For me, the moms’ logic was a little hard to follow. They want their daughters to be “liberated” from their traditional roles as the “objects” of men, especially in the context of sex. Their daughters have realized that if they act in a highly sexually suggestive (or even aggressive) manner, they will be the ones who are in control of the men, instead of the other way around. Moms now object because the daughters don’t aspire to be in politics or the CEO of a Fortune 500 instead of the next Paris Hilton or Snooki.
It seems that throwing off all of the traditions of western civilization (not to mention Christianity) has some unpleasant consequences, no? Indeed, relativism comes back to bite its adherents in the butt. Without anything to anchor humanity to any notion of right or wrong, proper or improper, the human being will just go right off the track. Almost like they’re depraved sinners by nature, or something.
Actually, it all reminds me of Lord of the Flies. Do they teach that anymore in schools? Probably not, because it suggests something about human nature that modernity rejects. This is just the same principle at work, but on the level of female sexuality.
If one abandons Christianity and reject its teachings about the way men and women are created to be, then to what is society to turn to define these relationships? Why is being CEO of some corporation better than being Lady Gaga? It seems to me that the kids have merely taken the sexual libertinism of their feminist moms to its logical conclusion.
I think that it’s fairly indisputable that extreme environmentalists treat their environmentalism with religious fervor. I believe that for many environmentalists it IS their religion. And, like other religions, environmentalism has its demons that need to be exorcised. Apparently, the newest demon is our air conditioning.
Yes, you see, it just sucks too much power, and is just flat-out overused - “lavishly” used. So says Stan Cox in the Washington Post. Read his whole article here. But turn off your AC first. Here’s a sample:
In a country that’s among the world’s highest greenhouse-gas emitters, air conditioning is one of the worst power-guzzlers. The energy required to air-condition American homes and retail spaces has doubled since the early 1990s. Turning buildings into refrigerators burns fossil fuels, which emits greenhouse gases, which raises global temperatures, which creates a need for — you guessed it — more air-conditioning.
A.C.’s obvious public-health benefits during severe heat waves do not justify its lavish use in everyday life for months on end.
Who the devil is Stan Cox to say whether my use of my air conditioner that I pay for with my money is lavish. Good grief. Do we still live in America or what? If I want my house at 60 degrees year-round, and I pay for it, whose business is it? Yeesh. I guess minding your own business is just passe.
But Mr. Cox goes on to daydream about what our world would be like if everyone (except “hospitals, archives, and cooling centers” - who get passes for some reason unexplained) were forced to shut off the AC. Get this:
In a world without air conditioning, a warmer, more flexible, more relaxed workplace helps make summer a time to slow down again. Three-digit temperatures prompt siestas. Code-orange days mean offices are closed. Shorter summer business hours and month-long closings — common in pre-air-conditioned America — return.
Yeah, that’s really what we need. With the recession on, what would really help is shutting down business for weeks on end and napping. But it gets better:
And with the right to open a window, office employees no longer have to carry sweaters or space heaters to work in the summer. After a long absence, ceiling fans, window fans and desk fans (and, for that matter, paperweights) take back the American office.
See, what would really bring our economy back to life is the renewed demand for paperweights!! What planet are these folks living on? But the best:
In the air-conditioned age, fear of crime was often cited by people reluctant to open their homes to night breezes. In Washington, as in most of the world’s warm cities, window grilles (not “bars,” please) are now standard.
There you go. Let’s not spend our time and money on AC or law enforcement. Bars - ooops, grilles - on the windows is way to go green.
I am not against opening the windows and catching a nice cool breeze if one’s available. And, when one is, I do that at my house. So, I’m not completely opposed to turning off the AC and enjoying the fresh air, but this is ridiculous over-sentimentalization. There’s a reason people switched from desk fans to AC. Nostalgia for simpler days is somewhat understandable. But this is so far over the top. I think that AC is one of God’s merciful gifts to those of us who live in warm climates like the south. It increases everyone’s productivity and just makes life more enjoyable.
These whacko enviros just can’t seem to enjoy the fruits of societal advancements. They must think they’ve sinned against mother earth (or Gaia, or whatever) and that sweating out 100+ degree summers is their penance.
Years after the announcement of victory in Iraq, we have finally won the country. Yesterday on NPR there was a feature on a growth industry in Iraq. It seems that cosmetic surgery is booming. One doctor interviewed said that he had performed 1,400 “nose jobs” in the past few years. There were interviews with young women who had opted for the surgery. One was on a list and when her name finally came up for the surgery, she was both afraid and excited. She said that she was glad she did it and didn’t regret it, despite the money (cosmetic surgery is not cheap there) and the pain. It sounded like an interview with a California teen.
OK, spoiler alert! Spoiler alert!! If you haven’t seen it, then stop reading now.
With that out of the way, I’ve been thinking a lot about where the Lost writers ended their series. I have come to the conclusion that it is the absolute apex of postmodern relativism. I could not possibly have created anything any more perfectly illustrative of the modern American worldview.
Here’s why I say that. The central mystery of season 6 has been what the flash-sideways were. Now we know, sort of. They were a place for the characters who have died to meet up so that they could finally bring themselves together and move on to the next place. What’s the next place? No answer. And the presence of Hurley and Ben, who were still alive on the island (Hurley even being the new Jacob)? No answer. Michael and Walt? No answer. Mr. Echo? No answer.
I had such high hopes for this show. They had raised so many themes of great literature - free will versus fate, good versus evil, redemption from past sins, the call to a life undesired, etc. Yet in the end they did nothing with it.
Consider, for example, the good versus evil theme. This was very well developed, with classic imagery: the man in black/smoke monster on the one hand and the fair haired Jacob, always dressed in white. Biblical parallels were even raised - the twins, one named Jacob, destined for his role from birth; the other (nameless) rebellious, without care for the island, and self-centered. Yet, the writers never answered the theme they raised. Jacob killed his brother (not exactly something one would expect from the symbol of goodness) and appears to have played games with those he brought to the island over the years.
The same is true with free will and fate. The strong implication was that it was Jack’s fate to be the next Jacob. However, Jacob didn’t force the issue, instead giving the last 4 candidates “something that he never had - a choice.” So which was it?
Why raise these issues and never answer them? Why invoke all the religious imagery (for crying out loud, the one who led them out of the church at the very end into the light was named Christian Shepard!) and never apply it - either to endorse or debunk? There is only one answer. And the answer is that the answer is whatever you want it to be.
It is postmodernism on steroids. There are many questions, and no definite answers - only those the viewer supplies. The afterlife is so blank (just a white light) that everyone can write his or her own beliefs onto them (heaven for the Christian - nirvana for the Hindu - nothing really for the atheist). The only thing that really seemed to matter in the end was the emotional connection between the viewer and the characters. Sawyer HAD to be reunited to Juliet, and Jack to Kate. Go search the web and read all the viewer responses about how emotionally satisfying it was. Perhaps it was that, but at the expense of being intellectually satisfying. One commenter to an article I read this morning talked about the “deeply spiritual” meaning that the critics are missing. I think that’s exactly my point. “Spiritual” described it perfectly - deep sounding but ultimately nothing but fluff.
My take is that Lost is the poster child for post-modernism. What say you all?
A couple of quick hits this morning to encapsulate what’s wrong with our education system. What’s worrysome about these three things is not so much their existence as the abject lack of any strategy by anyone in power to actually do anything about it. The only solution that those in power seem to have is to throw money at the problem, which is working out really, really well.
Putting the cap on this downer, take the time to read Victor Davis Hanson’s latest comments on our general state of education, politics, and culture. It is a scathing indictment of pious, upper-middle-class eco-yuppieism and the lazy, uneducated, entitlement-minded middle- and lower-middle-classes too. The common thread of both, though, as Prof. Hanson so accurately identifies, is that they each want something without being willing to do what it takes to get it.
Bill Cosby has defined an intellectual as someone who studies something that happens naturally. The folks who did this study, then, are definitely intellectuals:
Watching a curvaceous woman can feel like a reward in the brain of men, much as drinking alcohol or taking drugs might, research now reveals.
These new findings might help explain the preoccupation men can have toward pornography, scientists added.
I don’t think I need to add anything. Res ipsa loquitur.
Interesting kerfuffle in the commentary over Amy Bishop, the professor turned shooter in Huntsville:
“You have to talk about Amy Bishop’s mental health in this situation as one of the variables, but being denied tenure when you’re in your mid-40s at an out-of-the-way obscure rural campus in the deep South is a catastrophic loss, and people don’t understand that,” says Jack Levin, a criminologist at Northeastern University in Boston.
This is from a WSJ piece entitled “Going Postdoctoral” - a clever twist on “going postal.”
The wonderful thing about the internet, though, is that people can call out snobbery so easily. After having read an Instapundit link about this, one of Professor Reynolds’s readers emailed in the following statistics comparing Huntsville to Boston:
Boston: High school or higher: 78.9%
Huntsville: High school or higher: 85.7%
Boston: Bachelor’s degree or higher: 35.6%
Huntsville: Bachelor’s degree or higher: 36.1%
Boston: Graduate or professional degree: 15.3%
Huntsville: Graduate or professional degree: 12.7%
So Huntsville AL beats Boston in 2 out of 3 categories and isn’t far behind Boston in the third, especially when you consider all the college teachers, lawyers and doctors in Boston.
It has long astounded me how people outside the South assume that life in the South must just suck because it’s the South.
I perused a toy catalogue that came in my mail from a large chain…wondering what’s popular with kids now. No real surprises, thankfully. The usual fare. What bothered me was the “take” on boys’ toys vs. girls’ toys. The girls’ lead page … and I quote: “she already thinks she’s a princess…make it official.” The boy pages lead quote, ” gifts that inspire good behavior….toys for boys.” Now, this statement about the boy toys is certainly not true in my opinion…I mean … it’s the usual guns, games, fast cars…dinosaurs, power vehicles and power action figures…etc. They’re obviously the things boys enjoy…the major theme being power. So why the odd intro….things that help boys behave? You want your girls to feel empowered….like princesses. But the boys, well…you just want them to behave? Personally, I WANT our BOYS to feel empowered….brave….strong… warriors for all that is right. I know it’s messy, though. I raised three boys. You don’t make warriors at tea parties. Don’t get me wrong, I want boys who respect authority, know what it means to be under authority, and who learn self-control and thoughtfulness for others. What I detest, though, is our cultures’penchant to try and feminize boys….make them kind and gentle creatures who wouldn’t hurt a flea if they knew it carried the plague! So….from a Christian mom who wants boys to be boys and men to be men….I encourage you parents of boys to let them climb, push, run, jump, hunt, take some chances, get a few knocks and bruises and learn to jump up, brush off, and keep going..always protecting the fair damsels in their midst (sisters, classmates, mom, etc.) at the same time…maybe even treating them like princesses from time to time, because they have the strength, power, and right-headedness to do it.
