Dual Citizen

The Democracy of the Dead

2012-02-14T04:20:00.000-08:00

Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about. All democrats object to men being disqualified by the accident of birth; tradition objects to their being disqualified by the accident of death. Democracy tells us not to neglect a good man's opinion, even if he is our groom; tradition asks us not to neglect a good man's opinion, even if he is our father. I, at any rate, cannot separate the two ideas of democracy and tradition; it seems evident to me that they are the same idea. We will have the dead at our councils. The ancient Greeks voted by stones; these shall vote by tombstones. It is all quite regular and official, for most tombstones, like most ballot papers, are marked with a cross.

--GK Chesterton in Orthodoxy

First Amendment Revised

2012-02-13T04:29:00.000-08:00

This is what the First Amendment to the US Constitution actually says:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

This is what Nicholas Kristof, respected columnist for the New York Times, thinks it says:

The basic principle of American life is that we try to respect religious beliefs, and accommodate them where we can.

Albert Mohler's latest is a response to Kristof's column, and it's must reading for those following the HHS mandate. Here an excerpt:

After asking his most pressing question, “After all, do we really want to make accommodations across the range of faith?,” he makes this amazing statement:

“The basic principle of American life is that we try to respect religious beliefs, and accommodate them where we can.”

That sentence caught the immediate attention of many. Could someone of Nicholas Kristof’s influence and stature really write and mean that?

When President Obama spoke February 10, announcing his administration’s modifications to the birth control issue, he at least spoke of religious liberty as “an inalienable right that is enshrined in our Constitution.” The President then made the error of speaking as if an “inalienable right” is to be accommodated to a matter of policy. That was bad enough, and very revealing of the President’s worldview and constitutional perspective. Nicholas Kristof’s statement is light years beyond the President in disrespect for religious liberty.

Where would we find what Kristof describes as “the basic principle of American life,” when he goes on to state that principle with language as chilling as “we try to respect religious beliefs, and accommodate them where we can.”
The language of accommodation is almost as old as the Constitution itself, but it was never framed as Kristof frames it — certainly not by the founders who spoke of “inalienable rights” granted to human beings by the Creator’s endowment.
Can you imagine any of the founders speaking as Kristof writes of an intention to “try to respect religious beliefs?”

Mr. Kristof is a serious man, and he raises serious issues in this column. But with this one simplistic and condescending sentence he throws religious liberty under the bus, and reveals what makes sense to so many in the secular elite.

They will try their best, they promise, to respect our religious beliefs, and to “accommodate them where we can.”

Mohler also takes on Kristof for his column's absolutely ridiculous opening line:

Kristof writes rather sarcastically about the “pelvic politics” of recent controversy. The furor over the Obama Administration’s inclusion of mandatory coverage of birth control as “preventive care” under the Affordable Care Act, stating: “I may not be as theologically sophisticated as American bishops, but I had thought that Jesus talked more about helping the poor than about banning contraceptives.”

How clever. Would Kristof say the same to theological liberals trying to argue for nuclear disarmament? Not yet, anyway. This cheap shot signals Kristof’s intention to slam those who have theological and moral concerns about the mandatory inclusion of birth control under the so-called Obama Care legislation. He cheapens his own credibility by speaking of “banning contraceptives.”

So, if contraceptives are not free they are “banned?” Nice try.

This kind of straw-man is all too typical of the rhetoric coming from the left.

An Accounting Trick

2012-02-10T12:43:00.000-08:00

President Obama's "compromise" on the contraceptive mandate is nothing but a sleight of hand. Robert T. Miller at First Thoughts explains it well - it's depressing to me that anybody would fall for this:

So now we see how the Obama administration proposes to preserve the religious freedom of religiously-affiliated employers like hospitals, schools and charities while requiring all health insurance plans to include abortion-inducing drugs, sterilizations, and contraception. According to the “fact sheet” released this afternoon by the White House, “Religious organizations will not have to provide contraceptive coverage” or “subsidize the cost of contraception.” Nevertheless, the insurance companies with which religious employers contract to provide health insurance for their employees “will be required to provide contraception coverage to these women free of charge.”

This is economic nonsense. Insurance companies have no money to pay for such benefits for the affected employees except from premiums they charge the employers who purchase coverage for their employees. So, one way or another, the employers are paying for the products to which they object. For example, suppose that, under the old rule, a religious employer would have had to pay $5,000 per employee annually for coverage including contraception. Under the new rule, the employer may elect to buy a policy that says that it omits such coverage. But the insurer has to provide the coverage anyway, and it may not charge the employee for it. How will it pay for the coverage? Obviously by building that cost into the price it charges the religious employer. Hence, the new policy will cost the employer the same $5,000 per employee that the old one did.

Under the old rule, the employer had to pay for abortion-inducing drugs, sterilizations, and contraception. Under the new rule, the employer has to pay for abortion-inducing drugs, sterilizations, and contraception, but President Obama will say that it doesn’t, and we’ll believe him. That fixes everything. And to think, some people accuse President Obama of empty rhetoric.

This either reveals a great dishonesty or great lack of economic understanding on the part of the Obama administration. Either one is disturbing.

Now I Get It

2012-02-10T04:48:00.000-08:00

A couple of years ago I shared a video of Chuck Colson sounding the alarm over a speech where Hillary Clinton had used the phrase "freedom of worship" to describe our first amendment right to free exercise of religion, emphasizing that freedom of worship and freedom of religion are very different things. Freedom of worship is the freedom to go to church and do religious things in that church. The Chinese communists allow that. Freedom of religion is the ability to live out your religion in public.

I shared it sensing that he may be on to something but not quite sure it was quite the emergency he thought it was. But when I heard about the Health and Human services contraceptive mandate, I immediately thought back to that warning and realized that he was right. Since then there has been quite a response especially from Catholic and Evangelical groups, many of them calling for civil disobedience in defiance of this mandate. Here's a list:

Justin Taylor has a list of Christian leaders who have called for civil disobedience
Denny Burk has posted a new video from Chuck Colson on this with some suggested actions we can take
MSNBC reports that EWTN is suing over this mandate
ABC News is reporting that even some Senate Democrats are opposed to this mandate

To add insult to injury, the Obama administration is giving a one year waiver for religious organizations to comply with the mandate. It's as if they are saying "Yeah we know you're hung up on your silly religious views, so we'll give you a year to get over it and come to the right view"

Life - Part 4

2012-02-10T04:18:00.000-08:00

I watched this with my wife last night. It's very well done. I challenge you to watch this - especially if you're pro-choice or even if you're personally pro-life but believe that it should be a matter of personal choice. I think this may change your mind.

Life - Part 3

2012-02-06T07:57:00.000-08:00

Very well said.

HT: Denny Burk

Abortion Is Their Sacrament, and Planned Parenthood Is Their Temple

2012-02-03T04:36:00.000-08:00

Denny Burk describes the situation between breast cancer charity Susan G. Komen for the Cure and Planned Parenthood very well.

Excerpt:

Pro-abortion zealots are trying to weave a narrative to the public so that they can portray Komen as the bad guy. They want Komen to either change their standards or feel the wrath of millions of pro-abortion donors who will no longer support Susan G. Komen for the Cure. Yes, you heard that right. The pro-abortionists are so committed to their sacrament of abortion and to their temple of Planned Parenthood, that they would rather see the breast cancer charity die than lose funding for their abortion mills. That is a sick and distorted calculus, but there it is.

Read the whole thing

Also read: Komen Get It - James Taranto - Wall Street Journal

Eric Metaxas at the National Prayer Breakfast

2012-02-02T16:22:00.000-08:00

Wow. Aside from being a little too goofy I thought he was great.

By the way I've read both of his books he talks about in this speech (Bonhoeffer and Amazing Grace). Both are phenomenal. I highly recommend them.

Life - Part 2

2012-01-31T09:42:00.000-08:00

As Matt Chandler mentioned in his Sanctity of Life Sunday sermon, and as I have often thought about myself, we often look back at our shameful history with regard to slavery and wonder how in the world people countenanced such an obvious injustice without speaking out against it. The answer, it seems, is that the American people in the 19th century were not so very different from us. The following is an excerpt from a speech Abraham Lincoln gave in 1860 in New Haven, Connecticut (which is of course north of the Mason-Dixon line - to a group of people who were, presumably for the most part, personally anti-slavery):

What we want, and all we want, is to have with us the men who think slavery wrong. But those who say they hate slavery, and are opposed to it, but yet act with the Democratic party -- where are they? Let us apply a few tests. You say that you think slavery is wrong, but you denounce all attempts to restrain it. Is there anything else that you think wrong, that you are not willing to deal with as a wrong? Why are you so careful, so tender of this one wrong and no other? [Laughter.] You will not let us do a single thing as if it was wrong; there is no place where you will allow it to be even called wrong! We must not call it wrong in the Free States, because it is not there, and we must not call it wrong in the Slave States because it is there; we must not call it wrong in politics because that is bringing morality into politics, and we must not call it wrong in the pulpit because that is bringing politics into religion; we must not bring it into the Tract Society or the other societies, because those are such unsuitable places, and there is no single place, according to you, where this wrong thing can properly be called wrong! [Continued laughter and applause.]

This all sounds very familiar in the current debate about abortion, doesn't it?

HT: Justin Taylor

Life

2012-01-27T10:23:00.000-08:00

I was somewhat surprised when my pastor, Matt Chandler (The Village Church), preached an explicitly pro-life sermon on this past Sunday, which was Sanctity of Life Sunday. I'm not surprised at all that this is his position, but surprised that he preached this message because he normally seems to take great pains to steer clear of anything that would be seen as political. However, as he pointed out, the Scriptures call for us not merely to refrain from taking part in works of darkness, but also to expose them (Ephesians 5:11). I thought it struck exactly the right tone, made all the right points, and as usual pointed back to the Cross of Christ.

I highly recommend listening to it. You can download it here.

I also recommend the podcast which you can subscribe to here.

The Three Deadliest Words in the World....

2012-01-22T12:31:00.000-08:00

...are "It's a Girl"

The Bible: Roadmap to Life?

2012-01-11T04:18:00.000-08:00

Don't Do It Tim!

2011-12-29T08:27:00.000-08:00

MSNBC.com is reporting that Saturday Night Live would like Tim Tebow to host. The article mentions why this would be a bad idea:

There’s no question the sketches “SNL’s” writers would create for Tebow would play off the many known issues surrounding him — the circumcisions, his virginity, the on-field prayer stance dubbed “Tebowing.” But once they handed those scripts to Tebow, it seems wildly unlikely that he’d go along with what they come up with. Who can blame him?

Manning did it, and he looked smart for doing so. But here’s betting the Tebow sketches would be much more personal and vicious, and much more likely to go against Tebow’s personal values, religious or otherwise.

Lots of public figures have hosted the show and have had the opportunity to improve their reputations by good-naturedly poking fun at themselves for things that they have gotten some negative attention from in the media (such as the classic George Steinbrenner sketch where he plays a convenience store manager who conspicuously doesn't fire his terrible employees). But, the negative media attention that Tebow gets is for his steadfast faith, and as Denny Burk points out:

Self-deprecating humor is one thing. Christ-deprecating humor is another, and it’s completely repugnant to Christians. It’s hard to imagine that the sketches would be any better than the last one, were Tebow to host.

I agree. And I say this as someone who used to absolutely love that show (back in the Chris Farley, Dana Carvey, Mike Meyers days). But more recently the show has crossed several lines and has kept going. There's every reason to believe that the show with Tebow as host would be a disgrace.

Don't do it Tim!

HT: Denny Burk

Look At Jesus

2011-11-29T19:37:00.001-08:00

The following excerpt comes from D.A Carson's The God Who is There in a section where he is commenting on John 1:18 (No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father's side, he has made him known.)

Do you hear what this text is saying? Do you want to know what God looks like? Look at Jesus. ‘No one has ever seen God,’ and God in all of His transcendent splendor we still cannot see until the last day. But the Word became flesh; God became a human being with the name of Jesus; and we can see Him.
That is why Jesus later says to one of His own disciples, ‘Don’t you know Me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen Me has seen the Father’ (John 14:9).
Do you want to know what the character of God is like? Study Jesus. Do you want to know what the holiness of God is like? Study Jesus. Do you want to know what the wrath of God is like? Study Jesus.
Do you want to know what the forgiveness of God is like? Study Jesus. Do you want to know what the glory of God is like? Study Jesus all the way to that wretched cross. Study Jesus.

A Prayer for Parents

2011-09-04T19:31:00.000-07:00

O LORD God of heaven,
The great and awesome God who keeps covenant
and steadfast love with those who love Him and
keep His commandments, let Your ear be attentive and Your
eyes open, to hear the prayer of Your servant that I now pray
before You day and night for my children. Grant them
continual patience and forbearance to live with me, a wicked
parent. For I have sinned against You; I have acted very
corruptly against You by forsaking my responsibility to lead
them in righteousness and the fear of You; I have not kept
Your commandments, Your statutes, or the rules that You
commanded Your servant Moses.
Prevent them from following my old self—when I am
unfaithful to Your Word, when I neglect prayer, fail to
redeem the time, speak carelessly, walk foolishly, fail to hope
in You, seek great things for myself, become anxious about
tomorrow. Protect them from my own indwelling sin—when I
am beset with the fear of man, the cares of the world, or the
love of money. May they never lose confidence that, in spite
of my many iniquities and shortcomings, I am Your servant
whom You have redeemed by Your great power and by Your
strong hand.
O Lord, let Your ear be attentive to the prayer of Your
servant. May they delight to fear Your name, and give success
to them today, and grant them mercy (Nehemiah 1).
from Setting Their Hope in God by Andrew Case

Thank Goodness for Civility!

2011-08-07T07:05:00.000-07:00

Froma Harrop is the president of a 64 year-old professional organization called the National Conference of Editorial Writers. One of its new missions is called the Civility Project, which endeavors to improve the quality of public discourse.

In the wake of debt ceiling vote, Froma Harrop wrote this opinion piece. Here's an excerpt:

Make no mistake: The tea party Republicans have engaged in economic terrorism against the United States -- threatening to blow up the economy if they don't get what they want. And like the al-Qaida bombers, what they want is delusional: the dream of restoring some fantasy caliphate in which no one pays taxes, while the country is magically protected from foreign attack and the elderly get government-paid hip replacements.
Americans are not supposed to negotiate with terrorists, but that's what Obama has been doing. Obama should have grabbed the bully pulpit early on, bellowing that everything can be discussed but America's honor, which requires making good on its debt obligations. Lines about "we're all at fault" and "Republicans should compromise" are beyond pathetic on a subject that should be beyond discussion.

I could comment further but I think I'll leave it there.

HT: James Taranto

John Piper on How to Recognize Wolves in the Making

2011-07-12T09:22:00.000-07:00

Pastor John from 1989:

Let me just mention one feature to watch out for in the recognition of wolves. As I have watched the movement from biblical faithfulness to liberalism in persons and institutions that I have known over the years, this feature stands out: An emotional disenchantment with faithfulness to what is old and fixed, and an emotional preoccupation with what is new or fashionable or relevant in the eyes of the world.
Let's try to say it another way: when this feature is prevalent, you don't get the impression that a person really longs to bring his mind and heart into conformity to fixed biblical truth. Instead you see the desire to picture biblical truth as unfixed, fluid, indefinable, distant, inaccessible, and so open to the trends of the day.
So what marks a possible wolf-in-the-making is not simply that he rejects or accepts any particular biblical truth, but that he isn't deeply oriented on the Bible. He is more oriented on experience. He isn't captured by the great old faith once for all delivered to the saints. Instead he's enamored by what is new and innovative.
A good elder can be creative. But the indispensable mark when it comes to doctrinal fitness is faithfulness to what is fixed in Scripture—disciplined, humble submission to the particular affirmations of the Bible—carefully and reverently studied and explained and cherished. When that spirit begins to go, there's a wolf-in-the-making.

Excerpted from Watch Out for the Wolves Within.

HT: Desiring God blog

Trustworthy Bible or Stepford God?

2011-07-01T11:09:00.000-07:00

I am rereading Tim Keller's The Reason for God with some friends, and I recently came across this section that I thought was too good not to share:

If we let our unexamined beliefs undermine our confidence in the Bible, the cost may be greater than we think.

If you don't trust the Bible enough to let it challenge and correct your thinking, how could you ever have a personal relationship with God? In any truly personal relationship, the other person has to be able to contradict you. For example, if a wife is not allowed to contradict her husband, they won't have an intimate relationship. Remember the (two!) movies The Stepford Wives? The husbands of Stepford, Connecticut, decide to have their wives turned into robots who never cross the wills of their husbands. A Stepford wife was wonderfully compliant and beautiful, but no one would describe such a marriage as intimate or personal.

Now, what happens if you eliminate anything from the Bible that offends your sensibility and crosses your will? If you pick and choose what you want to believe and reject the rest, how will you ever have a God who can contradict you? You won't! You'll have a Stepford God! A God, essentially, of your own making, and not a God with whom you can have a relationship and genuine interaction. Only if your God can say things that outrage you and make you struggle (as in a real friendship or marriage!) will you know that you have gotten hold of a real God and not a figment of your imagination. So an authoritative Bible is not the enemy of a personal relationship with God. It is the precondition for it.

Storm and The Abolition of Man

2011-06-11T05:44:00.000-07:00

I came across a very strange article a few weeks ago that I've been thinking about quite a bit since. It seems that Kathy Witterick and David Stocker of Toronto, Canada had a baby together, and have decided not to announce the sex of the baby. In the email they sent out to friends and family announcing the birth, they said "We've decided not to share Storm's sex for now--a tribute to freedom and choice in place of limitation, a stand up to what the world could become in Storm's lifetime (a more progressive place? ...)"

The article ended this way:

As for his mother, she's not giving up the crusade against the tyranny of assigned gender roles. "Everyone keeps asking us, 'When will this end?'" she said. "And we always turn the question back. Yeah, when will this end? When will we live in a world where people can make choices to be whoever they are?"

I've been thinking about this in the light of a book I reread recently, CS Lewis's The Abolition of Man. Particularly this part:

For the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue. For magic and applied science alike the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men: the solution is a technique; and both, in the practice of this technique, are ready to do things hitherto regarded as disgusting and impious

If humanity came about, not by the act of a Divine Creator but essentially by accident, it follows that there is nothing wrong with considering it infinitely malleable, manipulating it as we wish. However if we were created by God our task is to conform to reality, even if it causes us to do other than what we wish.

And if there is a God, the decision about whether Storm is a male or female is not up to Storm. It has already been decided by God.

And by the way, Storm is clearly a boy.

Ideas Have Consequences

2011-04-04T04:02:00.000-07:00

I recently finished reading, and highly, highly recommend, 10 Books that Screwed Up the World: And 5 Others that Didn't Help by Benjamin Wiker. It's brilliant. In the book the author examines 15 books that have been important in shaping, or more accurately misshaping, our thinking in the West. If you want to see a list and quick summary of the books, click here.

I thought the conclusion of the book was really well put so I quote it at length here:

Can we gather, from what screwed up the world, what we might do to save it?

    To ask such a question is to have slept through the lesson. In no small part the carnage and confusion was caused by notions that the world, rather than human beings, needed to be saved from and for something. To save the world from political impotence, Machiavelli would have us embrace effective brutality. To save the world from skepticism, Descartes would have us become both more skeptical and more prideful. To save the world from industrial oppression, Marx and Lenin would have us annihilate half the world in revolution. To save the world from disease, poverty, and every social ill, Margaret Sanger and Adolf Hitler would have us eliminate the hordes of "unfit." To save the world from male oppression, Betty Friedan would have women kill their offspring.

    Until the twentieth century, the notion of salvation had a decent pedigree. Now that the notion has been so tainted by its secular adherents, it will be a wonder if the idea of salvation itself can be saved. What all our authors have grasped, in one way or another, is that something is wrong and needs to be righted. But they have also suffered acutely from one terrible insight: If God really does not exist, then it is all up to us. If this world is our only world, this life our only life, then it would seem that every effort, any means, and all passions fair or foul should be unleashed in an effort to transform the miseries of human life into a durable earthly happiness. If we all bang on the gates of paradise with our collective force, they must break open and allow humanity to enter, even though some will be lost in the crush.

    If such is the result of rejecting the notion that it is man, and not primarily the world, that has fallen, then the way might be open to a very sober reassessment of an ancient insight. There's something profoundly wrong with us, some crack or deep taint that is largely incurable because it is largely invisible, a terrible twist that begins in the soul and curls its way outward. These are the threads of the screws that have screwed up the world.

The cracks in the soul become more visible when they are ignored. They become most visible when the twisted soul tries to rid the world of the very idea that each individual has a soul accountable to God. The twisted soul does this in order to deny its own twistedness, and that good and evil are defined by a divine source outside the self. The authors we've examined who have taken a turn at twisting the screws that have screwed up the world all have this in common. They all deny sin.
.
.
.

   If the books we've covered offer an image of insanity, then perhaps by reversing the image and holding it up to a different light we can recover some outline of sanity. Perhaps we are not merely animals as Darwin would have it, but something more than animals. Perhaps we are not ghosts in machines, as Descartes would have it, but some other strange and glorious creature, something godlike but with two feet on the ground. Yet, being something godlike, we are not, as Nietzsche would have it, gods ourselves, but something far less, a faint but glowing resemblance to Someone else infinitely more resplendent. Perhaps there are dark corridors of our hearts that must be uncovered and exposed to light, as Freud would have it, but the darkness is not as hopelessly dark, and the light comes from another heart illumined by puncture and resurrection. Perhaps we do need a final revolution, as Marx and Lenin would have it, but it is a revolution from within and from above. Perhaps we should, as Mill bid us, seek the greatest happiness of the greatest number, but by filling our souls with unearthly joy rather than merely feeding our earthly pleasures like pigs. Perhaps, as Nietzsche howled, God did indeed die, but rose again, an ubermensche of a very different kind, one that can save us from the madness of our own making.

