I’m not reformed but am reformed adjacent and watching my reformed brethren tear themselves apart in heartbreaking. That said until you start actually addressing the arguments of your opponents and until you clearly define your terms you aren’t going to get anywhere “solving” this problem. You very much have to deep dive into the causes and effects if you want those men to listen to you. For one thing you have to acknowledge that yes, many generations of Americans have in fact been lied to about almost everything by people in authority (both religious and secular) for their entire lives and that as such it’s understandable that they have started questioning everything. The truth can stand questioning, there’s no reason to shut down questions and doing so makes it look like you have something to hide.
On one hand there are people who are absolutely blaspheming the name of Christ by saying vile terrible things about Jews. However people concerned with antisemitism have also over reacted and lumped a bunch of young men who have legitimate concerns and questions (especially about WWII as we are taught it) in with these extremists. This benefits no one. Again you have to trust the truth. The truth is that pretty much everyone was awful in that war. The Nazis were awful. The Italians were awful. The French were awful. The Brits killed about 3 million of their Indian subjects through neglect. America supported China against Japan before officially entering the war, and ignored intelligence that warned them an attack on Pearl Harbor was likely if not imminent. We then used that attack as impetus to join the war which ultimately completely disrupted the social fabric of America and cost an immeasurable amount of blood and gold. The Soviets were the worst of all of them and the Japanese were probably second worse. It’s still a good thing that the allies stopped the Japanese and the Nazis (although the allies should then have done something about Stalin). The truth can stand scrutiny.
Defining terms is important because many of them do not think that the people who claim Jewish descent today are the biblical Jews. Until you address this issue all the Bible verses you can provide about Jews are not going to accomplish anything.
You also have to have some solutions to the very real world concerns that are driving many of these issues. Many of these young men are draftable. Our country is one bad day away from officially being at war and maybe a bad week away from a decision to draft young men to fight in said war on behalf of Israel. If you are going to rightly teach young men that the gospel knows no ethnicity or nationality then you need some plan to protect your young men from being sent to war to protect another nation. Sending our young men to kill and die in the name of Israel isn’t Christ like either. Israel has the right to self defense it does not have the right to the lives of our young people to do it.
The reformed church also places an incredibly difficult burden on young men. There’s an expectation that he lead his family. There’s an expectation that he will have a pile of kids and his wife will stay home with them. This is not only a tremendously difficult path in today’s culture it’s not a clear path. The idea that Jews control the world and economic system isn’t particularly attractive when you have achieved the sort of success you have been told is the baseline for adulthood. Finding practical ways to help young men not just find purpose but to achieve that goal is something the church needs to articulate.
You’re spot on that many of these young men lacked spiritual if not biological fathers and as such they do not submit to authority as they ought. But if you want to teach them you have to act within that reality. Thumping them with Bible verses is not going to work, especially not when they can find some other interpretation of those verses that supports their viewpoint.
Well-spoken, but I beg to differ with " This is not only a tremendously difficult path in today’s culture it’s not a clear path. " Jesus never told us that obedience and submission would be easy. I'm here to testify, after more than 45 years of feminist onslaught, it is not only possible, but not that hard, when one's priorities are aligned with Scripture, rather than with keeping up with the heathen.