From the information available about the Fort Hood shooter, Nadal Malik Hasan, it seems as though he was an adherent of radical, jihadist Islam. This morning, there are stories coming out that the Army may have missed (ignored?) some pretty important warning signs:
Law enforcement officials also faced questions about whether they had missed possible warning signs. Six months ago, investigators came across Internet postings, allegedly by Hasan, that indicated sympathy for suicide bombers and empathized with the plight of Muslim civilians killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a federal official briefed on the situation. The official, and another source, said investigators never confirmed whether Hasan was the author of the postings and did not pursue the matter.
The postings were among a handful of possible red flags that preceded Thursday’s rampage, in which 13 people were killed and 38 were wounded in the deadliest mass shooting on a U.S. military installation to date. Friends and acquaintances said Hasan had been increasingly agitated over the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and he reportedly said the U.S. “war on terror” was a “war on Muslims.” Officials have seized Hasan’s computer to determine his role in the blog posts and other writings.
The same article goes on to fret over whether “stress” caused Hasan to carry out his attack.
The UK Telegraph also has a story about the links between Hasan and a radical mosque where two of the 9/11 hijackers worshiped:
Hasan, the sole suspect in the massacre of 13 fellow US soldiers in Texas, attended the controversial Dar al-Hijrah mosque in Great Falls, Virginia, in 2001 at the same time as two of the September 11 terrorists, The Sunday Telegraph has learnt. His mother’s funeral was held there in May that year.
The preacher at the time was Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born Yemeni scholar who was banned from addressing a meeting in London by video link in August because he is accused of supporting attacks on British troops and backing terrorist organisations.
Hasan’s eyes “lit up” when he mentioned his deep respect for al-Awlaki’s teachings, according to a fellow Muslim officer at the Fort Hood base in Texas, the scene of Thursday’s horrific shooting spree.
This is obviously very disturbing on a lot of levels. But, add to these the AP report that he shouted “Allahu Akbar” while shooting, and NPR’s report that he gave a lecture on the Koran at what was supposed to be an academic conference, and it seems very clear from all the available evidence that this man was at least partially, if not fully, motivated by a jihadist impulse to slay the infidels. Moreover, it seems clear that there were many warning signs that went unheeded.
The question on the table, then, is whether the signs were simply missed - as depressingly familiar as that would be, or, were rather ignored out of fear of offending a Muslim. At first, I wondered which was worse - negligence or willing blindness. I think I’ve answered that question. A society can recover from missing the signs of coming attacks by the enemy. But when the powers that be see the attacks coming and choose to ignore them, I’m not sure how that society survives.
Maybe, if it wants to survive, it needs new leaders.
The timing on this could not be better. In my earlier post, Proof, I updated the career progress of Levi Johnston, the father of Sarah Palin’s grandchild. Well, as if on cue, today there is another career update: Levi is going to pose nude for the November issue of Playgirl.
You couldn’t make this stuff up.
For the record, I agree with Allahpundit that the next stop on the career path is BOUND to be porn.
I propose this as yet more proof of the depravity of mankind. It has been posited that there is no such thing as bad publicity. I think the fact that this is so demonstrably true can only reinforce our reformed view of human nature.
Today’s proof: the case of Levi Johnston. Remember him? He’s the babydaddy of Sarah Palin’s grandchild. He fathered this child while he and Bristol Palin were still in high school. They got engaged, and then after the election loss, he dumped her, and went on a tell-all spree in the media criticizing the Palins.
And what has all of this bad behavior gained him? Public scorn? Ridicule? Shame? No - an endorsement deal.
I find it maddeningly frustrating to try to read a “news article” as opposed to a commentary, and find that it is, in fact, an editorial or commentary, disguised as an article….or perhaps the lines have become so skewed the writers don’t realize the difference anymore. Here’s an example of what I’m referring to, from a Times article about President Obama”s “health-care advisor” Ezekial Emanuel.
” The attacks on Emanuel are a reminder that there is a narrow slice of Americans who not only don’t trust government, but also have come to regard it as a dark conspirator in their lives. This peculiar brand of distrust helps create the conditions for fast-moving fear-mongering, especially on complex and emotionally charged topics like the life and death of the elderly and infirm. Prairie fires of that kind are hard to douse when the Administration’s own plan for health care remains vague, weeks away from being ready for a public rollout. The health-care bill that recently passed the House does not contain, as some have suggested, any provisions that would deny treatment to the elderly, infirm or disabled…”
(o.k. it’s Time, what do I expect, right?) but…if it were just Time I guess I would overlook it…but I see it EVERYWHERE and it drives me CRAZY! I grew up thinking the news was supposed to be objective and report facts. Maybe that’s my problem to begin with…naivite. But I would love to think I could read something without the internal commentary and opinions inserted and THEN follow up by reading opinions about said news if I so choose. Here’s a link to the entire “news article” if anyone’s interested. It is just one of the grossest examples of this blended “commentary/news reporting” that is running rampant. What do they teach in those journalism schools these days?
http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20090812/us_time/08599191583500
I think many new Reformed believers misunderstand what is really behind “neo-calvinism.” Oddly enough, it’s NOT about the beer, it’s about the glory of God.
Note the contrast here on an article in the news about this week’s solar ecliipse:
Indian astrologers are predicting violence and turmoil across the world as a result of this week’s total solar eclipse, which the superstitious and religious view as a sign of potential doom
BUT...
astronomers, scientists and secularists are trying to play down claims of evil portent in connection with Wednesday’s natural spectacle, le about this week’s solar eclipse….
Get it? the superstitious AND religious on the one hand….the astronomers, scientists and secularists on the other. What’s left to say?
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090720/sc_afp/scienceastronomyeclipseasiatourismsuperstition
You know, sometimes an organization outlives its usefulness. MADD is one of those organizations. Everyone everywhere has gotten their point, agreed with them, and changed laws and enforcement practices. Rather than deeming their efforts successful and disbanding, they’ve morphed into the neo-prohibitionist ninnies that now just annoy everybody.
That includes the Flying Fish Brewing Co. of Cherry Hill, NJ. You see, they have had the temerity to name a new line of beers they’re brewing after famous exits from the New Jersey Turnpike, one of which is quite near their facility. MADD has condemned this, saying, “The combination of a roadway and advertising for any kind of a beer doesn’t make any kind of sense. This is almost a mockery.”
Oh, it’s a mockery alright.
I frequently lament the loss of logic (or, in other words, old-fashioned common sense) in American culture. This is yet another example. What on earth does the beer name have to do with driving drunk? Absolutely nothing. Does that stop MADD from making idiots of themselves? Of course not. What else do they have to do?
You knew that somebody was going to do it, so why not me?
We’ve all heard about Michael Jackson’s death. The gruesome details are really leaking out in the UK papers. It runs the gamut, too: from the ex-nanny who says she pumped his stomach on more than one occasion when he OD’d to the leaked autopsy reports that say he was bald and weighed only 114 pounds. If these leaks are to be believed, he had had no fewer than 13 plastic surgeries on his face alone. He was very clearly disturbed psychologically. To be sure, he was a talented performer. But, that has been overshadowed by his freakish behavior, drug addictions, and - let’s face it - all the allegations about his behavior around children.
So this person, who, for the last 15 years has been treated as a has-been weirdo by the press, is now the subject of unbridled grief. Elizabeth Taylor says that she can’t imagine her life without him. The US House of Representatives held a moment of silence. The city of Los Angeles says that it is expecting crowds in the millions for his memorial service.
Perhaps I’m jaded and uncaring, but this strikes me as so far out of whack as to be ridiculous. None of these millions of mourners even knew Michael Jackson. What’s more, if we’re going to mourn something, shouldn’t we mourn the folks in Iran who are dying the streets trying to overthrow the mullahs? Somehow, though, dying for freedom at the hands of religious fascist dictators doesn’t stir people’s emotions these days, but Michael Jackson does. Our culture is even out of whack in a secular sense.
I was bewildered by the whole Princess Di thing too, but, at least she was glamorous and good looking. Michael Jackson was weird and freaky looking. Why deify him? Mankind was made to worship, and since, because of the fall, we don’t worship what we’re supposed to worship, we cast about looking for a substitute. Lest anyone doubt the complete wreckage of the human soul as a result of the fall, just watch this upcoming memorial service for Michael Jackson. We’re not any different than the Israelites dancing around the golden calf. Scratch that - we’re worse.
I noticed in the NY Times Book Review section that there was a new children’s book out. It is a retelling of the Paul Bunyan legend and tells the story of Paula Bunyan, Paul’s sister. The story is cited as “green and feminist.” However Paula is described as being “as strong as ten moose.”
One of Webster’s definitions for schizophrenia is “the presense of mutually contradictory or antagonistic parts or qualities.” Francis Shaeffer used the word to describe American culture. This came home to me when I heard on yesterday’s news about the ” international manhunt” mounted to track down a woman and her son who fled their home and, I suppose, their state, because the boy has cancer and neither he nor his parents want him to undergo chemotherapy. His doctor says it could save his life and obtained a court order to force him to have the chemo. The family’s faith and thoughts on holistic medicine cause them to want to try other things. The merits of their beliefs are neither here nor there. What is so absurd to me is the expense the government is going to to track down this family and force them to do something to, supposedly, save the boy’s life. Now, I’m sure this mother wants to save her son’s life. She just disagrees about how to go about that. The doctor was on the television discussing how difficult it was going to be, once they found the boy, to administer the chemo if he resisted. At the same time this drama plays out, all over our country, day in and day out, our government guarantees other women the right to end the life of their unborn children. This is an inalienble right today, and millions and millions of dollars are spent to end the lives of unborn, and sometimes almost born or actually born unwanted infants. While some women can legallly murder their young, this woman is not allowed to try and save her son by the means she thinks best. I find it mind boggling to try and understand how these govenment policies and interventions can coexist.
Following is the text of a letter I sent this morning to Senator Hank Erwin:
Senator Erwin,
It was with great dismay that I read this week that you led an attempt to filibuster the Free the Hops/Gourmet Beer Bill.
I am dismayed, as a fellow Christian, Republican, and conservative, that you would advocate such an illogical position.
Lest you dismiss me as liberal crank or RINO, I’ll establish my bona fides for you. I am an elder in the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA). In case you’re not familiar with our schism, the PCA is the more conservative denomination of the two. We confess the inerrancy of the scripture, we do not redefine sin for the times, and we don’t ordain women or gays.
I am also a very conservative Republican. I remain a conservative Republican even in times like these, when the current presidential administration seems bent on destroying what I’ve always understood the country to be about.
I believe that you too are a Christian, a Republican, and a conservative. This is why your stance on this bill baffles me.
As a brother in Christ, and with all respect, I question whether you seriously believe that there is anything biblically wrong with drinking alcohol, because even the most cursory reading of the scriptures cannot support such a position. The Bible is filled with references to wine, and these cannot seriously be thought to refer to grape juice. Psalm 104:15, listing God’s good gifts to man, admits that these good gifts include “wine that gladdens the heart of man.” Senator, grape juice does not gladden anyone’s heart - but wine does.