Look at the Cross

2011-03-20T20:38:00.000-07:00

I have been hearing so much about Rob Bell's new book that I at first felt like I needed to read it so that I could form an informed opinion about it, so the day it was published I downloaded the sample on my Nook, intending to buy it. But then I decided that the cost of the eBook wasn't worth it for a book that I knew I wouldn't like, especially when I realized that I honestly don't need to read the whole thing to have an informed opinion about it since he sets up his thesis in the preface (which was part of the sample):

A staggering number of people have been taught that a select few Christians will spend forever in a peaceful, joyous place called heaven while the rest of humanity spends forever in torment and punishment in hell with no chance for anything better. It’s been clearly communicated to many that this belief is a central truth of the Christian faith and to reject it is, in essence, to reject Jesus. This is misguided, toxic, and ultimately subverts the contagious spread of Jesus’ message of love, peace, forgiveness and joy that our world desperately needs to hear.

It has also been reviewed by solid evangelical thinkers who quote the book extensively and have all unanimously concluded that the book teaches a form of universalism, or at least inclusivism:

Kevin DeYoung
Tim Challies
Albert Mohler
and many, many others

The criticism basically seems to be that the book resolves the tension between God's love and the existence of hell by claiming that basically everybody ends up in heaven even if they start in hell.

It's not only his critics but also his supporters that make this clear. For instance Richard Mouw of Fuller Theological Seminary made the following statement:

The real hellacious fight, says Mouw, a friend of Bell, a Fuller graduate, is between "generous orthodoxy and stingy orthodoxy. There are stingy people who just want to consign many others to hell and only a few to heaven and take delight in the idea. But Rob Bell allows for a lot of mystery in how Jesus reaches people."

I deeply resent the notion that those of us who agree with the orthodox view of Salvation, the only view with serious scriptural support, take this view not because scripture clearly teaches it but because we "want to consign many others to hell and take delight in the idea". But I digress.

Also Rob Bell's own inability to give a straight answer to very straightforward questions asked by Martin Bashir in the deer-in-the-headlights interview on MSNBC also gives it away.

So for all these reasons I think it's safe to say that I don't really have to read the book to have an informed opinion on what it says, and on what position he's taking.

I recommend reading the reviews I linked above for a thorough treatment of where Bell's theology misses the mark, but his fundamental error seems to be this: His view is that "God is love", which is of course true, but not complete. Love is not God's only attribute. God is also a God of wrath. This is admittedly a difficult truth to comprehend, however the scriptures are so clear on this point that we are simply not free to deny it unless we are prepared to ignore scripture. To Rob Bell the view that God is both love and wrath not merely difficult, it is an untenable position.

For a Biblical treatment of this doctrine I highly recommend D.A. Carson's The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God as alternative to Love Wins. Here's an excerpt:

The reality is that the Old Testament displays the grace and love of God in experience and types, and these realities become all the clearer in the new covenant writings. Similarly, the Old Testament displays the righteous wrath of God in experience and types, and these realities become all the clearer in the new covenant writings. In other words, both God’s love and God’s wrath are ratcheted up in the move from the old covenant to the new, from the Old Testament to the New. These themes barrel along through redemptive history, unresolved, until they come to a resounding climax—in the cross.
Do you wish to see God’s love? Look at the cross.
Do you wish to see God’s wrath? Look at the cross.

The cross only makes sense when you get these ideas straight. We know that God's love provided the cross, but we often forget that His wrath required it.

Dr Lloyd-Jones documentary on George Whitefield

2011-03-12T06:40:00.000-08:00

Dads: Relish the Role

2011-02-27T21:02:00.000-08:00

Here's some good advice for Dads from my pastor, Matt Chandler. Since I'm selfish and lazy I don't tend to do this well for long before needing to be reminded again. I thought I would share this in case I'm not alone.

Download Snippet

Stream snippet:

Download Whole sermon

Tim Keller on Morning Joe

2011-02-20T15:05:00.000-08:00

Tim Keller has a new book coming out this week. He was on Morning Joe last week. Clip is below.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Randall Wallace at National Prayer Breakfast

2011-02-07T18:22:00.000-08:00

I thought this was a very good speech given by Randall Wallace (director of Secretariat, screenwriter for Braveheart and We Were Soldiers, among many others) at the National Prayer Breakfast.

Planned Parenthood Aids Underage Sex Ring

2011-02-02T10:17:00.000-08:00

This video defies commentary so I will not add any except to encourage you to watch the whole thing, and underscore the part at the end where the video notes that Planned Parenthood receives about $300 million per year from taxpayers.

Tucson Punditry

2011-01-18T10:30:00.001-08:00

I found the media's reaction to the shootings in Tucson dispiriting but clarifying. These three columns seem to be the most eloquent expressions of my own reaction:

The Authoritarian Media - James Taranto

After the horrific shooting spree, the editorial board of New York Times offered a voice of reasoned circumspection: "In the aftermath of this unforgivable attack, it will be important to avoid drawing prejudicial conclusions . . .," the paper counseled.

Here's how the sentence continued: ". . . from the fact that Major Hasan is an American Muslim whose parents came from the Middle East."

The Tucson Safeway massacre prompted exactly the opposite reaction. What was once known as the paper of record egged on its readers to draw invidious conclusions that are not only prejudicial but contrary to fact. In doing so, the Times has crossed a moral line.

Massacre, Followed by Libel - Charles Krauthammer

The charge: The Tucson massacre is a consequence of the "climate of hate" created by Sarah Palin, the Tea Party, Glenn Beck, Obamacare opponents and sundry other liberal betes noires.

The verdict: Rarely in American political discourse has there been a charge so reckless, so scurrilous and so unsupported by evidence.
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The origins of Loughner's delusions are clear: mental illness. What are the origins of Krugman's?

Libeling the Right: The Key to the Left's Success - Dennis Prager

The Left rarely convinces Americans to adopt its views. What it does is create a fear of the Right that influences many Americans to align themselves with the Left.

Grinch Alert

2010-12-20T12:08:00.000-08:00

A few days ago my sister-in-law told me about a website started by a church I used to go to called Grinch Alert. My first reaction was to cringe. My second reaction was to think for a moment that maybe it was legitimate. And then my third reaction was an even bigger cringe.

The first problem with this website is obvious. It's stupid. It comes across as whining about the fact that some stores will not allow their employees to say "Merry Christmas" so they instead say "Happy Holidays" as though that makes American Christians somehow a beleaguered, oppressed minority. Please! One has to be completely ignorant of history and current events all over the world today to believe that this is anything approaching oppression. That was my initial cringe.

Then for a moment I thought about the fact that this does indeed point to something real. No the church is not oppressed, but it is weak, it is marginalized, and it is under fire, especially from society's secular and multicultural elites. There really is a "war on Christmas", or more accurately on Christianity, in our culture. And the "inclusiveness" which motivates the "Happy Holidays" is ridiculous, inconsistent, and narcissistic, and deserves to be responded to. My favorite example from this year was when a woman called up a favorite radio show of mine and said that she sings in the master chorale in her community, and their performance of Handel's Messiah, which was at a church, was referred to as a "holiday concert". I believe there should be a debate about this in our culture, and I can't quite think of a way for that debate to happen without the church being involved. So that's why for a moment I thought this was legitimate.

Then I thought about the fact that this debate needs to happen in light of the earlier observation that the website is stupid and whiny. And that's the reason for my bigger cringe. Treating the issue as though saying "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas" is the disease rather than a symptom of the disease, is not helping. Putting up what amounts to a blacklist which the media are having a field day with is tactless, and therefore counterproductive. We Christians need to learn how to come across as attractive, winsome and compelling rather than tactless and angry cranks.

Ross Douthat of the New York Times wrote a really good column about this last Sunday. Here's the upshot:

...this month’s ubiquitous carols and crèches notwithstanding, believing Christians are no longer what they once were — an overwhelming majority in a self-consciously Christian nation. The question is whether they can become a creative and attractive minority in a different sort of culture, where they’re competing not only with rival faiths but with a host of pseudo-Christian spiritualities, and where the idea of a single religious truth seems increasingly passé.

Or to put it another way, Christians need to find a way to thrive in a society that looks less and less like any sort of Christendom — and more and more like the diverse and complicated Roman Empire where their religion had its beginning, 2,000 years ago this week.

City of Man

2010-10-26T19:03:00.001-07:00

Michael Gerson and Peter Wehner talk about their new book, City of Man, in the video below. I've read the book - it's quite good.

Enjoy!

City of Man: Religion and Politics in a New Era from Madison Trammel on Vimeo.

In Defense of Straight Ticket Voting

2010-10-15T10:44:00.000-07:00

On Election Day, I'm going to go to the voting booth, mark the "Straight Ticket Republican" line, and call it a day. Is this because I'm a die-hard Republican party loyalist? No. A ditto-head with a Glenn Beck tattoo? Nope - I don't listen to Rush, and I have never heard/seen even a single Glenn Beck show. (We don't even have the Fox News Channel). Is it because I'm a lazy voter who doesn't take the time to learn about the candidates and is just taking a shot in the dark? No. It's because I'm a conservative, and I have come to realize that there is no point in a conservative even considering voting for a Democrat.

I used to buy the idea that a voter should not vote along party lines but should determine the best candidate and vote for that person for each office. I now believe that if that idea was ever valid (and it may have been) it's not in valid in the current political climate. Today, the gap between the two parties is unbridgeable. They are not merely people with the same ends but have different opinions for how to achieve them, as I used to believe. I now understand that they have different ends.

This is not to say that there are no good people who are Democrats. I know many. I even have some in my family who I love, and love spending time with. This is also not to say there are no jerks who are Republicans. I know MANY.

I believe both parties mean well. They both want a better America, so they share ends in that sense. However, they do not even agree on what a better America would look like.

I came close to voting for a Democrat once. In 2002, when Dick Armey retired from the House, the two candidates who ran for his seat were Michael Burgess (R) and Paul LeBon (D). I wasn't super impressed with Michael Burgess, and Paul LeBon seemed like a good guy. He was a pro-life Catholic, and actually made a pretty good case that he was more pro-life than his Republican opponent. But in the end I went ahead and voted for Burgess. Why? Because of Dick Gephardt and Al Gore. What do I mean?

Here's a quote from Dick Gephardt in 1984:

"Life is the division of human cells, a process that begins with conception. The (Supreme Court's abortion) ruling was unjust, and it is incumbent on the Congress to correct the injustice... I have always been supportive of pro-life legislation. I intend to remain steadfast on this issue.... I believe that the life of the unborn should be protected at all costs."

Then in 1987 when he decided to run for President, he abandoned his pro-life stance and remained a pro-choice champion for the rest of his 3 decade political career.

Here's Al Gore in 1983:

It is my deep personal conviction that abortion is wrong. I hope that some day we will see the current outrageously large number of abortions drop sharply.

Then as he began to rise through the ranks of the Democratic party, he also abandoned this position.

The pro-life position has no place in the Democratic party. If Paul LeBon had won, I believe it is safe to say that he would have either switched sides on this issue or else would have been silenced or blocked from advancement by his party.

On the other hand, I believed the Republican party would have the opposite effect on Michael Burgess. If he was not 100% pro-life in his record before election, he would be pushed in that direction by his party. By the way, Michael Burgess was ultimately elected, and currently has a 0% rating from NARAL. I think I made the right choice.

The point I'm trying to make is that each of the political parties has a culture, and the different cultures between the two parties are significantly different. If a congressman who espouses my values was a Democrat, he would be under constant pressure to change his positions. We saw this not only with the examples I gave above, but more recently with Bart Stupak. Stupak is the most visible pro-life Democrat who eventually gave in to party pressure to change his vote in favor of the Health Care bill on the basis of a pledge by President Obama to issue an executive order preventing the federal funding of abortion. (Incidentally, nobody, left or right, believes the President kept that promise.) So while I do believe that Bart Stupak is genuinely pro-life, he caved under enormous pressure from his party to vote in favor of a bill that violates those convictions. (On the other hand, it appears that this may have been the plan all along). So ultimately, what good does it do me, as a pro-life voter, to look at the individual convictions of candidates when, if elected, the party pressure for them to violate those convictions will ultimately yield the same vote as a pro-choice congressman?

But it's not just the position on the issues that makes me say that the gap between the parties is unbridgeable. The abortion issue is not the only issue, though it's a huge one and I think it's bigger than most people realize (for instance did you know that 41% of pregnancies in New York City end in abortion? Is this not an outrage?) There's something more fundamental than the issue of abortion that leads me to a Republican straight ticket. There's a first principle involved.

(I'm borrowing heavily from Wayne Grudem's excellent Politics - According to the Bible for much of the data that follows)

The government of the United States of America was formed to be a government by the people based on laws, under a Constitution which holds the highest authority. It includes carefully balanced separation of powers where one group would make the laws (namely the Congress and state and local legislatures), and another group would interpret and apply the laws (the courts), and check to see that the laws were consistent with the Constitution. This is an excellent system. Over time, however, a hole has become apparent in that system of checks and balances, and the Left in this country are exploiting it. The hole I'm referring to is the reality that the Supreme Court can have unlimited power. If a case comes to the Supreme Court, and the Constitution does not say something that the Supreme Court justices want it to say or think that it should say, they can claim to "discover" new principles in the Constitution, and there is nobody in our system who can overrule them. Therefore, in practice, the Supreme Court, not the Constitution, is really the highest authority in the land.

An obvious example of this once again goes back to the issue of abortion. The Roe v. Wade decision of the Supreme Court overturned laws that restricted or prohibited abortion in every state. How did it do this when the Constitution does not address the issue of abortion? They claimed to have found a "right to privacy" in the due process provision of the 14th amendment. Here's the text of that clause:

Nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.

So where is the right to privacy in that statement? Keep looking, it's simply not there. The purpose of the amendment was to guarantee that slaves and their descendants would have all the rights of citizenship and equal protection as all other citizens under the law. This amendment was never intended to have anything to do with abortion. Yet 7 of the 9 Supreme Court justices apparently thought the Constitution should guarantee abortion, so they simply claimed that it does. In his dissent, Justice Byron White wrote:

I find nothing in the language or history of the Constitution to support the Court's judgment. The Court simply fashions and announces a new constitutional right for pregnant mothers and, with scarcely any reason or authority for its action, invests that right with sufficient substance to override most existing state abortion statutes... As an exercise of raw judicial power, the Court perhaps has authority to do what it does today; but, in my view, its judgment is an improvident and extravagant exercise of the power of judicial review that the Constitution extends to this Court.

William Rehnquist, who was the other dissenting vote, wrote:

To reach its result, the Court necessarily has had to find within the scope of the Fourteenth Amendment a right that was apparently completely unknown to the drafters of the Amendment... By the time of the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868, there were at least thirty-six laws enacted by state or territorial legislatures limiting abortion.

Yet, in the Supreme Court, majority rules, and it ruled in favor of inventing a right that the Constitution does not uphold. And, while this is a clear abuse of the power of the Supreme Court, our checks and balances do not provide any check on the Supreme Court.

In the Roe v. Wade decision, the Supreme Court set a dangerous precedent that has been followed many times, where the Supreme Court "discovers" new Constitutional principles, so that the word "Constitutional" has come to mean "something 5 of more of the Supreme Court justices think is a good idea". The Supreme Court has used this same mentality to:

Reinterpret the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to mean that religious viewpoints are to be banned from the public square (see Lemon v. Kurtzman)
Seize private property for private development (see Kelo v. City of New London)
Come within one vote of changing laws regarding whether an organization has to accept homosexual conduct (see Boy Scouts of America et al. v. Dale)

At the state level in some states, following the pattern of the Supreme Court, state supreme courts have invented the right of same sex couples to marry, which is a notion that has been rejected by voters (even in liberal states) every time the chance to vote on it has been offered.

And on and on I could go. The bottom line is, I believe this abuse of power by the Supreme Court is the must fundamental problem we now face as a nation, because it has caused a crack in the system. We're not as much a government "by the people" as we once were. We now have a little monarchy: a group of judges that were not elected by the people, and who will be allowed to stay in office as long as they live, that can decree something that we the people oppose, and there's nothing we can do about it. As a result, we're a little less free.

The best thing we can do (sort of) is to see to it that the justices who are appointed to the courts are not going to abuse their power as justices. How can we guarantee this? We can't. How can we have an exponentially greater chance of getting these kinds of justices? By electing Republicans - which is why I'm bringing this up. The President has the power to appoint, and the Senate to confirm, justices to the Supreme Court when a sitting justice retires or dies. Though it certainly could happen (and has happened) that Supreme Court justices nominated by Republicans turn out to be activist, Republicans will generally make it their aim that this is not the case. And sadly, Democrats will essentially without exception make it their aim that it is. I wish this was not true. But it is.

The Democrats have realized that the agenda they have for remaking the United States can be more easily accomplished by appointing activist judges rather than by getting their agenda through by the legislative process. In other words, rather than having to persuade the people of the rightness of their goals, they can appoint judges that will force them. (Remember, for instance, that abortion was already legal in states that wanted it to be legal even before Roe v. Wade. That decision took the right away from the states who wanted to limit abortion to do so). Does this make us as citizens more free, or less free?

Robert Bork put it well in his book on American jurisprudence:

In the Past few decades American institutions have struggled with the temptations of politics. Professions and academic disciplines that once possessed a life and structure of their own have steadily succumbed, in some cases almost entirely, to the belief that nothing matters beyond politically desirable results, however achieved. . . . It is coming to be denied that anything counts, not objectivity, not even intellectual honesty, that stands in the way of the ‘correct’ political outcome.
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In the law, the moment of temptation is the moment of choice, when a judge realizes that in the case before him his strongly held view of justice . . . is not embodied in a statute or any provision of the Constitution. He then must choose between his version of justice and abiding by the American form of government. Yet the desire to do justice, whose nature seems to him obvious, is compelling, while the concept of constitutional process is abstract, rather arid, and the abstinence it counsels unsatisfying. To give in to temptation, this one time, solves an urgent human problem, and a faint crack appears in the American foundation. A judge has begun to rule where a legislator should.

And when Democrats do not have the presidency and wish to block a non-activist judge appointment from the court, the Democrats launch an epic battle and smear campaign against the nominee. See Robert Bork, see Clarence Thomas, see John Roberts.

I could go on to talk about the issue of the size of government, on which I believe the Democrats are violating another first principle of limited government. But this went longer than I expected, so I'll end here with this. I acknowledge that it's possible that I'm letting my own political bias affect my view of the courts issue. After all, I do basically agree with conservative politics across the board, and admit that it would be harder for me to see the flaws of the Democrats' methods of achieving their ends if I happened to agree with their ends. So having given that disclaimer, you can decide whether you think my own bias is clouding my judgment when I say this: It seems to me that all Americans, not just conservatives, should be absolutely outraged by the way the Democrats have encouraged the abuse of power by the courts, and should give voice to that outrage in the voting booth. If there was a movement within the Democratic party to bring the party back to sanity on this issue, I would say otherwise. But if there is such a movement, I'm unaware of it.

Some people have told me that they don't want the balance of power to shift all the way to the right either, and that the best situation is when the Senate and Congress are basically evenly split so they have to fight over everything. When I hear that, I admit that it sounds good. But then as I consider it further, I don't want there to be a balance of power between people who do believe the Constitution is supreme and those who don't. Any party who does not respect the American form of government simply does not deserve a seat at the table. Only when we repair the crack that on the American foundation caused by this judicial activism should we talk about the finer points of economic policy, foreign policy, and the rest. Let's first ensure that we remain free.

Man is Not Great

2010-09-12T19:09:00.000-07:00

I recently finished reading The Rage Against God by Peter Hitchens, who is the brother of the outspoken atheist Chrisopher Hitchens, author of God is Not Great. The Rage Against God is an excellent book. Peter, a serious Christian, and his brother Christopher do not agree on much. I think a better title for his book would have been Man is Not Great, as it is in many ways an answer to his brother's book. But that's my only complaint. Get it and read it! Here's an excerpt:

Let us examine the strange problem of the Atheist states, which a ruthlessly honest Godless person must surely admit as a difficulty. After all, intelligent Christians must -- if they are candid -- accept that faith has often led to cruel violence and intolerant persecution. They may say, as I would, that this was because humans often misunderstand or misuse the teachings of the religions they follow. This is not because they are religious, but because Man is not great.

Atheists, in return, ought equally to concede that Godless regimes and movements have given birth to terrible persecutions and massacres. They do not do so, in my view, because in these cases the slaughter is not the result of a misunderstanding or excessive zeal. Utopia can only ever be approached across a sea of blood. This is a far greater problem for the atheist than it is for the Christian, because the atheist uses this argument to try to demonstrate that religion specifically makes things worse than they otherwise would be. On the contrary, it demonstrates that our ability to be savage to our own kind cannot be wholly prevented by religion. More important still, Atheist states have a consistent tendency to commit mass murders in the name of the greater good.

It is difficult to claim that Christianity has learned nothing from its past cruelty or that such cruelty is written in its laws or prescribed by its beliefs. When did Christians last burn, strangle, or imprison each other for alleged errors of faith? By contrast, those who reject God's absolute authority, preferring their own, are far more ready to persecute than Christians have been and have grown more included to do over time . Each revolutionary generation reliably repeats the savagery. The Bolsheviks knew all about the French revolutionary terror, but that did not stop them having their own. The Chinese Communists knew all about Stalin's intentional famine and five-year-plans, but they repeated the barbarity with the Great Leap Forward. The Khmer Rouge were not ignorant of their revolutionary forerunners, yet they repeated the evil worse than before. The supposedly enlightened revolution of Fidel Castro resorted swiftly to torture and arbitrary imprisonment and to the lawless purging and murder even of Castro's old comrades such as Huber Matos. By comparison, where now do we see Christian churches or factions persecuting each other as they did in the Reformation or Counter-Reformation? Nowhere. The delusion or revolutionary progress, and the ruthlessness it justifies, survives any amount of experience. This suggests that terror and slaughter are inherent in utopian materialist revolutionary movements. There will be another of these episodes along soon. What, then, do we gain by rejecting God and worshiping ourselves instead?

