. We have about 15 WELS churches in the Phoenix area.
On this subject somewhat: Todd Wilken of the great radio program Issues, Etc., says that he believes that Lutheranism is about to explode in America.
He says that there is an outpouring among young laity and young pastors for the Word of God, and the Lutheran Confessions. He claims that the zeal among the young for the Lutheran Confessions may be greater than what our fathers and grandfathers had.
That is great news for the Lutheran Reformation.
You are right on in mentioning the soft prison systems in some states. You mention that the poor and the homeless would actually like to spend the night in one of those prisons, because they are like a hotel. The only problem is, so do the law breakers enjoy those cozy prisons.
Where I am originally from, Los Angeles, the prisons are almost country clubs. They have tennis courts, girlie magazines, T.V. sets, cigarettes, weights, etc. Many a felon has admitted to loving doing time in the L.A. prison system.
Also, these prisons cost the tax payers millions of dollars. The tent city prison concept makes much more economic sense.
I have family and friends that still live in the Los Angeles area, and they really, really, like Sheriff Joe, and wish that they had him in Southern California. Believe me on this, when he retires, crime will go up.
My point was that nothing is done in this life without some sort of confusion involved. Conservatives go a bit overboard with treating law breakers like dogs and liberals go to the other extreme just to spite the conservatives. It seems that the position the reformers would take is one in which they could relate with the law breakers and seek to set them free with the Gospel. This takes the self-righteousness out of the equation. But perhaps I am a bit confused.
The Reformers would be attempting to advance the Kingdom of God through the proclamation of the Word and the proper administration of the Sacraments, through His proper means, the Church.
This issue pertains to the first use of the law (curb), which applies to both the believer and the unbeliever alike, as God's sword to restrain evil, to keep law and order in society.
Luther says this:
"Streets must be kept clean, peace established in cities, and justice administered in the land. Therefore one must let the sword strike transgressors vigorously and boldly, as St. Paul teaches (Romans 13:4) For God wants non-Christians held in check to keep them from doing wrong or from committing wrong without being punished."
"Let no none imagine that the world can be governed without the shedding of blood. The temporal sword should and must be red and bloodstained, for the world is wicked and is bound to be so. Therefore the sword is God's rod and vengeance for it"
Nobody has a problem with keeping order and peace or even bloodshed to get it. It's just that a sheriff taking his cues from Percy Wetmore (Doug Hutchison) in "The Green Mile" instead of Paul Edgecomb (Tom Hanks). Wisdom is superior to pragmatism.
If you don't like Hagge's pragmatism why Sheriff Joe's?
There are varying degrees of law breakers in the prison system. Some do not respond to the fear of the law and the intensity of the law should be increased in these types. Others are very sorry for what they have done and what position they are at on this continuum is hard to determine. To take a hard core stance with all law breakers seems a bit unwise to me. I am thinking about the warden in Shawshank Redemption who seemed to take pleasure in punishing all law breakers like they were less than human. I think a latent sadism resides in many hard core conservative points of view and they need to be more careful in what they spout off. There are instances in the Old Testament where God told the Isrealites to not feel sorry for their enemies and kill them without batting an eye. That is something which I still do not really understand but I take it that God had his reasons for doing so. Personally, I would rather err on the side of mercy of grace then on the side of justice. But there certainly is room for disagreement here.
Really? Different kingdoms! Different rules! I'm no pragmatist but if, in the kingdom of man, one adopts a pragmatic philosophy and applies it in law enforcement, so what? Sheriff Joe isn't trying to make good Christians, he's trying to make good citizens. Or, at least to protect the good citizens from the bad ones. And yes, there are good citizens.
You are 100% correct in your response. We don't need to drag God's Word into every situation that is going on in the Kingdom of man. You said it perfectly: "Sheriff Joe isn't trying to make good Christians, he's trying to make good citizens."
I don't want a sheriff or a politicain for that matter, trying to make people good Christians. That is a true mixing up of the two kingdoms.
John:
Some of the liberal systems (California, etc.), want to arrest and go for rehab, while bypassing punishment. You must, have a law enforcement in place that punishes first, and then you can rehab.
Yes, we need to have compassion. But, why not have compassion on the poor victims also? The punishment needs to fit the crime, then go for love, mercy, compassion and rehab.
Zrim:
By continuing to compare Hagee and Sheriff Joe, you are confusing the two kingdoms. The sphere's of the two men are in different kingdoms.
It is like trying to play football, basketball and hockey at the same time. It isn't "pragmatic."
I'm not sure it's as much a 2K thing as it is a wisdom thing. The answer to coddling sinners isn't brutalizing them. In the same way, the answer to swaddling criminals isn't humiliating them.
And I'm not sure the role of any sheriff is as much to make good citizens as it is to punish criminals. It seems to me that once we presume that anyone other than parents make citizens (for good or ill) we've accepted the claims of modernity. So, Lloyd, I'm not at all sure how you can at once laud the notion that Sheriff Joe is making good citizens, then cry foul on the liberals for rehabbing. It sounds like you are saying that certain "conservative" modes of rehab are ok, while other "liberal" ones aren't. But I'm saying that the only role for sheriffs is to punish, which again, is different from either coddling or humilating, both of which are highly popular with the masses.
I guess it is John Hagee- I do not know much about him though.