Consider the wedding feast at Cana. There Jesus changed water into wine. But not just any wine - very good wine. In fact, upon tasting it, the master of the banquet said “Everyone brings out the choice wine first and then the cheaper wine after the guests have had too much to drink; but you have saved the best till now.” Obviously, this is because, after having had a few glasses of wine, the guests are mellowed and not so critical of the quality of the wine that follows. So, considering this, it must be the case that Jesus knew that even more wine would be consumed and changed the water to allow for exactly that. The implication is clear that alcohol was involved.
Centuries of church history throughout the world validate this interpretation, too. Indeed, Martin Luther’s drinking with his students is well attested.
Even without the clarity of scripture or the aid of historical Church fathers, common sense tells one that in Palestine during the first century AD, the technology did not exist to prevent grape juice from fermenting. Wine referenced in the Bible is very clearly fermented and very clearly has alcohol, the same as our wine does now. There is simply no biblical sanction to drinking. What’s condemned as sinful is being a drunk.
The other objection you have lodged is to the bill’s effect on “young people”. Senator, I’m sure that you are aware that young people - legally and illegally - already drink beer and other kinds of alcohol. Ordinary table wines have more alcohol content than the beer this bill would legalize. This doesn’t even begin to address the fact that all manner of liquors are sold by the State of Alabama itself - including pure grain alcohol - which is 95% alcohol. Knowing that such things are already legal, it completely defies all logic that a Belgian Ale should not be. It is an absurdity of the highest caliber.
You also cannot logically justify your position with fears of underage drinking. First of all, that’s already illegal. Second, though, the beers in question are quite expensive, and would not be purchased by any underage drinker, whose financial resources would not allow for $6 per bottle beer, when six dollars will buy an entire case of other brands already legal.
I am aware of your candidacy for lieutenant governor. I assume, since opposition to this bill cannot be grounded in logic, policy, or scripture, that you are attempting to appeal politically to an electorate that is predominated by Christians who persist in the error that drinking is prohibited to Christians and a sin biblically. As demonstrated above, that is palpably not true.
Senator, as a Christian leader, you should not pander to such palpable error. In fact, you should correct it. Please rethink your opposition to this bill. The truth will set you free, and voters will respond to honesty. Pandering to erroneous thought, especially from a fellow believer who seeks public trust, only breeds cynicism and resentment, especially on the part of non-Christians.
If you do not enjoy partaking of beer, wine, or any other form of alcohol, I surely respect your right to abstain. I, on the other hand, very much enjoy some of the beers this bill would legalize. I would appreciate the law not arbitrarily and erroneously restricting me from purchasing them in Alabama.
Please reconsider your position, and urge others in the Senate in opposition to do the same.
Thank you for your consideration.
Clay Staggs
Tuscaloosa, Alabama
PS - I have posted this letter on my Church’s Blog, which can be found at http://www.riverwoodchurch.org/blog. In the spirit of open debate among fellow Christians, I will post any reply you care to make.
I had heard that Catcher in the Rye was banned at one time.
Same goes for some Intelligent Design references in textbooks.
And you probably read about the parents all aflutter in Salt Lake about a Twilight book that inferred possibly sexual activity on a honeymoon. Imagine insinuating that married people might consumate their marriage.
But this one surprised me.
Someone in Vestavia Hills (Birmingham) was displeased about a book’s portrayal of….Lynyrd Skynrd. And sought to have it banned.
I might hide Wild at Heart behind some other books in the Riverwood library and wrap the Left Behind series in brown paper, but banishment is a tough pill to swallow. Given any indication of past prohibitions, it just makes me want to read it.
Against the wishes of my wife (she wanted me to relax), I cuddled up with Saul Friedlander’s The Extermination Years: 1939-1945 over Christmas. It’s a detailed chronology of the persistent, organized, and relentless Nazi machine— depicted through thousands of original journal entries. Yes, a holly jolly Christmas. I scratched out many notes/questions in the margins, but those will have to wait for other posts. I have real unanswered questions about how the Church should respond to known aggregious acts against other humans. (Darfur, Sudan, Rwanda…and now China)
But history is always safer when it stays in the past.
Not so with this news from China. They have designed a new death-van, that recalls the gas wagons of the Nazi ever-changing approach to the “solution.” What is so chilling, is that they are killing criminals and harvesting their needed organs. Remember, you can be given the death penalty for things like tax-evasion in China. Also more chilling is the fact that executions have risen to 10,000 a year from 1,500. Nothing like efficiency. That’s what eventually drove Zyklon-B and furnaces to get married. The death van: so new, so efficient. But I am sure our Wal-Mart plastic thingamajiggies are worth the trouble.
Book: The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner’s Semester at America’s Holiest University
Kevin Roose went undercover at Liberty University for a semester. He even went on the university’s spring break mission trip— an attempt to convert spring-breakers for Jesus.
There is a great excerpt at Salon.com. It is fantastic and hard to read all at the same time. You will cringe as you watch evangelicals do almost everything they shouldn’t do in evangelism. It is painful. This would be a great discussion piece some evening, to be sure.
One quote:
He slumps back against the tree, a little maudlin, eyes sloshing around in his head.
“Jason, you need to be born again.”
“So what if I am? Then tomorrow, I come back out here and go drinking again, and nothing’s changed. What good is that?”
“You won’t come back out here tomorrow if you get born again. You’ll have the Holy Spirit guiding you.”
The issue of post-salvation behavior is an interesting one. I thought, when Scott was teaching us to evangelize, that we’d be told to do some sort of follow-up with successful converts, if we had any — guide them to a local church, maybe, or at least take their contact information. But there’s no such procedure. If Jason had decided to get saved (he didn’t), Martina would have led him through the Sinner’s Prayer (“Jesus, I am a sinner, come into my heart and be my Lord and Savior” or some variant thereof), she would have let him know he was saved, perhaps given him some Bible verses to read, and they never would have seen each other again. Cold-turkey evangelism provides the shortest, most non-committal conversion offer of any Western religion — which, I suspect, is part of the appeal.
If the new believer backslides, though, like Jason was suggesting he might, Christians are likely to believe that he wasn’t really saved. False conversions are a glaring wart on the face of Christian evangelism. In the book that accompanies our Way of the Master program, I found several sobering statistics about the percentage of apparent converts who stay involved with the church in the long term, including one from Peter Wagner, a seminary professor in California who estimated that only 3 to 16 percent of the converts at Christian crusades stay involved.
The false conversion rate is profoundly depressing if you believe in this stuff. After all, if we get ten converts during this week — an optimistic number — and our false conversion numbers are consistent with the average, this group has spent a week’s worth of twelve-hour days, thousands of dollars, and suffered massive amounts of emotional trauma for what? One more Christian? Two?
When the public doesn’t like something, does that make it right?
There is a pastor who is housing a convicted child-killer for two months.
The community hates that idea.
Story, here.
Parallel issue: If the public is infuriated by the AIG bonuses, should they renege on a contractual obligation to pay them?
Hey, Calvinism is trending. In fact it just made TIME magazine’s top-ten list of ideas that are changing the world right now in ‘09. It even made the top three.
Sounds like the beginning of a locker-room joke. 500 years after he dies and John Calvin is literally lying in the middle of another controversy. There seems to be some commotion over in Geneva about an ex-prostitute (who sought better rights for sex-workers) who is buried in the same cemetery as J.C. Read all about it.
Personally: bury me anywhere— under the front porch or next to Al Capone. Death comes to all, but true life to only some.
I am working through John Donne’s Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, (and, no, that is not “emergent” in the Rob Bell/Brian McLaren sort of way) and Meditation 17 is pretty amazing:
“No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were. Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee…”
How great to realize that the “dirtiest” and the “most spiritually revered” simply succumb to to their own humanity…and die. All must simply rely on the mercy of Another’s power for life— and by “all” I include the hooker and John Calvin.
New OctoMom, Nadya Suleman, and Rick Warren now have the same agent. They are now both represented by Ambassador Agency, Inc. owned by Wes Yoder. They call themselves a “Christian-based talent agency.”
An agent, Rick? Really? Has something gone awry in Christendom? Or is this just a biblical trajectory from first-century Christianity? I seemed to have missed something.
I realize that the South is not exactly the poster child for race relations. That said, it never ceases to amaze me what non-Southerners expect that they will find when they come to the South. Case in point: a Muslim academic, Akbar Ahmed, who teaches at the American University in Washington, decided to produce a documentary about various American reactions to Muslims following 9/11. Now, taking the show into the South, where better to go than Arab, Alabama, right?
So they take a blue-eyed American girl, dress her in a black abaya, and they go into a barbecue place in Arab to observe the reaction. The girl merely says that she hopes there’s no violence. Shockingly, they eat their meal without incident, and the other patrons are nice and friendly.
No, really. You can read the CNN write-up here. But better is the video. Really, watch the whole thing. Be sure to take note of the howler about the “survivalists” who are really just some guys who had been hunting.
Hat Tip to Allahpundit at Hot Air. I’ll end with AP’s commenter’s observation, which sums this up pretty well:
A native Alabaman comments in the Headlines thread that he’d feel safer in Birmingham in a turban than in San Francisco in a Bush/Cheney t-shirt.
The latest copy of Credenda Agenda arrived in the mail yesterday. One of the first things I look at is the “Cave of Adullam,” a compendium of ridiculous events, and events ridiculing ridiculous events, that occur in our post-modern culture. One of the items in this issue follows:
A recent bumper sticker nailed it. “I already have a Savior. I’m looking for a president”
That item crossed my mind this morning as I looked over the Tuscaloosa News with my coffee. A headline article shouted Business as Usual? It went on to state that Barack Obama was finding it difficult to follow through on his hard line on ethics. In particular, he has run afoul of his campaign promise against lobbying; to wit, “I don’t take a dime of their money and when I am president, they won’t find a job in my White House.” One of the specifics was that they certainly couldn’t join any department they had lobbied previously. However, he has nominated two former lobbists as officials in Defense and Health and Human Resources; in both cases previous lobbists in those areas.
The kicker came with Tom Daschle, a Cabinet nominee. Daschle is under fire for tax problems and taking money from special interests. The article states that Daschle was “not technically a lobbiest,” but he did manage to collect over $5 million dollars in the past two years for “advising” (about WHAT????) the health, energy and telecommunications industries.
Apologies are being made for Obama, even from Republicans, and the general consensus was that his intentions were good, but it is apparent that there will be no great overthrow of unethical practices by politicians at this level. The bumper sticker was absolutely correct; there is a Savior but he’s not political. In a fallen world, the only solution for greed and other forms of evil is that Savior’s return. It’s not in any politician or political process or political system.
According to an article in Forbes, people who are moderate drinkers give more to charities than do teetotalers. Not only that, but drinkers are generally happier and earn more money, even when you control for factors such as income. Read the whole story here, but here’s the bottom line:
In sum, moderate drinking has links to good health, fortune, humor and character. None of this is to argue that your Bacchanalian excesses over the holidays were advisable. But as you contemplate your sins, be careful not to overcorrect in 2009. You might not like the results.
Is there any benefit that drinking can’t bestow? Here’s a story (adults only!) that suggests not.
I know - let’s see if we can’t get the Congress to lay out some of that $850 billion stimulus to subsidize drinking! Hey, if we can spend $200 million to resod the national mall, why can’t the government buy us a beer?