Religion and Science

2010-09-08T19:24:00.000-07:00

Stephen Hawking's The Grand Design came out yesterday. I have so far only read the introduction, but I can already see that it sets out to do what it couldn't possibly do. It sets out to answer from science questions that are beyond the scope of science.

From the intro:

To understand the universe at the deepest level, we need to know not only how the universe behaves, but why.

Why is there something rather than nothing?
Why do we exist?
Why this particular set of laws and not some other?

This is the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything. We shall attempt to answer it in this book.

OK. We'll see. But I submit that even the most brilliant physicist in the world, which Stephen Hawking may very well be, is not necessarily particularly qualified to answer these questions. The moment he appeals to physical laws to make his argument, he's failed, because before the existence of the physical universe, there were no physical laws. He couldn't possibly speak about what happened before the Big Bang purely in physical terms. That's outside his arena. It's before anything "physical" existed. A physicist's expertise in the universe begins the moment after the Big Bang, but he has no expertise in anything before. I would argue that a Big Bang needs a "Big Banger". And I believe that "Big Banger" is the God of the Bible. A world renowned authority in physics is the right person to talk to if you want to understand how the physical universe works. But if you want to understand why that physical universe is there, why there's something rather than nothing, it's simply beyond the scope of his expertise.

Reminds me of this short CS Lewis essay:

Religion and Science by CS Lewis (from God in the Dock)

"Miracles", said my friend. "Oh, come. Science has knocked the bottom out of all that. We know that Nature is governed by fixed laws."
"Didn't people always know that?" said I.

"Good Lord, no", said he. "For instance, take a story like the Virgin Birth. We know now that such a thing couldn't happen. We know there must be a male spermatozoon."

"But look here", said I, "St. Joseph--"

"Who's he?" asked my friend.

"He was the husband of the Virgin Mary. If you'll read the story in the Bible you'll find that when he saw his fiancée was going to have a baby he decided to cry off the marriage. Why did he do that?"

"Wouldn't most men?"

"Any man would", said I, "provided he knew the laws of Nature -- in other words, provided he knew that a girl doesn't ordinarily have a baby unless she's been sleeping with a man. But according to your theory people in the old days didn't know that Nature was governed by fixed laws. I'm pointing out that the story shows that St. Joseph knew that law just as well as you do."

"But he came to believe in the Virgin Birth afterwards, didn't he?"

"Quite. But he didn't do so because he was under any illusion as to where babies come from in the ordinary course of Nature. He believed in the Virgin Birth as something super-natural. He knew that Nature works in fixed, regular ways: but he also believed that there existed something beyond Nature which could interfere with her workings--from outside, so to speak."

"But modern science has shown there's no such thing."

"Really," said I. "Which of the sciences?"

"Oh, well, that's a matter of detail," said my friend. "I can't give you chapter and verse from memory."

"But, don't you see", said I, "that science never could show anything of the sort?"

"Why on earth not?"

"Because science studies Nature. And the question is whether anything besides Nature exists--anything 'outside'. How could you find that out by studying simply Nature?"

"But don't we find out that Nature must work in an absolutely fixed way? I mean, the laws of Nature tell us not merely how things do happen, but how they must happen. No power could possibly alter them."

"How do you mean?" said I.

"Look here," said he. "Could this 'something outside' that you talk about make two and two five?"

"Well, no," said I.

"All right," said he. "Well, I think the laws of Nature are really like two and two making four. The idea of their being altered is absurd as the idea of altering the laws of arithmetic."

"Half a moment," said I. "Suppose you put sixpence into a drawer today, and sixpence into the same drawer tomorrow. Do the laws of arithmetic make it certain that you'll find a shilling's worth there the day after?"

"Of course", said he, "provided no one's been tampering with your drawer."

"Ah, but that's the whole point," said I. "The laws of arithmetic can tell you what you'll find, with absolute certainty, provided that there's no interference. If a thief has been at the drawer of course you'll get a different result. But the thief won't have broken the laws of arithmetic -- only the laws of England. Now, aren't the laws of Nature much in the same boat? Don't they all tell you what will happen provided there's no interference?"

"How do you mean?"

"Well, the laws will tell you how a billiard ball will travel on a smooth surface if you hit it in a particular way -- but only provided no one interferes. If, after it's already in motion, someone snatches up a cue and gives it a biff on one side -- why, then, you won't get what the scientist predicted."

"No, of course not. He can't allow for monkey-tricks like that."

"Quite, and in the same way, if there was anything outside Nature, and if it interfered -- then the events which the scientist expected wouldn't follow. That would be what we call a miracle. In one sense it wouldn't break the laws of Nature. The laws tell you what will happen if nothing interferes. They can't tell you whether something is going to interfere. I mean, it's not the expert at arithmetic who can tell you how likely someone is to interfere with the pennies in my drawer; a detective would be more use. It isn't the physicist who can tell you how likely I am to catch up a cue and spoil his experiment with the billiard ball; you'd better ask a psychologist. And it isn't the scientist who can tell you how likely Nature is to be interfered with from outside. You must go to the metaphysician."

"These are rather niggling points," said my friend. "You see, the real objection goes far deeper. The whole picture of the universe which science has given us makes it such rot to believe that the Power at the back of it all could be interested in us tiny little creatures crawling about on an unimportant planet! It was all so obviously invesnted by people who believed in a flat earth with the stars only a mile or two away."

"When did people believe that?"

"Why, all those old Christian chaps you're always telling about did. I mean Boethius and Augustine and Thomas Aquinas and Dante."

"Sorry", said I, "but this is one of the few subjects I do know something about."
I reached out my hand to a bookshelf. "You see this book", I said, "Ptolemy's Almagest. You know what it is?"

"Yes," said he. "It's the standard astronomical handbook used all through the Middle Ages."

"Well, just read that," I said, pointing to Book I, chapter 5.

"The earth," read out my friend, hesitating a bit as he translated the Latin, "the earth, in relation to the distance of the fixed stars, has no appreciable size and must be treated as a mathematical point!"

There was a moment's silence.

"Did they really know that then?" said my friend. "But--but none of the histories of science -- none of the modern encyclopedias -- ever mention the fact."

"Exactly," said I. "I'll leave you to think out the reason. It almost looks as if someone was anxious to hush it up, doesn't it? I wonder why."

There was another short silence.

"At any rate", said I, "we can now state the problem accurately. People usually think the problem is how to reconcile what we now know about the size of the universe with our traditional ideas of religion. That turns out not to be the problem at all. The real problem is this. The enormous size of the universe and the insignificance of earth were known for centuries, and no one ever dreamed that they had any bearing on the religious question. Then, less than a hundred years ago, they are suddenly trotted out as an argument against Christianity. And the people who trot them out carefully hush up the fact that they were known long ago. Don't you think that all you atheists are strangely unsuspicious people?"

How to Defeat Nazis

2010-08-28T12:29:00.000-07:00

I read several good books over the summer, but my favorite was Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy by Eric Metaxas. Bonhoeffer's story is really incredible. In short, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a pastor in Germany during the 1930s and 1940s, and he was one of the surprisingly few Christians in Germany to see Hitler and his regime for what they were. Bonhoeffer was ultimately hanged for his involvement in a plot to assassinate Hitler.

I really highly recommend the book. The foreword alone, written by Tim Keller, is worth the price of the book. Keller argues that the fact that Germany had lost hold of the true gospel was what allowed Hitler to come to power. Here's an excerpt:

How could the "church of Luther," that great teacher of the gospel, have ever come to such a place? The answer is that the true gospel, summed up by Bonhoeffer as costly grace, had been lost. On the one hand, the church had become marked by formalism. That meant going to church and hearing that God just loves and forgives everyone, so it doesn't really matter much how you live. Bonhoeffer called this cheap grace. On the other hand, there was legalism, or salvation by law and good works. Legalism meant that God loves you because you have pulled yourself together and are trying to live a good, disciplined life.

Both of these impulses made it possible for Hitler to come to power. The formalists in Germany may have seen things that bothered them, but saw no need to sacrifice their safety to stand up to them. Legalists responded by having pharisaical attitudes toward other nations and races that approved of Hitler's policies. But as one, Germany lost hold of the brilliant balance of the gospel that Luther so persistently expounded--"We are saved by faith alone, but not by faith which is alone." That is, we are saved, not by anything we do, but by grace. Yet if we have truly understood and believed the gospel, it will change what we do and how we live.

By the time of Hitler's ascension, much of the German church understood grace only as abstract acceptance--"God forgives; that's his job." But we know that true grace comes to us by costly sacrifice. And if God was willing to go to the cross and endure such pain and absorb such a cost in order to save us, then we must live sacrificially as we serve others. Anyone who truly understands how God's grace comes to us will have a changed life. That's the gospel, not salvation by law, or by cheap grace, but by costly grace. Costly grace changes you from the inside out. Neither law nor cheap grace can do that.

Christopher Hitchens on Pullman, Lewis, and Jesus

2010-07-10T12:40:00.000-07:00

From Christopher Hitchens’s review of Phillip Pullman’s new revisionist book on Jesus and early Christianity, published last week in the NYT:

Belief in the divinity of Jesus of Nazareth and belief in the virtue of his teachings are not at all the same thing. Writing to John Adams in 1813, having taken his razor blade to the books of the New Testament and removed all “the artificial vestments in which they have been muffled by priests,” Thomas Jefferson said the 46-page residue contained “the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which has ever been offered to man.”

Ernest Renan, in his pathbreaking “Life of Jesus” in 1863, also repudiated the idea that Jesus was the son of God while affirming the beauty of his teachings.

In rather striking contrast, C. S. Lewis maintained in his classic statement “Mere Christianity”:

“That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God; or else a madman or something worse.”

As an admirer of Jefferson and Renan and a strong nonadmirer of Lewis, I am bound to say that Lewis is more honest here.

Absent a direct line to the Almighty and a conviction that the last days are upon us, how is it “moral” to teach people to abandon their families, give up on thrift and husbandry and take to the stony roads?

How is it moral to claim a monopoly on access to heaven, or to threaten waverers with everlasting fire, let alone to condemn fig trees and persuade devils to infest the bodies of pigs?

Such a person if not divine would be a sorcerer and a fanatic.

HT: Justin Taylor

Muddying the Waters

2010-07-10T05:42:00.000-07:00

One of the many reasons why I land on the right politically is that I have noticed that the left side frequently does not take ownership of its political philosophy. To me it seems that they are often happy to make political gains by muddying the waters rather than clarifying them in terms of what their positions are on the issues, and on where their political opponents land on the issues. Often this takes the form of a rhetorical sleight of hand where the language is changed slightly to make a clear distinction appear to be subtle.

One recent example is the controversy over the illegal immigration law in Arizona. I am getting really tired of hearing this reported as simply the "anti-immigration" law. The distinction between immigration and illegal immigration is exceedingly simple and clear, but I believe in order to portray their political opponents as bigots, this very clear distinction is intentionally muddied. Like most Americans, according to polling data, yes I'm against illegal immigration while simultaneously being perfectly in favor of legal immigration. Incidentally I'm also against illegal shopping, also known as shoplifting or theft, but that doesn't mean I'm against shopping, and only a fool would find that distinction complex. The illegal immigration issue should never be discussed with the word "illegal" dropped. It's disingenuous.

Whether our immigration laws are just is a separate discussion, which maybe we do need to have, but to be against enforcing a law that nobody is trying to repeal seems to me to be an untenable position in a country of laws. Some issues are complex. This one isn't.

Happy 4th!

2010-07-04T15:03:00.000-07:00

IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

The 56 signatures on the Declaration appear in the positions indicated:

Column 1
Georgia:
Button Gwinnett
Lyman Hall
George Walton

Column 2
North Carolina:
William Hooper
Joseph Hewes
John Penn
South Carolina:
Edward Rutledge
Thomas Heyward, Jr.
Thomas Lynch, Jr.
Arthur Middleton

Column 3
Massachusetts:
John Hancock
Maryland:
Samuel Chase
William Paca
Thomas Stone
Charles Carroll of Carrollton
Virginia:
George Wythe
Richard Henry Lee
Thomas Jefferson
Benjamin Harrison
Thomas Nelson, Jr.
Francis Lightfoot Lee
Carter Braxton

Column 4
Pennsylvania:
Robert Morris
Benjamin Rush
Benjamin Franklin
John Morton
George Clymer
James Smith
George Taylor
James Wilson
George Ross
Delaware:
Caesar Rodney
George Read
Thomas McKean

Column 5
New York:
William Floyd
Philip Livingston
Francis Lewis
Lewis Morris
New Jersey:
Richard Stockton
John Witherspoon
Francis Hopkinson
John Hart
Abraham Clark

Column 6
New Hampshire:
Josiah Bartlett
William Whipple
Massachusetts:
Samuel Adams
John Adams
Robert Treat Paine
Elbridge Gerry
Rhode Island:
Stephen Hopkins
William Ellery
Connecticut:
Roger Sherman
Samuel Huntington
William Williams
Oliver Wolcott
New Hampshire:
Matthew Thornton

Freedom of Worship

2010-07-03T05:57:00.000-07:00

What do you think of this? I'm not quite ready to hit the panic button, but I do see Chuck Colson's point.

Scapegoated Again

2010-06-23T06:11:00.001-07:00

Shelby Steele has a good column in the Wall Street Journal about Israel.

Excerpt:

The most interesting voice in all the fallout surrounding the Gaza flotilla incident is that sanctimonious and meddling voice known as "world opinion." At every turn "world opinion," like a school marm, takes offense and condemns Israel for yet another infraction of the world's moral sensibility. And this voice has achieved an international political legitimacy so that even the silliest condemnation of Israel is an opportunity for self-congratulation.
Rock bands now find moral imprimatur in canceling their summer tour stops in Israel (Elvis Costello, the Pixies, the Gorillaz, the Klaxons). A demonstrator at an anti-Israel rally in New York carries a sign depicting the skull and crossbones drawn over the word "Israel." White House correspondent Helen Thomas, in one of the ugliest incarnations of this voice, calls on Jews to move back to Poland. And of course the United Nations and other international organizations smugly pass one condemnatory resolution after another against Israel while the Obama administration either joins in or demurs with a wink.
This is something new in the world, this almost complete segregation of Israel in the community of nations. And if Helen Thomas's remarks were pathetic and ugly, didn't they also point to the end game of this isolation effort: the nullification of Israel's legitimacy as a nation? There is a chilling familiarity in all this. One of the world's oldest stories is playing out before our eyes: The Jews are being scapegoated again.

Whole Thing

Matt Chandler at T4G

2010-04-17T07:12:00.000-07:00

This is an incredible video of my pastor, Matt Chandler, speaking at the 2010 Together for the Gospel conference about suffering.

T4G 2010 -- Special Session -- Matt Chandler from Together for the Gospel (T4G) on Vimeo.

God's Wonderful Surprise

2010-04-04T05:50:00.000-07:00

It's Friday. But Sunday's Comin'!

2010-04-02T03:37:00.000-07:00

Sunday's Comin' from Igniter Media on Vimeo.

Tim Keller on Religion vs. The Gospel

2010-02-23T20:39:00.000-08:00

RELIGION: I obey-therefore I’m accepted.

THE GOSPEL: I’m accepted-therefore I obey.

RELIGION: Motivation is based on fear and insecurity.

THE GOSPEL: Motivation is based on grateful joy.

RELIGION: I obey God in order to get things from God.

THE GOSPEL: I obey God to get to God-to delight and resemble Him.

RELIGION: When circumstances in my life go wrong, I am angry at God or my self, since I believe, like Job’s friends that anyone who is good deserves a comfortable life.

THE GOSPEL: When circumstances in my life go wrong, I struggle but I know all my punishment fell on Jesus and that while he may allow this for my training, he will exercise his Fatherly love within my trial.

RELIGION: When I am criticized I am furious or devastated because it is critical that I think of myself as a ‘good person’. Threats to that self-image must be destroyed at all costs.

THE GOSPEL: When I am criticized I struggle, but it is not critical for me to think of myself as a ‘good person.’ My identity is not built on my record or my performance but on God’s love for me in Christ. I can take criticism.

RELIGION: My prayer life consists largely of petition and it only heats up when I am in a time of need. My main purpose in prayer is control of the environment.

THE GOSPEL: My prayer life consists of generous stretches of praise and adoration. My main purpose is fellowship with Him.

RELIGION: My self-view swings between two poles. If and when I am living up to my standards, I feel confident, but then I am prone to be proud and unsympathetic to failing people. If and when I am not living up to standards, I feel insecure and inadequate. I’m not confident. I feel like a failure.

THE GOSPEL: My self-view is not based on a view of my self as a moral achiever. In Christ I am “simul iustus et peccator”—simultaneously sinful and yet accepted in Christ. I am so bad he had to die for me and I am so loved he was glad to die for me. This leads me to deeper and deeper humility and confidence at the same time. Neither swaggering nor sniveling.

RELIGION: My identity and self-worth are based mainly on how hard I work. Or how moral I am, and so I must look down on those I perceive as lazy or immoral. I disdain and feel superior to ‘the other.’

THE GOSPEL: My identity and self-worth are centered on the one who died for His enemies, who was excluded from the city for me. I am saved by sheer grace. So I can’t look down on those who believe or practice something different from me. Only by grace I am what I am. I’ve no inner need to win arguments.

RELIGION: Since I look to my own pedigree or performance for my spiritual acceptability, my heart manufactures idols. It may be my talents, my moral record, my personal discipline, my social status, etc. I absolutely have to have them so they serve as my main hope, meaning, happiness, security, and significance, whatever I may say I believe about God.

THE GOSPEL: I have many good things in my life—family, work, spiritual disciplines, etc. But none of these good things are ultimate things to me. None of them are things I absolutely have to have, so there is a limit to how much anxiety, bitterness, and despondency they can inflict on me when they are threatened and lost.

McLaren Book Critique (Smackdown?) Roundup

2010-02-17T04:23:00.000-08:00

Several years ago a very dear friend of mine sent me a copy of A New Kind of Christian by an author I had never heard of named Brian McLaren. The book is a fictional narrative of a conversation between a burned out conservative pastor and a science teacher, where the science teacher convinces the pastor to embrace the Bible as a premodern text that should not be read with modern expectations. I didn't like the book and found it to be basically somewhat nuanced theological liberalism. However McLaren's views were a little hard to pin down because the book is just a conversation between two people, and McLaren did not necessarily take ownership of everything his science teacher character had to say.

I later came to understand that Brian McLaren is part of what is known as the "emergent church" movement, which prefers to call itself a "conversation" rather than a movement. Early reaction to this movement from evangelical leadership such as Albert Mohler and DA Carson has basically been to say that the emergent church has some critiques of the evangelical church that are spot on and we need to listen, but their proposed solutions are problematic. More recently, some of those at the forefront of the conversation, including McLaren, have moved further and further from what I think can rightly be considered orthodoxy.

Brian McLaren has written several other books, but apparently he has now written a new book (with a similar title to the one I read) A New Kind of Christianity, where he is quite a bit more upfront about his actual views than his past works, and the critiques from evangelicals have been more direct. I just wanted to link to a few that I have seen on blogs that I frequent:

Mike Wittmer, author of Don't Stop Believing: Why Living Like Jesus is Not Enough, is doing an entire series on his blog answering various questions raised in the book. The intro is here. Here's an excerpt:

I read the introductory three chapters of A New Kind of Christianity, and so far it’s an updated version of the Brian we’ve seen before. He claims to be “a mild-mannered guy” who is only looking for a new way to be a Christian that will boost the declining numbers in our churches, and he can’t understand why his critics respond with “fear,” “clenched teeth,” and “suspicion and accusation.” Brian’s really good at winning sympathy, and soon I was loathing myself for ever politely disagreeing with such a nice man.

But then I remembered that this debate about the Christian faith—which he and his friends started—is not a personality contest. You can’t dismiss what Christians have always believed and then expect a free pass because you’re likeable. And just below the surface of Brian’s humble, can’t-we-all-just-get-along vibe is an accusatory tone that repeatedly compares his critics to a religious Gestapo whose leaders defend their conservative beliefs because they don’t want to lose their jobs.

Kevin DeYoung, pastor of University Reformed Church of East Lansing, Michigan, and co-author of a great book entitled Why We're Not Emergent: By Two Guys Who Should Be (great title!), has done a 2 part review of the book on his blog, which he has combined into a PDF here. His analysis concludes this way:

Well, 6000 words later, what is possibly left to say? Hopefully not much. It would not sadden me in the least if I never talked or wrote about the emergent movement again. I don’t think any of us will be talking about the “great emergence” twenty years hence, let alone a hundred. All that remains is to highlight one final irony.
For all the talk of being new (xi) and at the same time ancient (255), McLarenism is neither. It is old fashioned liberalism. McLaren, despite his historical plundering, has no right to claim he is in tradition of Martin Luther because he finds “sustaining inner strength,” or in the tradition of the Wesleys because “our hearts can be ‘strangely warmed’” (227). This is like saying I’m in the tradition of Ignatius because I have strong convictions. It doesn’t work. McLaren stands in the tradition of Ritschl, Harnack, Rauschenbush, and Whitehead, plain and simple.

Tim Challies gets the award for the most fiery review of the book.

Excerpt:

It wasn’t too long ago that I wrote about Brian McLaren and got in trouble. Reflecting on seeing him speak at a nearby church, I suggested that he appears to love Jesus but hate God. Based on immediate and furious reaction, I quickly retracted that statement. I should not have done so. I believed it then and I believe it now. And if it was true then, how much more true is it upon the release of his latest tome A New Kind of Christianity. In this book we finally see where McLaren’s journey has taken him; it has taken him into outright, rank, unapologetic apostasy. He hates God. Period.

Woh! On one hand, Yikes! Down boy!! But as I look further into what McLaren has written (I have not read the book but all 3 of these bloggers have quoted large chunks of it in their analyses), I find it hard to really disagree.

