Hyper Grace, Hyper Repentance, and the Middle Ground

Response to

Rooting Out Fuzzy Theology Behind the Hyper-Grace Message

DAVID & NANCY RAVENHILL
Charisma Magazine online 9:21AM EDT 4/2/2013
http://www.charismamag.com/blogs/prophetic-insight/17255-rooting-out-fuzzy-theology-behind-the-hyper-grace-message

Two Types of Repentance

Most Charismatics Christians (they mistakenly call themselves Pentecostals) fail to distinguish between two types of repentance. Peter explicitly names the first type, and only regarding changing minds FROM rejection of Messiah TO receiving Him. The New Testament only describes the second type without naming it "repentance." We label the second type "repentance," but the label is not Biblical, although it works as long as one does not confuse the two.

Unfortunately, many people DO confuse the two.

The first repentance exchanges a broken-down death trap of a clunker for a brand new car. The dealer has stamped "IT IS FINISHED" on the papers, sent the clunker to the recyclers, and placed the new owner's name in the Lamb's Book of Car Registrations. That new car irrevocably belongs to the new owner.

The second repentance leads to cleaning up the car, driving on better roads in accordance with the Car Ownership Bible, repairing any damage and wear, and learning to use it for profitable purposes. The owner may dent the car, soil it, and fail to maintain it until it's no earthly good. A judge may tell the owner to take it off the road. But the car will always belong to the owner.

Confusing Grace and Repentance

Many people confuse the two. When the car gets dirty, they foolishly keep returning to the dealership to ask for the car again. As the author implies, however, they would be wise to return to the Dealer as many times as needed to maintain and learn more about their car.

Just as one extreme insults the blood of Christ by excusing sin that has been washed away, the other insults the blood by ignoring its sufficiency and attempting to re-apply it, even though "there remains no more offering for sin."

Contrasting the Dangers of the Two Hypers

If we wish to compare the dangers of the two, hyper repentance poses the greater danger. Lost people who have learned hyper repentance add self-reliance on repentance to reliance on Christ. Paul explicitly explains that grace and works mutually exclude each other. The Giver does not give gifts to those who ask for wages.

Therefore, both hypers present practical dangers to the saved, but hyper repentance adds an everlasting danger to the lost.

The irony lies not in the Ravenhill's attempt to correct hyper grace (for which I am grateful), but in that he does so from within the territory of hyper repentance.

Dating

My dad warned me against women who would take advantage of me, but he should have warned me against my own predatory, testosterone-poisoned mind.

In the natural mind, the goal of dating is "hooking up" or "scoring." This puts the wrong pressures on people who date. Reaching the goal sets you up for heartbreak and endangers the future of the relationship. Most dangerously, the carnal definition of "dating" risks creating an innocent human life whom you sentence to, at best, the stigma of illegitimacy, the emotional wounds of growing up fatherless, or at worst, the torture of being chemically burned to death or being vivisected, without even the benefit of anaesthetic, before birth.

Proper dating, however, can serve as a tool of socialization: learning self restraint, learning to enjoy, understand, and honor the opposite sex, and developing friendships.

I did not realize until I was around 25 that I needed to correct my goals in dating. I changed from looking for a wife to learning to enjoy women as friends, without the sexual or marital agenda.

Think of how men and women approach shopping. A woman enjoys shopping for the experience, whereas a man sets a goal of hunting down his prey, the specific item or deal. As I matured, I learned to shop at hardware stores just to get ideas and to see what's available for solving problems later. That's similar to the mindset one needs in dating.

Around my 27th birthday, I was praying for somebody to disciple. The Lord revealed to me that a man's ultimate disciple is (or ought to be) his wife. That was the end of that prayer request.

About a month later, God gave me that disciple. It did not take years of dating to know that she was the one. By the end of the year, we were married. It's been almost 30 years, now. The point is, a guy needs to look at dating as practice lessons in leadership, discipling, and responsibility, too.

With the right mindset about the purpose of dating, it becomes a lot easier to counter testosterone poisoning. Date to enjoy, to learn, to develop restraint. Let the goals come in their own time.

What's So Bad about Being a Liberal?

First, not all that presents itself as conservative is actually conservative.

The Republican Party poorly represents conservatism. In fact, the GOP vacillates between moderately conservative on some issues and liberal economics and internationalism. I would guess that a third of the GOP is actually liberal, a third sticks a wet finger in the air, and a minority is actually conservative. For example, George W. Bush got tax cuts passed early in his administration, but cooperated with Democrat-led bail-outs of banks and GM.

So, let's not use Republicans to define the opposite of liberalism.

