What everyone can answer correctly, would be the SHOULD BE part: well studied in scripture, caring, an example, leader, etc.
What a lot answer wrong, would be the SHOULD NOT BE part: better than another church member, anyone.
This error is due to a kind of pastor-worship, idolizing leadership in churches. That the pastor should be the most caring in the church, more biblically fluent than every other church members, etc. Not only is it not possible, it defies the sense God placed in us, even non-believers can see that. Otherwise, the pastor would be burdened with impossible tasks that even defies God's statues - Encourage others to be better than oneself.
Bob led the Men's Fellowship, on Patience. I wasn't paying attention in the middle but I realized there's some great error Bob committed in the middle when he took the LOVE chapter from 1 Corinthians 13 and replace every word of "Love" with "God": God is kind, God is patience... Clyde was the one who later reflected on it and responded how he felt that was strange (I didn't even pick up on that, for some reason, because of one of the verses we read, I was looking into something else: That Ben Shapiro was wrong by having no problem with John MacArthur going to heavenaccording to Judaism because MacArthur, being not a Jew, did not violate the 7 Noahide laws: Do not deny God, Do not Blaspheme God, Do not Murder, Do not Engage in immoral sex, Do not Steal, Do not Eat flesh from a living animal, Establish legal system to uphold the above 6 laws. Because MacArthur would have broken the first 2 by calling Jesus God). The pastor and Phil went further in error saying that "God is not self-seeking" simply meant that the incarnate Son, Jesus, as a man, did not seek His own glory. They confused the divine and human natures, yet again. Even ChatGPT would agree with me. This is how it responded:
In Reformed Theology, what is wrong with substituting the word "love" with "God" in 1 Corinthians 13?
In Reformed theology, substituting the word “love” with “God” in 1 Corinthians 13 is generally theologically problematic, even if it might sound inspiring at first glance. Here's why:
1. Category Confusion (God ≠ Love Itself)
Reformed theology insists that God is not reducible to any one attribute — even love.
While "God is love" (1 John 4:8) is true, the reverse, "Love is God," is not. That would be idolatry — making love the ultimate reality instead of the personal, triune God.
Swapping “love” with “God” in 1 Corinthians 13 risks reversing the biblical logic — putting human virtue in place of divine personhood.
To reverse the phrase is to turn an attribute into a deity — a textbook case of idolatry. — R.C. Sproul, “Essential Truths of the Christian Faith”
“God’s love must be understood in harmony with His holiness and justice. To abstract love from His other attributes is to make an idol.” — Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology
2. 1 Corinthians 13 Describes Christian Virtue, Not God's Nature
The passage describes how Christians should love — it's ethical instruction, not a creed about God’s essence.
“Love is patient, love is kind…” is not a list of God’s attributes per se. It’s how believers ought to reflect Christ.
John Calvin, in his Commentary on 1 Corinthians, emphasizes that 1 Corinthians 13 shows what love looks like among people, not a description of God Himself.
3. It Diminishes God's Justice, Wrath, Holiness
God’s love is never separated from His justice, holiness, and truth.
By only focusing on attributes like “not irritable,” “keeps no record of wrongs,” etc., one might misrepresent God — as though He is never wrathful or never condemns sin.
Reformed theology warns against a sentimentalized God, which often emerges when “love” becomes the lens through which all other divine attributes are filtered.
What Reformed Theology Does Affirm
God’s love is real, covenantal, and sacrificial — chiefly displayed in Christ’s substitutionary atonement.
1 Corinthians 13 shows what Christ-like love looks like in the lives of regenerated believers.
Believers are called to imitate this love — not to equate it with God's being.
Summary:
❌ Wrong Idea
✅ Reformed Correction
"Love is God"
"God is love" — but He is also holy, just, sovereign
1 Corinthians 13 describes God’s nature
It describes the Christian ethic and fruit of the Spirit
Love as a divine replacement
Love as a result of union with the triune God
In Reformed theology, saying “God is love” means God defines love. Saying “Love is God” reverses the source and elevates a human (or emotional) concept of love above Scripture — making it a functional idol.
John Frame — The Doctrine of God
Frame emphasizes that God’s attributes are not independent parts. To replace “love” with “God” in 1 Corinthians 13 implies God is only love, which denies His simplicity (that all His attributes are fully integrated).