For instance, Kevin DeYoung discusses McLaren's view of The Fall:

The strangest bit of exegesis, however, is back in Genesis. I knew A New Kind of Christianity would be tough sledding for me when I heard the Fall described as “a classic coming-of-age story, filled with ambivalence—a childhood lost, an adulthood gained” (51). Never mind the descent into sin that unfolds in Genesis 4-11, never mind Romans 5:12-21, never mind Ephesians 2:1-3, never mind the curses and banishment from the garden, the Fall is really “the first stage of ascent as human beings progress from the life of hunter-gatherers to the life of agriculturalists and beyond” (50). To be fair, McLaren acknowledges the presence of sin in the world, but in his theology there is no Fall, no original sin, no inherited guilt. Genesis 3 is about a loss of innocence and a journey into maturity. With this interpretation as the first building block, it’s no wonder McLaren’s theology is optimistic about human potential for doing the right thing and devoid of any notion of substitutionary atonement. When sin is “ultimately a refusal to grow” and not ultimately an offense against God, you’re going to wind up with a new kind of Christianity (238).

DeYoung also points out:

...McLaren starts and ends the book with a conciliatory tone, urging his followers to be respectful and avoid controversy. Even though McLaren sees himself as farther along on the quest, he argues that every rung on the ladder is good because they all lead upward (237). He is careful not to portray himself as having it all figured out and everyone before him as benighted fools (27). This is good cop McLaren.

But then in the middle of the book there is a whole lot of bad cop, so much so that it is hard to really believe he thinks evangelical theology is anything other than oppressive barbarism. People who read Genesis in the traditional way have been “brainwashed.” The God of evangelicalism is the “dread cosmic dictator of the six-line Greco-Roman framework” (48). This deity—the one that saves sinners from the fall and punishes unbelievers in hell—“is an idol, a damnable idol” (65). We have a “tribal and violent God, a rather flattened view of Jesus, and a domesticated understanding of the gospel” (161). We worship an “ugly” God (102), McLaren explains, and our exclusivism makes him “want to cry, groan, or scream” (223).

That's pretty bold. So if God really is who Christians have for 2000 years said He is, McLaren just called him a dread cosmic dictator, a damnable idol, tribal, violent, and ugly. In other words, if God is who I believe He is, Brian McLaren hates him. So Tim Challies, as extreme as your analysis sounded at first blush, I think you're right.

I've read Machen's Christianity and Liberalism, written in the 1920s addressing the theological liberalism that was creeping up in his day, and all I can say after reading these reviews is that Solomon was right: There's nothing new under the sun. H.R. Niebuhr summarized 19th century American liberalism this way:

A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross

Sounds familiar, doesn't it? This is not a new kind of Christianity. It's not new, and Machen would say, and I would agree, that this is not Christianity at all.

I submit that the real solution to the problem McLaren is concerned about (declining church numbers) is a recovery of a robust, orthodox, accurate Gospel preaching and teaching, which is not distracted by politics (in either direction, right or left), or confused with the prosperity "gospel" (either the explicit kind like Creflo Dollar, or the more soft-pedalled version of Joel Osteen), or the "social gospel" which views the essence of Christianity to be "living like Jesus", or theologically liberal churches that are basically teaching nothing but secular values occasionally wrapped in out of context scripture, or theologically "light duty" churches that essentially teach that the Bible is basically about you rather than about God (e.g. David and Goliath is a story about "defeating the giants in your life" rather than the story of how the victory of the substitute becomes his people’s victory, even though they did not do anything to accomplish it themselves, pointing to Christ), or any other distraction from the Real Thing. I'm thankful to belong to a church that teaches the same old Gospel:

Because the sinless Savior died
My sinful soul is counted free
For God, the Just, is satisfied
To look on Him and pardon me

Incidentally, my church has been dealing with space issues for years and has still not fully solved the problem of how to accommodate everybody who wants to go in the building on Sunday morning. Redeemer Presbyterian Church, which is a very conservative and traditional Presbyterian church in Manhattan, whose pastor teaches the same plain old Gospel, is also packed. As is Mars Hill Church in Seattle. How does McLaren explain that?

I'm confident, and thankful, that in 20 years nobody will be talking about Brian McLaren anymore. But people will still be talking about the Gospel. And I find the real Gospel far more profound, satisfying and compelling than any substitute, including McLarenism.

Bearing shame and scoffing rude,
In my place condemned he stood;
Sealed my pardon with his blood:
Hallelujah! What a Savior!

Joy and Truth

2010-02-11T04:37:00.000-08:00

CS Lewis is one of my favorite authors, and it seems like most evangelicals feel the same way. In some ways he's kind of a strange hero for an evangelical. As John Piper points out:

He doesn’t believe in the inerrancy of Scripture, and defaults to logical arguments more naturally than to biblical exegesis.

He doesn’t treat the Reformation with respect, but thinks it could have been avoided, and calls aspects of if farcical.

He steadfastly refused in public or in letters to explain why he was not a Roman Catholic but remained in the Church of England.

He makes room for at least some people to be saved through imperfect representations of Christ in other religions.

He made a strong logical, but I think unbiblical, case for free will to explain why there is suffering in the world.

He speaks of the atonement with reverence, but puts little significance on any of the explanations for how it actually saves sinners.

So what is it about CS Lewis that evangelicals find so attractive? According to John Piper...

The answer lies in the way that the experience of Joy and the defense of Truth come together in Lewis’s life and writings. The way Lewis deals with these two things—Joy and Truth—is so radically different from Liberal theology and emergent postmodern slipperiness that he is simply in another world—a world where I am totally at home, and where I find both my heart and my mind awakened and made more alive and perceptive and responsive and earnest and hopeful and amazed and passionate for the glory of God every time I turn to C. S. Lewis. It’s this combination of experiencing the stab of God-shaped joy and defending objective, absolute Truth, because of the absolute Reality of God, that sets Lewis apart as unparalleled in the modern world. To my knowledge, there is simply no one else who puts these two things together the way Lewis does.

Audio

Mud Pies

2010-02-05T04:16:00.000-08:00

If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased. --CS Lewis, The Weight of Glory

Is There a Jihadist in Your Church Nursery?

2010-02-02T03:54:00.000-08:00

I can identify with this blog entry by Russell Moore:

I find myself often drawn more to Bible Belt morality than to the gospel. When I go without prayer, I can still recognize the goodness of a just social order, a loving marriage, a stable community. But, when that happens, I don’t see myself as a sinner and, as a result, I don’t see God in Christ. I see God in myself. Unless I see myself in Christ and him crucified, I see God as, at the core, justice, not love, as solitary, not a Trinitarian community of love. When I forget about the gospel, I imagine that God is seeing me in terms of some cosmic scale of my good deeds and sins. That leads me to pride or despair. And it’s crypto-Koranic, not Christian.

I love my country. I hate terrorism. And I’m hawkish on the war against radical Islam. But I sometimes act like a jihadist too. Every time I believe that God’s vengeance ought to be administered by me, rather than by the Cross or the Judgment Seat, well, that’s something other than the gospel (Matt. 26:52).

I don’t want to bring in the reign of God with bombs or box cutters, but I sometimes want to do it with my words, with a well-crafted rebuke, or even with my keyboard. Every time I do such, I act as though my God is a capricious, blood-thirsty idol who is sending me into the world to condemn instead of save it — instead of a loving Father who sent his Son into the world to save it instead of condemn it (Jn. 3:17).
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They’re singing “Yes, Jesus Loves Me,” and they look awfully cute. But one day, and one day soon, they’ll be looking to us, and to our lives — not just our songs and Bible stories — to see if we really believe in the gospel of Christ — or in something else. They’ll wonder whether we really believe God is love and God is Trinity and God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself.

Read the whole thing.

HT: Justin Taylor

Ross Douthat on Liberal Democracy’s Bargain with Believers

2010-01-11T10:23:00.000-08:00

Ross Douthat:

Liberal democracy offers religious believers a bargain. Accept, as a price of citizenship, that you may never impose your convictions on your neighbor, or use state power to compel belief. In return, you will be free to practice your own faith as you see fit — and free, as well, to compete with other believers (and nonbelievers) in the marketplace of ideas.

That’s the theory. In practice, the admirable principle that nobody should be persecuted for their beliefs often blurs into the more illiberal idea that nobody should ever publicly criticize another religion. Or champion one’s own faith as an alternative. Or say anything whatsoever about religion, outside the privacy of church, synagogue or home.

A week ago, Brit Hume broke all three rules at once.
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When liberal democracy was forged, in the wake of Western Europe’s religious wars, this sort of peaceful theological debate is exactly what it promised to deliver. And the differences between religions are worth debating. Theology has consequences: It shapes lives, families, nations, cultures, wars; it can change people, save them from themselves, and sometimes warp or even destroy them.
If we tiptoe politely around this reality, then we betray every teacher, guru and philosopher — including Jesus of Nazareth and the Buddha both — who ever sought to resolve the most human of all problems: How then should we live?
It’s reasonable to doubt that a cable news analyst has the right answer to this question. But the debate that Brit Hume kicked off a week ago is still worth having. Indeed, it’s the most important one there is.

Read the whole thing.

HT: Justin Taylor

Subjected in Hope

2009-12-28T12:58:00.000-08:00

John Piper preached yesterday at The Village Church a sermon that is by far the most incredible sermon on suffering I have ever heard. Here are my notes:

Subjected in Hope - Romans 8:18-25

How does the Apostle Paul help me suffer by putting suffering in a universal/global context?

v. 17: Shows that the pathway to our glory is in suffering
v. 18-25: Shows us that it is worth it.

We need a proper context of suffering or else we will bail on Christianity in the midst of suffering.

Context of suffering:
1. The whole creation groans – v. 22
2. The whole of history groans – v. 18
3. …but not quite all of history v. 20 – creation was subjected to futility by God. He judiciously subjected the world to this suffering. You have to have a properly high view of God’s holiness in order to not consider the amount of suffering in the world to be an overreaction to Adam and Eve’s sin.

The ultimate, global meaning of all suffering is that sin is ghastly

“Brain tumors exist because of my rebellion against God” – Beau Hughes. Note: Not Matt's rebellion, but my rebellion. That’s how horrific sin is.

We live in the already but not yet – we have to have patience: v. 25

Six promises:
1. After this present time we are going to see an all-satisfying view – v.18 - The desire in us to experience greatness is because of the image of God in us.
2. We are sons of God “incognito” that are (hopefully) displaying some signs of God’s glory now – v. 19 Someday my ordinariness will be glorified
3. The ultimate design of this futility is hope – v. 20 – We have been forgiven, accepted, and justified. But for now there is a lot that goes wrong. My death and my suffering are no longer part of God’s curse (Galatians 3:13). God is no longer punitive towards us, but rather purifying (Hebrews 12)
4. All creation will be freed from our current suffering – (v. 21) Creation was made for us. It will one day be our playground. Nobody has ever been “too heavenly minded”.
5. The miseries of the universe are not death throes but birth pains – When you are in the hospital and you hear a scream, it makes a huge difference whether you are in the maternity ward or the oncology unit. All of my suffering is birth pains.
6. God cares about our bodies – v. 23

Practical points:
1. Pray for Matt’s healing. This is no compromise of the sovereignty of God. Pray until Matt tells us to stop. (Paul was eventually told to stop asking for God to remove the thorn in his flesh).
2. Keep our eyes on the cross. Whatever we do or do not understand about suffering, what we do know is that Christ took it all for us.
3. When God undertakes to do a great thing, He breaks people. A wounded shepherd is the best shepherd. What a great thing God may be pleased to do with this brokenness!

Here is the audio. It is well worth a listen.

Your Barista Has a Soul

2009-12-17T04:43:00.000-08:00

Been thinking a lot about local pastor Matt Chandler. On Tuesday he got the results from his pathology report which indicates that his brain tumor is malignant, and now he awaits a meeting with a neuro-oncologist to find out what his treatment options are.

I recall that in the last sermon that Matt Chandler preached before his seizure, when making a point of how to live as image bearers of Christ, he said that, when you go to Starbucks, you should remember that your barista has a soul. The picture to the right is of a chalk board at a local Starbucks that Matt frequents. I think it's safe to say that he practices what he preached that day.

Please continue to pray.

Richard Lindzen on Global Warming

2009-12-08T23:47:00.001-08:00

Here's a video of MIT Professor of Meteorology Richard Lindzen giving a lecture called "Deconstructing Global Warming".

Christ is Better

2009-12-07T04:44:00.000-08:00

A local pastor for whom I have a lot of respect, Matt Chandler, recently found that he had a brain tumor. He has been on my mind a lot lately, partly because he's basically my age, has roughly the same aged kids, even sends his oldest kid to the same Christian school I send my oldest to, and partly because I have so much admiration for him and for the impact he's had on the kingdom. I don't think there's a single sermon podcast of his anywhere that I haven't listened to. He's a great communicator and uses that gift to teach sound doctrine rather than to tickle the ears of those listening. It has been amazing to see how much mention he has gotten on so many of the blogs I read from all over the world.

Here is a video that was shown to his congregation yesterday, made during the week between the time the tumor was discovered and the surgery. I respect him all the more as I see him come forth as gold as he is tested by fire.

I Asked the Lord That I Might Grow

2009-11-29T05:37:00.000-08:00

This is a great hymn written by John Newton that I heard quoted a while back, and was reminded of recently. Thought I'd share the lyrics. They are very true, very often.

I asked the Lord that I might grow
In faith, and love, and every grace;
Might more of His salvation know,
And seek, more earnestly, His face.

’Twas He who taught me thus to pray,
And He, I trust, has answered prayer!
But it has been in such a way,
As almost drove me to despair.

I hoped that in some favored hour,
At once He’d answer my request;
And by His love’s constraining pow’r,
Subdue my sins, and give me rest.

Instead of this, He made me feel
The hidden evils of my heart;
And let the angry pow’rs of hell
Assault my soul in every part.

Yea more, with His own hand He seemed
Intent to aggravate my woe;
Crossed all the fair designs I schemed,
Blasted my gourds, and laid me low.

Lord, why is this, I trembling cried,
Wilt thou pursue thy worm to death?
“’Tis in this way, the Lord replied,
I answer prayer for grace and faith.

These inward trials I employ,
From self, and pride, to set thee free;
And break thy schemes of earthly joy,
That thou may’st find thy all in Me.”

Medicalizing Mass Murder

2009-11-15T06:03:00.001-08:00

Charles Krauthammer has a good column in Friday's Washington Post.

Excerpt:

What a surprise -- that someone who shouts "Allahu Akbar" (the "God is great" jihadist battle cry) as he is shooting up a room of American soldiers might have Islamist motives. It certainly was a surprise to the mainstream media, which spent the weekend after the Fort Hood massacre playing down Nidal Hasan's religious beliefs.
"I cringe that he's a Muslim. . . . I think he's probably just a nut case," said Newsweek's Evan Thomas. Some were more adamant. Time's Joe Klein decried "odious attempts by Jewish extremists . . . to argue that the massacre perpetrated by Nidal Hasan was somehow a direct consequence of his Islamic beliefs." While none could match Klein's peculiar cherchez-le-juif motif, the popular story line was of an Army psychiatrist driven over the edge by terrible stories he had heard from soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.

They suffered. He listened. He snapped.

Really? What about the doctors and nurses, the counselors and physical therapists at Walter Reed Army Medical Center who every day hear and live with the pain and the suffering of returning soldiers? How many of them then picked up a gun and shot 51 innocents?
And what about civilian psychiatrists -- not the Upper West Side therapist treating Woody Allen neurotics, but the thousands of doctors working with hospitalized psychotics -- who every day hear not just tales but cries of the most excruciating anguish, of the most unimaginable torment? How many of those doctors commit mass murder?

It's been decades since I practiced psychiatry. Perhaps I missed the epidemic.

But, of course, if the shooter is named Nidal Hasan, who National Public Radio reported had been trying to proselytize doctors and patients, then something must be found. Presto! Secondary post-traumatic stress disorder, a handy invention to allow one to ignore the obvious.

Whole thing.

Douglas Wilson vs. Christopher Hitchens on Joy Behar

2009-10-28T09:14:00.000-07:00

I thought Douglas Wilson did OK, especially considering that he doesn't have the benefit of a British accent. But to the challenge that he's too intelligent to believe that "snakes talk, virgins bear children, and dead men walk" I think the answer is much simpler. We're not saying that "snakes talk", we believe it happened once. We're not saying that "virgins bear children", we believe it happened once. When we're accused of believing that "snakes talk" and "virgins bear children", it makes it look as if we are so irrational as to believe these things happen all of the time. But if these things happened all of the time, they wouldn't be miracles, and would hardly be noteworthy. Since they don't happen normally, we Christians believe that it's kind of a big deal when they do happen. I really don't find this logic all that complicated.

So the task of the person who wants to evaluate whether it is reasonable to believe the Bible does not need to ask whether "snakes talk" or "virgins bear children". Obviously they don't naturally. Rather, they need to ask whether the biblical account is reliable. If it is, then there's reason to believe that supernaturally, these things have happened.

I wish CS Lewis was still around to go head to head with Hitchens. That would have leveled the playing field with an opposing British accent coupled with just the right amount of condescension. I bet he would have said something like this:

I have been reading poems, romances, vision literature, legends, myths all my life. I know what they are like. I know that none of them is like this. Of the text there are only two possible views. Either this is reportage - though it may no doubt contain errors - pretty close to the facts... Or else, some unknown writer in the second century, without known predecessors or successors, suddenly anticipated the whole technique of modern novelistic, realistic narrative. If it is untrue, it must be narrative of that kind. The reader who doesn't see this simply has not learned to read.

If we conclude that the Bible contains genuine miracles, then we need not ask whether virgins bear children. But if we believe that the Bible does not contain genuine miracles, then it is not worth believing.

I also found it interesting at the end of this clip that Joy Behar declared it as "so not Christian" to spank a child, after joining Christopher Hitchens in dismissing the biblical narrative. Can we please agree that, even if you don't like what the Bible says, it gets to define what is and is not "Christian"??

Kevin DeYoung on Social Justice - Part 2

2009-08-29T05:24:00.000-07:00

Kevin DeYoung has posted his second entry on his Biblical analysis of social justice and the poor. Excerpt

My contention, and I am willing to prove myself wrong as I work through several other texts, is that social justice in the Bible is not an achieved result but equal treatment and a fair process. No bribes. No backroom deals. No slanderous judgments. No breaking your promises. No taking advantage of the weak. That’s what the Bible means by social justice. Ideally, justice is blind. That’s why Lady Justice on our courthouses has her eyes covered. That’s why the U.S. Supreme Court building has inscribed on it the words “Equal Justice Under Law.” Justice means there is one law for everyone, not different rules for different kinds of people.

Whole thing

Kevin DeYoung on Social Justice and the poor

2009-08-21T13:47:00.000-07:00

Kevin DeYoung is a pastor, author, and blogger who I have found that I am in agreement with on a number of things. He has started a blog series on a topic that I have also thought about taking a deep dive into: What does the Bible say about social justice and the poor?.

I'll be reading with great interest.

Krauthammer on Health Care Reform

2009-08-15T13:09:00.000-07:00

My objection to the nationalization of health care is on fairly simple grounds: it yet again violates the the American ideal of limited government. To those who say that health care is a right, I say that health care is a really important thing, but that it can't be a right. To say that someone has a “right” to healthcare is to say that others have a responsibility to extend healthcare to that person, without any reciprocal obligation on the part of the recipient to compensate for it. When we call everything that everybody really ought to have a "right", and that everybody's "rights" ought to be provided to them by the government, we have full-on socialism. Instead when we look at the reality that everybody really ought to have good healthcare, our attitude should be that we have a very solemn responsibility to provide for our families, and our neighbors in extenuating circumstances, and should encourage the poor to adopt the same attitude.

However, I will admit that for a brief time I did buy a particular argument of Obamacare, which is that a lot of money could be saved by prevention. Until Charles Krauthammer set my mind aright, as he often does. I would also like to point out that the previous sentence contains my first usage of the word "aright" ever.

Excerpt:

The fallacy here is confusing the individual with society. For the individual, catching something early generally reduces later spending for that condition. But, explains Elmendorf, we don't know in advance which patients are going to develop costly illnesses. To avert one case, "it is usually necessary to provide preventive care to many patients, most of whom would not have suffered that illness anyway." And this costs society money that would not have been spent otherwise.
Think of it this way. Assume that a screening test for disease X costs $500 and finding it early averts $10,000 of costly treatment at a later stage. Are you saving money? Well, if one in 10 of those who are screened tests positive, society is saving $5,000. But if only one in 100 would get that disease, society is shelling out $40,000 more than it would without the preventive care.

Whole thing.

Repenting of the Health and Wealth Gospel

2009-08-14T20:00:00.000-07:00

Most people who know me well have heard me rant about the "health and wealth" gospel, in particular as taught by a pastor in Houston who shall remain nameless but whose name rhymes with Owell Josteen. I find it to be a despicable perversion of the real Gospel and harbor a great deal of anger at those who lead people astray with it. Then while reading one of the books I'm reading now called When Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty Without Hurting the Poor...And Yourself by Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert I came across this:

One Sunday I was walking with a staff member through one of Africa's largest slums, the massive Kibera slum of Nairobi, Kenya. The conditions were simply inhumane. People lived in shacks constructed out of cardboard boxes. Foul smells gushed out of open ditches carrying human and animal excrement. I had a hard time keeping my balance as I continually slipped on oozy brown substances that I hoped were mud but feared were something else. Children picked through garbage dumps looking for anything of value. As we walked deeper and deeper into the slum, my sense of despair increased. This place is completely God-forsaken, I thought to myself.

Then to my amazement, right there among the dung, I heard the sound of a familiar hymn. There must be Western missionaries conducting an open-air service in here, I thought to myself. As we turned the corner, my eyes landed on the shack from which the music bellowed. Every Sunday, thirty slum dwellers crammed into this ten-by-twenty foot "sanctuary" to worship the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The church was made out of cardboard boxes that had been opened up and stapled to studs. It wasn't pretty, but it was a church, a church made up of some of the poorest people on earth.