Max Mitchell is working on the “Princess Diana Bible.” Why name it after her? “Because she has done so many good works,” Max says. You may know Max from his upcoming movie, “Horror in the Wind,” where an airborne substance reverses the world’s sexual orientation. Ok, maybe you haven’t heard of him.
Mitchell concocts Aida and Eve (and you were expecting Adam and Steve)….and Cain is fathered by the serpent. I am unconcerned that Mitchell’s “bible” will unseat the real one, but an interesting conversation has arisen from the controversy. What does make a writing Scripture? The ensuing verbal/written articulated defense of the real thing will only benefit the people of God. Instead of throwing a conniption fit over unbelievers doing unbelieving things, I can confidently believe that God, in his sovereignty, uses guys like Mitchell only to bolster the strength of his Church, by pushing every Christian generation to ask, again, “why do we believe what we believe?” I once entitled an apologetic class “the Conversion of the Christian Mind” for that very reason.
Victor Davis Hanson is a professor of classics and history at Stanford. He regularly contributes to National Review and other conservative-leaning publications. I enjoy his writing and recommend it highly.
This morning I ran across an article of his that could fairly be described as a list of the 10 worst things going right now in American culture. The article is here. I’d appreciate hearing anyone’s take on the list. As a teaser, being the fan of classical education that I am, I’m going to post his first point, with which I heartily agree:
1. Four years of high-school Latin would dramatically arrest the decline in American education. In particular, such instruction would do more for minority youths than all the ‘role model’ diversity sermons on Harriet Tubman, Malcolm X, Montezuma, and Caesar Chavez put together. Nothing so enriches the vocabulary, so instructs about English grammar and syntax, so creates a discipline of the mind, an elegance of expression, and serves as a gateway to the thinking and values of Western civilization as mastery of a page of Virgil or Livy (except perhaps Sophocles’s Antigone in Greek or Thucydides’ dialogue at Melos). After some 20 years of teaching mostly minority youth Greek, Latin, and ancient history and literature in translation (1984-2004), I came to the unfortunate conclusion that ethnic studies, women studies—indeed, anything “studies”— were perhaps the fruits of some evil plot dreamed up by illiberal white separatists to ensure that poor minority students in the public schools and universities were offered only a third-rate education.
I’d only quibble to add that Latin should start in Kindergarten.
Last week I picked up the morning paper and read that Mark Cuban, perhaps best known as the volatile owner of the NBA Dallas Mavericks, had been indicted for insider trading by the Securties and Exchange commission. He sold shares of a company prior to its public offering supposedly based on confidential knowledge, thus saving himself from a loss of $750,000. I have absolutly no “confidential knowledge” of Mr. Cuban’s guilt or innocence; and given his great resources, the verdict will probably be innocent no matter what the facts; such is our system, but the indictment shocked me.
Mr. Cuban has a reported net worth of $2.5 Billion; that’s with a “B”. He can put his hands on 2,500 groups of a million dollars. Thus, as ridiculous as it sounds to you and I, $750,000 fits the description of “chump change” to Mr. Cuban. Apart from any moral reasons, why in the world would he put himself in a position that had the potential of this one for trouble or even jail time (see Martha Stewart and Leona Helmsley.) Three possibilities came to mind.
First, Mr. Cuban is a highly competetive individual. This competetitiveness is often visible on the sidelines fo Mavs games, as he is very much into every play and nuance of every play. One would assume that he brings this same competitiveness to his business ventures, so is this indictment simply a result of a “game on” mentality?
Secondly, is Mr. Cuban so secure in his wealth and power that he considers himself bullet proof and its adjunct, that he is, literally, above the law? This is certainly not unprecedented, and there are many instances that could be pointed to in that regard. Ms. Helmsley’s famous statement, “We don’t pay taxes. Little people pay taxes” is a prime exemple. Also significant in the decision making process is the fact that she, another billionaire, served time for tax evasion.
Thirdly, there is the title of this post, “How much is enough?” When billionaire J. Paul Getty was asked this, his reply was “Just a little more.” Is this a function of the two possibilities above or is it a related to the fallenness of man in a fallen world; our Reformed world view?
Tim, in a sermon recently, spoke of the fact that money and power does not corrupt the king; he is corrupt to begin with and the money and power simply allows him to indulge himself more. This situation can very easily speak to that, but what stands out to the Reformed Christian is that the world is fallen, and that “a little more”, even at another’s expense is what is expected in a world that is corrupt at its very base and core.
As I have said before, I purposely declined to enter the fray, because I was less concerned about the outcome of the elections and more concerned about what people were believing and saying.
John Piper has a fantastic little clip where he discusses the most important issues in the elections.
My favorite part?
When confronted by an animated person prior to the elections who was painting a doomsday picture if his opponent won, Piper asks, “Are you a Christian?” I think I spit some Sprite out on my keyboard.
There is almost too much here: (How’s that for a channel name, by the way? Presumptuous?)
But, again, you can see the dangerous conclusions that people make when they begin with the erroneous assumption that America=the people of God. Lou Engle, perhaps, is the most passionate when he begins to pray for forgiveness onbehalf of America…not for the impurities, sins, heresies, and weaknesses within the Church…but in America. To extend the illustration, that would be like the Hebrews starting to confess for the Philistines’ transgressions. We just don’t see that in the Bible, do we?
The Pre-Election Rhetoric Accountability Forum continues:
Perhaps you received this impassioned plea from the desk of Don Wildmon, president of the American Family Association (AFA), during the month of October: Its contents, below:
Please vote! Our children’s future depends on it!
In my 70 years, I have never seen an election where coverage was so one-sided and biased or where censorship by the liberal media was so widely practiced and where media coverage was so slanted as I have seen in this election process. Their plan is working. The only chance conservatives have is to make sure they care enough to vote.
If the liberals win the upcoming election, America as we have known it will no longer exist. This country that we love, founded on Judeo-Christian values, will cease to exist and will be replaced by a secular state hostile to Christianity. This “city set on a hill” which our forefathers founded, will go dark. The damage will be deep and long lasting. It cannot be turned around in the next election, or the one after that, or by any election in the future. The damage will be permanent. That is why it is so important for you to vote and to encourage friends and family to vote. This is one election where your vote really counts.
Summarial bullet points:
• The last tool available to the religious conservative is voting
• America is a Christian nation
• America is also New Jerusalem
• An Obama presidency will wreak PERMANENT damage. Not capable of redemption.
The impassioned rhetoric this election season was nauseating. And I’m not talking about the candidates or their handlers. The Christian Right supplied enough portions for every American to have second and third helpings. I purposely laid a low profile during these heated exchanges, but now that we have seen that Election Day did not, in fact, usher in the Apocalypse, perhaps Chrsitians will be able to reconcile an Obama win with the Sovereignty of God.
Case in Point: LA Times Blog
Prayer at McCain rally by Rev. Arnold Conrad:
“I would also pray Lord that your reputation is involved in all that happens between now and November, because there are millions of people around this world praying to their God — whether it’s Hindu, Buddha, Allah — that his [McCain’s] opponent wins for a variety of reasons.
And Lord I pray that you would guard your own reputation, because they’re going to think that their god is bigger than you, if that happens. So I pray that you would step forward and honor your own name in all that happens between now and Election Day.
Oh Lord, we just commit this time to you, move among us, make your presence very well felt as we are gathered here today in Jesus’s name I pray.”
Which brings some important questions to the fore in this post-election season:
1) Did McCain really win, and there has been a giant conspiratorial cover-up?
2) Is God strong enough to fight the wave of Obama fever?
3) Has God been publicly punk’d by the American electorate?
4) Does this prove that Obama is bigger than God?
(Yes, the previous questions carry sarcastic tones)
How does the Christian Right reconcile their “godly” champion (McCain) losing?
You cannot have your pre-election rhetoric and then abandon it, post-election.
That does not sit well with me. We must call for accountability for the spiritual statements made prior to Tuesday night. And I have begun. And please, nobody post a comment about how, “just maybe Obama is God’s judgment on America.”
Dana found this today & blogged about it. I had to repost it on the RB.
London’s red buses will soon have ads on them. Read this article for the full effect.
A few highlights:
“Organizers of a campaign to raise money for the ads said Wednesday they received more than $113,000 in donations, almost seven times their target, in the hours since they launched the project on a charity website.”
Isn’t there a global economic meltdown? $113,000 for bus signs in hours? Of course, $9,000 of that came from Richard Dawkins.
“The money will be used to to place posters on 30 buses carrying the slogan, “There is probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.”
Now, let’s see. I’m on a crowded street in London waiting on bus to take me to a job that I may not like (or to look for a job). Maybe I have no money in my pocket. Maybe I have just found out that I or someone I love has a life threatening disease. Maybe I’m a mom with young kids in tow trying to get out for a bit. There are any number of things that could be going on in people’s lives.
But, I read a bus sign proclaiming that there is “probably” no God, to stop worrying and enjoy my life. Ah, things are looking up already. (By the way, Richard Dawkins wasn’t thrilled with the choice of words—but they had to throw in the probably to avoid offending the religious British.)
Seriously, the very idea that, with all the concerns and worries that someone may have in today’s world, being assured that there is probably no God by a bus sign is going to make anyone think about their life any differently is laughable. Fellow atheists already believe there is no God, that this is their one shot. Religious people probably aren’t going to care what is written on the side of the bus. For those wondering or searching, what does proclamation that there is probably no God do for them? Should they try a little harder to enjoy their existence a little more? How, exactly, should they do that?
One of the organizers came up with the idea after she saw a Christian poster on one of the buses. She stated that she visited the website promoted on one sign and found that it told nonbelievers that would spend eternity in torment in hell.
“I thought it would be a really positive thing to counter that by putting forward a happier and more upbeat advert, saying “Don’t worry, you are not going to hell.”
Depending on one’s circumstance in this life, the thought that this is all there is may or may not be a more upbeat thought!
From Richard Dawkins, “This campaign to put alternative slogans on London buses will make people think—and thinking is anathema to religion.”
Do the atheists really want people to think, to dwell on the fact that this is all there is? That they should just quit worrying, put on their happy face and enjoy this life because that’s all there is?
There better be a website or toll free number—or directions to the nearest bar—for those who read the sign, think and don’t end up committing suicide!
So I was just reading a review by Carl Trueman, a British church history prof. at Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia. (read anything you can get your hands on by Carl Trueman. He’s a lot of fun to read due to his brilliance, clarity and characteristic British wit that drips sarcasm). Trueman wrote a great review of Machen’s Christianity and Liberalism (a book I’ve been told that is on the future reading list for Riverwood’s book group). Check out the entire article here: http://www.thegospelcoalition.org/themelios/33-2/minority-report-the-second-most-important-book-you-will-ever-read.