Kevin DeYoung – various blog posts on 1 Corinthians 13 and theology proper
DeYoung criticizes the use of 1 Corinthians 13 as a “definition of God” and reminds readers it's about how we should act.
He writes: “Paul is talking about love as a Christian virtue, not about God's essence… To use 1 Corinthians 13 to describe God’s being is misapplied sentimentality.”
Although, DeYoung did write an article replacing "love" with "Jesus".
Summary: What Reformed Theology Teaches
Question
Reformed Response
Is God love?
Yes — 1 John 4:8 clearly teaches this.
Is love God?
No — that’s theological inversion and leads to idolatry.
Can 1 Cor. 13 describe God?
It reflects God’s character in some ways, but the context is Christian ethics, not God’s essence.
Why not substitute “God” for “love” in 1 Cor. 13?
It wrongly equates God’s essence with one attribute and imposes an anthropocentric framework onto divine nature.
Summary: Why Reformed Theology Warns Against It
Error
Why It’s Problematic
Reducing God to “love”
Denies God's full nature (justice, holiness, wrath).
Imposing human ethics onto God
Makes God submit to our view of virtue.
Eisegesis of 1 Corinthians 13
It’s not a doctrinal definition of God, but ethical guidance for Christians.
Violates divine simplicity
Attributes of God are not isolated or ranked.
Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758)
“God is love, but love is not God. Love is a perfection of God’s nature, not a god to be worshiped.” — Paraphrased from Charity and Its Fruits
I think Bob has a tendency to idolize Christian ethics. The last time he seemingly attempted to idolize humility.
The pastor also erred greatly around @30:00 when Phil rightly spoke that we must strive and never to be complacent, and the pastor attempted to correct him: "It's gotta be a different understanding of striving, though, because you're not gonna outdo the Pharisees. That's his point. Unless your righteousness exceeds the Pharisees, that's not him saying, try harder..." I would temper that by saying, it is try harder. Try harder to trust in Christ, to strive by laying your burdens down with Christ. To strive by giving all glory and credit to God.
This continues with the pastor: ...That's him saying, you can't do it. So you do start at the level that you can't. But when we talk about striving, it goes hand in hand with loving the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. It is, it is essentially not doing it by your own power, but working through faith. So when we talk about striving, there's this thing of, I've gotta reach the goal. I've gotta make the mark. I've gotta show the judges. That's not what we're doing. What we're doing is actually putting more weight on God. We're actually letting go and putting more weight on God, and then his power pushes us to work. And if you're not in that frame of mind, then you're still thinking, I've gotta outdo the Pharisees. I've heard Bible teachers who come from a more Arminian mindset say the problem with the Pharisees was they weren't trying hard enough.
My comment would simply be: that has a tendency of a strawman argument (I really wonder if there are really so many such strawmen who traumatized the pastor before, as these folks, though exist, are really scarce in my view) which is the only condition that this argument is correct, as most Christians who works hard already laid their burden on Christ, so it's try harder, but without your own credit but God's. Not focusing on yourself, but on God. So there's no "letting go". It's active, not passive. Also, just because we tell people to strive, does not always have to mean we meant "try harder" according to your own strength. To not see this is foolishness and hence low IQ.
7/18/2025
Phoebus Cartel formed by light bulb companies (Philips, International General Electrics, Tokyo Eletric, Osram, AEI, etc.) around the world to restrict the light bulb life to be shorter, so they could sell more, as in the early 1900s, the light bulb sales were dropped because of longer lasting bulbs. This Cartel fines any manufacturers breaking their agreement. This restricted the bulbs to only last up to 1000 hours. Fortunately, this Cartel was disbanded in 1939.
I asked ChatGPT about my site: What's https://nycphantom.com/journal mainly about? And the response was quite interestingly good:
The Journal section on nycphantom.com is essentially the author’s personal diary, not a formal blog or devotional. It features entries on:
It reads like a daily journal where the author (Timothy Law, aka “timlyg”) records his spiritual meditations, technical interests, creative pursuits, and personal reflections—ranging across theology, astrophotography, programming, and church life.
Let me know if you'd like a few specific entries highlighted or a deeper dive into any topic!