When we arrived at the church, I was immediately asked to preach the sermon. As a good Presbyterian, I quickly jotted down some notes about the sovereignty of God and was looking forward to teaching this congregation the historic doctrines of the Reformation. But before the sermon began, the service included a time of sharing and prayer. I listened as some of the poorest people on the planet cried out to God: "Jehovah Jireh, please heal my son, as he is going blind." "Merciful Lord, please protect me when I go home today, for my husband always beats me." "Sovereign King, please provide my children with enough food today, as they are hungry."

As I listened to these people praying to be able to live another day, I thought about my ample salary, my life insurance policy, my health insurance policy, my two cars, my house, etc. I realized that I do not really trust in God's sovereignty on a daily basis, as I have sufficient buffers in place to shield me from most economic shocks. I realized that when these folks pray the fourth petition of the Lord's prayer -- Give us this day our daily bread -- their minds do not wander as mine so often does. I realized that while I have sufficient education and training to deliver a sermon on God's sovereignty with no forewarning, these slum dwellers were trusting in God's sovereignty just to get them through the day. And I realized that these people had a far deeper intimacy with God than I probably will ever have in my entire life.

Surprisingly, as this story illustrates, for many of us North Americans the first step in overcoming our god-complexes is to repent of the health and wealth gospel. At its core, the health and wealth gospel teaches that God rewards increasing levels of faith with greater amounts of wealth. When stated this way, the health and wealth gospel is easy to reject on a host of biblical grounds. Take the case of Job, for example. He had enormous faith and lived a godly life, but he went from riches to poverty because he was righteous and God wanted to prove this to Satan.

Think about it. If anybody dares suggest to me that the poor are poor because they are less spiritual than the rest of us -- which is what the health and wealth gospel teaches -- I am quick to rebuke them. I immediately point out that the poor could be poor due to injustices committed against them. Yet, all of this notwithstanding, I was still amazed to see people in this Kenyan slum who were simultaneously so spiritually strong and so devastatingly poor. Right down there in the bowels of hell was this Kenyan church, filled with spiritual giants who were struggling just to eat every day. This shocked me. At some level I had implicitly assumed that my economic superiority goes hand in hand with my spiritual superiority. This is none other than the lie of the health and wealth gospel.

Yeah. Me too. Ouch.

With the Miracles We Have a Savior

2009-08-06T04:07:00.000-07:00

I'm currently reading through J. Gresham Machen's Christianity and Liberalism. This morning I came across this quote which was too good not to share:

It may certainly be admitted that if the New Testament narrative had no miracles in it, it would be far easier to believe. The more commonplace a story is, the easier it is to accept it as true. But commonplace narratives have little value. The New Testament without the miracles would be far easier to believe. But the trouble is, it would not be worth believing. Without the miracles the New Testament would contain an account of a holy man--not a perfect man, it is true, for He was led to make lofty claims to which He had no right--but a man at least far holier than the rest of men. But of what benefit would such a man, and the death which marked His failure, be to us? The loftier be the example which Jesus set, the greater becomes our sorrow at our failure to attain to it; and the greater our hopelessness under the burden of sin. The sage of Nazareth may satisfy those who have never faced the problem of evil in their own lives; but to talk about an ideal to those who are under the thralldom of sin is a cruel mockery. Yet if Jesus was merely a man like the rest of men, then an ideal is all that we have in Him. Far more is needed by a sinful world. It is small comfort to be told that there was goodness in the world, when what we need is goodness triumphant over sin. But goodness triumphant over sin involves an entrance of the creative power of God, and that creative power of God is manifested by the miracles. Without the miracles, the New Testament might be easier to believe. But the thing that would be believed would be entirely different from that which presents itself to us now. Without the miracles we should have a teacher; with the miracles we have a Savior.

First Communion on the Moon

2009-07-20T09:05:00.000-07:00

Very interesting - found it here:

As we remember the first men on the moon, let's not forget the first supper on the moon -- the Lord's Supper, served and received by an elder in the Presbyterian Church, Apollo 11 astronaut Eugene 'Buzz' Aldrin.

"This is the (lunar module) pilot," Aldrin said on July 20, 1969. "I'd like to take this opportunity to ask every person listening in, whoever and wherever they may be, to pause for a moment and contemplate the events of the past few hours and to give thanks in his or her own way." Aldrin's way was to serve himself communion, using a kit provided by the pastor of Houston's Webster Presbyterian Church.

Aldrin's brief and private Christian service never caused a flap, but it could have. Aldrin has said that he planned to broadcast the service, but NASA at the last minute asked him not to because of concerns about a lawsuit filed (later dismissed) by atheist Madelyn Murray O'Hare after Apollo 8 astronauts read from Genesis while orbiting the moon at Christmas.

Did NASA do the right thing by making Aldrin keep his religious beliefs to himself?

As an elder in the Presbyterian church, Aldrin had the authority to conduct what is called an "extended serving" of the Lord's Supper. But Aldrin was representing the United States of America that day, and in many ways, all of his fellow earthlings. Should he have even conducted a private religious service?

"In the radio blackout," Aldrin wrote in Guideposts magazine in 1970, "I opened the little plastic packages which contained the bread and the wine. I poured the wine into the chalice our church had given me. In the one-sixth gravity of the moon, the wine slowly curled and gracefully came up the side of the cup. Then I read the Scripture, 'I am the vine, you are the branches. Whosoever abides in me will bring forth much fruit.'

"I ate the tiny Host and swallowed the wine. I gave thanks for the intelligence and spirit that had brought two young pilots to the Sea of Tranquility. It was interesting for me to think: the very first liquid ever poured on the moon, and the very first food eaten there, were the communion elements."

One small sip for man, one giant leap of faith for mankind.

The small chalice Aldrin used for the wine went back to Webster Church. Each year on the Sunday closest to July 20, the congregation celebrates Lunar Communion. "Communion can be celebrated anywhere," senior pastor Mark Cooper said Sunday. "Even cramped up in a lunar module on the moon."

Aldrin wasn't the only person to bring his faith to the moon that day. The astronauts left behind a tiny silicon chip containing a message of peace from four U.S. presidents and 73 other world leaders. Seven of them made references to God -- the presidents of Brazil, Ireland, South Vietnam and Malagasy, the king of Belgium, Pope Paul VI -- and Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran, who wrote:

"On this occasion when Mr. Neil Armstrong and Colonel Edwin Aldrin set foot for the first time on the surface of the Moon from the Earth, we pray the Almighty God to guide mankind towards ever increasing success in the establishment of peace and the progress of culture, knowledge and human civilisation."

Dinesh D'Souza on the New Atheism

2009-07-13T21:32:00.000-07:00

Below is the video of a really good talk Dinesh D'Souza gave at Wheaton College on the New Atheism back in April.

You can also download the audio only here.

National Debt Road Trip

2009-07-10T05:46:00.001-07:00

The Trouble with Rand - Part 3: Piety is no substitute for technique

2009-07-08T05:00:00.000-07:00

I just wanted to quickly wrap up my thoughts on the recent Ayn Rand resurgence. Given the fact that I find Ayn Rand's view of greed and altruism deeply contradictory to Christian teaching on these topics, why do I basically agree with her economics? Simply put, because, despite her motives, I believe that she is right that the free market is the only system that really works.

As Christian philosopher Etienne Gilson said, "Piety is no substitute for technique". When thinking through the Christian response to the very real problem of poverty, I believe that it's simplistic to simply align with the people who do the best job of selling the idea that they care the most. Rather, as a people who are called to love the Lord with our hearts, souls, and minds, we are obligated to think through the long term consequences, and not merely the noble intent, of the policies we advocate.

For example, the "living wage" is an issue where a lot of Christians, in my view, put their piety ahead of their technique. I admit that it sounds nice that everybody should make a living wage. But what if you go beyond what Thomas Sowell calls "stage one thinking"? The reality is that making it illegal to pay somebody who cleans bathrooms and takes out the trash at the mall (as I used to do when I was in high school working at Chick-fil-A) less than what some politician considers a living wage does not change the actual value of that work. The people who suffer most when wages are artificially raised, that is, raised in a way that doesn't actually reflect the change in the value of the productivity, are those who are supposedly being helped. After all, if an employer has a staff of 10 entry level employees he's paying $5 per hour, and then it suddenly becomes illegal for him to pay them less than $7.50, he's likely to have to let 3 or 4 of them go, or else cut back their hours so that they end up taking home the same amount. The change to the minimum wage does nothing to change the reality that the employer has to pay his employees from the revenue his business brings in. So, though simplistic stage-one thinking says "Yay - everybody is going to get paid more!", the realities of economics dictate the fact that the real consequence that some people will get paid more and others will lose their jobs.

Similar arguments can be made for practically all other policies that are meant to help those who are seen as on the "bottom rung" economically but try to circumvent the very basic realities of economics. For instance, "fair trade coffee" encourages poor farmers to enter or stay in the coffee market even when economic reality says that it's not in the farmer's long term interest to do so. In the end, I think it's actually quite self-indulgent for a Christian to advocate a policy that will eventually cause more harm than good, which he has not thought through thoroughly because he was so impressed with his own motives.

Though I object to the notion that free market is based on greed (see part 2), I will concede the point that ambitious, greedy people will join me in my preference for the free market (though I think it is often overlooked that lazy, greedy people prefer socialism - after all, wanting something for nothing is a form of greed, right?). However, even in their greed, the free market will force them to respond to the needs of others to meet their greedy ends. One more quote from Jay Richards's book:

"In spite of their natural selfishness and rapacity," Adam Smith wrote, businesspeople "are led by an invisible hand . . . and thus without intending it, without knowing it, advance the interest of society." Notice that he says "in spite of." His point isn't that the butcher should be selfish, or even that his selfishness is particularly helpful. Rather, his point is that even if the butcher is selfish, even if the butcher would love nothing more than to sell you a spoiled hunk of grisly beef in exchange for your worldly goods and leave you homeless, the butcher can't make you buy his meat in a free economy. He has to offer you meat you'll freely buy. The cruel, greedy butcher, in other words, has to look for ways to set up win-win scenarios. Even to satisfy his greed, he has to meet your desires. The market makes this happen. That's making the best of a bad situation, and of a bad butcher.

So what about the poor? First of all, I think what's good for the economy is good for everybody, so since the free market is the best model for the entire economy, there will be fewer people in the poor category if free market principles are adhered to. Secondly, for those who are still poor, unlike Ayn Rand I'm all for charity. I think churches have a very clear responsibility for the poor. I think in general people who advocate for a more free market tend to be more personally generous, and people who advocate a more socialistic model are less generous personally, probably out of a feeling that, in their advocacy, they already "gave at the office" so to speak. This New York Times column by Nicholas Kristof (not a conservative by any stretch) seems to say as much. Basically I think that people will respond to the needs of the poor more effectively at a more personal level, and will tend to see helping the poor as a more personal responsibility if the government hands the responsibility over to the private citizens.

I guess my view of capitalism is similar to Winston Churchill's view of democracy: It's the worst model for the economy, except all the others. I do not worship at the altar of capitalism, as I believe Ayn Rand basically did. However, this side of Glory I think it's the best we can do. Yes it's messy. No, it isn't perfect. Yes, it allows some things that I morally object to. No, it doesn't prevent all injustice. But it does fit the human condition and the realities of basic economics that other methods seek to skirt. And I think we're making a grave mistake as we move further away from free market economics in the direction of European-style socialism.

Dennis Prager on the Honduran "Coup"

2009-07-01T04:25:00.000-07:00

I have mentioned several times on this blog that Dennis Prager is my favorite radio talk show host. He's one of only two or three that I will listen to, but he's definitely the only one that I practically never miss. I'm posting the audio from the first hour of his Tuesday show here because his analysis of the situation in Honduras and of President Obama is very good and something that I think everybody needs to hear.

Download the audio here.

...or play the audio here.

Lebensunwertes Leben

2009-07-01T04:11:00.000-07:00

The following is from Jonah Goldberg's blog:

From the LA Times:

Reporting from Washington — President Obama suggested at a town hall event Wednesday night that one way to shave medical costs is to stop expensive and ultimately futile procedures performed on people who are about to die and don't stand to gain from the extra care.

In a nationally televised event at the White House, Obama said families need better information so they don't unthinkingly approve "additional tests or additional drugs that the evidence shows is not necessarily going to improve care."

He added: "Maybe you're better off not having the surgery, but taking the painkiller."

There's an interesting contradiction here. According to the pro-choice perspective, it's outrageous for the state to interfere in a woman's decision to terminate a pregnancy. But it's pragmatic and reasonable for the state to consider terminating a person, if some money can be saved.

This logic is nothing new.

Chilling

The Trouble with Rand - Part 2: Vices and Virtues

2009-06-13T07:14:00.000-07:00

In my last post I posted a video of Ayn Rand on the Phil Donahue show extolling the virtues of greed and selfishness, and lambasting the vices of self-sacrifice and altruism. Such was her twisted view of the free market, which interestingly was basically the same view Marx had of the free market. Rand seems to have accepted Marx's caricature of capitalism that it is based on greed, and, rather than correcting the fallacy of that claim, declared greed good. I have a number of problems with Rand's view:

1. Greed is not virtue

We all know that greed is not a virtue. That greed is wrong is very apparent throughout Scripture. Greed is one of the "Seven Deadly Sins" laid out by Ponticus in the 4th century. It is the vice of Ebeneezer Scrooge in my favorite story, A Christmas Carol. This is obvious to everyone - probably even Rand herself if she were honest.

In Money, Greed, and God, Jay Richards points out:

Despite Rand's official praise of selfishness, however, John Galt doesn't look anything like Ebenezer Scrooge or that cigar-smoking, tuxedo-clad guy in Monopoly. On the contrary, Galt is a pioneer, a brave creator of wealth who pursues his vision despite powerful obstacles, including a malevolent state bent on destroying him. In fact, although Rand despised Christian self-sacrifice, Galt is suspiciously Christlike. He preaches a message of salvation, founds a community, and challenges the status quo and the official powers-that-be, who hunt him down, torture him, but ultimately fail to conquer him.

To be sure, there are dissonant notes. His symbol is not a cross but the dollar sign. The book ends with Galt and his lover tracing the sign of the dollar across a dry valley. But insofar as Galt's character works, it's because he contradicts the miserly stereotype that Rand's philosophy leads the reader to expect. In fact, none of Rand's best fictional characters fit her philosophy very well.

2. Self sacrifice is not a vice

We all know instinctively that self sacrifice is not a bad thing. As a Christian I believe that Christ's act of self-sacrifice is the central event of History. Christians are taught that "Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends." (John 15:13) And yet I don't think one has to be a Christian to know instinctively that giving of yourself for the good of others is a very admirable virtue, not a vice. All would consider a soldier who sits on a grenade to save his brothers a hero, an nobody I know could seriously call that an act of weakness.

3. The free market does not require greed.

18th century philosopher Adam Smith famously said in his work The Wealth of Nations, which is essentially the first modern work on economics, that "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, nor the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest". The Marxist take on this statement has always been that Adam Smith was basically in favor of selfishness, but this is not true. "Self-interest" and "selfishness" are entirely different things. Out of selfishness I might drive the newest, biggest, most expensive Hummer SUV I can get my hands on, no matter whether I can really afford it, no matter if it means that I can't feed my kids, no matter who I had to cheat in order to afford it. But instead out of self-interest, because I have a limited budget and a 27 mile commute to work, because I care about fuel efficiency and reliability, I choose to drive a 2002 Toyota Corolla. See the difference? Selfishness means that I only care about me, me, me. Acting in my self-interest involves the stuff I ought to be doing - choosing a house and car that best fits my situation, taking care of my family, even taking care of others in need as I am able to see their need is an aspect of self-interest. Here's Jay Richards again:

But self-interest isn't just looking out for number one at everyone else's expense. Since we're social beings, our self-interest includes our friends, families, communities, co-workers, coreligionists, and others. When I pay my bills, I'm not pursuing just my own narrow interest, but the interests of my family, my bank, my community, and whomever I'm paying. I chose my church and my neighborhood and my car not just for myself, but for my children.

There is a huge difference between selfishness and self-interest. Adam Smith's point is that when people are given the freedom to make prudent decisions for themselves, an order emerges that tends to work out best for everybody. This works basically because we are more competent to pursue our own interests, and to help meet the needs of our neighbors, than some distant central entity. I know what is best for my children because they're my children. In our case we have our oldest in a school that definitely fits his natural bent, but when the time comes we may not make the same decision about the other three. We will make that decision based on what we observe. My wife and I are the most competent people in the world to make this decision for our kids because we know our children better than anybody else. A central entity cannot make these distinctions.

This also works in the realm of altruism. Say I know two people in my church that have lost their jobs and fallen on hard times. Say I know that Person A is out of work basically because he does not have marketable job skills. He really just needs to go to school and get some training and will basically need a handout for awhile. On the other hand Person B is the type of guy who really just needs to get his act together, and based on his personality I know that what he really needs is some tough love and if he gets a handout he'll quickly grow dependent on it and continue to flounder. A central entity would treat these two people the same: They're out of work, so give them a handout. But if the decision was left to my church, it may decide to treat each of these two people in the way that it knows best suits their situations, giving them both a better shot at flourishing in the long run.

I will try to wrap this "series" up with one more post later.

The Trouble with Rand - Part 1

2009-06-13T05:41:00.000-07:00

This year, as President Obama's policies have moved our country further and further from capitalism in the direction of a vastly expanded government control of the economy, Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged has been getting a lot of good press in conservative circles and at one point had climbed as high as #16 on the Amazon.com rankings. I took the bait and bought a copy of the book (which is roughly the same thickness as the Dallas phonebook) back in January and began reading. I still haven't finished (I don't read fast enough to have the patience for a book that long), but since the book has been discussed so much, I've read lots of spoilers and hardly feel as though I need to read the book to understand the essence of it.

Rand makes many good points about how and why the free market works better than socialism, but she misses something so enormous that I can't possibly, as a Christian, fully buy into her ideas. I'm going to try to write sort of a series of posts about this. For now, this video of Ayn Rand on the Phil Donahue show many years ago pretty much sums up the problem I have with her philosophy.

Why We Love the Church

2009-06-09T05:12:00.001-07:00

Ted Kluck and Kevin DeYoung (authors of Why We're Not Emergent: By Two Guys Who Should Be) have written another book due out this month called Why We Love the Church. I ran across the following excerpt which I liked. I'm looking forward to reading the book.

Perhaps I’m just sick of revolutionaries. I am thirty-two years old, and am a part of the generation that has probably purchased more Che Guevara posters than any other generation in history. You know the poster. It’s the one that shows Che bearded, in his beret, looking larger than life. It is often accompanied on the wall by a Bob Marley poster, or the John Belushi poster in which he wears a sweatshirt emblazoned with the word “College.” We’re big on revolutionaries. We’re big on changing the world. We’re big, also, on not being ordinary.

A search on a popular Christian bookseller’s Web site revealed no less than sixty-two items with the word manifesto in the title and hundreds containing the term revolutionary. There are revolutionary books for teens. Ditto for stay-at-home moms. There’s a book about how Jesus was a revolutionary communicator, and how you can use His revolutionary communication skills in your home/business/church. The question then becomes, If we’re all revolutionaries, are any of us an actual revolutionary? Being a revolutionary used to mean that you overthrew a government; now it means that you’re a courageous enough visionary to have church on a golf course or in someone’s living room.

My point in all of this is not to make not-so-subtle jabs at revolutionary culture (maybe a little bit); rather, it is to encourage the scores of nonrevolutionaries in our midst, of which I am one. I want to encourage those of us who try really hard to pray for our families and friends, try to read our Bibles consistently, and share the gospel with those around us. Those of us who aren’t ready to chuck centuries worth of church history, and years of unglamorous but God-glorifying growth in the name of revolution.

I’m also a part of the generation that has produced more memoirs before the age of thirty-five than any other in history. We’re crazy about Christian narrative nonfiction, especially those “on the road” stories, no matter how trite or contrived they may be. We’re journeyers. We’re wanderers. We still haven’t found what we’re looking for. Jack Kerouac’s (or Donald Miller’s...or Lauren Winner’s) wayward children are all over the Christian book landscape.

These narrative titles all follow a similar pattern, in that in them experiences are had (a cross-country road trip, a self-finding excursion through Europe, a documentary chronicling the lameness of American Christians, a chronicle on how the author dropped out of church and subsequently “found” Jesus), and then those experiences are shared in book form. Many of these books are supposed to tell us that “community” is the answer, and individualism is bad, but at the end of the day these books are largely about the individual and his or her discoveries.

FDR's D-Day Prayer June 6, 1944

2009-06-06T08:47:00.000-07:00

My Fellow Americans:

Last night, when I spoke with you about the fall of Rome, I knew at that moment that troops of the United States and our Allies were crossing the Channel in another and greater operation. It has come to pass with success thus far.

And so, in this poignant hour, I ask you to join with me in prayer:

Almighty God: Our sons, pride of our nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our Republic, our religion, and our civilization, and to set free a suffering humanity.

Lead them straight and true; give strength to their arms, stoutness to their hearts, steadfastness in their faith.

They will need Thy blessings. Their road will be long and hard. For the enemy is strong. He may hurl back our forces. Success may not come with rushing speed, but we shall return again and again; and we know that by Thy grace, and by the righteousness of our cause, our sons will triumph.

They will be sore tried, by night and by day, without rest -- until the victory is won. The darkness will be rent by noise and flame. Men's souls will be shaken with the violences of war.

For these men are lately drawn from the ways of peace. They fight not for the lust of conquest. They fight to end conquest. They fight to liberate. They fight to let justice arise, and tolerance and goodwill among all Thy people. They yearn but for the end of battle, for their return to the haven of home.

Some will never return. Embrace these, Father, and receive them, Thy heroic servants, into Thy kingdom.

