Salem comes to Sioux County

Dordt's corrupt and many of it's professors love Rome, ironically. I checked out Jim Schaap's personal facebook page about 3 years ago. He "liked" many liberal people and pages. He "liked" Pope Francis and Obama.

I bet if you asked Jim Schaap this question ---"Jim, Do you believe that God the Father punished his only Son, Jesus Christ, on the cross for our sins? Yes or No?" --- he'd evade and doublespeak like "Progressive Christians" do all the time. Many of them openly revile the Gospel of substitionary atonement, but some of them like Jim would be more evasive.

Progressive's hate that question with all their heart, mind, soul, and strength.

Their methodology is trash-and-burn. They see themselves as the righteous, the only ones who hold truths they believe in free-fall all around. Something close by is going to hell unless they scream. That's why I put his words in red.

Maybe it's my politics (I like Obama). Maybe it's the church (I like Pope Francis). Chances are, what he throws on the fire is some highly flammable mix. Lately, here in the neighborhood, they've decided to take on the peddlers of perdition in institutions that have brought light and learning to the region. Sioux County, Iowa, without its colleges, would be a far less attractive place to live. They call themselves the Sioux County Conservatives, and they're convinced it's their mission to take out the trash. Where there isn't much, they create it, bring it to the curb, and torch it. 

Hence, Vaughn Wassink posting what he did above, about me. I don't know Vaughn Wassink, but he apparently knows me. What I do know is that he wants to throw gas on the fire their website has burning, so he brings up yet another name, mine, from one of the institutions Sioux County Conservatives believe to be leading us all to perdition. It really doesn't matter that I'm not from that institution--that I'm retired. What I am, by his reckoning, is trash that's got to be burned. Salem comes to Sioux County.

This guy Schaap, he says, once "liked" Pope Francis and Obama. In fact, he said so openly on Facebook. That makes him a "progressive," and "progressives" have to be outed and muted and brought out to the curb. He wonders what my answer would be if he would pose the question of the efficacy of the cross. He knows I'd waffle, "evade or doublespeak." After all, Vaughn Wassink says "progressives" like me "openly revile the Gospel of substitutionary atonement."

He's making trash and lighting fires. 

If Vaughn Wassink would draw up the criteria by which God almighty determines who is and who isn't a recipient of His grace--if he was God--I'd be in big trouble. But his rules will never determine the meaning or reach of grace. 

Nor will mine. 

Maybe on Ash Wednesday especially we should thank goodness that's true, of both of us and for both of us. We all stand in need of the cross; we all need grace. Without it, we're all trash, even Vaughn Wassink and the Sioux County Conservatives, the true believers so gleefully lighting the fires.