7/17/2025 On Eugenics: Scientists have finally tested on a 3rd person (other than the two biological parents) DNA contribution to an embryo. This concept was only imagined in the movie Twins 1988 by Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito. This shouts "blasphemy" from fundamentalists. I could care less as far as parental biological heritage goes, because before the Creator's eyes, biological trait is not one to be idolized: Parental biological heritage is only as good as identity, not credit (which belongs solely to God), which is the cause of the fundamentalists' outburst, fearing that their biological "credit" as parents has been hijacked by a 3rd person.
7/16/2025Paul's Justified vs. James' Justified. not the same thing ~ Stephen Tong. Paul's justified - No longer sinners before God (clothed with Christ's righteousness). James' justified - Reflecting God's glory before men.
Youtube and Meta (Facebook) finally have issues with those reposting others' contents with no originality at all. Cracking down on unoriginality. That's good, especially if this involves monetization.
7/14/2025
On Hebrews 6:1, this is so important from Stephen Tong: Because Martin Luther's focus on Sola Gratia, the Lutherans 100 years later mistaken good works for granted, no holy life, worst than even gentiles. Tong spoke of a triumphant Christianity, which is our responsibility, no longer about Sola Gratia. If one still stuck at Sola Gratia, one is just a baby. Sola Gratia MUST produce good works!
Today the missionary couple, Hillary of Ghana, visited our church and talked in our Sunday School. I asked him a day before (at Flaming Grill) and after the Sunday service on demonic possessions. Seems like he had quite an experience on it personally. Although, I sensed from his sharing that he was more into the strangeness of the possessions than the deliverance of it them. A typical Charismatics interest. Nevertheless, his dealings with those seem sound on the most part.
I also spoke to Frances, the new family I was able to talk to last week. I learned that they went from non-denominational (Charismatics?) to interested in Reformed after watching the documentary: American Gospel(2 movies free on Archive, totaling 5 hours). Hence they searched for Presbyterian church in the neighborhood and found us.
The author, Clara Collier, sees these old universities as relic, contrasting research centers which were separate institutes from the universities at the time (pre-1800).
Early modern universities have four traditional faculties: Theology, law, medicine, and philosophy. The last one just means: everything from modern arts to sciences, from poetry to physics. And this last category was the least prestigious and worst attended: Professors were the least paid in this and only for lecturing. Research was done in their own time. For the sciences, one needs to go to the British Royal Society or the French Académie des sciences.
From the 16th century, starting with astronomy, such interest was pursued outside of universities. Copernicus, Brahe, Galileo all left their teaching job in universities for civil servants or court astronomers which paid more. Kepler had it worst as devout Lutheran yet excommunicated by Lutherans for taking Calvinistic view on the Eucharist, so he was never able to secure a university chair at all. Government-funded facilities were more successful than universities which became less popular in this field.
German universities were seen as factories during the second half (18th century) of the Age of Enlightenment. From an intellectual res publica to Immanuel Kant's fabrikenmäßig (in a factory). Cameralism (the science of public administration) was the goal. But this system eventually failed because professors (of whom many are incompetent) prefer their own hiring politics rather than handing the meritocratic decision to outsiders. This results in the state founded universities such as the University of Göttingen by George II of Britain and Hanover in the 1730s. These universities hired famous professors and were liberal in non-traditional subjects like modern history or applied mathematics. Göttingen had a modern academic research library, the largest in the world at the time, featuring breakthroughs such as organizing books on shelves by subjects with reference to a catalogue. Göttingen came to define the Enlightenment university.
Hanover prime minister, Gerlach Adolph von Münchhausen, was most responsible for introducing a new criterion for academic advancement: the publication record: Professors either publish or perish. Göttingen was for training ministers and attracting rich students from other German states who would come to spend money in Hanover. Fame was its cameralist currency and it worked very well.
Kant in his 1786 book The Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, “A doctrine/system is a complete understanding organized according to principles, then it's called science (Wissenschaft = science, systematic knowledge: [a German-language term that embraces scholarship, research, study, higher education, and academia]).” With the classicists, we get the seminar (in the field of classical philology, 1738, at Göttingen). The first seminar was state-funded specialized institutes for teacher training, following Prussia's pedagogical seminars. Teachers were trained to teach Latin and Greek at Gymnasien (advanced secondary schools). Then seminars evolved into collegia (introduced by classicist and archeologist Christian Gottlob Heyne) — private classes professors would teach to small groups of students for extra fees. Unlike formal university classes which were just lectures, collegia demanded active student participation. traditional practice of disputation was done as written assignments and critiqued by class peers. This novel approach in 1763 became the standard practice in Germany academia by the 19th century. More universities established philology seminars on the Göttingen model — Wittenberg, Erlangen, Kiel, Helmsted, and Halle.
