David Westerfield

Using the Gospel Message as a Means for Political Activism

On August 26, 2008

In Apologetics, Culture, Politics, Theology

“I make these requests in the name of your son, Jesus, who gave his own life against the forces of injustice. Let Him be our example.” – Donald Miller, Opening Prayer at the DNC Last Night

More than anything I am saddened by Donald Miller’s recent statements both in an interview with ChristianityToday and his prayer last night at the DNC. I realize many I know are fans (some big fans) of Donald Miller and to say anything against the ideas or theology of someone who may have been instrumental in opening them up toward Christianity makes me somewhat of an outcast, which is hard. I pray by God’s grace you may see what I’m saying as well as my concerns. I want to affirm that I am indeed glad for the work Miller has done in bringing a new generation a different angle on things that has been used by God in order to bring them to the obedience of faith in Christ, for the salvation of their souls. I know personally of a few former high school students where this was indeed the case. And for that I praise God!

But for the sake of the purity of the Gospel we preach to the world, I cannot help but point out where we really need to watch ourselves and our theology. Most of the time, false doctrine historically has started out small, in things that are questionable, yet maybe not worth splitting over at the moment. But over time, that small error begins to snowball, and gets bigger and bigger, until what you are left with is exactly what Satan wants: a gutted, Christ-less, cross-less, dead Christianity that has nothing to say to the world by which people may be saved. Just look at the state of a majority of mainline denominations in both the United States and Europe. That is the fallout of gutting the Gospel in the 19th and 20th centuries of its essential message. We would do well to pay attention to this.

I am not questioning the intentions of Donald Miller in praying at the DNC, though I would question doing it in the first place from a true Christian worldview perspective (that goes for the RNC as well I might add). Regardless, I have no doubt that he means well, honestly. But more than the abortion statements he’s made recently (which alone are just blatantly inaccurate), more than the liberal political activism he’s engaged in (which is hypocritically doing the same thing he accuses conservatives of doing in the Republican party), this statement alone during his prayer at the DNC last night really gets under my skin, mainly for the sake of the purity of the Gospel. This is a case in point of why theology matters greatly. You don’t have to be a seminary student or prof to know at the very least the essentials of your own faith and the great tradition passed down to us over the course of church history. In fact, this is a necessity with the winds of doctrine whipping back and forth at hurricane force speed.

Now to the main point of my issue with Miller’s statement. Was the life, death, and resurrection of the Son of God mainly “against the forces of injustice,” as an unbelieving world sees it? Or was it, in Jesus’ own words, “… to give [my] life a ransom for many?” Does Miller’s statement do justice to what was intended by the prophecy of Isaiah 53 as it pertains to the suffering Messiah, as well as the interpretation of the whole Old Testament in relation to the work of Christ in the book of Hebrews? What kind of message does this convey to 1) the DNC, and 2) the rest of the world about the main point, the heart of the matter of the work of Christ on behalf of sinners? It conveys the “Jesus died as our example” theory of the atonement, which is what the world naturally thinks when they look at the message of the Gospel without any investigation into what it’s actually saying. Yet the main point was not so much to give us an example to imitate (which is just law upon law, though of course He still is our example), but rather the main intention was to 1) show the righteousness of God in passing over former sins, and 2) to satisfy the wrath of God through His blood in the place of sinners in great unearned, undeserved love and mercy (Romans 3:21-26).

When a outspoken member of the evangelical community proclaims loud and clear, “I make these requests in the name of your son, Jesus, who gave his own life against the forces of injustice. Let Him be our example,” this falls right in line with what the world already naturally thinks about Christianity and thus confirms their false presuppositions concerning it. Therefore, Miller’s short statement of the intention of the cross is actually counter to the Gospel and does injury to it. This is the old-time [theologically] liberal action of attempting to make Christianity more palatable to an unbelieving world by lopping off the very heart of the message which is an offense or foolishness to the world.

If we are going to believe 1 Corinthians 1 about the foolishness of what we preach (foolishness in man’s eyes, not God’s), we must understand that the Gospel was never meant to be made palatable to the natural man, but that in the foolishness of what we preach (with all of its hard doctrinal edges, namely sin, wrath, death, hell, justice, election, love, mercy, sacrificial atonement, bodily resurrection, regeneration, faith, etc.), the power of God is displayed in Him converting souls to faith in Christ to a message that is counter to the world’s message. The very fact of the matter is the world cannot accept the Gospel as the truth until the Holy Spirit lifts the veil on people’s hearts, removes hearts of stone, gives people eyes to see it, ears to hear it (which is why we witness to unbelievers and pray for this operation of God, knowing only He can convert people). And in this way, God grants faith to those He wishes in order to display His glory in all the steps of salvation and the power of His might in bringing people to life from death who never would have or could have converted themselves.

But making the Gospel a message of “fighting injustice” and Christ merely as our “example”? Though I would hope, of course, that Miller would personally go on to say there was way, way more intended by the death of Christ on behalf of sinners than just becoming our example, the very fact of the matter is that the world does not implicitly get that from a “Christ our example” presentation of the Gospel. Even unbelievers can affirm that message, as they do every day in one form or another in our modern day of relativistic thinking.

Related Reading:
http://piercedforourtransgressions.com/

The Seeker-Sensitive Movement: Your Thoughts Al and R.C.

By David Westerfield

On August 22, 2008

In Christian Culture, Culture, Philosophy of Ministry, Theology

And Willow Creek’s own assessment seems to fall right in line with R.C. and Al’s comments … http://blog.christianitytoday.com/outof … ek_re.html

The Gospel – The Foolishness of What We Preach

By David Westerfield

On August 20, 2008

In Philosophy of Ministry, Theology

From the way many teachers teach and many pastors preach nowadays, you would think the Gospel was something that just makes sense to people, that it’s like a lay up explanation that will solve all of people’s various urgent problems. “First, all you have to do (as if the demands of the Gospel were in our own power to achieve, namely faith and repentance that only come from God to begin with) is 1, then 2, and then 3, and bingo! You’re saved and all your problems will be fixed because God wants you to live life to your fullest potential!” If we can boil the Gospel down into this nice little package, maybe people will more easily accept it, at least so the thinking goes.

Yet, the Scriptures indicate that to the natural person, the Gospel, and the cross in particular, is an utterly foolish message, or a stumbling block. Why is this? Well, for one, we are dead in sins. It is a foolish message to a spiritually dead man until God creates light and faith in the heart of the unbeliever. The Gospel is the opposite of what the world expects. Our culture looks for what’s practically relevant for their problems in the here and now, something they can do. “How can I overcome my stress?” “How do I get a better marriage?” And so on. Preachers like Joel Osteen address this message loud and clear that God’s main goal for your life is to live it to the fullest now, all you have to do is A, B, and C, because God helps those who help themselves, so they say.