I’m going to presume that you are a woman and as such frankly I don’t think your opinion on how easy it is to be a man is worth anything at all. Every Christian man I’ve spoken to in the last five years wether he’s 18 and looking at the future shaking in his space boots or looking backwards at nearly ninety has expressed that the traditional male path to success is far more difficult today than anytime post WWI maybe any time in modern history. None of my elders think today’s young men have it better or easier than they did. My grandfather had a very clear path toward success, he went to trade school and became a mechanic and supported a stay at home wife and five kids from his two man shop. My dad followed his footsteps and bought him out of the same shop. He had two kids but my mom had to go into teaching once we were in school to make ends meet. My dad refused to allow either son in law or a cousin join him in business because he knew his shop would die sooner rather than later because of the encroachment of the big city and technology changes. They’ve been trying to sell the shop for three years and probably will eventually wind up just selling the real estate and auctioning off all the tools and equipment because the dealerships and Walmart and Jiffy Lube can beat their prices. My husband went into the military and got shot in the face in Iraq, he is a disabled veteran who will never be healthy enough to hold down a full time job again. We have spent a decade fighting the VA to get his benefits. So what path forward do we point our son down? University isn’t an option. We don’t want him shedding his blood in a DEI military on foreign soil just to get screwed by the VA if he makes it home. How many of the trades will still be around in ten or fifteen years with AI moving at warp speed? He wants to be a farmer but he won’t inherit a farm and he won’t have any capital to compete against Bill Gates and Ted Turner for farmland that comes up for sale. I come from working class people and university and a doctorate was supposed to be my kid’s ticket into the middle class. Unfortunately I was late enough that tuition had already sky rocketed and early enough that nobody thought to worry about it. There wasn’t any jump into the middle class for us. The path to a wife and family that includes being able to own a small home and go on vacation once a year to see the grandparents is anything but clear right now. That hardly qualifies as keeping up with the heathens.
“Difficult” is a subjective term. It was no “easier” or “harder” to follow God’s Way from the first temptation and sin in The Garden. God doesn’t accept whining or excuses from anyone. He made The Way through from The Beginning, and will until The End. It’s His GIFT to us - even the very faith by which we believe.
As a godly older sister in Christ, I don’t accept excuses from myself, nor from any other Holy-Spirit filled Believer. Buck up the holy armour, I say, and STOP WEAKENING THE BRETHREN with false teaching.
Of course it is sometimes easier and sometimes harder to follow God’s way. That is precisely why God ordered the Hebrews to kill everyone who inhabited the promised land. He knew that if those people were allowed to remain that they would be a bad influence and a temptation for the Hebrews to follow their neighbor’s false Gods which is exactly what happened. It would have been easier to stay loyal to God without the influence of false idols everywhere. It’s also why He outlawed marrying foreigners, because if your wife is worshipping a false God it’s easier to fall into worshipping that God than if you are both following God. That’s also why in the New Testament believers are not to marry unbelievers, doing so makes it more likely you adopt at least some part of their belief system. Just because it’s harder to follow God sometimes isn’t an excuse not to, but it’s just silly to say that following God is never easier or harder depending on your circumstances. It is much harder for my Nigerian sisters to live out forgiving their “enemies” when their enemies have murdered their husbands and children than it is for me to live out forgiving my “enemies” which are generally people who make my life mildly more inconvenient or who hurt me emotionally. Me forgiving my parents for their divorce is certainly easier than forgiving the man who murdered my husband and children.
Nice job plucking out random Bible verses completely out of context and offering them in the place of answers to practical questions. “Obey God” is not a particularly helpful answer when my son asks me whether or not he should go to trade school or where he should apply to jobs. Certainly if God is pointing him in a specific direction he should follow it, but I think it’s unlikely he will get such a direction for every decision he ever makes. In my experience most people who claim to hear from God about every decision they make are simply slapping God’s name on the things they wanted to do.
I’m not passive aggressive, I’m simply pointing out that you are ignorant and wrong, conflating being older with being an elder or someone worth listening to. You have terrible theology and think that throwing out of context Bible verses at people searching for actual practical help is useful. You refuse to acknowledge the complete dissolution of the entire social system your life was based on. This attitude is exactly why young reformed men have turned against both their olders and their elders. You are doing the modern equivalent of James 2:15-16. Young men are crying out for direction and real leadership and a way to achieve the challenge laid before them and the answer you give is “obey God”. Then when they point out that this isn’t helpful, they get called names just like you immediately went to “harpy”.
You posted “as a godly older sister” and after I responded without name calling or disparagement, but with facts and practical example your response was immediately to call me a passive aggressive harpy. Is that how Christians who want to be seen as elders and listened to ought to behave? This is unironically the exact same behavior shown by the frustrated reformed elders, a refusal to actually discuss the facts at hand and an immediate appeal to authority (which unlike you they at least actually have), followed by name calling.
