Imperial Valley Christian Center

Sometimes we Christians, in our effort to be pious, just end up being silly. Halloween is one of those times.

There's a guy in our neighborhood who has, for as long as I remember, had a vinyl sign, about 6 feet across, hanging over his front door with some type of come to Jesus message. I don't know about anyone else but every time I see that sign what I read is come to Jesus and you can help lower people's home values too. Or come to Jesus and you can violate the homeowners association rules in the name of your God too.

So now comes Halloween. The streets are full of kids boiling over with excitement about the prospect of dressing up in their costumes and people giving them candy. "Wow! what a concept. We knock on doors and people give us bags full of candy? They should have Halloween every week." Some people go all out decorating their houses, putting on costumes, putting on little performances all in the hopes of getting a laugh out of a kid, or adding a little joy to someone's life. 

In this scenario a lot of Christians take pride in playing the part of the Grinch. "Why we can't put on costumes and celebrate Halloween that's a pagan holiday." So this particular guy was standing out in front of his house looking quite grinchy. He had apparently just put in a new lawn so his yard was surrounded with crime scene like tape so that no one would walk on it. Which is understandable. But on top of that he was standing out in front of his house and in an over abundance of caution was glaring at all the passersby. Most of the passersby were kids.

So here's the scenario. The guy who advertises to the neighborhood that he's a Christian is out glaring at all the neighborhood kids, while other people in the neighborhood are spending a lot of time, effort and money trying to bring joy to some kids lives. Hmmm something is wrong with this picture.

Galatians 5:22  But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith,

You notice what's missing from this list… yeah correct doctrine.  The way you can tell if you're walking in the spirit is that you're producing the stuff on this list. The way you can tell if you're being a good Christian, isn't that you have correct doctrine, it's that you are producing the stuff on that list. One of the things on that list is joy. If you're not producing joy you're not being a good Christian. Joy is a fruit of the spirit, those who produce joy are walking in the spirit, those who aren't, aren't.

So what message does this mighty, witnessing Christian send to the neighborhood? If you want joy don't hang out with Christians. Now that's the way to win people to Christ. Let's not be joy stealers, instead let's try our best to be joy bringers, then we'll be the children of our father who is in heaven.

We've spent a lot of time establishing that the phrase, the Kingdom of God, is at the core of the Christianity. But what did Jesus mean by that phrase? Sometimes we kind of have the idea that Jesus didn't want his listeners to understand him, that he was speaking in some kind of secret, coded language. Well his language may be secret and coded to us but it wasn't to the people he was teaching and preaching to. If we want to understand what he was saying we need to learn to understand his words the way the people he was speaking understood them.

In this program I’m explaining Hebrew parallelisms, which are a very common feature of Hebrew writing. You can find parallelisms in every Psalm and every section of the book of Proverbs. A parallelism is where the same idea is repeated in a passage in different ways, using different words. For example:

Joshua 1:8
This book of the law

shall not depart out of thy mouth;
but thou shalt meditate therein day and night,

that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein:

for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and
then thou shalt have good success.

This passage of scripture contains two examples of parallelisms. The second one is the easier one to see: "thou shalt make thy way prosperous" and "thou shalt have good success" obviously mean the same thing. They are parallel to each other. The second phrase repeats the idea of the first.

The other example demonstrates how we can use Hebrew parallelisms to understand the words of Jesus. The first phrase says: "shall not depart out of thy mouth" the second says, "shalt mediate therein." On first glance we might think he is telling us to do two different things here: keep the word in our mouth and meditate in it. But once we learn to recognize Hebrew parallelisims we see that he is just repeating the same idea in two different ways and this helps us better understand what he is saying. In our American mindset we tend to think of meditation as something we do in our mind, as synonymous with thinking about something. If we look at this phrase with Hebrew parallelisms in mind we see that "meditate" is parallel to "not depart out of thy mouth" Because they are parallel they mean essentially the same thing. So what we discover is that  by "meditate" the author means to constantly keep the word of God in your mouth, to always be speaking it, or muttering it, or mumbling it.

Can you see how understanding parallelisms can help us to better understand the Bible? Now we want to use that understanding to learn what Jesus meant by the phrase, "the Kingdom of God."

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… Or Why Conservative Responses To Illegal Immigration Often Come Across As Bigoted or Even Racist

Maybe it's just me, (Hey I’m a Mexican American conservative, who lives about 15 miles from the Mexican Border, I used to practice a little immigration law, what do I know.) but every time John Derbyshire, over at The Corner, let's loose a rant against illegal immigrants, the image that pops into my head is of Bill "The Butcher" Cutting the leader of the nativist gang in the movie Gangs of New York. I guess I shouldn't be too hard on the Derb as he suffers from a most common affliction; hating that most which you used to be. You see Derb used to be an illegal alien and just like no one hates smoking as much as ex-smokers apparently no one hates illegal immigration as much as former illegal immigrants.