The Gospel message is counter to this though. Whereas the world’s gospel is do 1, 2, and 3, and then God will accept you or bless you or whatever, the Gospel message comes in and states that you were so bad off in your sin and innate rebellion against God that He had to do the work Himself in the Person of Christ to redeem you. And He did this not out of compulsion, but out of pure, divine, premeditated love for His people.

Yet many teachers nowadays seem to think that the former message, that God just wants A, B, and C from you before he’ll accept you, is the Gospel of Christianity, when that is actually antithetical to the message! Even the obedience of faith, if not seen as the work of God itself, lends us to the conclusion that we must achieve something apart from the work of God in us, that we must dig ourselves out of the hole we find ourselves in before God will lift a finger. But in ourselves, we can’t see Christ, can’t believe the Gospel unless God reveals Christ to us, creating in us that which was not there: belief. This is the new birth. And it is necessary not only to see the kingdom of God, but also to enter it (John 3).

I was reading through my daily Scripture reading today, that is simultaneously going through the latter part of the Psalms and 1 Corinthians at the moment, and came to the passages where Paul speaks about this very thing.

“For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” – 1 Corinthians 1:18

“Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? (Particularly through the Gospel?)” – 1 Corinthians 1:20

“For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach (the Gospel) to save those who believe.” – 1 Corinthians 1:21

“For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified (the Gospel), a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.” – 1 Corinthians 1:22-24

“But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.” – 1 Corinthians 1:27-29

Summed up: the Gospel is foolishness, utter nonsense, the antithesis, the opposite of what the world, by default, expects to hear. And therefore, the world regards the Gospel as foolishness. Most in the world assume they know what we’re going to say as it pertains to the Gospel. “Jesus is a great teacher and if you emulate His example of perfection, you will be saved, because God helps those who help themselves.” Yet this is not the Gospel! And how unfortunate it is that teachers in the evangelical church now preach this very thing as Gospel-truth. This is a flat out lie. The Gospel is God’s power through Christ to save us because it was impossible for us to save ourselves. And He achieved our salvation through weakness, temptation, submission, and ultimately, He intentionally gave Himself to destruction on our behalf, in order to raise us to new life through the power of His resurrection.

In verses 22 through 24, Paul distinguishes between how three different groups respond to the message of the Gospel.

First of all, the Jews, particularly in Paul’s time. When the Jews heard the message of Christ crucified for sinners, it was a stumbling block. Their Messiah was not supposed to give Himself unto destruction and punishment in our place. Rather, He was to be the triumphant King who would come into Jerusalem and wipe out the Romans. He was to be the One who would, through a mighty political arm, rescue His people and give those “pagans” what they deserved: the sword. He was not supposed to be a servant but a mighty ruler, a conqueror.

And yet, Jesus, their Messiah, came not to be served but to serve and to give His life as a ransom for many. He came as a poor, humble servant, a carpenter. He came not to be honored, but to give that up in order that through His perfect work for us, He might reconcile us to God. This was the opposite of what the Jews thought. This is the Gospel. It is a stumbling block because at the cross, we see how bad our sin nature really is that we would crucify God Himself. We threw the worst we had at Christ on the cross. Yet He willingly did this to rescue us from utter destruction because not only did He suffer physically, but He took the wrath of God in Himself that was owed to us for our rebellion. This message was counter-intuitive to the Jewish culture who thought that righteousness (or a pure and right-standing with God) was obtained through adherence to the Mosaic and Levitcal law. Yet righteousness, as Paul clearly points out, is obtained through faith. This message is a stumbling block and a rock of offense to the Jews because it pulled the rug out from underneath their system of self-salvation.

Then there is another group, the Greeks, or the Gentiles, or in other words, the rest of us. This group considers the message of Christ crucified for sinners as foolishness, utter nonsense. Greeks are known for their many philosophies on life, salvation, man, a whole host of topics. And again, their message, much like the Jews, can be summed up like this: man has the capacity to achieve whatever the deity requires; or man in himself and his abilities can achieve greatness. This presupposed idea permeates Greek philosophy and really all worldly religious systems of understanding God outside of the Scriptures. It is the natural result of depraved minds incapacitated from the fall. As Paul says, it can all be summed up as, “the wisdom of the world.” The wisdom of the world is that man can achieve essentially whatever he wants, including any type of religious salvation through his own strength. So you can imagine that when they hear the message of the cross, that God became man, submitted Himself to humiliation, fulfilled all righteousness, gave Himself unto death on the cross on behalf of sinners, and rose from the grave, it makes absolutely no sense to them, for they want a message of what they can do, not what someone has done for them, especially God Himself. To them it is just silly talk, fantasies and fairy tales.

The message of the cross is counter-intuitive to both Jews and Greeks. Jews expected a political Savior. Greeks expect salvation to be anything other than God becoming one of us and giving Himself in our place. Both of their presuppositions about man are essentially the same though: man has the ability to achieve whatever is demanded of him. The cross of Christ begs to differ. The cross cries out: this is what was required to save your soul because of your own sinful incapacity to do it yourself! The cross shows us how bad off we really are, what was required of us as a result of our sin (the wrath of God), and at the same time this shows how great the love and mercy of God is toward us.

However, Paul then distinguishes a third group, labeling them in essence, “those who are called.” This group consists of both kinds of the aforementioned person, Jews and Greeks. This group regards the cross, not as a stumbling block and not as foolishness, but as “the power of God and the wisdom of God.” But how? If this message makes no sense to the world, why do they differ from the other two groups? Was it something they did to make them see? No! They were called of God, born of God’s Spirit, that as a result of His work in them, they no longer regard the cross as utter nonsense like the Greeks, or as a stumbling block to their own self-salvation, but as the power of God for salvation. Now they see the cross as the wisdom of God and the greatest achievement in all the universe. Because of God’s work in their souls to see and hear the truth of the Gospel, piercing through the darkness of their own souls, they see the cross not as the largest defeat in the universe, but as the largest triumph over evil, through which their own salvation was procured and infallibly secured. But it was not their working and toiling and pleasing God that granted them the right and ability to see the cross as the wisdom, power, and genius work of God. Rather, it was God unconditionally granting them the ability to see the truth of what was purchased for them upon the cross. And even more than that, it was that very work on the cross that gained them this very ability to see. They have been born of the Spirit of God and as a result, they believe the message.