Thank you for standing up against antisemitism and for reminding us that all humans are made in the image of God. As a Jewish person who grew up in Israel and who loves Israel, I find antisemitism terrifying—but antisemitism also provides opportunities and reminders for people to reject what is evil and to emphasize the common light of humanity. Those who use Christianity to fuel antisemitism remind me of Herod, “so that I may go and worship him” (Matthew 2:8). In other words, they seem to be pursuing personal power for themselves under the mask of wanting to worship Christ. Hitler himself channeled the idea that he was Jesus-like. Today, people who are attracted to antisemitism would benefit from contemplating what Hitler said in his Address to the Reichstag on 30 January 1939. Note how Hitler is describing himself as a prophet and how, in an act of stunning projection, Hitler blamed the Jews for the war that he was passionately pursuing and that would soon bring destruction upon Europe. I hope that this can serve as a reminder of the deceitfulness of “blaming the Jews:”
“I have been a prophet very often in my lifetime, and this earned me mostly ridicule. In the time of my struggle for power, it was primarily the Jewish people who mocked my prophecy that, one day, I would assume leadership of this Germany, of this State, and of the entire Volk, and that I would press for a resolution of the Jewish question, among many other problems. The resounding laughter of the Jews in Germany then may well be stuck in their throats today, I suspect. Once again I will be a prophet: should the international Jewry of finance succeed, both within and beyond Europe, in plunging mankind into yet another world war, then the result will not be a Bolshevization of the earth and the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe. Thus, the days of propagandist impotence of the non-Jewish peoples are over.”
I hope that those who are attracted to Hitler will take inspiration instead from a person such as Pastor André Trocmé who closely studied the gospel and found in it only reasons to oppose Hitler—and who went on to risk his life to save Jews.
The refusal of "Christians" to actually read the Bible is the number one cause, and the second is pastors refusing to preach the Bible and preferring to use sermons.com or some "Christianized" version of a Tony Robbins hype video to preach on Sunday morning. ☹
If Pastors (or people who claim they are Christians) would actually just read the Bible, this anti Jew heresy would be easily debunked.
In Jeremiah 31:36 & 37 we read: "I am as likely to reject My people Israel as I am to do away with the laws of nature!" Just as the heavens cannot be measured and the foundation of the earth cannot be explored, so I will not consider casting them away forever for their sins. I the Lord have spoken!" In case that verse was not enough, perhaps Romans 11:1 "I ask then, has God rejected His people the Jews? Of course not! Remember that I myself am a Jew, a descendent of Abraham and member of the tribe of Benjamin."
Another terrible abuse of Scripture I have seen is in Revelation 2:9 where Jesus refers to the "synagogue of satan", a very ill-informed Substack writer claimed this refers to all Jews, when it clearly is referring to a particular group of Jews specifically in the city of Smyrna.
Another reason for the evil propaganda you are exposing, is that the Antichrist hates Jews, and his spirit is already in the world stirring up hatred against God's people. Many woke Christians (can you be woke, and Christian? I don't think so) due to the current conflict in the Middle East between "Palestinians" and Israel - have bought into the politically correct narrative that it is fashionable to hate Jews. Perhaps when they find out that Palestinians advocate for throwing gays off buildings - they might change their views 🤔
There's an awful lot of godless hubris that hasn't been transformed out of some believers yet. My caution is that we will be held accountable for every idle word we have spoken on The Day of Christ...
I’m not reformed but am reformed adjacent and watching my reformed brethren tear themselves apart in heartbreaking. That said until you start actually addressing the arguments of your opponents and until you clearly define your terms you aren’t going to get anywhere “solving” this problem. You very much have to deep dive into the causes and effects if you want those men to listen to you. For one thing you have to acknowledge that yes, many generations of Americans have in fact been lied to about almost everything by people in authority (both religious and secular) for their entire lives and that as such it’s understandable that they have started questioning everything. The truth can stand questioning, there’s no reason to shut down questions and doing so makes it look like you have something to hide.