Duke Karl August of Saxe-Weimar was a modern, enlightened ruler with a passion for acquiring famous intellectuals (at this point, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was one of his ministers). Around 1798, he started to recruit a new crop of brilliant young scholars to his university: the playwright Friedrich Schiller, theologian Ernst Schleiermacher, philosophers Johann Gottlieb Fichte, G.W.F. Hegel, and F.W.J. Schelling, and the polymathic brothers Friedrich and August Wilhelm Schlegel. There's up and down (i.e. Schiller was bad at lecturing, Fichte was popular but resigned for being an atheist, etc.).
In the Romantic worldview, the goal of education was not to memorize facts but rather to train the capacity to notice connections between them and incorporate new information into the same systematic framework. As Schelling wrote, “knowledge of the organic whole of all sciences must therefore precede a particular education focused on a single specialty.” Thus, the university which spread the universal pursuit of knowledge was to be preserved over specialized schools. Fichte's central idea was that universities should foster personal self-development (Bildung) as thinkers and scholars, but also as moral beings.
The university, Fichte’s friend Schleiermacher, the theologian wrote, “forms the transition between the time when a young man is first prepared for systematic knowledge, by his own studying and by acquiring a knowledge base, and the time when, in the prime of his intellectual life, he expands the field or adds on a beautiful new wing to the edifice of knowledge through his own research.” To Schleiermacher, academies of science are centers of research production, not universities.
By the end of the 18th century, the Napoleonic wars (subjugation of Prussia by Napoleon Bonaparte) killed off the old university system with all things French (utilitarian over medieval institutions). half of all German universities shut down. Halle, the centerpiece of Prussian academia, closed in 1806. Wilhelm von Humboldt, Prussian educational administrator, from 1809 to 1810, developed a plan for an institution (synthesizing universities and seminars) to be built in Berlin, modeled on the pedagogical vision of Schelling, Fichte, and Schleiermacher, but also inspired by his own alma mater, Göttingen. Thus, the University of Berlin was founded in 1810. It was like Göttingen but with philosophy, one of the four faculties, elevated to a more central intellectual role, however, students in the career-oriented law, theology, and medical faculties still outnumbered the philosophers.
Berlin also marked an important transition: from fraternity violence to paeans to the life of the mind. The Romanticism era. Berlin Ph.D.: Fichte not only insisted on offering the degree, but added two novel requirements: candidates needed to write their own dissertations — and they needed to be works of original research. This was a very big change. Like seminars, dissertations have their roots in the medieval disputation. Starting in the 16th century, German doctoral candidates would hold a disputation as part of their graduation ceremony. In these disputations, they would defend a set of theses — written by the presiding professor. Professors would produce tens of thousands of these — before journals were common, they were the predominant form of academic publication. However, they typically weren’t new contributions to human knowledge. The dissertation was a test of a candidate's ability to defend their mentor's work. The work itself didn’t have to be new.
True Bildung happened in lectures or seminar discussions where students and teachers could learn together directly. Schleiermacher was even opposed to writing down lecture notes in advance, since this would get in the way of the students “directly observing the activity of intelligence producing knowledge.”
The Americans: The founders of Johns Hopkins and the University of Chicago were explicitly built on German models. Charles Eliot, the president of Harvard from 1869 to 1909, was a committed Germanophile, and reformed Harvard’s graduate school along German lines. The whole institutional structure of American graduate education is German, from academic departments (an outgrowth of the seminar) to doctoral dissertations. It’s Humboldt’s world, and we’re just living in it.
Without [this history], German universities might well have been hollowed out and replaced with professional schools, as they were in France.
My conclusion: So basically, the Germans were responsible for universities/colleges today for not turning into mere trade schools. But I don't agree with the author that it is a good thing that the research university's real contribution is a world where scholars don’t have to be originals or geniuses to add their bricks to the edifice of human knowledge (though I’m sure it helps), as this actually degrades the research university: everyone gets an A as long as you put in the time, nobody will fail even if you are not mentally capable of it. True, there was greater reliance on unique few scholars outside of universities, and synthesizing specialization with such is a good introduction of great researches into universities; However, emphasizing system over individual risks encouraging mediocrity and bureaucracy. The author does, as Deepseek AI concurs, appear to be a pragmatic anti-elitist. Nevertheless, this is a good history lesson overall.