If our Gospel message makes sense to the world, based upon the passages above, I cannot see how our message is faithful to the Scriptures. If they world nods their heads in agreement with our message, there must be something dreadfully wrong. If the world does not reject this message as a whole, I honestly think we need to reexamine what we personally believe that message to be. The Gospel is foolishness to the world, a stumbling block, because it tells people the opposite of what the world preaches: that man is basically good and can achieve salvation of himself, whenever he so pleases. The Gospel says you are more sinful, turned away from God, spiritually incapable than you can possibly imagine. But through Christ’s achievement, by God’s mercy alone, you can be reconciled to God by His work in your soul to believe this message. As Jonathan Edwards said, “We are dependent on God, not only for redemption itself but for our faith in the Redeemer; not only for the gift of His Son but for the Holy Ghost for our conversion.”

If you don’t see the message of Christ crucified for sinners as the wisdom of God and even now regard it as foolishness, beg of God to give you eyes to see, ears to hear Him, a new heart that can respond to Him in love, and a new divine sense that can at last taste and see that the Lord is good. Apart from Christ’s work in you, to show you your lost estate, to reveal your depravity, you will continue to regard this message of salvation as nonsense. Beg of God to create faith in your heart. He alone is your only hope of being able to do anything pleasing in His sight.

A New Kind of Family?

By David Westerfield

On August 4, 2008

In Audio, Culture, Theology

After you have a child, you begin to look at the world, entertainment, television, community, family, all sorts of things in a totally different perspective. At least I have. I noticed the other day in flipping TV stations that the ABC Family channel has a new slogan: A New Kind of Family. Maybe it’s not a new slogan, I don’t know. Regardless, it seems to me as if they are marketing to the millions of viewers who live in what our culture calls “non-traditional” or “progressive” families. Unfortunately now in this day in age, we live in a society of these kinds of families that are totally dysfunctional, where priorities are all askew, parents divorce and remarry like they are in middle school dating relationships, people in their teens, 20’s, and 30’s are having kids out of wedlock intentionally (and unintentionally through promiscuity), and what the culture calls a “traditional” family is now the minority. I myself grew up in a highly dysfunctional home. My wife did as well. We are still feeling the effects of that dysfunction to this day. Yet Christ has been gracious to reverse a majority of the damage through His power alone and continues to sustain us. All that to say, the individualistic tendencies within our culture are now getting the best of us. The very fact that ABC Family would go this route in their marketing points to this sad reality: their main tool for bringing in viewers is to make shows targeting this breakdown in the family unit, because that is now the majority of people in this country.

Our culture now not only views marriage in a distorted way, but is presenting this distorted viewpoint as what is normal. That is kind of frightening to me. God created us male and female and instituted a covenant marriage relationship between the two sexes as what is fitting and normal. Families just don’t work in the way God intended them to work unless they are structured in this manner. Any other ordering of a family unit is trying to perfectly fit a square peg in a round hole. Sure, people can make you think what they want by presenting their disordered family as something that is normal and as something that is “working,” much in the same way you can force the square peg into the round hole, but forcing it in still doesn’t make the square peg a perfect fit because the corners will get stripped off of the peg.

ABC Family is an example of the media presenting this distortion as normal, acceptable, because clearly their target audience is no longer the traditional family, but the new, progressive family. They feel that is the norm now, otherwise, wouldn’t they still be marketing to the traditional family? But the reality is families are dying from the inside out and this has adverse effects on the culture. Mothers’ and fathers’ lack of commitment to each other and their family’s, and their lack of God-honoring actions are ripping lives and relationships apart, particularly their children’s lives, whose relationships with their (married, not divorced) parents are necessary for proper mental, social, and most importantly, spiritual development. Living in a covenant marriage “’til death do us part” with one man and one woman is not just a preference for how we want our family’s to be, but rather it is the way God Himself designed it and sovereignly set forth as the way it should and must be. And not only is this so, but it is the only logically functional way for it to work in our lives. Any other way is a distortion of the picture a family was meant to point to: the reality of Christ and His bride, the church, whom He has purchased with His own blood.

What the culture calls traditional in regard to family is in reality that which God has instituted from the beginning and it has not changed, even with the winds of individualism sweeping our land and what our narcissistic Western culture sovereignly deems as right and true. Though we are more technologically enabled and knowledgeable than those from our not so distant past, and though there are some ways of doing things that can be changed and restructured for the better as a result of these advances, the truth and reality of marriage is not something that needs redefining or restructuring. God made it that way for a reason and to go against His design is to go against God Himself in rebellion against His Creator rights. In addition, God has so structured communities in His own design, using the family unit to constitute the group, that it is detrimental for our society to accept this new type of family as the norm. To do so will ultimately be our demise.

God-instituted families are the only kind of family structure that will truly work. Our culture calls the new kind of family progressive as if to distinguish it from a traditional family, as if it were just a matter of preference, like a flavor of ice cream or something. Yet, these new kinds of families will not work because God created things in such a way so that if the components of the family unit are disordered or taken out, things just naturally will inevitably fall apart. And I’m not just talking about gay marriage, though that is definitely a component of what I’m talking about. More specifically, I’m talking about the most common family disordering that is rampant among us: divorce and remarriage. Or as Al Mohler calls it, the “Divorce Industrial Complex.”

This disordering of the family unit and the rampant adultery that plagues our society wreaks havoc in all kinds of ways. It obviously breaks things down the family. But this breakdown works its way out into the society at large. It starts in small communities. Then it moves out further and further into the society, in all its different realms and facets. Most children now (this makes me honestly want to weep) do not know what a God-honoring marriage looks like now as they only know what a broken home looks like. A God-honoring marriage is foreign to most people now. This has tremendous effects on our culture. Just look at it now. We are a people who desperately need the Gospel once again; we need missions not just around the world, but here in our neighborhoods, down the street, at work, in the library, downtown! But this missions work starts in the family first and works its way outward by witnessing to the power of the Gospel not just with our words but our actions in relation to those that are dearest to us.

Divorce and remarriage has wreaked havoc in my life, my wife’s life, as well as countless numbers of you reading this. I realize that many of you have been through divorces, either children of a divorce or the divorcer/divorcee. I also know that many of you are remarried after your divorce. For those of you who were complicit in a divorce or are remarried after a divorce, I am not here to condemn you, for these things are between you and the Lord. That is not my job and I step out of His way in this. I do know that there is great mercy, love, grace, and kindness in Christ, if you will turn and embrace Him.