And for us at home -- fathers, mothers, children, wives, sisters, and brothers of brave men overseas, whose thoughts and prayers are ever with them -- help us, Almighty God, to rededicate ourselves in renewed faith in Thee in this hour of great sacrifice.

Many people have urged that I call the nation into a single day of special prayer. But because the road is long and the desire is great, I ask that our people devote themselves in a continuance of prayer. As we rise to each new day, and again when each day is spent, let words of prayer be on our lips, invoking Thy help to our efforts.

Give us strength, too -- strength in our daily tasks, to redouble the contributions we make in the physical and the material support of our armed forces.

And let our hearts be stout, to wait out the long travail, to bear sorrows that may come, to impart our courage unto our sons wheresoever they may be.

And, O Lord, give us faith. Give us faith in Thee; faith in our sons; faith in each other; faith in our united crusade. Let not the keeness of our spirit ever be dulled. Let not the impacts of temporary events, of temporal matters of but fleeting moment -- let not these deter us in our unconquerable purpose.

With Thy blessing, we shall prevail over the unholy forces of our enemy. Help us to conquer the apostles of greed and racial arrogances. Lead us to the saving of our country, and with our sister nations into a world unity that will spell a sure peace -- a peace invulnerable to the schemings of unworthy men. And a peace that will let all of men live in freedom, reaping the just rewards of their honest toil.

Thy will be done, Almighty God.

Amen.

Franklin D. Roosevelt - June 6, 1944

Stem Cells and Torture

2009-06-04T05:41:00.000-07:00

Valparaiso Christian ethics professor Gilbert Meilaender has written a really good article in The Weekly Standard on bioethics and torture. It reads almost as if we were reading C.S. Lewis commenting on our current moral quandaries. A couple of excerpts:

However great the promise of such research for relief of suffering and prevention of death, the fact that we continue to suffer and die is not an emergency. If we take to describing that sad fact of life as a crisis or emergency, there will be no end to what we might contemplate doing in the cause of medical progress. Our desire to accomplish good results will have swamped any moral limits on what we do in pursuit of that goal. And, more generally, this should make us wary of the martial language--a "war on cancer"--still all too common in our thinking about medicine.

Hence, what a terrorist does is quite different from what a soldier does. The essential feature of the terrorist's action is that it deliberately (and, generally, at random) targets civilians. Terrorists do so simply to instill fear, and, as Michael Walzer has written, "in its modern manifestations, terror is the totalitarian form of war and politics." It recognizes no limits on the violence that can be enacted in a good cause, and it subsumes individuals entirely into their political communities--treating us as if we belonged to those communities to the whole extent of our being.

Our obligations to captured terrorists are not, therefore, quite the same as our obligations to captured soldiers, to whom "benevolent quarantine" is owed. (This is a point about our moral, not our legal, obligations. If the Geneva Conventions do not recognize such a distinction, they miss something of moral importance.) The quarantine of terrorists need not be so benevolent. Indeed, once we begin to think about the difference between a captured soldier and a captured terrorist, we really should be puzzled about what we owe the terrorist.

After all, a captured terrorist may not only have carried out an attack in the past; we may have good reason to believe he is planning an attack still to be carried out in the future. If we caught him in the act of doing it, we could kill him in order to protect his innocent victims. Now that we have caught him before that next act--but have not caught all others engaged with him in planning it--can we do nothing to him to protect the innocents at whom the plans he knows and shares are taking aim? Government authorities may surely prey upon his desires and weaknesses in seeking information from him. Likewise, he may be coerced in a variety of ways, using such coercion to "motivate" him to cooperate. But subjecting him to experiences that simply break his will, that turn him into a thing no longer able to decide (in response to either temptation or coercion) is a different matter entirely.

Read the whole thing here.

Tullian Tchividjian on Self Righteousness

2009-05-30T07:56:00.000-07:00

Tullian Tchividjian has a great blog post on self righteousness. Here's an excerpt:

Now, it’s very interesting that in the Bible it’s always the immoral person that gets the Gospel before the moral person. It’s the prostitute who understands grace; it’s the Pharisee who doesn’t. It’s the unrighteous younger brother who gets it before the self-righteous older brother. Tim’s book points this out well.

There is, however, another (perhaps more subtle) side to self-righteousness that younger brother types need to be careful of. There’s an equally dangerous form of self-righteousness that plagues the unconventional, the liberal, and the non-religious types. We anti-legalists can become just as guilty of legalism in the opposite direction. What do I mean?

It’s simple: we can become self-righteous against those who are self-righteous. Many younger evangelicals today are reacting to their parents’ conservative, buttoned-down, rule-keeping flavor of “older brother religion” with a type of liberal, untucked, rule-breaking flavor of “younger brother irreligion” which screams, ”That’s right, I know I don’t have it all together and you think you do; I know I’m not good and you think you are. That makes me better than you.” See the irony?

In other words, they’re proud that they’re not self-righteous!

Note: The Tim Keller book he mentions is really good, as are all Tim Keller books. He has a new book coming out in October.

There Are No "Unintended Pregnancies"

2009-05-22T06:36:00.000-07:00

Anthony Esolen made a really good point about the President's Notre Dame speech over at Mere Comments. Here's an excerpt.

Let us suppose I have a fancy revolver with twenty chambers. Suppose that we put one bullet in the revolver, in one of the chambers. Suppose also that I and my pal enjoy the frisson of terror and risk that rushes up our spines when we spin the chambers and hold the revolver to the other fellow's head and pull the trigger. Of course, I do not want to kill my friend, and he does not want to kill me. But we are both willing to incur the risk of death to have that spasm of glee and fright. Now, it won't do to compare our actions to those of, say, a bridge-painter, who knows when he climbs up his ladder that there is a measurable chance that he will fall to his death (it is, I'm told, one of the most dangerous jobs in the country, and therefore fabulously well remunerated). That is because the purpose of a ladder is that it be climbed, not that it be fallen from, whereas the very purpose of a gun is to shoot a bullet.
Suppose that my friend and I play this game of American Roulette once a year, on one of our birthdays. Now suppose that my friend's number comes up, and I shoot him through the head. By law, and by the moral philosophy that undergirds the law, I do not get to plead that I did not intend his death. Perhaps I did not want him to die, but I certainly did intend the chance that he would die: I intentionally used a weapon against him, a weapon whose purpose it is to kill, and I used it in a way that would ensure his death, if the right chamber came up. It would be up to judge and jury to assess the correct punishment in my case, but as a matter of fact I am a murderer.

Except in the case of rape, there are no "unintended pregnancies," none. There are plenty of women who do not want to be pregnant, and plenty of men who do not want them to be pregnant, but in all those cases the pregnancies are the results of intentional actions that have pregnancy as their perfectly natural and perfectly predictable consequence. Contraception does not change the nature of the act itself; indeed, it makes the actors more keenly aware that they are doing what makes babies, since otherwise they would not go so far out of their way (donning or inserting into the body uncomfortable devices, or flooding the system with pregnancy-mimicking hormones) to thwart the body's natural functions. The "problem" in the case of Sexual Roulette is not that the body fails, but that it succeeds.
So the pregnancies are the result of intention. The problem is that the children are not wanted, and that is a very different thing. For the question we should immediately ask is not, "How do we dispose of this child we do not want?" but "What is wrong with us that we do not want this child?"

Read the whole thing

Daniel Hannan on Bailouts

2009-05-20T05:46:00.000-07:00

John Mark Reynolds on the Obama Administration

2009-05-16T05:36:00.000-07:00

I have recently become a fan of John Mark Reynolds of Biola University. He has written a very interesting analysis of the current situation in our country. Here's an excerpt:

Half of us believe the country is on the right track, an improvement from Bush days, but the optimists are not acting as they poll. They are behaving like the rains are coming and there is an ark to be built. People want to believe in the still so new administration, but the ache in their bones warns that the weather ahead is going to be rough.

Why are arks being built in neighborhoods all over America? People sense, Democrats and Republicans, that there is a deeper problem than the elites of either party are acknowledging. They are reading between the lines and sense what they cannot articulate. They are still hopeful, but they are starting to hedge their bets.

They have no confidence in the Democrats outside of Obama. If he is seen to fail, then both parties will have been recently repudiated. I have no idea what will happen next, but if this happens almost anybody might become President. (This does not include John Edwards.)

Except for Edwards being finished on the national scene, this is bad news and nobody should rejoice in it.

No patriot wants to see his nation suffer and few wish to see their President fail. Americans still are mostly proud of their intelligent new President and rightly enamored with the family values on display in the photogenic first family.

Read the rest.

Is the Debate Really Over?

2009-05-10T07:55:00.000-07:00

“The science is beyond dispute and the facts are clear. Sea levels are rising. Coastlines are shrinking. We’ve seen record drought, spreading famine, and storms that are growing stronger with each passing hurricane season"

This statement was made by President-elect Obama back in November as he addressed the Governors' Global Climate Summit in Los Angeles. (Sidebar) I'm not picking on President Obama - the candidate that I voted for would probably sign has name to that statement as well. (end sidebar) But is the debate really over? Is the science really so clear? Many who say so recklessly claim that the only scientists who say otherwise are "quacks". Al Gore has likened disagreeing with his claims to believing that the Earth is flat. The arrogance of that statement is staggering when you consider the following list of eminent scientists that disagree with Al Gore (who is not a scientist, by the way):

The late Reid A. Bryson has been called the "Father of Modern Climatology". He believed that there is a trend of increasing global temperature but that they are not caused by human activity but rather that they are cyclical.

Dr. Edward Wegman, professor at the Center for Computational Statistics at George Mason University, chair of the National Academy of Sciences' Committee on Applied and Theoretical Statistics, and board member of the American Statistical Association. Dr. Wegman claims that the research which shows a "hockey stick" shaped curve in the temperature over the past millennium (where the handle is the stable period for most of the millennium and then the blade of the hockey stick is the sharp increase over the past century), which has been influential in shaping the debate, was based on faulty statistical methodology and was conducted without consulting mainstream statisticians.

Richard S.J. Tol is a Research Professor at the Economic and Social Research Institute, Dublin, Ireland, where he is responsible for the research areas energy and environment. He is also the Professor of the Economics of Climate Change at the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, the Netherlands; an Adjunct Professor at the Department of Engineering and Public Policy, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, and an Associate of the Research Unit Sustainability and Global Change, Hamburg University and Centre for Marine and Atmospheric Science, Hamburg, Germany. In broad terms, his position is that global warming is real, but it has benefits as well as harms.

Christopher Landsea of the Atlantic Oceanographic & Meteorological Laboratory. His basic position seems to be that there is a warming trend, but it is only having a very negligible impact on hurricane activity.

Duncan Wingham, Professor of Climate Physics at University College London and Director of the Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling. He believes that the collapse of Antarctica's ice shelves is likely the result of natural current fluctuations rather than global warming.

Dr. Richard Lindzen a past professor at the University of Chicago and Harvard, the Alfred P. Sloan professor of meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and a lead author in a landmark report from the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the very organization that established global warming as an issue of paramount importance. Lindzen doesn't believe there is an overall warming trend and has said that he is "willing to take bets that global average temperatures in 20 years will in fact be lower than they are now".

Henrik Svensmark of the Danish National Space Center. He believes there is global warming, but that it isn't caused by CO2 but rather by solar activity.

Ian Plimer is an Australian geologist who recently wrote a well documented book called Heaven and Earth which is not yet available in the US but will be soon. He was recently interviewed by Dennis Prager, and you can listen to that interview here.

There are more, but you get the point. These guys are eminent scientists, not quacks. Yes they are in the minority, and they may well be wrong. I'm not at all claiming to know who is right and wrong in this debate, but I do know one thing: Anybody who says that the debate is over and the science is clear is wrong. And, the title of Al Gore's documentary notwithstanding, the claim that catastrophe awaits if the government fails to act is actually quite convenient for those who would like to see the government grow substantially larger. Surely Al Gore and President Obama cannot be seen as neutral on that point.

Read this letter to New York Times magazine written by a Ph.D. candidate in Applied Mathematics and Atmospheric Sciences at Harvard University in response to an article called The Civil Heretic about global warming skeptic Freeman Dyson:

“The Civil Heretic” was a perfect example of what Freeman Dyson disagrees with: blatant and unfounded exaggeration. Dyson is not a “global-warming heretic”; he does not dispute the science. He simply says, and rightfully so, that the science is both uncertain and very much exaggerated. It is no secret that a lot of climate-change research is subject to opinion, that climate models sometimes disagree even on the signs of the future changes (e.g. drier vs. wetter future climate). The problem is, only sensational exaggeration makes the kind of story that will get politicians’ — and readers’ — attention. So, yes, climate scientists might exaggerate, but in today’s world, this is the only way to assure any political action and thus more federal financing to reduce the scientific uncertainty.

So she is admitting that, in research on this topic, the way to get government grants is to make exaggerated claims about the certainty of the science on this issue. Think about that next time you hear a global warming "denier" accused of being on the take of "big oil".

To me it seems that in order to believe that "going green" on a massive scale in a way that threatens our economy makes sense, you have to believe all of the following:

The Earth is getting warmer.
This warming is definitely caused by what humans do
This warming will be catastrophic

I'll admit that there's not a whole lot of debate about item 1 (but let's be honest, doesn't last winter cause anybody to think twice about even that one?) How about items 2 and 3? Couldn't this whole thing be sort of a Swine Flu Pandemic panic writ large?

One of my favorite websites is this one:

http://climatedebatedaily.com/

It's basically an aggregator of all of the articles on both sides of the issue. The column on the left contains links to the calls to action, and the column on the right contains links to the skeptical arguments. I do wonder if any politician has bothered to visit that site and read anything in the right column. Certainly the voices on the left column are getting more air play. I sure hope they know what they are doing!

A New Low?

2009-05-05T18:59:00.001-07:00

This is Keith Olbermann talking with Michael Musto of the Village Voice in what must be the most un-funny public shaming of all time. Reminder that Carrie Prejean's great sin was giving a direct answer to a direct question that, statistically, you the reader probably agree with, and your grandmother definitely agrees with. Every historical hero you might have - Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill, FDR, JFK, etc. certainly would have agreed with Prejean's answer (and most would have blushed at the question). President Obama gave a very similar answer at the Saddleback Forum.

Do conservatives do this? Seriously? And if your answer is yes I want some examples.

Are Traditionalists Beyond the Pale?

2009-04-21T08:21:00.001-07:00

I'm not a huge fan of pageants. I basically think they are silly but harmless. I didn't even know that there was a Miss USA pageant on Sunday until I heard on Monday about the controversial answer to a question given by Miss California, Carrie Prejean. Here's a video of what stirred the controversy for the few who may not know. It is widely believed that this answer cost her the crown. After the pageant, Perez Hilton, who had asked the question, posted this rant (Warning: contains profanity) on his blog where he called Carrie Prejean a "dumb b----" for her answer, and also said that if she had won, he would have run on stage and ripped off her tiara. I wanted to point out a few of things about this.

The question was inappropriate in the first place. He asked her to give her position on a divisive issue. Her only choices were to tell the truth, lie, or dodge the question. I don't think the judges are supposed to ask questions on divisive issues to push their agendas.
Carrie Prejean gave an answer that was admittedly not particularly eloquent (I've seen many comments picking on her "opposite marriage" statement), but it was polite and basically coherent. Her answer was also courageous given the fact that she surely knew what the "correct" answer to the question was in the eyes of the questioner and the popular culture.
The answer Perez Hilton said Carrie Prejean should have given to her question would not have been a direct answer to his question. His question was "Do you think every state should follow suit?" Her answer was basically, no offense, but no, for which she was called a "dumb b----" by the questioner. Perez Hilton said that she should have talked about federalism, etc. but that would have been a dodge. He asked a question for which there are only two direct answers: yes or no. Her answer was no, which was the wrong answer.
Hilton said that Prejean should "inspire and unite". But as a nation we're very divided on this issue. How would taking one side of this issue "unite"? I've never understood that thinking. Calls to unite are nearly always bogus, but never more nakedly so than in this case where the person is actually saying "Unite! - by taking my position".
The media is taking Perez Hilton, who asked an inappropriate question for such and event, and then went on a rant calling Carrie Prejean a "dumb b----" more seriously than the contestant who merely stated the opinion held by most Americans today, and held by practically all people from time immemorial to a few years ago.
I noticed that a commenter to Perez Hilton's video post named "obama4prez08" responded to the post with "hell yeah perez!" I wonder if obama4prez08 realizes that the answer Carrie Prejean gave was pretty much the same answer candidate Obama gave during the Saddleback Forum (FF to about 6:30 in this video).
Shanna Moakler, co-director of the Miss USA pageant, went on CBS and made these comments:

...I have to applaud her that she was willing to miss out on the opportunity of being Miss USA, you know, to stay true to her convictions. But, on the same token, you know, I think she has muddied the waters a little bit by -- by making -- just by -- her question was insensitive. And it's now become more about compassion, being compassionate in the way that she answered her question. So-
...And I have to say this, too, you know, I am her state director. And I want it to be known and, you know, be clarified that we're not abandoning her and we don't hate her. But it puts us in a difficult situation because we do have a difference of opinion. And we also have sponsors, and people that have supported her, and helped get her to where she was standing on that stage, that I think there's now become a sense of betrayal. So it's just, you know, that's where I'm saying it's become a topic of sensitivity, and she needed to answer her question with more compassion.

So she's basically agreeing that Prejean lost because of her opinion, and acted as though it was not the opinion itself but that it lacked "compassion". In reality, she gave a thoroughly polite answer to a question that put her in a very difficult position. It seems to me that it was actually Perez Hilton that put both Prejean and Moakler in a difficult position.

Am I making too big a deal of this? After all, it's just a silly pageant, right? Well, maybe. I don't care very much about the pageant. But what I do care about is that the campaign to make traditionalists appear "beyond the pale" just for agreeing with practically all who have gone before us about what the definition of marriage is. The reality is that Americans, even conservative ones, are quite tolerant of homosexuals, and most of us do support civil unions.

I thought Greg Koukl put it quite well:

Same-sex marriage is a strong-arm attempt of a minority to force public approval of homosexuality from a majority who doesn’t approve.
A marriage license does not confer any significant liberties that same-sex couples do not already have. Instead, it is meant to give them what they’ve been demanding for a long time—complete, unqualified, unconditional, and undiminished, social approval.
This is not about equal rights. It’s about public validation and social acceptance. It’s about one group who has a minority view trying to use the law to force their views on other people who don’t agree with them. If people want to celebrate same-sex unions, fine. That’s their business. Let them do that in private ceremonies, even religious ones if they can arrange them. But the government shouldn’t get involved. That basically gives broad cultural affirmation by government decree.
The insistence for same-sex marriage is about a radical attempt to alter the foundational institution of civilization by using government muscle to strong-arm the decent Americans into affirming a lifestyle and set of behaviors they [do] not, by and large, approve of, but are willing to tolerate as long as it is not forced on them.
The challenges, on balance, are empty and manipulative.
As to the charge, “That’s discrimination!,” I only note that it’s the same discrimination we make against polygamy. The people are not going to endorse polygamy because they think it’s wrong, just as they think same-sex marriage is wrong. Every argument for same-sex marriage is an argument for polygamy—and polyandry (multiple husbands), and polyamory (group marriage), etc. (get creative). If not one, why not the other?
Same-sex marriage advocates must support polygamy, given their logic. If they say, “That’s ridiculous,” I say, “You’re right. It is ridiculous. That’s my point. Ridiculous conclusions follow from the reasoning same-sex marriage advocates present.”
This is not about redefining marriage. This is about redefining civilization.

I'll Give Him His Due

2009-04-19T20:07:00.000-07:00

I mentioned awhile back that President Obama has "lifted the ban" on embryonic stem cell research, and that, in so doing, he also revoked funding for "induced pluripotent stem cell" research. I was surprised and pleased to read that Al Gore is set to head a venture capital foray into this type of research. I wish President Obama was as convinced of the promise of this research as Al Gore. From the story:

Former vice president Al Gore is entering the stem cell arena with an announcement today of a $20 million biotech venture in the hot area of “induced pluripotent” stem cells. Induced cells are attracting interest from researchers and biotech firms as an alternative to embryonic stem cells. Induced cells are made by inserting four genes into ordinary skin cells, and they offer a new path for “regenerative” medical treatments.

“I just think it’s a very important breakthrough that is filled with promise and hope,” says Gore, a partner with the venture-capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, which is backing the research. “I think this is one of those good news stories that comes along every once in a while.”

HT: First Things

More on Spiritual Formation vs. Works Righteousness

2009-04-17T20:49:00.000-07:00

A little while back I wrote a post pointing to a quote by Richard Foster I ran across in Christianity Today about how some people seem to be sort of paralyzed in their spiritual growth because of their understanding of grace. This stood out to me because this is something that I have struggled with. Several years ago when I read a book called Classic Christianity by Bob George, I came to a very different understanding of grace than I had prior to reading the book. Basically the thesis of book is that we are saved by grace, and not by works. Period. Full stop. It really put a much clearer distinction between "law" and "grace" than what I had understood before. We either attain God's acceptance on the basis of law or on the basis of God's grace. It's either something we accomplish, or its something that Christ already accomplished on the cross. And since sinful man cannot adhere perfectly to the law, we need to rest in God's grace and enjoy the freedom we have rather than revert back to a law-based approach to earning God's acceptance. This is something I thought I understood before this book, but after reading the book I realized that I didn't fully understand it before, because I was "comingling" law and grace. While I understood on some level that we're saved by what Christ accomplished on the cross, in a sense I was still trying to "earn" God's love by doing things. I thought of a quiet time, occasional fasting, not swearing, etc. as things that I do "for God". In fact I recall the pastor of one of the previous churches I attended criticizing the notion that somebody could have their "quiet time" as they drive in the car on the way to work. His comment was, "Do you really think God honors that kind of sacrifice?" This is more subtle than what I've heard coming out of some really hyper-legalistic churches. But still the implication that our quiet time is an offering we give to God, and that we had better make it good or else He won't "honor" it is the kind of thinking that I would have agreed with before, but now consider to be a form of works righteousness.