I love reading about Machen because I always find the issues Machen fought back in the 20’s and 30’s to still be alive and well in the church today. There truly is nothing new under the sun. For clarity’s sake, Gresham Machen was a seminary professor at Princeton and eventually left the school because of its drifting towards theological liberalism and founded Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia. Machen is also important for us PCA folk because he foreshadowed and was a forerunner in many of the battles that southern presbyterians fought later in the 60’s and 70’s that would eventually lead to the formation of the PCA. Machen essentially attempted to reform the mainline northern Presbyterian church and was actually deposed as a minister for his efforts and then would later create the OPC (Orthodox Presbyterian Church), a conservative Presbyterian denomination very similar to our own.
Anyway, many viewed Machen’s brand of orthodoxy as contentious and exclusive. Machen and many others would contend that the confessional orthodoxy he was advocating was none other than the doctrines that Protestants had traditionally held for centuries, doctrines that are organically connected to the teachings of the Bible. Check out Trueman’s words concerning Machen’s “contentious orthodoxy,” his words are worth considering and quoting at length:
In an age like ours, of course, where fuzzy boundaries, vagueness, doubt, and caution are supreme virtues, Machen’s thesis is likely to appear both arrogant and overstated. But, as Machen himself says in the opening paragraphs, “In the sphere of religion, as in other spheres, the things about which men are agreed are apt to be the things that are least worth holding; the really important things are the things about which men will fight.” There is insight here. Before we see Machen as too intolerant, too much a man of a bygone age, let us reflect on the fact that we live in an age that is remarkably certain and intolerant on a whole host of fronts, from racism to poverty to cruelty against animals to homophobia. Regardless of where we come down on each of these issues, very few of us will be indifferent on them, or particularly laissez-faire towards those with whom we disagree on these matters.
Thus, it is not really that Machen is a man of a bygone, intolerant age which makes this little book so offensive to modern ears. We should not flatter our own enlightened times so easily, for it is not the reality of intolerance in itself that has changed. Rather, it is that we now have a different set of issues that arouse intolerance, and this change reflects not only shifting values in society but also in the church, to the extent that she no longer stands intolerantly for her truth as she once did. The question is thus not whether we are intolerant: we surely are. The question is rather: Are we intolerant of the right things? As the value of religious truth has become negligible, so the passions aroused by such in the wider world have died down. That we do not fight over these things is not a virtue; it is rather be a sign that we just do not care about them any more, and that is the result of the downgrading of the Bible in our thinking. We no longer look on it as a book of divine truth and thus of almost unbearable importance; it is now a ragbag of disparate religious reflections, or a collection of texts reflecting on religious psychology, or simply a cacophony of ancient near-eastern tribal mythology.
I really resonated with Trueman’s words here, especially what he says about the fact that we live in age that is just as intolerant as any other and that the issue is not whether we are intolerant, but what are the issues that arouse such strong opinions and reactions in us. What are the issues that we feel are worth being intolerant over? Football team loyalties? Economic bailout plans? Presidential politics?
Thoughts?
This month’s issue of Gospel Today features 5 female pastors on its cover. Lifeway Christian Bookstores (a non-profit branch of the Southern Baptist Convention) made a decision to place the magazine out of sight and sell it upon request, only— due to their official stance that women cannot be pastors.
Roland Martin had a blistering commentary on their decision. His argumentation reached its pinnacle by crying out that Lifeway must treasure freedom of press just as much as it treasures freedom of religion. An empty argument, considering that his targeted audience doesn’t value the Constitution as much as it does the Bible.
But herein lies another mystery, pointed out by Sarah Vander Wal:
While I’m totally on board with the theology that women should not be pastors, I am still surprised by the actions of LifeWay. Why? Because of all the crap they DO have in their store. Example: Last time I was there, I saw a book titled, “How to Get the Most Out of God.”
Point taken, Sarah. Of all the things to hide from the kiddies and impressionable Chistians, why start with Gospel Today?
Before I get into it, “9/11” was a horrible, awful, and grievous event. I believe that.
At the somber ceremonies yesterday, NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg said:
Today marks the seventh anniversary of the day our world was broken. It lives forever in our hearts and our history, a tragedy that unites us in a common memory and a common story.
Never one to be left out, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani said,
The entire world is linked in our circle of sorrow.
Both comments made me smile. Bloomberg either has a very shallow understanding of world history or he has a selective memory. Tragic though it was, the world has been re-shattering itself for centuries. And centuries. In the words of my two-year old son, “It got broked,” much earlier. Adam set quite a precedent for disturbing the peace.
The second comment made me smile due to Giuliani’s unwitting, border-line profundity. We are all linked in our circle of sorrow. However, our link is not found in 9/11 but in our common depravity. And he was so close, too.
Everyone who’s even a casual reader of this blog knows how much I love watching political drama. This, however, is going completely off the rails. I know nothing of Rep. Cohen, whether he claims to be a Christian or not. If he does, then he is in serious need of rebuke about who Jesus is and what he was on this earth to do. It wasn’t “community organizing.” Suggesting such (on the floor of the House of Representatives, no less) either demonstrates shocking levels of ignorance or the cynical manipulation of his own religion for political gains.
If he’s not a Christian, then he’s the dumbest politician EVER (and that’s a prize for which there are many competitors). How many Christians will be offended by this? How many ordinary folks (especially women) who are not rabid partisans will be put off (or insulted) at Gov. Palin being likened to Pontius Pilate? Comparing your party’s candidate to Jesus? And the opposing Veep is Pilate? Disrespecting the religion of the overwhelming majority of people in this country is idiotic.
The reaction to Sarah Palin seems to be overwhelmingly positive, judging by the poll numbers. McCain/Palin now leads among the totally-crucial independent vote in Gallup’s latest survey by a whopping 15 points. McCain also has improved his standing with women voters to almost tied. I highly recommend this Bill Kristol article on Palin’s appeal as a Wal-Mart Mom. The basic thesis is that Palin’s appealing because she lives a life not terribly different from most ordinary folks, and they can identify with her. This makes it extremely problematic for her opponents to attack her. And, they should be especially careful of condescension. Enter Michelle Obama.
Now, remember that the First Rule of Holes is that when in one, it’s best to stop digging. Obama’s polls are slipping, as mentioned above, his fundraising appears to be declining, and Palin is out there connecting with ordinary folks really well. With that backdrop, Michelle Obama went to a Hollywood fundraiser, where a pool reporter named Patrick McDonald, was in attendance. Mr. McDonald works for LA Weekly, a gay magazine. Here’s the important quote from his article:
Obama then moved on to politics, where she first brought up her husband’s vice-presidential choice. “I think it was a really good pick—Senator Joe Biden,” she said, and later added, “People say they have amazing chemistry, and it’s true.” Obama continued with talk about Biden when she said, “What you learn about Barack from his choice is that he’s not afraid of smart people.” The crowd softly chuckled.
Wow. What a dumb thing to say. I have long thought that Michelle would wind up being a net liability for her husband in the long run (recall her comments about being proud of her country for the first time?). I offer this tidbit in further support of that view.
Perhaps the only thing that grates on my nerves more than the Carrie Nation types are the food police - you know, those folks that are desperately afraid that somebody, somewhere is enjoying their food. Now, I don’t want anyone to hear what I’m not saying. I don’t think that anybody should eat junk food all the time. However, having a delicious treat now and again is one of the true pleasures of life.
What brings this all up is the decision of Michael Phelps to endorse Frosted Flakes instead of Wheaties. I know, I know, who cares, right? Well, folks like Rebecca Solomon apparently do:
I would not consider Frosted Flakes the food of an Olympian,” said nutritionist Rebecca Solomon of Mount Sinai Medical Center. “I would rather see him promoting Fiber One. I would rather see him promoting oatmeal. I would even rather see him promoting Cheerios.”
Get that mental image: Michael Phelps on the box cover of Fiber One.
Why are some people so downright scared of freedom? If you don’t like Frosted Flakes, don’t eat it or give it to your kids, Micheal Phelps notwithstanding. On the other hand, lots of folks (yours truly included) enjoy Frosted Flakes with or without Mr. Phelps’s picture on the box.
But to shame him as some sort of traitor to proper nutrition for his endorsement deal? Gimme a break. With all due respect, Ms. Solomon and her ilk need to chill out.
This really came as something of a shock to me. Apparently a group of presidents of some prominent universities have dared to suggest that the drinking age be LOWERED back to 18. Read the whole story here.
The group makes what I consider to be the blazingly obvious point that putting alcohol out of the legal reach of the 18-20 year olds at universities has NOT stopped their drinking, but merely forced it underground, where truly idiotic behaviors like funneling flourish.
Apparently, however, not all university presidents who were approached agreed to sign on. Donna Shalala, former Clinton administration Secretary of Health and Human Services, now president of the University of Miami, is quoted in the article as opposing the initiative:
“I remember college campuses when we had 18-year-old drinking ages, and I honestly believe we’ve made some progress,” Ms. Shalala said in a telephone interview. “To just shift it back down to the high schools makes no sense at all.”
She believes that they’ve made “some progress.” Really. Wow, that’s inspiring. And contradictory of every report I’ve seen on campus drinking in the past 20 years.
I cannot for the life of me understand the knee-jerk nanny state opposition to letting a person that the law considers an adult have a beer. I mean, we let 16 year olds drive - far more lethal than a beer. But yet drinking must be reserved for age 21. It’s completely backwards and totally illogical. If anything, the drinking age should be 16 and the driving age 18.
I wish this group of university presidents the very best. They are taking on the ultimate issue of political correctness in America. I wish them well.
I have reread this thing several times, and I can’t get over two things. First, are there really that many Muslims in Shelbyville, Tennessee? And working at a poultry plant?
But, more importantly, what’s so mind boggling about this is that a LABOR UNION has voted to ditch LABOR DAY as a paid holiday!! That it’s ditched for some far-flung religious holiday is just icing on the cake.
I have always (since I became a Christian) been jealous of the name of Christ and concerned when His Church is put , or puts itself, in a bad light before the world. I recently posted about this, particularly the use of the term “evangelical”, to describe Christianinty and the attempt to correct this with the recent Evangelical Manifesto (read the post here).
On Saturday, I opened the newspaper with my coffee, as usual, and got out the weekly religion page first, as usual. And, as usual, it was more of the same, but Saturday it was much, much more. The lead article headline was “Miracle Worker?” and described one Todd Bentley, a current “healer” phenom operating out of Lakeland, Florida. Her is in his third month of a tent “revival” and hundreds of thousands have attended. Mary Ann Johnson reports that he is quite the celebrity in churches in London. His act is so outrageous, even violent (he once kicked an elderly woman in the face to “heal” her) that even the Pentecostals are complaining. Two statements I noted that they spoke out against in the article were “miracles are poppin’ like popcorn tonight,” and “Someone’s getting a new spinal cord tonight.” The Pentecostal leaders stated that this “cheapened” the work of the Holy Spirit. That in itself is some statement when you consider the source. Of course, none of the “healings” could be verified through medical evidence by the Associated Press reporter doing the article. Yet Bentley continues, and is, to the outside world, a face of Chirstianity.