Yet I cannot escape the conviction that Jesus’ words on these matters are emphatically clear, even though a great majority of people inside and outside the church would seek to just ignore and suppress them. These truths don’t need any deep, Old/New Testament, theological, historical, hermeneutical, contextual analysis to understand. They are clear. And ignoring them does not make their truthfulness any less truthful. They are hard-edged truths (much in the same way hell or predestination are hard truths to accept) that took some working through. I realized families were bad off to a great degree, but did not realize how terribly marriage was esteemed in our culture until I was about to get married and had very wise counsel that guided both of us in our minds and hearts. The statistics shocked and really frightened me as to what I was getting into. I really started taking marriage more seriously than I ever had at that point. (To read more on this go here, thoughts on divorce and remarriage). Some of it was difficult because of the down-hill momentum against marriage in much of our culture that had infected our thinking. But what was difficult to work through has turned out to be a huge blessing in our lives together, by God’s grace and mercy in us.

Much of where we are now as a culture, as it pertains to the family, can be blamed on our cultures’ utopianistic worldview for how individuals should live in communities. It is believed by a great majority of people now that it is okay or normal to live in families that don’t have a father, or mother, or where they have two fathers, two mothers, an uncle, grandparents, or any other combination you can possible think of. Now, I don’t want to negate the fact that there are circumstances where a father or mother dies. That is not what I am talking about here. I’m talking about willful disobedience on the part of parents to what God has instituted in the covenant of marriage.

“‘Til death do us part” means what it says. I believe firmly this includes even if a spouse commits adultery against the other. That doesn’t mean it isn’t hard to deal with. But it does mean that a covenant was made and it should be upheld. Marriage is not a contract where there are stipulations that if not met it can be broken at will, but rather it is a covenant where the love is unfailing toward the other spouse, even in the midst of something so terrible and emotionally draining. Christ can heal all hurts and reverse the curse though, even when an offense on that scale has been committed against you. That is who we are to turn to, not the divorce lawyer.

However, much of this great problem in our society should also be blamed on the church (possibly a majority of the blame) and our lack of upholding the family as the ideal for what God intended as what will work in reality. And we do this not so much by the words we say, but by the way we live our lives. There is a lot of speak coming from the evangelical church about the family and how we should do things. But there is little action on our part in this regard. Before we point our fingers outward toward what others are doing, maybe we need to look inward and repent of our ways before the throne of God, in order to witness to the power of the Gospel, specifically in family life, that we may win this dying world for Christ.

Last time I checked (which was a few years ago), the divorce rate in the church was worse than the average divorce rate in the rest of society, at least according to Barna. Do you see a problem here? We claim to be the people of God, born anew, raised from the dead by the Spirit’s supernatural saving power in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, who (when we were pursuing nothing but sin) gave us a new heart, new affections, new abilities that we didn’t have before, all in order to do what is right in His eyes, to be pleasing to Him, albeit imperfectly. And yet in practice we live worse than the world we claim to have been redeemed from? I’m missing something here.

There is a giant disconnect in people’s minds between true saving faith and what results from a person born of the Spirit of God who now possesses that faith by God’s gracious act. It is a disconnect that points to a darker reality no one wants to consider: the fact that it is probable that many, many, many people in the church (yes, even Gospel-preaching churches) have not been born of the Spirit of God and live today as nominal Christians, or as Paul would say, who live as enemies of the cross of Christ. Being born again is not a political label you slap on yourself and claim at any given moment of your life when you so choose. Being born again is something that happens to you by the supernatural working of the Spirit of God in you, by His choice, on His timing, and it is something you will know has happened to you, for the inward testimony of the Spirit is better than all reason (Calvin, Institutes, Book I). God brings you to life from the dead, you don’t. Jesus made this clear in John 3.

This is what conversion is: being raised from the dead through the preaching of the Gospel by God’s power, in order that what results from God’s work in you is belief and faith in Christ, and that what results from this new life are works that are pleasing to God (namely because the works are no longer a duty that must be performed, but it is now your delight to do them, because of your newly regenerated nature). This understanding of salvation doesn’t jive with what I’m hearing statistically coming out of the church these days. God saves you and gives you the means to be saved: faith. To put it in theological terms, faith is not produced by our unregenerated human nature (Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals). It is God’s work in us, it is His gift to grant. And as a result of this faith, though you will stumble and fall, you do that which is pleasing to Him and will return to Him again and again, for you cannot help but do so.

To be saved, we need this change to happen in us by God’s work, in order that with our eyes opened we may see and believe; with our ears opened, we may hear and understand with a renewed mind; with our hearts transplanted by God’s Spirit, we may love Him with a love created in us first by the Love of Christ. Until this message is preached and until this is a reality in the hearts of professing Christians, from both preachers as well as lay people, we will continue to flounder in our witness to the Gospel in the way we live our lives. And more specifically toward my main point here, we will fail in our witness to the Gospel in family life. The Gospel, salvation, and it’s infallible results (because of God) in people’s lives must not be disconnected any longer. In fact, the Scriptures are clear that for one to continue in willful disobedience points to an absence of saving faith to begin with. And man does this relate to marriage.

The reversal and healing of our nation is going to begin only when we, the church, repent of our wicked ways, seek God’s mercy upon us, and in practice uphold God-instituted marriage as what He has intended for family and community life, for every generation. Godliness starts in the home. This was a point J.I. Packer told Mark Driscoll recently of something that needs to be recovered in our generation. I do not claim to have in any way mastered anything. In as much as I speak to those reading this, I speak to myself and my own heart, for I know that if God were to let me go, I could fall further than I would ever have sinfully wanted to or believed I could go. I know I am wicked beyond what I can imagine or conceive, for I see glimpses of it every day in my constant wandering heart. Yet in Christ, there is great mercy, and conquering power over sin, for the joy and reconciliation to God that is in Christ’s work is greater than anything in the world. He is the source of change in relation to marriage, and is the One from whom and through whom all blessing and ability to do any of these things comes. Without Christ, we can do nothing.

You Must Be Born Again (MP3) – John Piper
Divorce and Remarriage – A Position Paper – John Piper

Top Webcam Email Alerts

By David Westerfield

On August 1, 2008

In Bizarro, Funny, Personal, Technology

I’m a nerd. I’m not afraid to hide it, clearly. As a nerd, I love technology. I have a webcam setup at home for security reasons, pointed across my front yard to catch possible intruders that wish to invade my property or cause other harm. I have a threshold setup on the software I run along with my webcam that, when hit, sends an email attached with a picture (or series of pictures) to an offsite email account.