On one hand there are people who are absolutely blaspheming the name of Christ by saying vile terrible things about Jews. However people concerned with antisemitism have also over reacted and lumped a bunch of young men who have legitimate concerns and questions (especially about WWII as we are taught it) in with these extremists. This benefits no one. Again you have to trust the truth. The truth is that pretty much everyone was awful in that war. The Nazis were awful. The Italians were awful. The French were awful. The Brits killed about 3 million of their Indian subjects through neglect. America supported China against Japan before officially entering the war, and ignored intelligence that warned them an attack on Pearl Harbor was likely if not imminent. We then used that attack as impetus to join the war which ultimately completely disrupted the social fabric of America and cost an immeasurable amount of blood and gold. The Soviets were the worst of all of them and the Japanese were probably second worse. It’s still a good thing that the allies stopped the Japanese and the Nazis (although the allies should then have done something about Stalin). The truth can stand scrutiny.
Defining terms is important because many of them do not think that the people who claim Jewish descent today are the biblical Jews. Until you address this issue all the Bible verses you can provide about Jews are not going to accomplish anything.
You also have to have some solutions to the very real world concerns that are driving many of these issues. Many of these young men are draftable. Our country is one bad day away from officially being at war and maybe a bad week away from a decision to draft young men to fight in said war on behalf of Israel. If you are going to rightly teach young men that the gospel knows no ethnicity or nationality then you need some plan to protect your young men from being sent to war to protect another nation. Sending our young men to kill and die in the name of Israel isn’t Christ like either. Israel has the right to self defense it does not have the right to the lives of our young people to do it.
The reformed church also places an incredibly difficult burden on young men. There’s an expectation that he lead his family. There’s an expectation that he will have a pile of kids and his wife will stay home with them. This is not only a tremendously difficult path in today’s culture it’s not a clear path. The idea that Jews control the world and economic system isn’t particularly attractive when you have achieved the sort of success you have been told is the baseline for adulthood. Finding practical ways to help young men not just find purpose but to achieve that goal is something the church needs to articulate.
You’re spot on that many of these young men lacked spiritual if not biological fathers and as such they do not submit to authority as they ought. But if you want to teach them you have to act within that reality. Thumping them with Bible verses is not going to work, especially not when they can find some other interpretation of those verses that supports their viewpoint.
Well-spoken, but I beg to differ with " This is not only a tremendously difficult path in today’s culture it’s not a clear path. " Jesus never told us that obedience and submission would be easy. I'm here to testify, after more than 45 years of feminist onslaught, it is not only possible, but not that hard, when one's priorities are aligned with Scripture, rather than with keeping up with the heathen.
I’m going to presume that you are a woman and as such frankly I don’t think your opinion on how easy it is to be a man is worth anything at all. Every Christian man I’ve spoken to in the last five years wether he’s 18 and looking at the future shaking in his space boots or looking backwards at nearly ninety has expressed that the traditional male path to success is far more difficult today than anytime post WWI maybe any time in modern history. None of my elders think today’s young men have it better or easier than they did. My grandfather had a very clear path toward success, he went to trade school and became a mechanic and supported a stay at home wife and five kids from his two man shop. My dad followed his footsteps and bought him out of the same shop. He had two kids but my mom had to go into teaching once we were in school to make ends meet. My dad refused to allow either son in law or a cousin join him in business because he knew his shop would die sooner rather than later because of the encroachment of the big city and technology changes. They’ve been trying to sell the shop for three years and probably will eventually wind up just selling the real estate and auctioning off all the tools and equipment because the dealerships and Walmart and Jiffy Lube can beat their prices. My husband went into the military and got shot in the face in Iraq, he is a disabled veteran who will never be healthy enough to hold down a full time job again. We have spent a decade fighting the VA to get his benefits. So what path forward do we point our son down? University isn’t an option. We don’t want him shedding his blood in a DEI military on foreign soil just to get screwed by the VA if he makes it home. How many of the trades will still be around in ten or fifteen years with AI moving at warp speed? He wants to be a farmer but he won’t inherit a farm and he won’t have any capital to compete against Bill Gates and Ted Turner for farmland that comes up for sale. I come from working class people and university and a doctorate was supposed to be my kid’s ticket into the middle class. Unfortunately I was late enough that tuition had already sky rocketed and early enough that nobody thought to worry about it. There wasn’t any jump into the middle class for us. The path to a wife and family that includes being able to own a small home and go on vacation once a year to see the grandparents is anything but clear right now. That hardly qualifies as keeping up with the heathens.