Second, being liberal is a good thing; and progress is good when the goal is good and the means are just. Being a liberal or a progressive, however, has a very peculiar meaning that does not necessarily connect to the root words, liberal and progress.

In my definitions (not necessarily standard, but offered for the sake of communication), conservatism seeks to preserve traditional values of liberty, self-reliance, and justice that does not respect persons.

Liberalism, or as the codeword is used today, progressivism, on the other hand, redefines a neutral term. Progress is good, right? Doesn't everybody love progress?

When you say change (as in hope and change) or progress, you have to pick a direction. You have to pick an origination and a destination. Depending on your definition of progress, it may or may not mean something good. The compass has only one North, but it has 359 degree-markers that point away from North.

Suppose your objective were to see far with an unobstructed view, so you climb the highest mountain. Progress would be pretty stupid if it meant trekking off that cliff to the West, wouldn't it? What else could you do? You could build a tower where you are, on your existing foundation. But would you leave the spot just because change is good?

The progressive compass points hard left, to 270 degrees, toward freedom for immorality and toward repression of traditional morality, toward collectivist statism, and toward "social justice" that bases rights on class, skin color, and sexual orientation.

American conservatives see progressive, liberal, socialist, and Marxist, as variations of a single philosophy. That philosophy derives from secular, materialist existentialism, in which interpretation is reality, objective truth is a myth, and the ultimate organism is the state.

Whereas Americanism states that authority flows from God through the People to the government, the progressive spectrum worships the Collective as the ultimate organism, whose people live at its pleasure. Americanism secures rights to the people and assigns responsibilities to the government, but progressivism gives the government rights and the people privileges. Conservative liberalism means personal tolerance and personal giving (to which the restaurant help will attest after any political convention), but Progressive liberalism forces promotion of the tolerable and gives at the expense of others.

If you believe black is white and right is wrong, then, I suppose, being a liberal is great.

What Fact Check Sites Do You Prefer?

Do you prefer Snopes, Factcheck, what? Thanks, L

The fact-check and urban legends sites have helped me avoid embarrassing myself many times. There's nothing like forwarding a request from a 7-year-old cancer victim, only to find that he's now 27, has to pay for his own zip code, and wishes people would stop sending him post cards for his collection.

 

When it comes to political or social issues, however, I don't trust any of them.

• PolitiFact is a project of the St. Petersberg Times, an extreme left-wing newspaper. Click HERE for an example of how their Lie of the Year with which they smeared Mitt Romney turned out to be true.
    
• FactCheck, FlackCheck, and FactCheckEd are a projects of Annenberg Public Policy Center and funded by the Annenberg Foundation. As board chairman of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, Barack Obama (or was he still Barry Soetoro?) helped fund "educational" activities of Bill Ayers, the 1960s terrorist who murdered at least one policeman with a bomb. What does that tell you about FactCheck's neutrality?
    
• Snopes is funded by George Soros, a pro-socialist billionaire and currency manipulator who boasts that he has overthrown at least two European countries. The editors of Snopes are Obama bundlers and one has even held an appointment in the Obama administration.
    
• The Fact Checker is a project of The Washington Post, a veritable media outlet for the Democrat Party.

No short-cut around visiting various sources and weighing the arguments. However, find the following sites quite helpful:

• Media Research Center (MRC) and its network of sites keep tabs on media bias.
  NewsBusters
  CNSNews.com
  MRCTV
  Business and Media Institute
  Culture and Media Institute
  TimesWatch
  MRC Action

If you have a favorite site for checking the veracity of what you hear from the media or the politicians, please let us know in the comments.

When Liberals Get Tough on Crime....

I see a common trope in the news that I call, When Liberals 'get tough on crime....'

• A kindergartener takes a 3/4" rubber GI Joe knife to school
• Seven-year-olds shoot at each other with "finger guns" while playing cops and robbers
• A teenage girl gives Midol to a classmate having menstrual cramps

...and they get suspensions and juvenile records.

• Or an Olympic rifle champion gets arrested for having his target rifle (with trigger lock and a locked bag) locked in the trunk of his car when picking up his child from school.
•  A man shoots an armed home invader and is sent to prison for illegally using a gun.

 When Liberals 'get tough on crime....' predicts the following:

• SWAT teams knocking down the doors of anybody who has ever been diagnosed with depression or anxiety (information courtesy of Obamacare) and who has a record of having applied to purchase a firearm (information courtesy of background check applications)
•  "Clean shoots" by police officers reacting to people startled out of their sleep and pointing flashlights at the intruders.

The second prediction reminds me of a little boy in Modesto, California, who was killed a few years ago by the "accidental discharge" of a shotgun pointed at his back while he laid, hands bound, on the floor during a legal (but mistaken) search of his grandfather's house.