Year: 2004

Baptism & The Salvation Army

The reason I bring up the Salvation Army is that I got the following e-mail from a correspondent:

I was wondering what the form and matter is for Baptism by a Salvationist [i.e., a member of the Salvation Army]. I am working with a young man in prison who wants to learn more about the faith, with the possibility of coming into full communion. He was baptised in his mother’s faith, i.e. Salvationist. Is this a valid baptism? He recieved instructions and claims to have made his first communion (but not Confirmation) in another state prison location (within a different diocese). Before I proceed, I need to know where he stands. He is single and has never been married, so, other than the baptism in question, and pehaps his recieving communion, he has no obvious impediments.

I replied:

I’m afraid that there is a difficulty in answering your question because the Salvation Army does not normally practice the sacraments. See the following links:

http://www.salvationarmy.org.uk/en/Library/factSheets/Sacraments.htm
http://www.salvationarmy.org.uk/en/Library/factSheets/FAQ-23-Baptism+and+membership.htm

There have been inconsistencies in this area, and sometimes Salvationists have received baptism in another church, but the Salvation Army does not encourage its members to be baptized. As a result of the irregular way in which baptism–when they occur among Salvationsists–are performed, there is no guarantee that any particular form (or matter) was used.

There would seem to be two solutions to the situation of the gentleman you describe: (1) investigate to find out the particulars of how *he* was baptized (e.g., did he do it in a Salvationist church or another church and what was the form and matter in his case). *Probably* he was baptized validly. However, because of the doubt in this area I would probably recommend a conditional baptism for him, just to be sure.

I wish the Salvationist gentleman the best of luck and hope that he soon comes into the Church, but I point this out here because it further underscores the problem with the Salvation Army’s lack of focus on gospel teaching. Even those who do not recognize baptism as means of salvation recognize that it is a scripturally-mandated response to the gospel (e.g., in Acts 2:38), and to simply discontinue its practice is fundamentally inconsistent with the Christian faith.

In fact, the result is that Salvationists who follow the practice of their group in this matter are not Christians because they are not baptized. They are kind of deutero-followers of the Messiah, like the disciples of Apollos that Paul found in Ephesis (Acts 19:1-7, cf. 18:18-28), but they are not Christians because they lack the sacrament that makes one a Christian.

Yes, Virginia, There Can Be Too Much Emphasis On Social Teaching

Quick! If someone comes up to you and says “Salvation Army,” what’s the first think you think of?

Guys on the street corner ringing bells and taking donations at Christmas time, right? Maybe big red trucks coming to cart away furniture and give it to the needy?

That’s the problem.

These things are not what the Salvation Army is about–or at least they shouldn’t be. You see, the Salvation Army is more than a charity.

It’s a church.

But it’s a church that has ruined its witness to Christ by over-emphasis on social teaching. It has allowed itself to become thought of in the public mind as a charity rather than a church, and that’s contrary to what it is to be a church.

People must undertand what we stand for as Christians. When they think of us, they must think of us as followers of Christ first and foremost, not as people who organize charitable events. (Heck, when I was a boy I thought the “Salvation” in their name referred to salvaging furniture that would otherwise be thrown away!)

It’s true that Jesus and his apostles were concerned for the material wellbeing of others and worked to improve it, but this was always subordinate to their concern for people’s spiritual wellbeing, and people knew it. The gospel is about how to get eternal life, not how to keep warm and well fed. While helping someone with the latter is important, it pales in comparison to helping them understand the former.

The Salvation Army has made a fatal mistake by becoming a charity in the mind of the public, which would be a betrayal of what it would be doing if it wants to be a church.

The case of the Salvation Army is a valuable object lesson for those in other churches–including the Catholic Church–to show what can go wrong when a group puts more emphasis on social teaching than on gospel teaching.

Michael Moore Accused of Breaking Two of Ten Commandments

Enfant terrible Michael Moore, producer of the films Bowling for Columbine and the new Bush-bash Farenheight 9-11, has recently been accused of breaking two of the Ten Commandments, specifically the ones involving theft and lying.