Directly below that piece was another episode of the agonizing and embarrassing Episcopal/Anglican soap opera. Bishops from around the world were in London for the church-wide Lambeth conference, an 18 day event. Bishops from around the world didn’t include the 200 conservative Anglican bishops who are boycotting the conference because of the consecration of Bishop Robinson, of New Hampshire, an openly gay man who lives with his lover and “leads” the church of Christ. Robinson has been barred from the conference by the Archbishop of Canterbury, “for the sake of unity,” but never fear; Bishop Katherine Schori of New York is there to stand up for him. In fact, Robinson himself is in London; he just doesn’t go to the meetings. Schori is introducing him to the other bishops after hours in a series of social events she has arranged. Schori believes that Robinson’s situation is covered by her belief that “committed same sex relationships are permitted under the Bible’s social justice teachings.” This is obviously a text I’ve never seen since the same situation with opposite sex relationships was dealt with by the phrase, “Go and sin no more.” This side-show also is the face of Christianity to the world.
There are others on those 6 pages of the religion section but these two are sufficient to the purpose. Christians will continue to be embarrassed by these degradations of the faith. The Riverwood Book Group has just finished reading D. G. Hart’s excellant study, The Lost Soul of American Protestantism ; a book that examines the roots of the pietist tradition of the protestant churches, beginning with the revivalist movement of “The Great Awakening” and continuing up until the present day with the Todd Bentleys of the Evangelical branch and the Robinsons and Schoris of the liberal branch of the pietist tradition. It’s a fascinating story and while it doesn’t cite a cure for the problem, it at least gives Confessional Christians some understanding of it and encouragement as they continue to hold to the faith and to worship the God of the scriptures.
I’ve bemoaned the fact that no one teaches or learns logic so many times that I’ve lost count. But examples of people saying and doing things that are totally irrational just keep on coming. The latest one was at the President’s press conference yesterday.
The question you are about to read actually came from a White House correspondent - that is, someone who has been afforded the privilege of questioning the leader of the free world.
Q `You never mention oil companies. Are you confident that American oil producers are tapping all of the sources they have out there, including offshore?
Now, I don’t believe that a great deal of formal education in economics is necessary to know the answer to this question. Some simple logic should do. The price of oil is $140+ per barrel - a historic high. Why on earth would company fail to tap their resources and cash in? The President then obliged with an answer that should have gone without saying:
THE PRESIDENT: What about them — do I think they’re investing capital to find more reserves with the price at $140 a barrel? Absolutely. Take an offshore exploration company. First of all, it costs a lot of money to buy the lease, so they tie up capital. Secondly, it takes a lot of money to do the geophysics, to determine what the structure may or may not look like. That ties up capital. Then they put the rig out there. Now, first of all, in a federal offshore lease, if you’re not exploring within a set period of time, you lose your bonus; you lose the amount of money that you paid to get the lease in the first place.
And once you explore, your first exploratory, if you happen to find oil or gas, it is — you’ll find yourself in a position where a lot of capital is tied up. And it becomes in your interest, your economic interest, to continue to explore so as to reduce the capital costs of the project on a per-barrel basis. And so I — I think — I think they’re exploring. And hopefully a lot of people continue to explore so that the supply of oil worldwide increases relative to demand.
I probably make too much of this, but the fact that someone in the White House press corps lacks this much rational thought really bothers me. Of all the questions that could be put to George Bush, the fact that this one would have been asked is just pathetic.
Barack Obama gave a speech in Colorado recently on the subject of service. You can read the whole text here. I’d like to focus on his comments on service for those in middle and high school:
Finally, we need to integrate service into education, so that young Americans are called upon and prepared to be active citizens.
Just as we teach math and writing, arts and athletics, we need to teach young Americans to take citizenship seriously. Study after study shows that students who serve do better in school, are more likely to go to college, and more likely to maintain that service as adults. So when I’m President, I will set a goal for all American middle and high school students to perform 50 hours of service a year, and for all college students to perform 100 hours of service a year. This means that by the time you graduate college, you’ll have done 17 weeks of service.
We’ll reach this goal in several ways. At the middle and high school level, we’ll make federal assistance conditional on school districts developing service programs, and give schools resources to offer new service opportunities. At the community level, we’ll develop public-private partnerships so students can serve more outside the classroom.
Much criticism has been leveled at the No Child Left Behind Act, and most of it justified. In my mind, the most insidious thing that it did was to insert the ever-incompetent US Department of Education even further into what has historically been local decision-making where grade school education is concerned. It did this essentially through a bribe: Accept this increased federal funding if you want, but you have to do X Y and Z to get it. No state had to accept the funding, but if they did (as always) there was a catch.
It appears that, if elected, Obama would take that one step further. Federal aid would be dependent on the schools compelling community service from their middle and high school students. I’d like to make two points about this. First of all, the schools have all they can say grace over to actually, you know, teach the students the basics, and many are even failing at that. Is it not absurd to place yet another mandate on these schools? Is there no amount of social engineering that we won’t foist on the public schools?
On top of that, perhaps this is my reformed thinking coming through here, but if “community service” becomes mandatory, does it not lose something of its character? I thought this when Clinton did AmeriCorp - if you’re getting a reward for doing a job (in the case of AmeriCorp, reduced student loan debt) then isn’t that just employment and not true community service? Maybe I’m off base here, but I think of true community service as being at least in some measure voluntary, or maybe done without the motivation of profit. Once we make community service just another course in school, won’t it become about as noble as your 10th grade health class? Maybe it will, and nobody cares. I’m not sure which is worse.
For those interested, Paul Mirengoff at Powerline does an excellent fisking of some other aspects of this text, too.
Exit question: With all the homework requirements, accelerated reading, incessant testing, extracurricular activities, and now possibly mandatory community service, do kids ever get the chance to just be kids anymore?
That quote is from none other than the Director of Greening for the upcoming Democrat Convention in Denver, Andrea Robinson. What’s she talking about? I’m glad you asked.
She’s referring to the 900 volunteers who will be stationed at all of the garbage disposal stations to be sure that the attendees put all of their trash in the right receptacle - depending of course on whether it’s being recycled, composted, etc. But the duties of the volunteers don’t stop there. To be sure that the trash is pure, they’ll actually be going through every single bag by hand.
Anyone looking for anything besides political correctness at this shin-dig had better look someplace else. I’ve already blogged about their dietary and food prep requirements in “Please Pass Me A Compostable Napkin.” In addition to the neo-Levitical food laws, and the trash nannies, Ms. Robinson has:
hired an Official Carbon Adviser, who will measure the greenhouse-gas emissions of every placard, every plane trip, every appetizer prepared and every coffee cup tossed. The Democrats hope to pay penance for those emissions by investing in renewable energy projects.
Organizers had wanted 1.500 fanny packs for various convention volunteers, and required that said fanny packs be made of organic cotton, in the USA, by union labor. Alas, the best that could be found was an organic fiber fanny pack made in the USA but with non-union labor.
Bryan Bond told me one time that human beings were created to worship, and if they’re not worshiping God, they’ll find something else to take His place. Nowhere is that statement more true than when applied to the environmentalist movement.
Rush Limbaugh says that it’s the new home for communists and socialists following the fall of the USSR, and I think that’s true enough where its politics is concerned. However, it goes much deeper than that - into a spiritual vacuum created by failure to recognize God as the proper focus of worship, where Mother Earth is substituted.
One important thing about making a substitution for God is that it doesn’t take away the knowledge of man’s sinfulness. Having bounced out the Creator and substituted the creation instead, the sins are perceived as being committed against the creation. And, of course, sin demands an atoning sacrifice, does it not?
As Exhibit A I offer ABC - the Australian Broadcasting Company. They have a cartoon character, Greena, who is a warrior princess devoted to saving the planet from carbon-belching knuckle-draggers like me. She’s part of this portion of their website directed at indoctrinating kids about how we’re destroying the planet with our environmentally rapacious lifestyles.
That is, sadly, not too uncommon these days. Where it goes to prove my point about sacrificing to the Enviro-Baals is the Greenhouse Calculator, which purports to tell its users (bear in mind that this is directed at children) when they should die, because they’ve used up their “fair share” of the earth’s resources. Go here and take the test yourself. Apparently I should have died at age 5.3. I think it’s especially effective how your “carbon pig” gets bigger and fatter as you answer each question, and explodes in a bloody mess right before they announce your age of death.
This is dark and sick. It’s utterly outrageous the way it’s packaged and aimed at kids. But, is it not the logical extension of the environmentalist agenda? Gaia has a problem, and we’re it. We’ve got to atone.
I have been, for several years now, one of those Christians who, despite being actually and totally evangelical in the classic sense, have become very nervous about being labeled “evangelical.” It is my belief that the term has been perhaps irremediably ruined when it became a political and cultural catchword for protestant Christianity. It is applied to “Christian leaders” who ply the halls of power promising and delivering blocs of non-thinking voters and to oily hucksters who promise health, wealth, hot wives and handsome husbands to all who have enough faith and can prove it by their contributions. I am quick to dismiss politicians and their advocates when they are obviously trying to selling Christ for votes. When I am seen as evangelical, I feel that I am seen as an advocate for the O’Steens, Hagees, Copelands, Robertsons, Hinns, et al, especially when I am speaking to a sceptic or avowed non-Christian.
Last week I ran across an editorial by William McKenzie re-printed from the Dallas Morning News that spoke of a manifesto by evangelicals who were as tired of the juxtaposition as I was. The article is linked here. McKinley spoke of an attempt by a broad spectrum of evangelicals to prepare a manifesto to “address the confusions and corruptions that attend the term ‘evangelical” in the United States and much of the Western world.’” Needless to say, I was interested and went to my computer to find this document.
I will confess that I was impressed. It does not pretend to be an apologetic for Christianity accurate to the last jot and tittle and it certainly isn’t but it does cover the essential basics; Christ is fully God and fully human and the only name by which we may be saved; and there is no salvation possible apart from His atoning death on the cross. The manifesto also speaks to the absolute Biblical ideas of ministry to the weak and helpless and of not catering to the rich and powerful.
As to my objections to the current meaning of the word, I will quote the Manifesto, first to the hucksterism and growth at any theological cost:
We confess that we Evangelicals have betrayed our beliefs by our behavior. All too often we have trumpeted the gospel of Jesus, but we have replaced biblical truths with therapeutic techniques, worship with entertainment, discipleship with growth in human potential, church growth with business entrepreneurialism, concern for the church and for the local congregation with expressions of the faith that are churchless and little better than a vapid spirituality, meeting real needs with pandering to felt needs, and mission principles with marketing precepts. In the process we have become known for commercial, diluted, and feel-good gospels of health, wealth, human potential, and religious happy talk, each of which is indistinguishable from the passing fashions of the surrounding world.
Regarding the dispicable politicizing of Christ, the Manifesto speaks as follows:
The other error, made by both the religious left and the religious right in recent decades, is to politicize faith, using faith to express essentially political points that have lost touch with biblical truth. That way faith loses its independence, the church becomes “the regime at prayer,” Christians become “useful idiots” for one political party or another, and the Christian faith becomes an ideology in its purest form. Christian beliefs are used as weapons for political interests. Christians from both sides of the political spectrum, left as well as right, have made the mistake of politicizing faith; and it would be no improvement to respond to a weakening of the religious right with a rejuvenation of the religious left. Whichever side it comes from, a politicized faith is faithless, foolish, and disastrous for the church – and
disastrous first and foremost for Christian reasons rather than constitutional reasons. Called to an allegiance higher than party, ideology, and nationality, we Evangelicals see it our duty to engage with politics, but our equal duty never to be completely equated with any party, partisan ideology, economic system, or nationality. In our scales, spiritual, moral, and social power are as important as political power, what is right outweighs what is popular, just as principle outweighs party, truth matters more than team-playing, and conscience more than power and survival.