A few days ago, Rev. Lin of CCCNY asked me to be Stephen Tong's translator, because he is coming to CCCNY to preach this Sunday, due to the Concert Tour of GRII/STEMI. I thanked her for the honor but I rejected the offer due the fact that I've already promised Stephen (of my church at Grace) to take over the sound system for this week's service.
I do wonder, if Pak Tong was the one requesting to preach or Rev. Lin was the one asking him to. The latter seems more plausible, so this entry will presuppose that. If it's the former, it still wouldn't excuse the latter, for Rev. Lin could easily persuade otherwise, if she has any sense of preparation for the Glory instead of conservation of her buried talents: "Look Lord, this church still has its name after so many decades, lo, there thou hast that is thine." (Matthew 25:25)
At his age, Stephen Tong would still not mind to preach, even though he has said that he's done and it's time for new blood and for him to focus on using other means such as music for the glory of God. So I don't think he's at his prime to preach anymore according to his last rally here. Moreover, his goal this time is the concert, not preaching. A bad true cannot bear good fruit (Matthew 7:18). Therefore, not only would Rev. Lin not produce any heir (pun intended) for the new generation of preachers over all these years, she has no shame in asking an old retired man to preach, making Stephen Tong work double shifts (preach by morning, conduct by night). This shows how little she cares actually for the Kingdom of God. I mean, who asks her visiting 85 year old grandpa to mow the lawn when she had 40 years prior to prepare for it?
Nadia and I have left the church for more than a decade now, yet no one from that church even bothered to ask why. What sort of ministerial leadership is this in a church? They would rather conclude their own slander: "They left because Nadia doesn't understand Chinese" even though she's been there fore 4 years prior. Rev. Lin couldn't even get it right as to whose the one who decided the leave: I or Nadia.
One telltale sign of such hired hands (John 10:12), in today's churches, is to see what does the minister do when a church member leaves all of a sudden. The common hired hands response would be: "They left us because they have been seduced by Satan, by the world". As if the minister's own church is truer than anywhere else. Very self-centered isn't it? This seems to be a very common American Reformed church habit. So it's not just on Laura Lin. But Tim Ferguson of Westfield OPC, Paul Murphy of NYC MERF, etc. Murphy maybe worse than Lin on this as he would justify himself: "Well, if you didn't become our official member, why should I care about you? That's not in my job description, that's not what I'm paid for." According to the logic from some of his sermons. Ferguson would at least give a "holier than thou" call: "Are you coming back to church, no? ok. Bye". Murphy (above my paygrade justification) and Lin ("Oh it must be because Nadia making you leave our church right?" - slander justification) could compete with each other to see who wins the trophy of the most convincing hired hand.
Another sign is that they have no zeal for bringing the Gospel themselves to others outside of the church. They would love to support evangelical groups. Rev. Lin is the worst kind I've seen, that doing the gospel is an "undesirable" labor that is done in obedience, and such "unpleasant" command will be rewarded one day, due to the fulfilment of such "unwanted" task. Instead of emmanuel, reward is the ultimate goal in life for people like her. Some may not support (not called to do so, allegedly) gospel ministries themselves but at least they would affirm its importance, that we must do with pleasure, this is already a very low bar, bordering unconverted ministry, so Rev. Laura Lin's even worse than this, turning her church CCCNY into a church that essentially praises man over Christ.
Of course, what people like her will always convince themselves is: "But I have given my life for the Lord, oh Lord, Lord, have I not done all these in my life, for your NAME?!" (Matthew 7:22)
Every so often I would come across some command lines instructions for certain features in Android phones. I've never paid attention to it, until now. Thanks to this site. I may just try it for fun. I had always thought that I am missing something but not too essential.
Stephen Tong: Paul vs. James on Faith and Work. Paul's faith is not the same as James'; James' work (James 2) and Paul's is also not the same.
Paul's "work" in Romans, is referring to the self-righteous work. Alluding to the pharisaic righteousness (Romans 3, 4, 8), which Jesus commanded us to exceed.