Ray Bradbury, author of the classic dystopian sci-fi novel Farenheight 451, is hopping mad that Moore sideswiped his novel’s title and is assuing him of ripping it off. (NOTE: Bradbury is so mad the he us a . . . uh . . . colorful phrase to describe Moore.)

Regarding Moore’s receipt of standing ovations and the Palme d’Or (Golden Palm) award at the Cannes film festival in the enfant terrible nation of France, Bradbury states:

“I have won prizes in different places and they are mostly meaningless. The people there hate us, which is why they gave him the d’Or. It’s a meaningless prize.”

Meanwhile, Conservative commentator Fred Barnes is accusing Moore of breaking the commandment against lying. In his book Stupid White Men, Moore recounted a phone call that showed Barnes acting like . . . well . . . . a stupid (and hypocritical) white man who didn’t know what The Iliad and The Odyssey are. Barnes flatly denies that the phone call ever took place and said Moore made it up. He writes:

The only problem is none of this is true. It never happened. Moore is a liar. He made it up. It’s a fabrication on two levels. One, I’ve never met Moore or even talked to him on the phone. And, two, I read both “The Iliad” and “The Odyssey” in my first year at the University of Virginia.

Makes one wonder what other things in Moore’s work may be made up.

Communist China Invades South Korea's Diet

Speaking of South Korea, a lot of South Koreans are unhappy about their ultra-pungent national dish–kimchi–being subverted by their Communist neighbor to the north. No, not North Korea. The BIG one: China.

Turns out, China is making cheap kimchi and undercutting the South Korean market for the food. They’re also threatening South Korea’s main export market for kimchi, which is in Japan.

I sympathize with the South Koreans. If a highly obnoxious nation–say, France–was dumping cheap hotdogs on the American market and threatening our main hotdog export markets (if we have any) then I’d be mad, too!

(This story reminds me: I haven’t had kimchi in a while. It’s probably fairly compatible with my diet, so maybe I’ll check that out.)

Communist China Invades South Korea’s Diet

Speaking of South Korea, a lot of South Koreans are unhappy about their ultra-pungent national dish–kimchi–being subverted by their Communist neighbor to the north. No, not North Korea. The BIG one: China.

Turns out, China is making cheap kimchi and undercutting the South Korean market for the food. They’re also threatening South Korea’s main export market for kimchi, which is in Japan.

I sympathize with the South Koreans. If a highly obnoxious nation–say, France–was dumping cheap hotdogs on the American market and threatening our main hotdog export markets (if we have any) then I’d be mad, too!

(This story reminds me: I haven’t had kimchi in a while. It’s probably fairly compatible with my diet, so maybe I’ll check that out.)

I Thought This Only Happend On Soap Operas

Man meets woman.

Man sleeps with woman.

Woman gets pregnant.

Woman demands they marry.

They do.

Baby looks nothing like man.

Woman claims babies switched in hospital.

Man threatens to sue hospital.

Woman admits baby was fathered by second man.

Marriage gets annulled.

Court orders woman to pay man $42,000 for jerking him around in this fashion.

Okay, the last one is a giveaway that this didn’t happen in America. It happened in South Korea. If it had happened here, I somehow doubt the man would have been able to be successful in court.

Breaking and Entering in Self-Defense?

A politician in Greenland is pleading self-defense on a breaking and entering charge.

Her argument is that it was too cold outside (this was Greenland, after all) and so she needed to get liquor to warm up. A local hotel which contained liquor was closed, so she forced her way in to get it.

Must . . . resist . . . making . . . joke . . . about . . . boozy politicians . . . and their . . . crazy antics.

Our Universe: Flat As A Pancake

giant-structures-in-the-universeAnother way one could argue that the universe has no beginning is if it is shaped in a funny, non-Euclidian way so that the matter and energy loops back on itself due to the curvature of space. Not all non-Euclidian shapes for space would allow it to do this, but some might.