I should know, my dad and the Derb are cut from the same cloth, he also being a former illegal immigrant, and vigorous objectioner to current illegals. My dad was here illegally in the '50s, back in

Went as a chaperone/van driver last night with the Central High School Jazz Band to hear the Wynton Marsalis Quintet at a beautiful venue, The California Center for the Performing Arts in Escondido California. It was a fantastic two and half hour concert. This was my first professional jazz concert and the atmosphere was refreshingly different from other concerts I've attended. Very informal, very fun. It felt more like five guys playing in your living room having a great time with each other and letting us listen in.

Here's a nice shot of Wynton with my son Jeremiah, he plays the "bari" and is the saxophone section leader.

But the best part of the evening was actually after the concert, when the kids from the Central Jazz band were invited to go back stage. I kind of assumed it would be sort of a meet, shake hands get an autograph, hopefully a picture kind of situation but it wasn't. It turned into a 45 minute teaching session with the master.

What a generous man. For a man of Wynton Marsalis' stature to spend that amount of time after a 2 1/2 hour concert talking with a bunch of high school kids is, in my experience, unheard of. I certainly can't imagine any similarly well known minister doing anything like that.

What did he talk about? Integrity. The integrity of continuing to do what you believe in even when it's not popular. Having the integrity to put in the work it takes to perform excellently. The importance of knowing the history of jazz in order to be able to play modern jazz well. How rock music has destroyed muscial ability in America. He called it amateur music. Music which requires no musical skill to play and that rap music was, generally, even worse.

Over all he struck me as a man who had a very clear sense of his purpose in life: to promote and propagate Jazz music. A purpose to which he appeared to be absolutely committed. Here's a guy who could have been out bigshot-ing but spent time talking to High School students probably none of whom will ever even aspire to becoming professional musicians. Why would anyone do this? Because he's committed to Jazz not to self aggrandizement. He's a geuine apostle of jazz.

When I say "he" I really mean the entire quintet who all spoke with the kids. The drummer, Ali Jackson told the kids, there's no money in Jazz. You do this for love of the music. Here'a a shot with the five of them. Ali Jackson the drummer on the far left. Bass player Carlos Henriquez, pianist Eric Lewis,  saxaphone player, Walter Blanding Jr. (Who spent some time talking to Jeremiah about circular breathing.), and Marsalis.

What a great night. What a great bunch of guys. What a great example of integrity and commitment. I only wish that this level of integrity and commitment were more prevalent in the ministry.

Thank you Mrs. Baker.

Here's a pretty funny political ad from Rick Santorum, he's a Republican Senator from Pennsylvania whose having a really tough campaign this year. I've always kind of liked him, he's pretty honest and stands up for what he believes is right even if it's going to cost him votes.

God Wants You To Be Rich

We, Word of Faith guys, get a lot of flack for teaching that God wants his people to prosper. (Imagine that a God who wants it to go well with people who serve him, what a concept.) It was even the subject of a Time Magazine cover story in September of this year. Time sums it up this way: " Does God want you to be rich? Yes say some megachurches. Others call it heresy. The debate over the new Gospel of wealth."

After studying this topic for many moons there is one thing of which I am absolutely certain: the Bible teaches…  religion may not teach it, tradition may not teach it, philosophy may not teach it, but the Bible teaches that God wants us to prosper. So in this series of lessons I’m really going to go over the top and show you from the Bible that God wants you to be rich.  In fact what you’re going to see is that the Bible says that God has sworn an oath to give his people power to become rich. But I don’t just want to convince you that the Bible teaches this, I want it to get inside of you. I want you to come a point where you expect God’s power to prosper to be available to work on your behalf.

Really cool film here about our perception of beauty. It's part of Dove Soap's campaign for self esteem. You should make all of your daughters watch it several times.

Here's an interesting letter from Dick Armey who used to be the Republican majority leader until he retired from congress.  I've always kind of liked him particularly because he was a professor of Economics before he was elected to congress. (My B.A. is in economics.) The letter is basically attacking Dr. Dobson for supporting tax increases and more government. But the interesting part is the stories he relates about Dr. Dobson:

Another Armey’s Axiom says that if it is about power, you lose. And unfortunately when it comes to James Dobson, my personal experience has been that the man is most interested in political power.

As Majority Leader, I remember vividly a meeting with the House leadership where Dobson scolded us for having failed to “deliver” for Christian conservatives, that we owed our majority to him, and that he had the power to take our jobs back. This offended me, and I told him so.

In a later meeting Dobson and a colleague came into my office to lobby against a trade bill, asking me to stop the legislation from going to the House floor. They were wrong on the issue, and I told them no. Would you at least postpone the vote, they asked? We have a direct mail fundraising letter about to go out to our membership, they said.

I wondered then if their opposition to the bill was driven less by their moral compass and more by the need to rile their membership and increase revenue. I wondered then, if these self-appointed Christian leaders, like many politicians, had come to Washington to do good, but had instead done well for themselves.

Dobson later ran an orchestrated campaign against me in my race to retain the Majority Leader post, telling my colleagues that I was not a good Christian. I prefer to leave that decision to Lord God Almighty on Judgment Day.

Maybe you can understand why I have recently been quoted referring to this person as a “bully.”

An awful lot of bad has been done in the world by using government power to try and do good. Read the rest of the letter here.