“Difficult” is a subjective term. It was no “easier” or “harder” to follow God’s Way from the first temptation and sin in The Garden. God doesn’t accept whining or excuses from anyone. He made The Way through from The Beginning, and will until The End. It’s His GIFT to us - even the very faith by which we believe.
https://biblehub.com/ephesians/2-8.htm
As a godly older sister in Christ, I don’t accept excuses from myself, nor from any other Holy-Spirit filled Believer. Buck up the holy armour, I say, and STOP WEAKENING THE BRETHREN with false teaching.
https://biblehub.com/ephesians/6-11.htm
Everything we need to live a victorious godly life has already been provided. All we need is to “Trust and Obey,” as the old hymn says.
GROW UP into everything in Christ Jesus. https://biblehub.com/ephesians/4-15.htm
GROW in the grace and the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour.
https://biblehub.com/2_peter/3-18.htm
This is what Scripture tells us. Do do otherwise is just sin.
Of course it is sometimes easier and sometimes harder to follow God’s way. That is precisely why God ordered the Hebrews to kill everyone who inhabited the promised land. He knew that if those people were allowed to remain that they would be a bad influence and a temptation for the Hebrews to follow their neighbor’s false Gods which is exactly what happened. It would have been easier to stay loyal to God without the influence of false idols everywhere. It’s also why He outlawed marrying foreigners, because if your wife is worshipping a false God it’s easier to fall into worshipping that God than if you are both following God. That’s also why in the New Testament believers are not to marry unbelievers, doing so makes it more likely you adopt at least some part of their belief system. Just because it’s harder to follow God sometimes isn’t an excuse not to, but it’s just silly to say that following God is never easier or harder depending on your circumstances. It is much harder for my Nigerian sisters to live out forgiving their “enemies” when their enemies have murdered their husbands and children than it is for me to live out forgiving my “enemies” which are generally people who make my life mildly more inconvenient or who hurt me emotionally. Me forgiving my parents for their divorce is certainly easier than forgiving the man who murdered my husband and children.
Nice job plucking out random Bible verses completely out of context and offering them in the place of answers to practical questions. “Obey God” is not a particularly helpful answer when my son asks me whether or not he should go to trade school or where he should apply to jobs. Certainly if God is pointing him in a specific direction he should follow it, but I think it’s unlikely he will get such a direction for every decision he ever makes. In my experience most people who claim to hear from God about every decision they make are simply slapping God’s name on the things they wanted to do.
No argument from me on this. Personal note to self: Watch out for argumentative and passive aggressive harpies in the future.
I’m not passive aggressive, I’m simply pointing out that you are ignorant and wrong, conflating being older with being an elder or someone worth listening to. You have terrible theology and think that throwing out of context Bible verses at people searching for actual practical help is useful. You refuse to acknowledge the complete dissolution of the entire social system your life was based on. This attitude is exactly why young reformed men have turned against both their olders and their elders. You are doing the modern equivalent of James 2:15-16. Young men are crying out for direction and real leadership and a way to achieve the challenge laid before them and the answer you give is “obey God”. Then when they point out that this isn’t helpful, they get called names just like you immediately went to “harpy”.
You posted “as a godly older sister” and after I responded without name calling or disparagement, but with facts and practical example your response was immediately to call me a passive aggressive harpy. Is that how Christians who want to be seen as elders and listened to ought to behave? This is unironically the exact same behavior shown by the frustrated reformed elders, a refusal to actually discuss the facts at hand and an immediate appeal to authority (which unlike you they at least actually have), followed by name calling.