Therefore, do not also think that Paul's and James' were supplement to each other, because their terminologies are though same words used, but different meaning.
Stephen Tong incorrectly sourced this quote "Faith is the acceptance of acceptance" to Martin Luther. But it was actually Paul Tillich who said that in his sermon "You are Accepted", then published in his book "The Shaking of the Foundations" in 1948. "You are accepted, accepted by that which is greater than you, and the name of which you do not know... Simply accept the fact that you are accepted!" ~ Perplexity.ai
7/9/2025我今站在主的言語上 詩歌 short children's hymn. Also, if there's bad recording in Stephen Tong's series, STEMI Taiwan's youtube channel maybe a good place to find recovery, such as this one, on Hebrews 5
＃站在上帝話語上而永不退卻、永不妥協的心，有多重要❓（希伯來書要理問答 第759問）（因此講原始影音嚴重不良，請多看文字內容。）: Isaiah 56:7 House of Prayer vs. Sermon Preaching in the Church (minister of the Word)
＃為何馬丁路德以不妥協的精神，強調行為與救恩不能相提並論❓（希伯來書要理問答 第760問）（因此講原始影音嚴重不良，請多看文字內容。）Why by grace alone (Sola Gratia) and yet I am working so hard? Tong: Many churches do not realize this, that Martin Luther though in shallowness, looked down on the book of James because of its emphasis on WORK, but in motive, Luther was greatly important to do so because our work has absolutely no part in the Gospel in God's grace. Because of Luther, the Catholics adjusted (for the better) their theology to put more emphasis on grace, though they still require work in salvation. Unfortunately, a couple hundred years later, the Lutheran also adjusted (for the worse) their theology, seeing that the book of James is also God's revelation, a sort of balancing act of God using James' notion of work and Paul's faith together.
Paraphrased from Perplexity.ai: Of course, the Catholics wouldn't admit that they "adjusted" their theology because of Luther, but rather: "Clarified" and "Reaffirmed" their own doctrine of grace and justification, in the Council of Trent (1545-1563), the counter-reformation movement: Though it affirms the necessity of grace, it conflates justification with sanctification in order to credit man's work. I would say that the Reformed compatibilism view trump this.
我今站在主的言语上， 虽世界过去或灭亡。 主的言语永远必长存， 我今站在主的言语上
7/8/2025 TUES Came across lots of shocking news (to me at least) regarding Ruby Franke, former youtuber of 8 Passengers channel. A mormon mother who shared her family life on Youtube. She's now imprisoned, and apparently estranged from all her children and especially her oldest daughter, Shari, who wrote a book (The House of My Mother, A Daughter's Quest for Freedom, apparently the book was actually written by the ghost writer Caroline Ryder) about it. I would probably expand any detail of this here instead of creating a new entry. Also, this is a reminder to me that it is crucial to really download any important/interesting/good Youtube videos, because Youtube really would just ban/delete/remove/cancel videos they don't like at any time.
There are tons of videos about this news, even movies and TV documentary series made.
After watching the Hulu Series: Devil in the Family - The Fall of Ruby Franke. I think it's possible that Jodi Hildebrandt was truly possessed by demons and Ruby fell for it.
7/7/2025Mon
Charlie KirkmentionedESOP to a guy in Che Guevara (Argentinian/Cuban Marxist) T-shirt, after asking Kirk about the Mondragon Corporation in Spain (founded by a priest) which Kirk criticized as "widely inefficient". ESOP is what my company SP has started using a couple of years back. This was after dealing with the Marxist audience with the concept of ESPP (Employee Stock Purchase Program) being practiced in Florida already by Publix (grocery store).
Another interesting public exchange by Charlie Kirk is the one labeled "Can you Be a Christian and a Nationalist". This has been a particularly interesting topic for me due to the recent debate between Stephen Wolfe (proponent of Christian Nationalism) and Chris Gordon.
My take: Charlie Kirk is good, but he actually lost this one in general. His fundamentalist mentality cause him to make false accusations here and there of his interlocutor, without deeper thinking (viz. low IQ).