Most of the time, I just get cars passing by, lightning during a storm, really any kind of movement or light change that causes enough of a fluctuation to trigger a webcam picture alert. Sorting through the emails on partly cloudy days is not always fun and many times, I just delete them all because it is too many to sort through. However, there are some rare occasions that I actually get something good, funny, or odd. Here is a sample of some of the best shots from the past two years that I have kept:
This guy thought he might try and get into my garage and steal some junk in the middle of the night last year in June.

Apparently, it proved to be too much of a risk for him with the flood lights along with neighbors who are not afraid to use a gun. Good, please leave. Whew.

I’m pretty sure this jumping spider knew he would send off an email alert and intentionally walked across the viewing range of the webcam.

It really isn’t that uncommon to see people walking across the yard. You would be quite surprised to know how many neighbors do this during the middle of the day 🙂 Anyway, this guy caught my attention only because he looks exactly like my wife’s brother. It was just the electric meter guy though.

I thought this was a fascinating photo study in the custodial/lawn service arts.

Finally, these are two shots from last nights’ thunderstorm that I thought were pretty awesome.

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Updated at 2:00pm on 08/02/2008:

I almost forgot … though we live in the city, we apparently are still on a rural mail route (can’t figure that one out). As such, we receive our mail (I would guess) about every other day on average, from a guy in a jerry-rigged minivan. He drives the thing from the passenger seat. Yet the wheel still resides on the drivers side … and I assume he has pedals on the passenger side as well. I’m still trying to figure out how he drives the thing without easily running into stuff. Very interesting to say the least.

Matthew Henry Commentary on Psalm 53:1-6 Pertaining to Sin

By David Westerfield

On July 30, 2008

In Theology

“The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’ They are corrupt, doing abominable iniquity; there is none who does good. God looks down from heaven on the children of man to see if there are any who understand, who seek after God. They have all fallen away; together they have become corrupt; there is none who does good, not even one. Have those who work evil no knowledge, who eat up my people as they eat bread, and do not call upon God? There they are, in great terror, where there is no terror! For God scatters the bones of him who encamps against you; you put them to shame, for God has rejected them. Oh, that salvation for Israel would come out of Zion! When God restores the fortunes of his people, let Jacob rejoice, let Israel be glad.” – Psalm 53:1-6

This psalm was opened before, and therefore we shall here only observe, in short, some things concerning sin, in order to the increasing of our sorrow for it and hatred of it.

1. The fact of sin. Is that proved? Can the charge be made out? Yes, God is a witness to it, an unexceptionable witness: from the place of his holiness he looks on the children of men, and sees how little good there is among them, v. 2. All the sinfulness of their hearts and lives in naked and open before him.

2. The fault of sin. Is there any harm in it? Yes, it is iniquity (v. 1, 4); it is an unrighteous thing; it is that which there is no good in (v. 1, 3); it is an evil thing; it is the worst of evils; it is that which makes this world such an evil world as it is; it is going back from God, v. 3.

3. The fountain of sin. How comes it that men are so bad? Surely it is because there is no fear of God before their eyes: they say in their hearts, “There is no God at all to call us to an account, none that we need to stand in awe of.” Men’s bad practices flow from their bad principles; if they profess to know God, yet in works, because in thoughts, they deny him.

4. The folly of sin. He is a fool (in the account of God, whose judgment we are sure is right) that harbours such corrupt thoughts. Atheists, whether in opinion or practice, are the greatest fools in the world. Those that do not seek God do not understand; they are like brute-beasts that have no understanding; for man is distinguished from the brutes, not so much by the powers of reason as by a capacity for religion. The workers of iniquity, whatever they pretend to, have no knowledge; those may truly be said to know nothing that do not know God, v. 4.

5. The filthiness of sin. Sinners are corrupt (v. 1); their nature is vitiated and spoiled, and the more noble the nature is the more vile it is when it is depraved, as that of the angels. Corruptio optimi est pessima—The best things, when corrupted, become the worst. Their iniquity is abominable; it is odious to the holy God, and it renders them so; whereas otherwise he hates nothing that he has made. It makes men filthy, altogether filthy. Wilful sinners are offensive in the nostrils of the God of heaven and of the holy angels. What decency soever proud sinners pretend to, it is certain that wickedness is the greatest defilement in the world.

6. The fruit of sin. See to what a degree of barbarity it brings men at last; when men’s hearts are hardened through the deceitfulness of sin see their cruelty to their brethren, that are bone of their bone—because they will not run with them to the same excess of riot, they eat them up as they eat bread; as if they had not only become beasts, but beasts of prey. And see their contempt of God at the same time. They have not called upon him, but scorn to be beholden to him.

7. The fear and shame that attend sin (v. 5): There were those in great fear who had made God their enemy; their own guilty consciences frightened them, and filled them with horror, though otherwise there was no apparent cause of fear. The wicked flees when none pursues. See the ground of this fear; it is because God has formerly scattered the bones of those that encamped against his people, not only broken their power and dispersed their forces, but slain them, and reduced their bodies to dry bones, like those scattered at the grave’s mouth, Ps. cxli. 7. Such will be the fate of those that lay siege to the camp of the saints and the beloved city, Rev. xx. 9. The apprehensions of this cannot but put those into frights that eat up God’s people. This enables the virgin, the daughter of Zion, to put them to shame, and expose them, because God has despised them, to laugh at them, because he that sits in heaven laughs at them. We need not look upon those enemies with fear whom God looks upon with contempt. If he despises them, we may.

8. The faith of the saints, and their hope and power touching the cure of this great evil, v. 6. There will come a Saviour, a great salvation, a salvation from sin. Oh that it might be hastened! for it will bring in glorious and joyful times. There were those in the Old-Testament times that looked and hoped, that prayed and waited, for this redemption. (1.) God will, in due time, save his church from the sinful malice of its enemies, which will bring joy to Jacob and Israel, that have long been in a mournful melancholy state. Such salvations were often wrought, and all typical of the everlasting triumphs of the glorious church. (2.) He will save all believers from their own iniquities, that they may not be led captive by them, which will be everlasting matter of joy to them. From this work the Redeemer had his name—Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins, Matt. i. 21.

