Paul's Passing Thoughts

“It’s not about injustice, It’s about Jesus.”

~ Producer of “Unearthed”

Justice: One Reason People Don’t Go to Church: Romans 13:1-7

1. Romans 13:1-7

A. What does this have to do with people not going to church?

b. Everything.

2. “Unearthed” video clip.

A. Seems to be EVERYTHING Christians would agree on as well as all moral people.

a. “You can’t legislate morality; you have to change people’s hearts.”

b. It calls men to stand up and be moral, and therefore circumventing the demand for porn.

c. Tim Keller

• A man’s “sense of justice.”
• The men are victims too; they are slaves.
• The gospel is the key. (the collective soul will be explained).

d. Mark Driscoll

• It hurts EVRYBODY, not just the man enslaved to porn.

†    Voice of reason; man is an island is a misnomer hurtful to society.

††  The collective good.

e. It’s the “portal”; soft porn ultimately leads to sex trafficking.”

f. You can’t keep picking the fruit (ie, stop the behavior), you have to cut off the root.

g. If we do this, it is hard telling what society will “look like” versus BE like.

h. We want move beyond the problem and make a film about the solution.

• Title: The Hearts of Men.
• Christ moves beyond symptoms and deal with the HEARTS of men.

†    Interpretive question: what is the “heart.”

i. Action.

• Primarily pray for the victimizers as well as the victims.
• Share
• Give Money

3. What is really going on here?

A. Their definition of the gospel is the societal collective Psyche.

B. Their definition of the heart is the soul of man.

4. The construct defined.

A. Image #1

a. The collective psyche is the root.

b. All things progressing toward restoration is the fruit.

c. Image #2—the tree in the video.

d. Church historian and author John Immel

• Image #1
• The root is IDEAS.
• The fruit is what society “looks like” as a result of the ideas.

B. The soul.

a. Like a tree, the “heart” has a root and fruit.

b. This is the Heart Theology of Neo-Calvinism.

• Pastor rant: “I am sick of the “root and fruit gospel”
• What is it? Image #3
• Man is totally depraved/incompetent, therefore, his root ideas must be supplied for the collective good of society.
• Moreover, his ideas should be compelled by force for the betterment of society.
• What man thinks is what society is.

† This is the collective soul making the collective psyche resuting in the ideal society.

• This is Plato: man’s soul is a mirror image of society; society is a tree of fruit and root, and man’s soul is a tree of fruit and root.
• Image #4
• Compare to Image #1
• Image #5

c. The video NEVER states that man changes; it states, like communism, that society is the manifestation of man’s thinking, and that man does not know what to think, and must be compelled to think the right things through being educated by the enlightened, and for the betterment of society, by force if necessary.

d. Man is too incompetent to be a problem, bad ideas are the problem. The Neo-Calvinist therefore deems him as someone who should be prayed for, and at times agrees with the state that he/she should be executed if they refuse to repent of their own ideas—for the collective good of society. It’s nothing personal, it just so happens that your body is the bearer of bad ideas that are hurtful to society. No man is a bad person per se, ideas are the problem.

5. Justice: the story of two realities.

A. The justice of Romans 13:1-7 versus the justice of Plato’s Republic.

a. Government is a gift to man by God and is His servant for the good of man.

b. God exhorts man to have a sense of justice and to follow Him, and man is capable of doing so, and has a free will to do so.

c. However, when injustice takes place via the choices of men, God warns Christians and the unregenerate alike (throughout the New Testament) that the government is His servant to enforce justice and punish injustice. Hence, God is pleased with the natural flow of justice, but warns that He will enforce justice sooner or later; presently by government, or in the future via His White Throne Judgment.

d. Man is without excuse because he is created with a conscience—Paul exhorts Christians to live by their consciences.

B. Plato’s Republic insists that ALL justice comes from the root because man is incapable of knowing good and reality. Therefore, it does NO good to enforce behavior, what man believes is what must be enforced, and this root will result in societies fruit.

Conclusion

History tells us that Plato’s construct does not work. And because it has become the premise of the church’s Heart Theology, church doesn’t work. Hence, people stop going to church for the same reason that people do not move from America to Russia.

“It’s not about injustice, It’s about Jesus.”

~ Producer of “Unearthed”