In this case Nick wins the general argument. I'm not sure if Nick's a lefty or a Catholic, but his argument is more reformed than Kirk's. Kirk argued as if America = the Church. He miscited (he said in City of God, 3rd Chapter) Augustine's Just War Theory. He misinterpreted ekklesia (Matthew 16:18) as government instead of church, an apparently fundamentalist low IQ view of Israel/nation vs. the Church. Nick should have stuck to Israel being the shadow type of the Church. And that Christian Nationalism is simply man's work, rather than God's work to bring God's kingdom to Earth.
7/6/2025 Sun
2nd time a new family visited our church today. Orlando was the one I spoke to first. I believe the one called 伊莎贝拉, is the wife, whose sister is 娜塔莉 (Thanks to Nadia for helping me remember), whose husband, 弗朗西斯, whose little boy is Calvin. Chinese transliteration for privacy.
I haven't read the book, but summaries and reviews I've read show that this perhaps Keller's best work.
I'll use Daniel Im's summary for now, highlighting his famous quotes from the book:
An idol is something we cannot live without. We must have it.
Anything can serve as a counterfeit god, especially the very best things in life.
Definition: An idol is anything more important to you than God. Anything that absorbs your heart and imagination more than God. Anything you seek to give you what only God can give. Anything that is so central and essential to your life, that should lose it, your life would feel hardly worth living.
If I have that [idol], then I will feel like my life has meaning. Then I’ll know I have value. And I’ll feel significant and secure.
The Bible uses three basic metaphors to talk about how people relate to the idols of their hearts: they love idols, trust idols, and obey idols. Spiritual adultery.
Idols give us a sense of being in control and we can locate them by looking at our nightmares: What do we fear the most? What if we lost it would make life not worth living?
Idols control us since we feel like we must have them or life is meaningless.
Whatever controls us is our Lord. The person who seeks power is controlled by power. The person who seeks acceptance is controlled by the people he or she wants to please. We do not control ourselves, we are controlled by the lord of our lives.
We will always be disappointed by idols, there are four things you can do: You can blame the things that are disappointing you and try to move on to better ones (that’s the way of continued idolatry and spiritual addiction), you can blame yourself and beat yourself (that’s the way of self loathing and shame), you can blame the world (that’s how you get hard, cynical, and empty), or you can reorient the entire focus of your life on God.
Jesus warns people far more often about greed than about sex, yet almost no one thinks they’re guilty of it.
Tithing is a minimum standard for Christian believers.
There’s only one way to change at the heart level…and that’s through the gospel.
One sign that you’ve made success an idol is the false sense of security it brings. The poor and the marginalized expect suffering. They know that life on this earth is nasty, brutish, and short. Successful people are much more shocked and overwhelmed by troubles: Life isn’t supposed to be this way.
It’s a lust…a longing to be inside...Until you conquer the fear of being an outsider, an outsider you will remain ~ C.S. Lewis.
It is impossible to understand a culture without discerning its idols.
When you pray and hope for something and you don’t get it and you respond with explosive anger or deep despair, then you may have found your real god [idol].
What are you looking to in order to justify yourself? It is a counterfeit god.
You may know about the love of Christ with your head, but not your heart. How can that be remedied? This takes spiritual disciplines.
Spiritual disciplines are forms of worship. And it is worship that is the final way to replace the idols of your heart. You can’t just get relief by figuring out your idols intellectually. You have to actually get the peace that Jesus gives…and that only comes when you worship. analysis can help you discover truths, but then you have to pray them into your heart. That takes time.
To do so, I need 1000 Subscribers and 4000 views in the last 12 months, according to google AI.
Currently I'm at 342 subscribers and I wasn't even promoting my channel. I think most of these could be bots or some spammer accounts. And I doubt I will reach 4000 views in a year, as my contents really are just for my own diary and online storage, with important ones double backed up to local drives, just in case.
I do plan to play all the hymns on Youtube, read Psalms, etc. That would probably the only self benefiting thing I do on social media that I would care to share with the public in a more professional (I will try) fashion.
But I'll note this here just so I can monitor how many subscribers I'm getting, either more or less.
Some think it's dishonest. I think they couldn't think deeper.
One main reason, would be due to the fact that social medias love to block, ban, delete contents/accounts of people whom they disagree with. In that case, I would either need to keep a local backup of everything I posted/followed/saved/etc. or simply have various personas which I monitor to be as consistent as the social media's "policy" as possible. So, time and energy saved, is a wiser move.
So let the shallow thinkers play safe or have their time wasted.