The Natural Inclination of the Heart of Man and The Power of Christ to Save

By David Westerfield

On July 28, 2008

In Theology

“God looks down from heaven on the children of man to see if there are any who understand, who seek after God. They have all fallen away; together they have become corrupt; there is none who does good, not even one.” – Psalm 53:2-3

I read through this chapter today as a part of my Bible reading plan, thinking about how different the presuppositional statements within these verses are from what we hear coming from the world’s various religions, which is essentially this: man is basically good and inclined to do good at any given moment. But then also I thought about how, unfortunately, we hear essentially the same thing coming from within the church many times: you are all basically good people because you give so generously and also God loves you. This message, in itself, is a disservice to the glory of God because it fails to deliver the entire message of His Gospel that He has so graciously declared to us in the pages of Scripture. Yes God loves His people. But how is that He has loved us? Why is His love so amazing?

Unless we understand what it is that we are being saved from, and understand the depth of our depravity, we will not understand how great is the love of Christ in sacrificing Himself in our place on the cross. The Scriptures are emphatically clear about our natural moral condition. We need to be honest about Scriptures’ assessment of our condition before God, lest we miss the heart of Christianity: the Gospel. And even after our conversion, it is necessary to see ourselves as, “simul iustus et pecator,” that is, simultaneously justified yet sinful, otherwise, to grow in Christ, we will trust ourselves instead of Christ for the power to progressively change (the only way to change in the way that glorifies God).

This chapter also made me think about this verse: “The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (Genesis 6:5). Unless God moves in me by His Spirit, I do not properly feel and view myself like this and I can’t stand it. My own heart is so inclined and prone toward evil, I cannot even begin to comprehend it. Jeremiah affirms this: “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9-10). I certainly cannot. I am not supposing to know my heart exhaustively, but am proclaiming that we can know our hearts truthfully from God’s Word. We need God’s Spirit to show us, increasingly, the offense caused by our hearts in relation to the glory of God. These verses are a great place to start.

This is not a popular set of verses to the world and in much of the church these days, because they expose us all for what we really are by nature, inherited from the fall of Adam: God-haters, God-despisers. That is not a well-received message. But the Scriptural truthfulness of it cannot be negated. As opposed to what the world says, we are naturally opposed to any good that pertains to glorifying and honoring God. Whether we acknowledge it or not, we seek His demise and seek to set ourselves upon His throne. This is the heart-essence of what sin is: exchanging the glory of God for our self-imposed religion (Romans 1:22). Sin says that we, mere humans, are the starting point of all that is true, right and good in the universe. How this grieves the Lord’s heart that the Author of all that is would be blatantly ignored in all of our words and deeds!

In a culture of positive-thinking, where any negative message, association or connotation is taboo, this message grates against us as a people. It destroys our pride. It destroys any self-value we think we possess. To the world, this statement is utter foolishness and opposes its set norms for how we view ourselves and all reality. This message goes against the self-deceived state we perceive within our own hearts, that we are basically morally good people.

In all reality, without the Gospel, this message is the worst possible news and should cause us to despair. But we do not stop here. We view ourselves in this way, truly, only to point to a great Savior we have in Christ, that He would rescue us from our plight of blindness and unresponsive heart-hardness under the wrath of God due to us for our deep-seated perversion.

Sin has corrupted us, by nature, from the inside out, not the reverse, from the outside inward. Jesus affirms this: “It is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth; this defiles a person” (Matthew 15:11). Also, “.. out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks” (Luke 6:45). Our nature determines our outcome. Until our heart is supernaturally repaired by the power of the cross, we remain unable to do anything good that glorifies God.

World religions state that to solve our problems we work from the outside inward through moral working and toiling to constrain, mold and shape our hearts into something good (good in relation to other men, remember). Many would even phrase Christianity to be within the same sphere of messages. Yet historic, Biblical Christianity says the opposite: only until your soul is cleansed by the blood of Christ of its poison, which at its core is obstinate toward God, can you do anything pleasing to God at all. Anything. This means that even the most benevolent work done toward other men, if not done through faith in Christ, in service toward His glory, itself is sin. This is what Paul meant when he said, “For whatever does not proceed from faith is sin,” (Romans 14:23) and also when the writer of Hebrews says, “And without faith it is impossible to please him” (Hebrews 11:6).

Many times, when we think of our moral state, we often compare ourselves merely in relation to other people. But when we do this, we can actually look pretty good (puffed up in our own pride and self-righteousness), especially when compared against Hitler or someone of equal insidiousness. Think about the response of the Pharisee “praying” in the temple as compared to the response of the tax collector: “The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.’ But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!'” I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted” (Luke 18:11-14).

The Pharisee compared himself to others and their works, yet the tax collector only compared himself to the majesty of God, to which he cries out in response, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” The tax collector saw God’s holiness, and like Isaiah and Ezekiel before him, knew that he was eternally ruined unless God was merciful toward him. God’s sovereign mercy was His only hope of being delivered. And it was in the heart of this response that Jesus declares that man to be justified in the presence of God rather than the Pharisee. We would do well to pay attention to the criteria used by each person when assessing their moral condition. And the criteria is set forth plainly in the Scriptures mentioned.

How is it that we are appropriately humbled in the presence of God? In the Scriptures, we see not how other men view us, but how God views us. Consider the Psalm at the beginning of this article: when “God looks down from heaven on the children of man to see if there are any who understand, who seek after God [i.e. the true God, as opposed to idols made in our own image from the ground upward] … They have all fallen away; together they have become corrupt; there is none who does good, not even one.” No one. This is a radical indictment of the human condition before the Lord. This is a radical indictment of my own heart in relation to God. We are more sinful than we dare even to believe.

It is of the utmost urgency that we see ourselves as being this bad. If we don’t, we can easily miss the Gospel altogether, because we view ourselves as not being that bad off that we would need to rescued. “But to admit our condition as being this bad off would flatten any pride or contribution we could possibly have! Correct?” Exactly. Naturally, before conversion, we are not in the same moral state like Adam was before the fall, as the world presumes, having the ability to choose good (that glorifies the Lord) or evil (which is an outright slap in His face). No, after the fall, we lost all inclination toward godliness in any manner.

We are all blind to Him and His goodness as a result of the fall. We are all naturally hardened toward Him under His just wrath that we have earned … That is until by His sovereign, infallible, unfailing grace through the death and resurrection of Christ, the Spirit brings us up from the dead through the message of the Gospel that breathes life into our dead souls. In our sin and unbelief in the Gospel, we are not merely a forest going through a drought spell that needs a little rain. Rather, we are a burned out forest, that only by the supernatural power of Christ can we be brought back to life, to flourish to His glory.