While I still consider the things I learned in Classic Christianity to have been a major formative milestone in my spiritual journey, I think I initially took it too far. I'm not saying that I disagree in the slightest about the very solid distinction between law and grace as it relates to justification, but I think I became hyper-sensitive to anything that sounded like a law-based approach to righteousness. Back in college I had read a book with some guys at my church called Celebration of Discipline by Richard Foster (interestingly, the author of that article I cited). At the time I had found it to be an edifying and challenging book. However, after reading Classic Christianity, when I started thinking through the implications of this very new way of understanding of God's grace, one of the (silly) things I came up with in my mind was, "Well, I guess I don't really believe in that Celebration of Discipline stuff anymore". It actually took me awhile to understand that I was confusing justification, which is the process by which we're brought into a right relationship with God, and sanctification, the growth process of the believer (which occurs after justification). Sanctification requires things that, externally, look very much like law, but their motivation should be in response to God's grace and a desire to obey Him, know Him better, and to become more like Him, not as an "offering" to God or to in any way earn His acceptance. So in the realm of sanctification, there very much is a place for the disciplines.

I think the realization came to me when my church invited John Hannah of Dallas Theological Seminary to come speak at our church's annual Winter Bible Conference one year. He gave a really excellent talk on John Owen's teaching on sanctification, which is that it involves two things: vivification and mortification. Vivification is basically the positive side to sanctification. Its the stuff that we should be putting into our lives. Mortification is the negative side, the stuff that we should be taking out of our lives. If you're interested, Dr. Hannah's notes are here and the audio is here: Session 1, Session 2, Session 3. I bet I've gone back and listened to that audio a dozen times, and have devoured every book he recommends in the notes. It's really excellent.

At first it didn't make sense to me that my church, which is very big on the Classic Christianity book, was also heartily endorsing the things that Dr. Hannah was teaching us, because it sounded very much like law to me at first. That's what triggered this realization. I don't think that the Classic Christianity book is at fault, it was just my failure to fully grasp it at first.

The final light bulb for me came when I read the beginning of a book written by one of the authors John Hannah recommended (not the same book, but the same author). The book is Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life by Donald Whitney. Whitney quotes a couple of other authors near the beginning of the book which made an impression on me.

We have not advanced very far in our spiritual lives if we have not encountered the basic paradox of freedom...that we are most free when we are bound. But not just any way of being bound will suffice; what matters is the character of our binding. The one who would be an athlete, but who is unwilling to discipline his body by regular exercise and abstinence, is not free to excel on the field or the track. His failure to train rigorously denies him the freedom to run with the desired speed and endurance. With one concerted voice, the giants of the devotional life apply the same principle to the whole of life: Discipline is the price of freedom. -- Elton Trueblood (emphasis mine)

...freedom and discipline have come to be regarded as mutually exclusive, when in fact freedom is not at all the opposite, but the final reward of discipline. -- Elisabeth Edwards

That's the part I was missing. Freedom and discipline are not mutually exclusive! Freedom is a result of discipline. The active pursuit of sanctification is not an abrogation of the freedom we have in God's grace, but it's actually a means to enjoy His grace more fully. Based on Richard Foster's quote in that article, I don't think I'm alone in being thick-headed on this point. I thought he explained it very well. I was paralyzed by grace (not really by grace but by my inadequate understanding of it), because I rejected anything that would help me towards sanctification out of the misunderstanding that it would be works righteousness.

Just wanted to share that, and wondered if anybody else has had a similar experience.

Bart Ehrman Interrupted (by Stephen Colbert)

2009-04-10T17:24:00.000-07:00

The Colbert Report

Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Bart Ehrman

colbertnation.com

Colbert Report Full Episodes

Political Humor

NASA Name Contest

Note: I had never heard the specific claim that Ehrman makes here, that Jesus makes no claims of divinity in Matthew, Mark, or Luke - only in John. Hmmm... So, as Colbert points out, all of the Gospels mention the crucifixion, right? So in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, if Jesus didn't claim to be God, what exactly are the Pharisees so mad about in their versions of the story? If He was just a guy who went around telling everybody to love one another, as I assume Ehrman thinks, why did the Pharisees want to kill him? This just doesn't ring true, even for an amateur like me.

Note 2: The I am di- vine, you are the branches joke was the worst thing ever.

The Heart of the Gospel - Part 2

2009-04-10T08:13:00.001-07:00

I have been reading D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones's book The Cross this morning and came across a paragraph that is another powerful answer to the problem raised by the woman in the Dallas Morning News article I mentioned in this post who converted to Islam because she never understood why Jesus had to die on the cross. "I mean, they're my sins," she said.

...Why can God not forgive this, why does the love of God not forgive a man who says he is sorry and who repents? That question, also, is answered in the Bible, and this is why the Son of God died. God, unlike us, is light, and in him is no darkness at all. God is just, God is holy. God is righteous. Of course, that means nothing to us. How can we think of holiness? We, ugly, foul, vile, sinful creatures. No, we do not understand the righteousness of God. That is why modern man does not believe in the blood of the cross. He does not know what righteousness is. He does not know what justice is or what law is. He does not believe in discipline, and his world is becoming a hell for that reason. But God is righteous, he is the law giver, he is holy, he is of so pure a countenance that he cannot even look upon sin; and God cannot pretend that he has not seen it. God sees sin. He sees everything. He must punish sin. His own holy nature insists upon it and he has told us abundantly that he is going to do so. So here is the problem. Man is a guilty sinner, God is a holy God. How can the two be brought together? The answer is the cross of Christ.

The Day of Atonement

2009-04-10T03:48:00.000-07:00

To put it lightly, parts of this are not pleasant to hear, but I encourage you to listen to reflect on what we are commemorating today. To download the audio only use this link.

The Triumph of the Cross

2009-04-10T03:34:00.000-07:00

But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world. - Galatians 6:14

The Christian church, very rightly, has always referred to the day on which our Lord's death is commemorated as Good Friday. I remember a man coming to me once who said 'You know, I cannot understand why you call this Good Friday.' And when I asked what we should call it, he said, 'You should call it Bad Friday. It was the day on which that terrible thing happened. Why do you call it Good Friday?' And thereby of course the poor man revealed to me that he had never really understood the meaning of the cross. He had never understood what happened there. A man who objects to calling it 'Good Friday' is one who is admitting that he has never gloried in the cross. It is Good Friday because of the wonderful thing that happened there. It is a good Friday because it was the Friday on which the Son of God did that without which none of us could ever be saved. Without that, none of us could ever come to a knowledge of God.

Now, that is just another way of saying that we glory in it, in Good Friday, the best day that has ever happened in the history of the human race. I realize that the moment I say that, I am testing the view of everybody who is at this moment considering these words on the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. If you do not end by seeing that it was good, glorious, wonderful, the best thing that has ever happened anywhere, you are misunderstanding it, and you are misinterpreting it. But the Apostle glories in it.

D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, The Cross

Spiritual Formation vs. Works Righteousness

2009-04-09T04:23:00.000-07:00

Since nobody ever leaves comments on my blog I thought I'd put something provocative out there to see if I could generate some comments. I ran across this quote that I've been chewing on for the last couple of days. What do you think? (It comes from this article by Richard Foster).

Still others have a practical theology that will not allow for spiritual growth. Indeed, they just might see it as a bad thing. Having been saved by grace, these people have become paralyzed by it. To attempt any progress in the spiritual life smacks of "works righteousness" to them. Their liturgies tell them they sin in word, thought, and deed daily, so they conclude that this is their fate until they die. Heaven is their only release from this world of sin and rebellion. Hence, these well-meaning folks will sit in their pews year after year without realizing any movement forward in their life with God....People may genuinely want to be good, but seldom are they prepared to do what it takes to produce the inward life of goodness that can form the soul.

God Himself Will Provide a Lamb

2009-04-05T20:44:00.001-07:00

This is an excerpt from my kids' The Big Book of Questions & Answers About Jesus by Sinclair Ferguson that I thought was good and worth sharing.

(From 24. Why did Jesus have to die?)

Abraham and Isaac went on their own up the mountain. Abraham was old, and found it difficult to climb. Isaac carried all the things they needed. He had told Isaac that they were going to the top of the mountain to offer a sacrifice to God. But Abraham hadn't told Isaac what the sacrifice was going to be.

Isaac was carrying wood, and something to light the sacrificial fire with. Isaac was also carrying a big knife. They would need a big knife to kill the animal for the sacrifice. But there was something missing. Isaac was puzzled. 'Father?' said Isaac. 'Yes, Isaac?' Abraham replied. 'Father, we have got the wood, and we can light a fire. I have the knife. But where is the lamb for the sacrifice?'

Can you imagine how Abraham must have felt? What could he say? Suddenly he thought of someting that was true--but meant he could still keep the terrible secret from Isaac. 'God himself will provide a lamb,' he replied.

When they reached the top, Abraham must have explained what was going to happen. He tied Isaac up on top of the wood. Isaac must have been willing to die. He was far stronger than his father Abraham. He could have stopped him. Abraham held the knife in his hand. He lifted it up slowly, because he was going to sacrifice his own son. Suddenly God's angel stopped him! Abraham looked round. He saw a ram in the bushes. Abraham untied Isaac, and he sacrificed the ram instead. God wanted to teach Abraham and all the people after him a very important lesson about Jesus. It was this:

We have all done wrong things and sinned against God. We all deserve to die for our sins. But God promised that he would provide the sacrifice that would take our place.

Abraham's words were true, after all. Eventually God did provide a lamb that would be sacrificed instead of us. Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away our sins. That is why Jesus had to die.

The Heart of the Gospel

2009-04-04T07:57:00.001-07:00

Note: This blog is meant to be a blog about both the City of Man and the City of God, and I have admittedly be too preoccupied with the former and not enough with the latter lately. So while I'm a little late I'm going to take a Lenten politics fast until Easter.

Several years ago my pastor mentioned a story in the Dallas Morning News Religion section about a woman who had converted from Christianity to Islam. The story does not seem to be in the Dallas Morning News any longer but I did find a copy of it here on this (rather poorly formatted) Muslim website. Here's a chunk of it:

As a child, Jennifer Harrell attended church and Sunday school. In high school, she was on the drill team and dated a football player. After college, she became a Methodist youth minister. At age 23, she became a single parent. At age 26, she became a Muslim.

"I grew up in Plano doing all the things I thought I was supposed to do," said Ms. Harrell, 29, of Dallas. "I went to church. I went to parties. But I wasn't concerned about heaven or hell. I took it all for granted."

Eventually, she took a job in sales, where she was introduced to Islam by Muslim co-workers. One of them loved to debate religion, which stirred Ms. Harrell to rethink her Christian faith. She studied the Bible, but also Islam in order to do a better job of defending her faith. Instead, she became intrigued that Muslims prayed five times a day, fasted and gave alms as a way of life. "I wasn't the type of Christian who prayed every morning," she said.

She said Muslim beliefs about Jesus made more sense to her because they revere him as a prophet and not God's son. "When I was a Christian, I never understood why Jesus had to die for my sins," Ms. Harrell said. "I mean, they're my sins."

The website seems to have this story as an example of why Islam makes more sense than Christianity, but my pastor's point was that this shows a basic, and all too common, lack of understanding of the gospel. I have to admit that before my pastor mentioned this, I probably wouldn't have been able to give a real strong answer to her question.

The answer is this: Sending Jesus to the cross was the only way God could save us without compromising with sin. God in his perfect justice could not simply tell us "Oh, don't worry about it, I forgive your sins". His perfect justice had to be satisfied, and a divine shrug of the shoulders would not have been sufficient. Yet, in His perfect love, He was willing to make the ultimate sacrifice to pay the price our sin demanded. So he sent Jesus to die in our place.

More concisely, D.A. Carson puts it like this in The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God.

Do you wish to see God's love? Look at the cross. Do you wish to see God's wrath? Look at the cross.

In his essay "The Heart of the Gospel", J.I. Packer puts it this way:

...justice has been done, for the sins of all that will ever be pardoned were judged and punished in the person of God the Son, and it is on this basis that pardon is now offered to us offenders. Redeeming love and retributive justice joined hands, so to speak, at Calvary, for there God showed himself to be "just, and the justifier of him that hath faith in Jesus."

Do you understand this? If you do, you are now seeing to the very heart of the Christian gospel. No version of that message goes deeper than that which declares man's root problem before God to be his sin, which evokes wrath, and God's basic provision for man to be propitiation, which out of wrath brings peace. Some versions of the gospel, indeed, are open to blame because they never get down to this level.

We have all heard the gospel presented as God's triumphant answer to human problems -- problems of our relation with ourselves and our fellow humans and our environment. Well, there is no doubt that the gospel does bring us solutions to these problems, but it does so by first solving a deeper problem -- the deepest of all human problems, the problem of man's relation with his Maker. And unless we make it plain that the solution of these former problems depends on the settling of this latter one, we are misrepresenting the message and becoming false witnesses of God--for a half-truth presented as if it were the whole truth becomes something of a falsehood by that very fact. No reader of the New Testament can miss the fact that it knows all about our human problems--fear, moral cowardice, illness of body and mind, loneliness, insecurity, hopelessness, despair, cruelty, abuse of power, and the rest--but equally no reader of the New Testament can miss the fact that it resolves all these problems, one way or another, into the fundamental problem of sin against God.

I wish somebody had told Jennifer Harrell this. So yes, they are our sins. But thank God He didn't leave it to us to pay for them!

Keynesianism

2009-04-02T18:51:00.001-07:00

I think Jonah's on to something....

2009-03-27T12:35:00.000-07:00

Earlier I read this paragraph from the introduction to Jonah Goldberg's book Liberal Facism.

...it is my argument that American liberalism is a totalitarian political religion, but not necessarily an Orwellian one. It is nice, not brutal. Nannying, not bullying. But it is definitely totalitarian--or "holistic," if you prefer--in that liberalism today sees no realm of human life that is beyond political significance, from what you eat to what you smoke to what you say. Sex is political. Food is political. Sports, entertainment, your inner motives and outer appearance, all have political salience for liberal fascists.

Later I read this story about California considering banning black cars. Yeah, I'd say anyone who considers the color of the car one drives to be political, that person has a fairly "holistic" view of politics.

Interestingly that same paragraph continues:

Liberals place their faith in priestly experts who know better, who plan, exhort, badger, and scold. They try to use science to discredit traditional notions of religion and faith, but they speak the language of pluralism and spirituality to defend "nontraditional" beliefs. Just as with classical fascism, liberal fascists speak of a "Third Way" between right and left where all good things go together and all hard choices are "false choices".

When I read that part I couldn't help but think back to the speech Barack Obama made when he issued the stem cell research executive order:

In recent years, when it comes to stem cell research, rather than furthering discovery, our government has forced what I believe is a false choice between sound science and moral values.

Just like Jonah Goldberg said, it's not a hard choice, a choice between competing goods where we have to carefully think through the moral implications. Rather, it's a "false choice".

NOTE: I really don't like the title of this book, but do like what I have seen so far of the contents of the book. I wanted to point out that Goldberg goes to great lengths to detach the link between the "brutal" aspects of what we think of when we use the word "fascist" (eugenics, racism, and mass murder). Here is Goldberg's definition of fascism:

Fascism is a religion of the state. It assumes the organic unity of the body politic and longs for a national leader attuned to the will of the people. It is totalitarian in that it views everything as political and holds that any action by the state is justified to achieve the common good. It takes responsibility for all aspects of life, including our health and well-being, and seeks to impose uniformity of thought and action, whether by force or through regulation and social pressure. Everything, including the economy and religion, must be aligned with its objectives. Any rival identity is part of the "problem" and therefore defined as the enemy. I will argue that contemporary American liberalism embodies all of these aspects of fascism.

So while he has intentionally chosen a rather inflammatory title, he quickly attempts to diffuse it in the intro. His point seems to be that we (especially liberals) throw around the word "fascist" very loosely in this country, and that while there is no single agreed upon meaning of the word, it does mean something other than "what liberals don't like". And what it means actually is largely embraced by the liberal side of the American political spectrum, rather than by the conservatives which are the ones frequently accused of fascism. It should be an interesting read - although judging by the thickness I can see that I'll probably only have time to skim it before it's due back at the library (I read pretty slowly).

Reducing Abortion for Real

2009-03-26T14:58:00.001-07:00

Good editorial in Christianity Today.

"If funding welfare would reduce abortion, we'd support it," says Clarke Forsythe, senior counsel at Americans United for Life. But the data show that welfare benefits have little impact on abortion rates. Even establishing a link between increased contraception use and reduced abortion rates is difficult.

If Congress and the White House really want to reduce the abortion rate, we will welcome their suggestions. So far, their specific proposals are doing the exact opposite.

An Open Letter to President Obama’s Pro-Life Supporters

2009-03-24T08:44:00.000-07:00

The little ticker on the right under the heading "Moral Accountability" has a letter signed by several pro-life college professors that I think is a must read. Here's an excerpt:

Even if one supposes that Barack Obama’s policies will result in fewer abortions despite relaxed legal restrictions, the number of human lives saved-even on the most optimistic reading-will be offset by the lives taken as a result of what President Obama did. This misguided and profoundly unjust policy alone wipes out any case for regarding Barack Obama’s election as a boon to the cause of defending nascent human life. And if Senator Obama’s campaign promises to the abortion lobby are to be believed, this may be only the beginning.

We know how deeply disappointed truly pro-life Obama supporters must be by the radicalism of the President’s decision. Democrats for Life (DFL), to its credit, has forcefully condemned the decision, making no secret of feeling betrayed by a president that it had gone the extra mile to work with in an effort to find “common ground.” A few days after the decision was announced, prominent Obama supporter Dr. David Gushee, a distinguished Evangelical theologian, publicly rebuked the President for “a series of disappointingly typical Democratic abortion-related moves.” We hope that you, too, will speak out against what can only be described as a moral atrocity against the weakest and most vulnerable of our brothers and sisters. On this, pro-lifers like you who supported Obama can find common ground with pro-lifers like us who found his denial of the full and equal dignity of unborn members of the human family to be disqualifying. Let us speak out with one voice against this grave and shocking injustice.

Best regards,

Robert P. George, Princeton University
Hadley Arkes, Amherst College
Francis Beckwith, Baylor University
Gerard V. Bradley, University of Notre Dame
Robert Lowry Clinton, Southern Illinois University
Teresa Collett, University of St. Thomas School of Law
Anthony Esolen, Providence College
Matthew Franck, Radford University
John Breen, Loyola University of Chicago
Patrick Lee, Franciscan University of Steubenville
Michael New, University of Alabama
Michael Paulsen, University of St. Thomas
Peter Ryan, S.J., Mount Saint Mary’s University
Ronald Rychlak, University of Mississippi
Michael Scaperlanda, University of Oklahoma College of Law
Colleen Sheehan, Villanova University
Gregory Sisk, University of St. Thomas School of Law
James Stoner, Louisiana State University
Christopher Tollefsen, University of South Carolina
Micah Watson, Union University
John Wauck, Pontifical University of the Holy Cross

I argued during the election cycle that Obama's especially radical record was more relevant to how he would actually govern than his centrist campaign rhetoric regarding this issue, and sadly, I was apparently right.

Read the whole thing here.

Draining Life from Life: The Problem of the European Model

2009-03-23T21:11:00.000-07:00

Charles Murray was recently awarded the Irving Kristol Award by the American Enterprise Institute. The following is excerpted from the speech he gave when he accepted that award. The speech is a really great analysis of where America is headed and why we should fight it. Here are some excerpts:

To become a source of deep satisfaction, a human activity has to meet some stringent requirements. It has to have been important (we don’t get deep satisfaction from trivial things). You have to have put a lot of effort into it (hence the cliché “nothing worth having comes easily”). And you have to have been responsible for the consequences.

There aren’t many activities in life that can satisfy those three requirements. Having been a good parent? That qualifies. A good marriage? That qualifies. Having been a good neighbor and good friend to those whose lives intersected with yours? That qualifies. And having been really good at something—good at something that drew the most from your abilities? That qualifies. Let me put it formally: If we ask what are the institutions through which human beings achieve deep satisfactions in life, the answer is that there are just four: family, community, vocation, and faith.
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Put aside all the sophisticated ways of conceptualizing governmental functions and think of it in this simplistic way: Almost anything that government does in social policy can be characterized as taking some of the trouble out of things. Sometimes, taking the trouble out of things is a good idea. Having an effective police force takes some of the trouble out of walking home safely at night, and I’m glad it does.

The problem is this: Every time the government takes some of the trouble out of performing the functions of family, community, vocation, and faith, it also strips those institutions of some of their vitality—it drains some of the life from them. It’s inevitable. Families are not vital because the day-to-day tasks of raising children and being a good spouse are so much fun, but because the family has responsibility for doing important things that won’t get done unless the family does them. Communities are not vital because it’s so much fun to respond to our neighbors’ needs, but because the community has the responsibility for doing important things that won’t get done unless the community does them. Once that imperative has been met—family and community really do have the action—then an elaborate web of social norms, expectations, rewards, and punishments evolves over time that supports families and communities in performing their functions. When the government says it will take some of the trouble out of doing the things that families and communities evolved to do, it inevitably takes some of the action away from families and communities, and the web frays, and eventually disintegrates.
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I have been making a number of claims with no data. The data exist. I could document the role of the welfare state in destroying the family in low-income communities. I could cite extensive quantitative evidence of decline in civic engagement and document the displacement effect that government intervention has had on civic engagement. But such evidence focuses on those near the bottom of society where the American welfare state has been most intrusive. If we want to know where America as a whole is headed—its destination—we should look to Europe.