The politicization of faith is never a sign of strength but of weakness. The saying is wise: “The first thing to say about politics is that politics is not the first thing.” The Evangelical soul is not for sale. It has already been bought at an infinite price.
The critics of the manifesto seem to be urging the status quo to be continued. Even McKenzie wants politicians to consider the “new evangelicals” in their campaign. The political aspects of it are apparently the reason he opined about it. In another piece, The Milquetoast Manifesto, Lisa Miller of Newsweek magazine seems to be lobbying for increased politicizing of Christianity instead of less. Her comments are here. Many of the comments on the website are the same; confrontation and “in your face” arguments about details.
I’m not sure the word “evangelical” can be redeemed at this point. There has been a lot of ink and hot air flowing under that bridge, but there is little in the manifesto I disagree with, and they have certainly defined the problem clearly. I can appluad their efforts at redemption of the concept.
There are two phenomena at work in America right now that are so inwardly destructive that I’m not sure the republic can survive them. The first is our modern higher education system. The other is the environmentalist movement. Apparently the two have merged with frightening results at Oberlin College in Ohio.
Every reader of this blog needs to take three minutes and click this link to read about Oberlin’s “new sustainability house — SEED, for Student Experiment in Ecological Design.”
Now, I’ll issue my standard request for folks not to hear what I’m not saying. I am not saying that there’s anything wrong with building houses to conserve energy. I am not saying that wasting energy or polluting the planet is good. Conservation and being a good steward of the earth is very good.
But, leave it to our educated classes to take a simple concept with simple application and go completely and utterly overboard with it. Under no circumstances whatsoever would any sensible human being put a picture of John Edwards (or anyone else for that matter, but Edwards is particularly egregious) over their shower as a means of water conservation:
Rebecca Bob-Waksberg, a resident in this house says that “[n]o one wants to linger in the shower with someone staring down from the ceiling … . “You could also look at it another way,” she said, “that John Edwards is encouraging me to take a shorter shower.” Why Mr. Edwards? “He had the strongest global warming policies of any of the candidates,” Mr. Brown said.
Lest you think that I’m nit-picking, consider these other features of the house:
There are bricks in the toilet to keep water flow down. Waste water is captured in buckets from the sink and tub drains and used to increase the toilet flow. Sanitary!
Despite the house being divided, one side agreed to unplug its refrigerator, which is just an “energy-sucker.”
In the winter, the thermostat is on 60.
The only thing missing, apparently, is the altar for Gaia worship.
Lest you think this the work of over-eager college students, consider the comments of the professor:
“This is a generation that is watching the world come undone,” said David Orr, a professor of environmental studies at Oberlin. Projects like the Oberlin house, he said, are “helping them understand how to stitch the world together again.” Dr. Orr’s course in ecological design became the incubator for the house when Mr. Brown and the two other founders of SEED.
So, if we all time our showers for 3 minutes (unless, of course, you have long curly hair), then that’ll stitch the world back together again? One might think that simply not bathing would be even more helpful in binding up the world’s wounds. But wait, they’ve already gone there:
At Oberlin last year, some students in the winning dorm [in the dorm-energy use Olympics - sigh] did not shower for two weeks, officials said.
I hardly know on whom to heap more scorn, the students or their (alleged) teachers, because nobody in this whole sorry scene has any common sense - let alone true higher education - behind them, only political correctness. Get this, from Lucas Brown, one of the residents:
“It’s not about telling people, ‘You have to do this, you have to do that,’ ” Mr. Brown said. “It’s about fitting sustainability into our own lives.” And hoping, he added, “that a friend will come over, recognize that it’s fun, start doing it, and then a friend of theirs will start doing it.”
Having John Edwards stare at me while I take a 3 minute shower is NOT fun. I will not start doing it. I will NOT unplug either of my two refrigerators. My thermostat will NOT be on 60 in the winter. Am I the only one that sees this for the insanity that it is?
The students and their teachers are not living in reality. Their ignorance is exceeded only by their self-congratulating egos. Despite protestations that this isn’t about telling anybody what to do, that’s EXACTLY what it is. The clear implication is that to keep the world from splitting apart, we’ve all got to live like cavemen. After all, what of those of us (like me) who simply refuse to live that way? If the world’s on the line, doesn’t somebody have to compel me to get with the program? Indeed, that’s why they need this:
By next fall, the house’s 24-hour energy-use monitoring system will be fully up and running. Every turn of the faucet, every switch of a light, will be recorded, room by room.
Sort of enviro-1984, huh? These students are probably too busy with environmental courses to have been bothered with literature, though.
When you stop to think about the entire body of knowledge of Western Civilization and the centuries of learning in its universities, that we have come to this is truly and deeply depressing.
The online game Second Life is an amazing phenomenon. Over 6 million users pay a monthly fee to participate in a virtual life. Second Life is pretty much like the computer game SIMS, although every character represents another real human across the globe. So, in other words, if real life is not working out for you, you can create a better virtual one. There was a controversy not too long ago, entailing a married-in-real-life man who was “marrying” another character within the virtual world. The ethicists began asking: Is this right and moral?
Entering into the mix, a mega-church called Lifechurch has begun simul-casting their morning worship services into a Second life virtual church also called Lifechurch.
This faceless isolation bothers me. Why? It is because that I have been recently reminded that disconnection from the people of God is also disconnection from God. Rephrased positively: Communion with God is also communion with his people. His real live people.
If we refuse this closeness of union to our fellow Christians, we shall suffer doubly; for the Holy Spirit will not use us as the channels of his grace to them, nor can the effectual working through them reach us. Nothing but weakness and death can result from such selfish isolation. —George Bethune
You know, since the Democrats are the odds-on favorite to be rulers of the political universe for the next four years, everyone might as well know what were in for.
At a recent campaign speech, Sen. Obama offered up this gem:
“We can’t drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times … and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK,” Obama said. “That’s not leadership. That’s not going to happen,” he added.
Wow. Even leaving aside for the moment what in blue blazes any other country should have to say about what our thermostats are on, this statement is so bad it can’t even rise to the level of Carteresque. Lecturing the little people on what kind of car they drive is de rigeur in liberal political circles these days. The thermostat part harkens back to the cardigan days of the late 70s and its attendant malaise. But get between people and their dinner table and you’ve really picked a fight.
Which brings us to the caterers at the upcoming Democrat convention in Denver. Apparently the local organizing committee has just issued its environmentally-correct request for catering proposals. According to their guidelines:
Fried foods are prohibited [it’s almost like they don’t want to win any southern states, isn’t it?]
No liquids may be served in individual plastic containers.
Plates must be reusable, recyclable, or compostable. [No word on how - or where - all this composting will be taking place]
All food should be local, organic, or both.
But here’s the absolute best:
[C]aterers must provide foods in “at least three of the following five colors: red, green, yellow, blue/purple, and white,” garnishes not included.
Honestly, doesn’t this sound like a bit from SNL or the Onion? It is the nanny state mentality run completely amok.
Exit question: If Obama were a Republican and had made the exact same statement, how long would it take for the investigative reporter to get into his home and figure out what the thermostat is set on?
That’s the title of an article by Matt Taibbi, appearing in Rolling Stone recently. (RS, May 1, 2008). It is an adaptation of his forthcoming book, The Great Derangement, (Random House).
The premise is this: Matt “infiltrates” (Degree of difficulty, judges? 1.5 out of 100) John Hagee’s mega-church in Texas, finally culminating in a membership retreat weekend. His stated purpose was to find out what kind of religion was driving George Bush’s foreign policy (read: Israel) and domestic policies, as well. Along the way he makes some scathing observations— some of which are very true, and some of which he misses.
It’s a longish article, but it is fascinating to hear a completely unchurched person describe a branch of evangelicalism. As with many people who have done the same, he confuses all evangelicals with John Hagee’s brand of theology, and that is where you will become most frustrated. (Warning: it also has some rougher language.)
I would insert some great quotes, but I know some of you have read it, and you may actually want to post them.
I never, ever thought I would find the occasion to link this blog’s readers to anything on the Access Hollywood website. And yet…..
Harrison Ford, of Indiana Jones, Jack Ryan, and Han Solo fame, has had his chest waxed to protest deforestation. You can read the whole sorry thing here. Get this:
In an effort to showcase the pain involved in deforestation, Harrison willingly subject himself to the painful process of stripping his chest of all its follicles. Having worked with CI for 15 years, it was Harrison’s hope that his trip to the salon might just shock people into thinking “green.”
What did Forrest Gump say? Stupid is as stupid does.
I guess everyone has heard by now the quote from Barack Obama during his recent fundraiser in San Francisco. But, for the benefit of those who may have been cut off from civilization the past week, here it is:
You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them…;And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not.
And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.
The condescension is utterly mind-boggling. And it hasn’t taken HRC long to respond. Here’s a recent ad of hers from Pennsylvania:
Now, the politics of this are pretty obvious: Obama’s image as the candidate of Hope and Unity is getting a little tarnished. Hillary is trying to take advantage to save her candidacy (though her attempts to portray herself as a bible-toting sportsman ring a bit hollow). I suspect that Obama has just handed HRC a LARGE victory in PA and IN, and maybe NC too. This will also surely make the superdelegates think twice about his ability to carry states like PA, OH, and MI, which the Dem nominee MUST carry to win.
However, all that said, what’s most interesting to me about this is the worldview that BHO has with regard to Christianity. Every reference I have ever heard him make to what drew him to his church are all vaguely political. Almost invariably, they center around the social outreach programs (what we’d call mercy ministries) that the church had. I have yet to hear him mention his own salvation, or, much less, the name of Jesus.
So, it seems that Obama thinks that big city churches that engage in social projects are OK, but people in small towns who “cling” to their religion are just doing so out of bitterness at being out of work. Got that? No, I don’t either. There’s an obvious double standard, and I suspect that the real truth of it lies in how much a church centers on sin, redemption, and Christ. Those that actually mention those things (like in those small PA towns) can’t actually be drawing people to hear that stuff. They MUST have other motives. The must just be all exercised about their bank balance being too low (these small town folks don’t have Ivy League law degrees after all - else why on earth would they be in a small town?). It’s their poverty that makes them need Jesus. Urban churches with educated congregations don’t go in for all that stuff because they’re more sophisticated. They occupy themselves with nobler pursuits - like social outreach.
(For clarity’s sake, I’m NOT slamming social outreach. But, it’s not the reason for church.)