We need to be born again of God’s Spirit, that is raised from among the spiritually dead, to perceive, let alone even act upon the grace of God given us in the cross of Christ. This is the message of John 3 to Nicodemus. And it is through the cross that this new birth of our souls is even effected to begin with. Apart from God’s work in us to turn toward Him, we are hopeless to change. For in our sin, we will only choose that which is displeasing in His sight. We need the Spirit to reach into our poisoned hearts and breathe new life in us, in order that we may effectively see, repent, and believe upon the Lord Jesus for eternal salvation. There is no hope without Him to begin this or even bring it to completion upon the Day of His return.

After believing, in order to change and become like Christ, we still, even then, do not trust ourselves for this. Jesus said, “Apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). We must return every day to His cleansing power, flowing like a fountain of eternal life, whereby we may be progressively changed into His likeness. Even after conversion, apart from solely trusting Christ to work in us, even in our good works, we are hopeless to rightly glorify God. Though we may be saved, our hearts are still corrupted and incline themselves naturally toward evil. Just look at David’s adultery with Bathsheeba and subsequent murder to cover it up.

Therefore, we must always be on our guard for sin and its deceits, returning to this truth daily, that we are desperately sinful and inclined to do that which dishonors God. For it is when we properly see this that we can then turn to Christ in hope to deliver us. The Gospel, from the beginning (conversion), to the end (glorification upon death) and every point in between (sanctification), is our only hope of eternal life. Return daily to the Gospel of Christ, for in it, the power of God is revealed for salvation to everyone who believes (Romans 1:16), both long-term (eternally) and short-term (temporally). The Lord Jesus alone, not politics, not great leaders, not great movements, not any other religion, no none of these; Christ alone is our only hope to be rescued from our terrible blindness under God’s just hand! Have mercy on us Lord Jesus, for you are the only hope of life now and forever.

Those of you who are outside His saving grace, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. “But what if I see my need from these passages and yet struggle to believe Him?” Cry out to the Lord like the father of the son whom Jesus healed when he said, “I believe; help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24). Also, consider the words of Jesus in this passage: “‘Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.’ When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished, saying, ‘Who then can be saved?’ But Jesus looked at them and said, ‘With man this [salvation] is impossible, but with God all things are possible.'” The answer is that only God can save you and give you eyes to see Him, ears to hear Him, and a heart that loves and trusts Him. And only He can give you assurance that you are His. Cry out to Him to save you and turn your heart toward Him, and in the sincerity of your heart, trust that He will make good on His promise to do exactly those things. It is your only hope. “For all who call upon the name of the Lord will be saved” (Romans 10:13).

There is No Such Thing as Fortune and Chance – John Calvin

By David Westerfield

On July 27, 2008

In Theology

Excerpt from the Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book I, Chapter 16, Section 2, by John Calvin.

That this distinction may be the more manifest, we must consider that the Providence of God, as taught in Scripture, is opposed to fortune and fortuitous causes. By an erroneous opinion prevailing in all ages, an opinion almost universally prevailing in our own day, viz., that all things happen fortuitously, the true doctrine of Providence has not only been obscured, but almost buried. If one falls among robbers, or ravenous beasts; if a sudden gust of wind at sea causes shipwreck; if one is struck down by the fall of a house or a tree; if another, when wandering through desert paths, meets with deliverance; or, after being tossed by the waves, arrives in port, and makes some wondrous hair-breadth escape from death – all these occurrences, prosperous as well as adverse, carnal sense will attribute to fortune. But whose has learned from the mouth of Christ that all the hairs of his head are numbered, (Matt 10:30) will look farther for the cause, and hold that all events whatsoever are governed by the secret counsel of God. With regard to inanimate objects again we must hold that though each is possessed of its peculiar properties, yet all of them exert their force only in so far as directed by the immediate hand of God. Hence they are merely instruments, into which God constantly infuses what energy he sees meet, and turns and converts to any purpose at his pleasure.

No created object makes a more wonderful or glorious display than the sun. For, besides illuminating the whole world with its brightness, how admirably does it foster and invigorate all animals by its heat, and fertilise the earth by its rays, warming the seeds of grain in its lap, and thereby calling forth the verdant blade! This it supports, increases, and strengthens with additional nurture, till it rises into the stalk; and still feeds it with perpetual moisture, till it comes into flower; and from flower to fruit, which it continues to ripen till it attains maturity. In like manner, by its warmth trees and vines bud, and put forth first their leaves, then their blossom, then their fruit. And the Lord, that he might claim the entire glory of these things as his own, was pleased that light should exist, and that the earth should be replenished with all kinds of herbs and fruits before he made the sun. No pious man, therefore, will make the sun either the necessary or principal cause of those things which existed before the creation of the sun, but only the instrument which God employs, because he so pleases; though he can lay it aside, and act equally well by himself: Again, when we read, that at the prayer of Joshua the sun was stayed in its course, (Josh. 10: 13) that as a favour to Hezekiah, its shadow receded ten degrees, (2 Kings 20: 11) by these miracles God declared that the sun does not daily rise and set by a blind instinct of nature, but is governed by Him in its course, that he may renew the remembrance of his paternal favour toward us. Nothing is more natural than for spring, in its turns to succeed winter, summer spring, and autumn summer; but in this series the variations are so great and so unequal as to make it very apparent that every single year, month, and day, is regulated by a new and special providence of God.

Christian > Protestant > Evangelical > Reformed

By David Westerfield

On July 26, 2008

In Theology

When I say I’m Reformed, I’m associating myself with the Gospel doctrines as recovered in the Reformation that I believe to be true for all people, whether they assert the truth of these doctrines or not. Reformed theology is the understanding of Scripture I believe to be the clearest systematized explanation of the faith.

What is it exactly that was recovered in the Reformation? To put it in no uncertain terms: the Gospel was recovered. This is what Luther fought for at the Diet of Worms, which is the picture I have posted along with my entry here. I have no reservation with affirming myself as Reformed for that reason alone, the Gospel, on top of the hundreds of other reasons.

In addition to the Gospel, when I say I’m Reformed, I’m also saying that I’m a unreserved five-point Calvinist and Covenantal (as opposed to Dispensational). These things are extremely important because I believe they affect where we stand on a host of other doctrines. But at the same time, I want to be careful to also say that I do not hold out at arms length those who disagree with me who also love the same Lord and God, Jesus Christ, who through faith alone in Him are saved.

With that said, recently, Lee Irons in this entry made comments that on the surface can seem like they are not a big deal. But upon digging through the surface to see what the heart of the issue is, there are things that I cannot assert with him.