Thank you for standing up against antisemitism and for reminding us that all humans are made in the image of God. As a Jewish person who grew up in Israel and who loves Israel, I find antisemitism terrifying—but antisemitism also provides opportunities and reminders for people to reject what is evil and to emphasize the common light of humanity. Those who use Christianity to fuel antisemitism remind me of Herod, “so that I may go and worship him” (Matthew 2:8). In other words, they seem to be pursuing personal power for themselves under the mask of wanting to worship Christ. Hitler himself channeled the idea that he was Jesus-like. Today, people who are attracted to antisemitism would benefit from contemplating what Hitler said in his Address to the Reichstag on 30 January 1939. Note how Hitler is describing himself as a prophet and how, in an act of stunning projection, Hitler blamed the Jews for the war that he was passionately pursuing and that would soon bring destruction upon Europe. I hope that this can serve as a reminder of the deceitfulness of “blaming the Jews:”
“I have been a prophet very often in my lifetime, and this earned me mostly ridicule. In the time of my struggle for power, it was primarily the Jewish people who mocked my prophecy that, one day, I would assume leadership of this Germany, of this State, and of the entire Volk, and that I would press for a resolution of the Jewish question, among many other problems. The resounding laughter of the Jews in Germany then may well be stuck in their throats today, I suspect. Once again I will be a prophet: should the international Jewry of finance succeed, both within and beyond Europe, in plunging mankind into yet another world war, then the result will not be a Bolshevization of the earth and the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe. Thus, the days of propagandist impotence of the non-Jewish peoples are over.”
I hope that those who are attracted to Hitler will take inspiration instead from a person such as Pastor André Trocmé who closely studied the gospel and found in it only reasons to oppose Hitler—and who went on to risk his life to save Jews.
The refusal of "Christians" to actually read the Bible is the number one cause, and the second is pastors refusing to preach the Bible and preferring to use sermons.com or some "Christianized" version of a Tony Robbins hype video to preach on Sunday morning. ☹
If Pastors (or people who claim they are Christians) would actually just read the Bible, this anti Jew heresy would be easily debunked.
In Jeremiah 31:36 & 37 we read: "I am as likely to reject My people Israel as I am to do away with the laws of nature!" Just as the heavens cannot be measured and the foundation of the earth cannot be explored, so I will not consider casting them away forever for their sins. I the Lord have spoken!" In case that verse was not enough, perhaps Romans 11:1 "I ask then, has God rejected His people the Jews? Of course not! Remember that I myself am a Jew, a descendent of Abraham and member of the tribe of Benjamin."
Or Psalm 122:6 - Psalm 121:4 - Psalm 125:1 - Psalm 129:5 - Hosea1:11 - Romans 11:11 - Zech 2:4 - Zech 8:7 & 8 - Ezekiel 28:25-27 - Romans 10:12 - Zech 12: 3 - Eph 2:14 - Eph 2:18 - Eph 3:6 - Eph 3:10 - Colossians 3:11 - Hebrews 12:22 - Isaiah 14:2 - Romans 11:28 - Genesis 12:1
Another terrible abuse of Scripture I have seen is in Revelation 2:9 where Jesus refers to the "synagogue of satan", a very ill-informed Substack writer claimed this refers to all Jews, when it clearly is referring to a particular group of Jews specifically in the city of Smyrna.
Another reason for the evil propaganda you are exposing, is that the Antichrist hates Jews, and his spirit is already in the world stirring up hatred against God's people. Many woke Christians (can you be woke, and Christian? I don't think so) due to the current conflict in the Middle East between "Palestinians" and Israel - have bought into the politically correct narrative that it is fashionable to hate Jews. Perhaps when they find out that Palestinians advocate for throwing gays off buildings - they might change their views 🤔
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQxS4M4C8HU
There's an awful lot of godless hubris that hasn't been transformed out of some believers yet. My caution is that we will be held accountable for every idle word we have spoken on The Day of Christ...