Fortunately, scientists now have evidence that the universe is not curved. It is Euclidian or “flat” in the argot of astronomy. This was shown a few years ago by examining gigantic structures in the night sky that are too faint for the human eye to see.

That’s what the picture on the left is. It’s a section of the southern sky (think: Australia, not Dixie) showing enormous structures that we could see if our eyes were sensitive to the right frequency. To give a sense of how big these structures are, the dot that is inset in the picture is the relative size of the moon. Since the structures themselves are ultra-far away, though, they’re FREAKING HUGE.

They also contain clues about the geometry of the universe, and they reveal it to be Euclidian. So all that stuff Carl Sagan told you in Cosmos about the universe maybe being a weird shape appears to be simply wrong.

This also means that you couldn’t stand up on a high hill, use a pair of superpowerful binoculars, look out across the universe, and see the back of your own head. They may have done that in a way cool Land of the Lost episode, but that was their universe, not ours.

How Big Is The Universe?

universeIt’s 156 billion light years across. That’s the current estimate. “How can that be,” you ask, “if the universe is only supposed to be about 13.7 billion years old? How could it grow to such a size in so short a time?”

The answer that is proposed is that the universe didn’t simply start flying out from the Big Bang. It did that–the theory goes–but there is supposed to be more to it. The universe also is inflating like a balloon, so the space that the energy from the Big Bang rushed into has inflated and continues to inflate, allowing the universe to grow larger than mere expansion at the speed of light would allow.

If it helps, think of an ant walking on the surface of a balloon. The ant himself can only go so fast, but if the balloon he’s standing on is expanding, he can cover much more distance than he could under his own power. The same way, a light particle can only fly through space so fast (186,000 miles per second), but if the space it is travelling through is itself is expanding, the light particle (or wave–whatever) will cover more distance.

At least that’s the theory.

If it’s true, it’s one more reason why the universe is moving apart too rapidly for its gravity to overcome its outward momentum and pull it back in on itself. That means that the universe can’t be an eternally oscillating thing with no beginning that undergoes an endless cycle of expansions and collapses.

In other words, the new finding is supportive of the idea that the universe had a beginning and thus was created.

Judge's Ruling Out Of Touch With Reality

A Boston judge recently ruled that calling someone a homosexual when he is not does not violate slander or libel laws.

In her ruling she stated:

“In fact, a finding that such a statement is defamatory requires this court to legitimize the prejudice and bigotry that for too long have plagued the homosexual community.”

That’s nuts.

In the interest of furthering the homosexual agenda the judge has relied upon an idiotic theory of jurisprudence that would place judges in the position of philosophers. For her argument to work one would have to assume that judges should decide whether saying something about a person is objectively good or bad. This is not the job of a judge. In a slander or libel case it does not matter what the objective status of an accusation is as long as it is false and would hurt the person it is made against.

Suppose I live in a community that believes being a Martian is a bad thing. Someone then accuses me of being a Martian, when I am not. People in the community then begin to react negatively toward me, refuse me service, deny me jobs, reject doing business with my firm, etc., all because I have been falsely accused of being a Martian. In such circumstances, I should be able to sue the person who falsely accused me of being a Martian in order to get compensation for the harm that the false accusation has done to me and my reputation. It does not matter whether being a Martian is a good, neutral, or bad. The point is that someone falsely accused me of something that has negative effects on me and my reputation due to the way people react to it.

The fact is that in our society people frequently react negatively to calling someone a homosexual. Whether one approves of that or not, it happens, and judges should not prevent people from seeking legal redress of the wrong when they are falsely accused of being homosexual.

This idiot judge’s ruling would put judges in the position of adjudicating cases not based on whether a person suffers due to the making of a false charge but on whether the false charge refers to a thing that is objectively bad.

I’m sorry, but determining the objective moral status of something is a job for philosophers and theologians, not Massachusetts judges, regardless of the divine prerogatives they seem to believe they possess.