I classify myself in this manner: Christian > Protestant > Evangelical > Reformed. There is a reason for this, which I have explained in this entry before, so I won’t go into it here. This is the same manner in which Irons classifies himself as well. However, I do not classify myself in this order for the same reasons that Irons does in his entry, nor do I share his explanation.

Steve Hays brought these issues to light recently in his blog entry found here. Seeing that Irons had the same classification system I did, I responded to Hays and asked if my ordering along with the explanation of it sounds right. The issue at hand with Irons entry, as Hays says in response to me, was this: “The problem is that Lee Irons sets these [labels-that is Evangelical and Reformed in particular] in potential opposition,” as if being Reformed is an accessory to being an Evangelical or being a Christian. As Irons says, “I’m not a Reformed person who happens to be a Christian. I’m a blood-bought Christian who happens to believe in the Reformed understanding of the gospel.”

But my question is this: is the Reformed point of view merely our opinion, or is it what the Scriptures have said? Are we not asserting that the Reformed understanding of the Gospel is the clearest, Scriptural articulation of the faith once for all delivered to the saints? That’s not to say Reformed theology itself is infallibly authoritative, whereas only the Scriptures are, but it is definitely authoritative as claiming to assert the truth of Scripture. Is it not?

Here is what I wrote, commenting on Hays’ blog entry:

“I classify myself in the same order as Lee Irons has in his post: Christian > Protestant > Evangelical > Reformed. But not for the same reasons he asserts. Each label is equally important to who I am as a believer in the Gospel. As my distinctions progress as noted, each further refines what it is I believe doctrinally to be true from the Word of God. I do not consider being Reformed an accessory as you explained, but as essential, the quintessential point that explains the Gospel in the clearest manner. Regardless, in distinguishing myself as such, I am making distinctions over against other streams of theological thought within each one of these groupings.

There are 2 billion-ish people in the world who consider themselves ‘Christian’. Someone I know is a Mormon and considers himself a Christian. So I must go further than this because that label, unfortunately, does not go far enough in our culture in explaining what it is I believe to be the truth.

Many theological liberals (‘practical Christian atheists’ and such) consider themselves Protestant. This label also has been hijacked. So I must go further.

Many Oneness Pentecostals consider themselves evangelical yet they deny core tenets of historic Christianity itself [such as the Trinity]. So again I must go further than this even, unfortunately.

That is when I say that I am Reformed. And this is the pinnacle of what I believe to be the faith once for all delivered to the saints. It is the doctrinal point of view through which I view all the other distinctions as noted above. However, this does not negate the fact that there are believers with whom I am tied through faith alone in Christ alone that are not Reformed. And I join hands with them in unity to the glory of God. I take these labels not as a badge of pride (excluding those with whom I disagree), but I take them to distinguish, in our modern day, what it is I believe to be the truth of the Scriptures, as applying to all believers, whether they believe it or not.

So I guess my question is this: do you feel the order of my classification along with the explanation of it is different than that of Irons? I believe that it is, but wanted your input.”

And Hays’ response to me:

“David, Your classification scheme is fine, given how you interpret and relate the terms. The problem is that Lee Irons sets these in potential opposition.”

That is definitely a problem, because there seems to be no confidence on the part of Irons that Reformed theology is accurate. For him it’s just, “useful,” or an, “accessory,” to the faith. I beg to differ.

Major DNS Internet Server Flaw – How it Affects the Average User

By David Westerfield

On July 25, 2008

In Security, Technology

(Original): http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id … _article=1
(Archived): http://www.westerfunk.net/archives/secu … et%20flaw/

(Original): http://isc.sans.org/diary.html?storyid=4780
(Archived): http://www.westerfunk.net/archives/secu … ervations/

Most of you will more than likely have no clue about this major flaw unless you read any of the tech headlines. Even then, there really should be no reason why you would know about it, or why it is important to you. But the consequences of this giant hole, if the internet servers are not patched, could potentially be devastating. And I would like to try and explain, to the average user, why this is a not a small problem by any stretch of the imagination. I emphasize the word “try” because I’m attempting to break the language down and make it easier to understand.

The flaw has to do with the internet servers you may have heard of called DNS servers. DNS stands for Domain Name Server. DNS servers function as a hostname to IP address resolver (e.g. www.google.com translating to 64.233.167.104, for arguments’ sake). So instead of looking up Google’s home page using an IP address (64.233.167.104), you enter in a name you can remember and it points to that particular IP address for you (www.google.com). That is a very simple description, but it will suffice to explain the issue at hand.

In comes the flaw: a hole exists within the widely used open source (i.e. free) DNS server software called BIND that allows an attacker to poison its DNS cache to change the hostname from it’s original IP to a different one. You say to me now, “what the … what are you saying?”

Let me try to explain. Whenever you look up www.google.com using your Internet Service Providers’ (ISP’s) DNS servers, that lookup request stays within the DNS server for a specified amount of time so it doesn’t have to keep looking up the IP address over and over again. The lookup request gets “cached” (or saved temporarily) in the servers’ memory. Basically, it makes the look up process much faster for you.

With that said, here’s the vulnerability: because of the hole that must be patched, hackers can currently insert or change www.google.com to point somewhere it was never intended to point. That’s a big problem.

And it only gets worse. A majority of us use the DNS servers provided by our ISP’s (e.g. AT&T, Charter, Verizon, etc.) who themselves use BIND (remember … the DNS server software?) to serve up DNS requests to users. Most of these ISP’s – yes, most – have YET to patch their servers and they remain highly exposed and vulnerable to, well, a massive attack by hackers.

Now here is how the attack would look from the average users’ point of view to, say, a banking site: you look up www.wellsfargo.com, get a page that looks like Wells Fargo’s, using their hostname even (ya know, www.wellsfargo.com). Yet you are pointed to (as an example) a foreign IP address to, oh, say, in Latvia. The fake Wells Fargo site employs the standard phishing tactic of asking you for your personal information to “verify” your identity. You input your information thinking it is your bank’s website. Yet all you are doing is giving your personal information to some hacker in Latvia who can then drain your account and steal your identity ultimately.

In all reality, this is a cyber national security threat, as our core DNS infrastructure remains highly exposed and ultimately could, in a worse-case scenario, hit the economy because of rampant fraud. Don’t think this could happen? Well, it’s likely ISP’s see how big the threat is now and are working vigorously to get their servers patched.

But, nevertheless, we should all take a sober look at what happened to OmniAmerican Bank within the past year (Archived) as an example of how the unforeseeable can happen, because there are people who are smart and determined enough to make it happen – even in a short amount of time.