Drive through rural Sweden, as I did a few years ago. In every town was a beautiful Lutheran church, freshly painted, on meticulously tended grounds, all subsidized by the Swedish government. And the churches are empty. Including on Sundays. Scandinavia and Western Europe pride themselves on their “child-friendly” policies, providing generous child allowances, free day-care centers, and long maternity leaves. Those same countries have fertility rates far below replacement and plunging marriage rates. Those same countries are ones in which jobs are most carefully protected by government regulation and mandated benefits are most lavish. And they, with only a few exceptions, are countries where work is most often seen as a necessary evil, least often seen as a vocation, and where the proportions of people who say they love their jobs are the lowest.
What’s happening? Call it the Europe syndrome. Last April I had occasion to speak in Zurich, where I made some of these same points. After the speech, a few of the twenty-something members of the audience approached and said plainly that the phrase “a life well-lived” did not have meaning for them. They were having a great time with their current sex partner and new BMW and the vacation home in Majorca, and saw no voids in their lives that needed filling.

It was fascinating to hear it said to my face, but not surprising. It conformed to both journalistic and scholarly accounts of a spreading European mentality. Let me emphasize “spreading.” I’m not talking about all Europeans, by any means. That mentality goes something like this: Human beings are a collection of chemicals that activate and, after a period of time, deactivate. The purpose of life is to while away the intervening time as pleasantly as possible.
If that’s the purpose of life, then work is not a vocation, but something that interferes with the higher good of leisure. If that’s the purpose of life, why have a child, when children are so much trouble—and, after all, what good are they, really? If that’s the purpose of life, why spend it worrying about neighbors? If that’s the purpose of life, what could possibly be the attraction of a religion that says otherwise?

It's long but worth it. Read the whole essay here.

"...morally unserious in the extreme"

2009-03-13T21:16:00.000-07:00

Charles Krauthammer has a brilliant analysis of President Obama's address before signing the embryonic stem cell executive order. Note that Krauthammer is a Harvard Medical School-educated physician, is paralyzed from the waist down, and a supporter of embryonic stem cell research (with limits).

...I am not religious. I do not believe that personhood is conferred upon conception. But I also do not believe that a human embryo is the moral equivalent of a hangnail and deserves no more respect than an appendix. Moreover, given the protean power of embryonic manipulation, the temptation it presents to science, and the well-recorded human propensity for evil even in the pursuit of good, lines must be drawn. I suggested the bright line prohibiting the deliberate creation of human embryos solely for the instrumental purpose of research -- a clear violation of the categorical imperative not to make a human life (even if only a potential human life) a means rather than an end.

On this, Obama has nothing to say. He leaves it entirely to the scientists. This is more than moral abdication. It is acquiescence to the mystique of "science" and its inherent moral benevolence. How anyone as sophisticated as Obama can believe this within living memory of Mengele and Tuskegee and the fake (and coercive) South Korean stem cell research is hard to fathom.

That part of the ceremony, watched from the safe distance of my office, made me uneasy. The other part -- the ostentatious issuance of a memorandum on "restoring scientific integrity to government decision-making" -- would have made me walk out.

Restoring? The implication, of course, is that while Obama is guided solely by science, Bush was driven by dogma, ideology and politics.

What an outrage. Bush's nationally televised stem cell speech was the most morally serious address on medical ethics ever given by an American president. It was so scrupulous in presenting the best case for both his view and the contrary view that until the last few minutes, the listener had no idea where Bush would come out.

Obama's address was morally unserious in the extreme. It was populated, as his didactic discourses always are, with a forest of straw men. Such as his admonition that we must resist the "false choice between sound science and moral values." Yet, exactly 2 minutes and 12 seconds later he went on to declare that he would never open the door to the "use of cloning for human reproduction."

Does he not think that a cloned human would be of extraordinary scientific interest? And yet he banned it.

Is he so obtuse not to see that he had just made a choice of ethics over science?...

Obama did not even pretend to make the case why some practices are morally permissible and others not.

This is not just intellectual laziness. It is the moral arrogance of a man who continuously dismisses his critics as ideological while he is guided exclusively by pragmatism (in economics, social policy, foreign policy) and science in medical ethics.

Science has everything to say about what is possible. Science has nothing to say about what is permissible. Obama's pretense that he will "restore science to its rightful place" and make science, not ideology, dispositive in moral debates is yet more rhetorical sleight of hand -- this time to abdicate decision-making and color his own ideological preferences as authentically "scientific."

Hooray for Science!!

2009-03-09T20:19:00.000-07:00

As we all know, President Barack Obama issued an Executive Order today "lifting the ban" on federal funding for embryonic research. Before doing so he made these remarks:

Promoting science isn’t just about providing resources — it’s also about protecting free and open inquiry. It’s about letting scientists like those who are here today do their jobs, free from manipulation or coercion, and listening to what they tell us, even when it’s inconvenient — especially when it’s inconvenient. It is about ensuring that scientific data is never distorted or concealed to serve a political agenda — and that we make scientific decisions based on facts, not ideology.

A few things I want to make note of:

I put "lifting the ban" above in quotes because the fact is that there was never such a ban. In fact Bush was the first president to approve funding of embryonic stem cells, but did so with the compromise that only the existing lines of embryonic stem cells could be used but further lines of stem cells could not be harvested for research.
President Obama in his comments seemed to be suggesting that he has the morally neutral position, while those of us who have ethical concerns about this type of research are the only ones bringing an ideology to the discussion. Does anybody buy that? Should science be allowed to do whatever it can do without any concern for whether it is moral? And even if your answer to that question is "Yes", do you honestly think that position is morally neutral?
The most galling part of this executive order is that "lifting the ban" on embryonic stem cell research is not the only thing that this executive order did. Tucked way down in Section 5(b) of the executive order is the revocation of a Bush executive order which funded research and production of induced Pluripotent Stem Cells, which is basically a recently developed method for producing the biological equivalent of embryonic stem cells using adult tissue. So while President Obama is saying "Yay us! We're the smart ones who care about science!...unlike that neanderthal religious nut Bush" he's actually pulling the plug on funding some very new, cutting edge, and promising scientific research which seems to have every potential benefit of embryonic stem cell research without the ethical concerns, and where great strides are still being made. Research that was funded by the aforementioned anti-science religious nut. Is that pro-science? Why would he do this? I honestly don't get it. By my count this is pretty much the first thing Obama has been unwilling to force the taxpayers to pay for.

An Open Letter to William Lobdell

2009-03-01T08:30:00.000-08:00

Last Thursday, radio host Hugh Hewitt interviewed William Lobdell, former religion reporter for the Los Angeles Times and author of the new book Losing My Religion: How I Lost My Faith Reporting on Religion in America-and Found Unexpected Peace. What made this interview particularly interesting is that Lobdell is also Hewitt's best friend. Hugh Hewitt is a Christian and had played an instrumental role in leading William Lobdell to Christ in the first place. Hugh Hewitt is encouraging people to email his friend directly and offer any support/advice they can give him. I thought it might make an interesting blog post, so here it is. (I'm also sending it to him - I'm not under the delusion that he reads this blog :-) If you want to listen to the interview, you can get the audio here (Part 1) (Part 2).

Dear Mr. Lobdell,

I'm an evangelical Christian layperson (software engineer) in my early thirties, husband and father of 3 boys (will be 4 any day now). I listened with great interest to the interview you gave Hugh Hewitt last Thursday. I especially appreciated the civility of the debate on the part of both yourself and Hugh. The depth of your friendship is clear, and it is also clear that you are not a belligerent atheist but just a guy who is being honest. I look forward to reading your book.

Hugh encouraged people to offer you our thoughts and encouragement, so here are mine. I am not so arrogant to believe I have magic words that can make you change your mind immediately, but I thought that maybe I could offer something that could be helpful. So in no particular order here are some thoughts I had after reflecting on the interview for awhile. I hope you find something helpful in here, and I hope none of it comes across as snarky. That's not my intention.

I was interested in the fact that you said that you started at a "seeker sensitive megachurch", and then went to a Presbyterian church seeking more depth, and then went on to a Catholic church seeking even more depth, tradition, etc. Your first jump makes total sense to me. I can see a seeker sensitive church being a good place to start on your faith journey, and I can also completely understand eventually finding that rather shallow. Your jump from a very traditional Presbyterian church to a Catholic church is interesting, and I was not able to identify with your reasoning. I think you said that your move to the Catholic church was motivated by your love of the tradition and the fact that it's a "big tent". What interested to me was that one reason that you didn't mention as a motivation for your move to the Catholic church, which for me would be the only motivation for such a move, was any sense of a realization that the Catholic church's theology was more true than the theology of your current church. To me it seems that the theology of the Catholic church is significantly different from a Presbyterian church (in a way that is not true of your jump from the evangelical megachurch to the Presbyterian church), so I can't identify with being able to seamlessly move between the two because of preferences regarding practice. This is not a slam on the Catholic church - I would expect that a Catholic theologian would agree that the differences between protestant theology and Catholic theology are pretty much irreconcilably different. Martin Luther certainly thought so as did the Church leadership who wanted to kill him for his statements. I would love to understand your thinking better on this point. Perhaps you go into more detail on this in your book.

From what I can gather without having read your book but having listened to the interview, the main thrust of your book is that as a religion reporter, after covering the many scandals in the church, you could no longer believe that what the church teaches is true. I can identify with a "crisis of faith" that occurs when the leadership in your church turns out to have huge moral failings. I experienced this a few years ago ....

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(Details emailed directly to William Lobdell intentionally left out of the "public" version for the sake of propriety)
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But what I keep going back to is that when it comes right down to it, this was a man's moral failure, not God's. In fact isn't this the central point of Christianity?...that, try as we might, we are are sinners and that is why we need a Savior.

One of your major issues was that there is no evidence that prayer "works". When I was telling my wife about the interview we started talking about this one. Prayer is a very complex topic which I won't claim to have a real good handle on. Can we really change God's mind about something? Do our prayers actually affect the outcome of things? There are scriptures that seem to suggest so (James 4:2, Mark 11:24, etc). But isn't God sovereign, meaning that we can't really change His mind on anything? In the end I don't really think prayer is something that "works" or "doesn't work". It's not a formula which, if performed correctly, can get God to do the thing that we want Him to do. If that were the case there would be a sense in which Jesus' prayer in the garden did not "work" when He asked the Father to "take this cup" from Him (Mark 14:36). I think the end of Jesus' prayer is the key to understanding prayer: "Yet not what I will, but what you will". Jesus understood that, sometimes we don't. As Tim Keller, pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City, who is my yoda on such things, there's always a "safety valve" on our prayers. God is not always going to give us what we think is best at the time we pray, when the thing we are praying for does not line up with God's ultimate plan. We don't have the wisdom to always pray for the right things. In a sense it's comforting to know that our prayers are not so powerful that we can really mess things up if we pray for what doesn't end up being the best thing. I find this short Tim Keller mp3 helpful on this topic. I haven't read most of these recommended resources but given the source I would expect these to be helpful as well.

Bottom line: Prayer is too complicated to be measured scientifically to determine whether it "worked". The power in prayer is the One to whom we pray, not the prayer itself. Thankfully He has not given us the level of control that we think we want.

During your interview somebody with a story similar to yours called and said that his former Christian friends acted in an unimpressive way when they heard he was walking away from the faith, and you agreed. Hugh disagreed that Christians in general act that way. I would just like to say that I am unfortunately not too surprised that you experienced this. I am frequently embarassed by some of the things that tactless Christians will say and do in these situations. But I would like to point out that in any organization that exists because the members adhere to a set of common beliefs, there is going to be some resistance and possibly some emotional rejection of those who walk away from those beliefs. It's unfathomable to me that if you were the member of the vegan society and then decided to eat meat, or if you were a member of a church of atheism and then changed to theism, you would not have some emotional resistance from those who remain faithful (ask Antony Flew). This is not an excuse but I think it puts it in some context. Christians aren't necessarily different in this regard, although we should be.

For what it's worth, I would suggest a couple of things. When in times of doubt, when I'm not really "feeling" closeness in my relationship with God, I tend to remind myself of the "data" of God. You mentioned that Lee Strobel's books don't seem to really hold together for you now like they did before, but here are a couple of other resources that you might find helpful.

Richard Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses and Craig Blomberg’s The Historical Reliability of the Gospels present similar evidence, the former being a more academic and difficult read and the latter being written more at the popular level.

If you've never read CS Lewis's Mere Christianity I think you should (but I bet you already have). Also his collection of essays God in the Dock is very good.

Last but not least I would suggest Tim Keller's The Reason for God which is a great response to some of the philosophical objections to Christianity. It makes many interesting points, including the point that doubts are really an alternative set of beliefs. Keller's sermon Who Is Jesus? is also very good.

Also, if you've never read CS Lewis's Screwtape Letters you might find it helpful in dealing with the moral failure of some of the church leadership you have reported on. I remember the day the announcement came about my pastor, I immediately pulled out my copy of that and reread it. It helped me to reflect on how cunning Satan can be. If there really is a Satan, it makes sense that he would prey on the influential leadership of the church.

One final suggestion: I think it would be really cool if you could use another R.E.M. song title for the title of the book you write after you come back to the faith. Shiny Happy People? Near Wild Heaven? Think about it :-)

Thanks for reading,
Barry

Marvin Olasky on Being the Third Brother

2009-02-19T11:33:00.000-08:00

This is an interesting article by Marvin Olasky.

Sidebar: The Tim Keller book he refers to is excellent (as is all Tim Keller stuff).

Not an Ann Fan

2009-02-15T18:55:00.001-08:00

Pat Buchanan is largely considered an anti-semite, and as far as I can tell, deservedly so. What is interesting is that it was conservative intellectual William F. Buckley, to his great credit, who first made this charge. Buckley was a man who believed the truth is more important than what helps one's side politically. In the long run, the credibility one gains by self-policing does help his movement.

In light of this, I have long wondered why serious conservative thinkers stomach Ann Coulter's venom. I don't think she does the conservative movement any favors. I think it would behoove those of us who would like to promote conservative ideas to distance ourselves from the one who seems to embody every negative conservative stereotype that we would like to be able to claim is "unfair". As long as our political opponents are able to say "But what about Ann Coulter?" our claims that conservatives are not heartless racists will fall on deaf ears, even though our claims are true in general. Here's her rap sheet - at least as I'm aware (I'm sure there are many more but these are the incidents that have caught my notice and have caused me to cringe over the years).

1) The Incident With National Review right after 9/11:

When 9/11 happened and flights were grounded, the editor of National Review online was traveling and of course was unable to get home. Things were apparently sort of chaotic at the magazine, as they were everywhere, National Review published a barely coherent column written by Ann Coulter that shouldn't have been published and probably wouldn't have been had the editors been working at full power where she ranted that "We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity." Later, National Review refused to publish a follow-up column by Ann Coulter which was apparently even less coherent and was something that NR's editors thought would embarass not only the magazine but also Ann Coulter. In response Ann Coulter went on the TV news show circuit and claimed that she was being censored, that they were only paying her $5 per week, etc. You can read Jonah Goldberg's summary of it here.

If credibility is important to getting a message out, and it is, then doesn't it make sense that a liar is not someone you want to be seen as a mouthpiece for your message?

2) In November 2003, Coulter wrote a column criticizing John Edwards for using the incident of her son's death for political gain in the following tasteless way:

"If you want points for not using your son's death politically, don't you have to take down all those "Ask me about my son's death in a horrific car accident" bumper stickers? "

Then when confronted by Elizabeth Edwards on Hardball about how hurtful that was, she claimed it was a lie.

So now we're up to liar, hateful and then lying about her hatefulness.

3) This one is more minor but irksome as well. When John McCain won the Republican nomination she claimed that she was going to campaign for Hillary Clinton. Of course she had no plans of doing that.

4) Most recently, apparently in Ann Coulter's most recent book Guilty, she defends a group called the Council of Conservative Citizens, which is apparently an openly white supremacist group.

Each of these is beyond the pale. I'm not sure why conservatives, including ones that couldn't be further from this kind of rhetoric in their own writings and radio shows (like my favorite, Dennis Prager, for instance) will actually have her on their shows and talk with her as though she is a credible source. She's definitely smart and makes several good points, but I can't get past her negatives and I don't understand why all conservatives don't feel the same. She's a liar, possibly a racist, and completely tactless. We need a William F. Buckley to stand up and say so.

Lesson from History

2009-02-11T06:17:00.001-08:00

"There have been criticisms from a bunch of different directions about this bill, so let me just address a few of them. Some of the criticisms really are with the basic idea that government should intervene at all in this moment of crisis. Now, you have some people, very sincere, who philosophically just think the government has no business interfering in the marketplace. And in fact there are several who've suggested that FDR was wrong to intervene back in the New Deal. They're fighting battles that I thought were resolved a pretty long time ago. " -- Barack Obama, February 9th, 2009

I think it's actually rather disingenuous for the president to say that those opposing the bill in congress and the senate are against "intervening at all". Later in the press conference Obama said that his tone had been consistently civil. I don't think there is anything "civil" about misrepresenting your opponents' position. Republicans in congress would like an alternative approach based on growing the economy rather than trying to spend ourselves into properity. I agree with them. I cite as evidence the following:

"We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. And I have just one interest, and if I am wrong ... somebody else can have my job. I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get a job. I want to see people get enough to eat. We have never made good on our promises ... I say after eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started ... And an enormous debt to boot!" -- Henry Morganthau, Secretary of the Treasury in the FDR Administration, May 1939

And this:

This column from back in December by Charles Krauthammer is already proving to have been prophetic. Note that he wrote this during the time when most conservatives like myself were breathing a little sigh of relief because we were happy to see the cabinet appointments President-elect Obama was making.

"The deepening recession creates the opportunity for federal intervention and government experimentation on a scale unseen since the New Deal. A Republican administration has already done the ideological groundwork with its unprecedented intervention, culminating in the forced partial nationalization of nine of the largest banks, the kind of stuff that happens in Peronist Argentina with a gun on the table. Additionally, Henry Paulson's invention of the number $700 billion forever altered our perception of imaginable government expenditure. Twenty billion more for Citigroup? Lunch money. "

Sorry kids, it looks like my generation is punting this problem to yours. Here's a tip: If a presidential candidate runs on a platform of "change" without really explaining what that change is, vote for the other candidate.

More About Exclusivity

2009-01-30T18:41:00.000-08:00

I finally remembered where to find the Tim Keller recording I mentioned here. It was part of a sermon series that Keller preached at his church in NYC which you can download here. By the way the sermon series was based on his excellent book, The Reason for God which is a really great read.

You can also listen to the sermon here...

...and watch this video of a similar talk he gave for the Veritas forum at UC Berkeley.

The rest of the sermons in that series are also very good. You can download them all for free here

Our Struggle for the Soul of our Nation

2009-01-22T07:58:00.001-08:00

Today is the 36th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision. I read on one news site that the decision "legalized abortion". That's not entirely accurate, as abortion was already legal in some states before the decision. Rather, it invalidated any law any state had against a first trimester abortion. I really believe that if more people were aware of that distinction there would be considerably less support for Roe v. Wade today. Overturning that decision would give the decision back to the states, it wouldn't "illegalize" abortion.

Read the following by Robert P. George - one of my favorite thinkers on the topic of abortion.

On this score, we have a marvelous model in the great anti-slavery crusader William Wilberforce. When he began his work against the monstrous evil of chattel slavery, the odds appeared to be long against abolition. He was attacked by partisans of the slave power as a zealot, a religious fanatic, and, most perversely, an enemy of freedom. He was, they said, imposing his religious values on others. If he didn’t like slavery, well, no one was forcing him to own slaves. He should mind his own business and stay out of other people’s affairs. Less vitriolic critics said that he was unrealistic. He was a dreamer. He was making impossible demands. Does any of this sound familiar?
Wilberforce refused to be intimidated. He would allow nothing to deter him from his mission of Christian charity to free the slaves and end the practice of slavery. He was undaunted by the ridicule often heaped upon him.

Read the whole article by Robert P. George.

O God of our many understandings....

2009-01-19T10:38:00.000-08:00

This is the way Bishop Gene Robinson began his invocation at the opening inaugural event at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. While thinking about the faux-sophistication and faux-humility of religious pluralism I'm reminded of a point I recently heard Tim Keller make about the well-known metaphor of the blind men and the elephant.

Basically the metaphor goes like this: A group of blind men are exploring an elephant by touch. One feels the tail and says the elephant is like a rope and one feels the leg and says the elephant is like a tree and one feels the ear and says the elephant is like a large leaf. Each has a piece of the truth. No one of them has it all.

Tim Keller cited a point made by Lesslie Newbigin, a missionary to India (where the above illustration originates). Newbigin's point is that the person telling this story is making a very exclusive and not at all humble claim. He claims to be the one who is not blind who sees the whole elephant.

“In the famous story of the blind men and the elephant ...the real point of the story is constantly overlooked. The story is told from the point of view of the king and his courtiers, who are not blind but can see that the blind men are unable to grasp the full reality of the elephant and are only able to get hold of part of it. The story is constantly told in order to neutralize the affirmations of the great religions, to suggest that they learn humility and recognize that none of them can have more than one aspect of the truth. But of course the real point of the story is exactly the opposite. If the king were also blind there would be no story. The story is told by the king, and it is the immensely arrogant claim of one who sees the full truth which all the world’s religions are only groping after. It embodies the claim to know the full reality that relativizes all the claims of the religions.” - Lesslie Newbigin

Tim Keller summarizes it like this:

“How can you know any religion only has part of the truth unless you have the whole truth? To know others only have a part of the truth requires that you know the whole truth. The only one who knows each has part of the elephant is the one who sees the whole elephant.” - Tim Keller

So while I join Gene Robinson in praying for President Obama, I make it clear that I am praying to the only God, the God of the Bible, not the "God of our many understandings". Am I making an exclusive truth claim by doing so? Yes, but no more so than Gene Robinson. Is it arrogant? Well, it is a truth that is unfortunately sometimes wielded in an arrogant way. But in my view, to say that God is God and that I submit to the Bible, even the parts I wish weren't in there, is a more humble position than the position that says that God is who I decide He (she, it?) is.