I think that Obama has a typical elitist attitude toward Christianity: it’s OK, so long as it knows its place and stays in it. And that place can’t intrude on anyone’s personal choices for living their life, or, worse, on public policy. But that’s not real Christianity. Christianity is knowing your sin and how Christ redeemed you from it without you even deserving it in the least. How can that knowledge stay contained? As I’ve written before, real Christianity is going to take over the whole person, and not be kept in a nice compartmentalized box where it merely runs a food bank or a clothes closet. A robust Christianity is going to assert itself beyond that, into the political, into the personal, into education and childrearing, into everything. For believing people, that’s a wonderful truth. For the unbeliever, it’s frightening.
That’s how I see it, anyway. But maybe I’m just bitter about being in this small town…….
I write a lot about politics here on the Riverblog. In a reply comment to my last post on the subject, I acknowledged that it might be in order some time for me to explain my views on the intersection of faith and politics. Today, I had in mind to do my taxes and had expected the effort to take all day. Happily it only took a couple of hours, so with the extra time, I’m going actually attempt to address those two least polite of dinner conversation topics – religion and politics.
Before starting, I want to make two points. First, I’m limiting my comments to how this issue plays out in the US, with all our First Amendment baggage in tow. Second, and as always, these are nothing more than my views. That and $1 will buy you a coke. Obviously, I think they’re correct, or I wouldn’t hold them. However, being the believer in depravity that I am, I don’t believe that they’re infallible.
There seem to be two popular schools of thought on how religion and politics should mix, and I don’t subscribe to either. The first group could fairly be characterized as the religious right. They seem to believe that the problem with our government and our politics is that we’ve divorced them from Christianity. This group seems to hold to the theory that the US is an inherently Christian nation, and that Christian concepts should play a role in politics and government.
The second group could fairly be characterized as secularists – maybe call them the irreligious left. They want no recognition of religion in public life, and believe that there should be a strict separation of church and state (a concept, I might add, that is extra-constitutional – go read the first amendment and see if that’s what’s mandated.) The secularists, since they tend not to be people of any particular faith themselves, believe that religion tends to be a generator of discord, and that it is best banished from public life and restricted to private activities.
Now, if you go look at data from the last presidential election, the best predicter of voting behavior was the frequency of attendance at church. Given that fact, it should not be surprising that Democrats are considered the secularist party and the Republicans the party of the religious right. Thus, a casual observer, seeing my unabashed GOP cheerleading, might assume me to be religious righter; that, however, would be way off the mark.
I disagree with the notion that this nation is a “Christian nation” to the extent that that means that it has always been populated by faithful Christians and has thus been rewarded by God for that faithfulness with prosperity. I disagree with that view of history and with that view of God. Many of the founders were not Christians, but rather deists. Their writings refer frequently to a “creator” or “providence”, but rarely to a savior, and almost never to Christ by name. Even if I’m wrong on the history, I cannot accept the premise that this country’s prosperity has anything to do with the relative religiosity of its citizenry or government. If prosperity is an indicator of Christian faithfulness, then what about the ancient Romans, or the Babylonians? Prosperous beyond any measure for their day, but utterly pagan.
So I disagree with the premise of the religious right. I disagree more with the secularists, because I find their arguments to be illogical. To say that all religious influence must be expunged from public life is as ridiculous as it is impossible. Christianity influences the whole person, including his worldview, and I’m sure any other religion would make the same claim. How can that be expunged if a person of faith is to hold public office or participate in politics? I suspect that the advocates of this position truly prefer to be free from certain policies and positions that are opposed or supported by religion (abortion being a good example) and seek to win by banishing the religious adherent from the debate altogether. Furthermore, for better or worse, most people in this country subscribe to a religion, and the vast majority of those are Christian. Isn’t it unreasonable to say that the government or politics can’t reflect that?
So where does that leave me? As I said above, true Christianity informs one’s outlook on everything because it works a transformation in one’s heart and mind. It certainly influences my thinking on issues such as abortion. It informs my views on the rights of parents to control the upbringing of their children, which makes me disinclined to support sex ed in the schools, or the providing of birth control without the parents’ consent. Christianity causes me to believe that the government should use its military power to defend the country.
My Christian outlook even leads me to believe in free-market capitalism, because I believe in total depravity. Markets need predictability to function, and if folks are free to make choices, they will choose what is in their interests, which is pretty doggone predictable. The converse of this is why socialism doesn’t work – it relies on the assumption that people will act for the good of the group as a whole and not themselves individually. I think that some elements of the church – the Roman Catholic church in particular – gets confused about this and urges more socialistic policies because they believe that since Christians are to put others before themselves that capitalism is wrong. To me, this both ignores the abysmal results that socialism, when historically attempted, has always produced, and the totally depraved nature of man (even Christians), which explains those historical failures.
Now, differing views of Christianity can produce different politics. Certainly so can other religions. So, my view is to get aligned politically with the party that reflects who you are and is going to be most likely to work to enact policies in which you believe. For me, that’s the GOP. For other Christians, it may be the Democrats or the libertarians, or whatever. Because God gave us all the ability to reason, I only expect Christians to be able to intelligently explain why their Christian views lead to their affiliation. (I once had a Christian friend argue to me that her faith supported her pro-choice views. I heartily disagreed, but she argued logically, and I cannot question her Christianity.) Party affiliation is not, to me, a litmus test for faith. Rather, the views that faith informs should dictate the party affiliation.
As always, I look forward to anyone’s comments on these issues.
I recently received a link to a video that is circulating on the internet. It is a fairly long video, about 16 minutes, and it is creatively produced and thought provoking. The main point of the video is to highlight the violence propagated by the Qur’an and the devoted followers of Islam. I think a typical reaction to the video could be one of hatred and disgust…towards what is portrayed and possibly even all of Islam. You can watch the video here:
I found myself with a different type of reaction. I was definitely disturbed by the images and memories, but I think one could produce the very same type of video using selected passages from the Bible highlighted with videos of “our” religious fanatics. I am definitely not an apologist for Islam, but I do believe that the vast majority of Muslims practice their religion and attend their mosques for similar reasons that you and I attend our various churches. As I watched the Islamic fanatics doing what they did and preaching what they preached in the video, my mind replayed images of Warren Jeffs, David Koresh, Jim Jones, various white supremacist groups, Westboro Baptist Church in Kansas, abortion clinic killers and various “con artist” televangelists…all doing their deeds in the name of God or Jesus, and all with scripture-a-plenty to justify it. I do believe the Bible to be the word of God, and I do believe the Qur’an to be simply a misguided book…but as a darn good pastor I know says, “context is everything.” If I have a particular agenda that I am passionate enough about, I think I could take parts of the Yellow Pages out of context to further my agenda.
Jonah Goldberg had an Op-Ed in the LA Times this morning, with an interesting premise.
Let me just give you the title and sub-title:
“Evolution of Religious Bigotry: The cowardice and intolerance of slapping a Darwin fish on your car bumper.”
As Christopher Caldwell once observed in the Weekly Standard, Darwin fish flout the agreed-on etiquette of identity politics. “Namely: It’s acceptable to assert identity and abhorrent to attack it. A plaque with ‘Shalom’ written inside a Star of David would hardly attract notice; a plaque with ‘Usury’ written inside the same symbol would be an outrage.”
And another:
The Darwin fish ostensibly symbolizes the superiority of progressive-minded science over backward-looking faith. I think this is a false juxtaposition, but I would have a lot more respect for the folks who believe it if they aimed their brave contempt for religion at those who might behead them for it.
Warning: The following will most likely offend somebody. Even my wife has her reservations about this idea. She tells me I must “lighten-up.” (I had her permission to write those two lines). But my intent is not to make anybody mad, defensive, or destroy any DVDs. I simply want to raise some questions that we should work through as believers. In essence, I am asking: “What do you think?”
Recently, I posted a short article about Anglican vicar Rev. Harrison who recently released a new book, Must Know Stories, in which he re-tells the major stories of the bible, while spicing up already dysfunctional characters with even more dysfunction and fantastic embellishments. His work reflects the PoMo notion that truth only communicates principle, and mythical approximation can just-as-well communicate the “point” of the bible.
Now, it’s easy for me to make my point when somebody starts making our historical stories even more graphic and clearly perverts the original. But let’s go the other way. What if someone embellishes the truth, changes the characters, removes the graphic parts, and adds age-appropriate parallels? The product would be cute, cuddly, family-friendly, and, yet, very much fictional. Would you have a problem with that? If you don’t, you have an overwhelming evangelical consensus at your back. American Christians (across various denominations) love their Veggie Tales.
Truth in blogging journalism: we have a row of VT DVDs in our movie collection—and I am not exactly sprinting to throw them out. Guilty of ownership, your honor. My point is not to stop watching the VT, or even destroy our current collection.
My point: Even “cuteness” should be held to a high standard. Simply being cute doesn’t give us greater latitude with the truth. Cuteness should be accurate. Our critical filters should be activated when we watch wholesome-looking cartoon characters, just as much as when we watch every art film de jour.
My wife let me know of a good approach to viewing the VT videos. She would have her kindergarten class watch the VT episode, read the real Bible story, and then discuss its similarities and differences. She said they did a fantastic job of dissecting them. It would seem that this approach would equip our kids to be critical thinkers, without dismissing the merits of any form of media.
Now, the VT episodes are shown on Saturday morning with all the other cartoons. They have had to edit out all references to the Bible, resulting in a sweet, moral lesson detached from the historical and overall redemptive story of our “Sacred History”. And if that’s the case, VT is just Aesop reincarnated.
An Anglican vicar, the right Reverend Robert Harrison has just released his new book, Must Know Stories. He retells all of the major biblical stories while updating them “to create more interest.” Goliath is now a drunk, and Eve is now a sex-crazed man-eater. You can read all about it here.
As if the Bible needed more graphic stories of sinful people doing sinful things.
It’s not that these characters are/are not guilty of his revisions, it’s that they are revised and presented as the truth.
Here is the most fantastic PoMo quote from the article:
“It’s better to tell the story controversially than not at all.”
Do you know what we call this genre? Fiction. Let’s not call it the Bible.
In George Will’s column today he offers up some fascinating data. (Washington Post, March 27, 2008, “Conservatives More Liberal Givers”) You can read it in its entirety here:
Here are some tidbits:
• “Although liberal families’ incomes average 6 percent higher than those of conservative families, conservative-headed households give, on average, 30 percent more to charity than the average liberal-headed household ($1,600 per year vs. $1,227). “
• “People who reject the idea that “government has a responsibility to reduce income inequality” give an average of four times more than people who accept that proposition. “
I don’t think there is room for any conservative to heave a self-contented sigh, but I think it is very interesting to examine the self-perceptions of both camps. By virtue of my calling and denominational affiliation, most Americans would view me as a “conservative.” Yet, I would not feel that my charitable giving was “excellent” or “good,” even. Contrast that to the “liberals” in Will’s article who would have a generally positive view of their charitable giving. Where is the disconnect? George Will alludes to it at the conclusion of his article.
About three weeks ago, I posted on the current desire/need to be a victim in modern American culture. I ran across a quote today from Tim Rutten in the LA TImes that I consider profound:
“In the United States and, increasingly, in parts of Western Europe, the only unchallenged moral authority has become that of victims.”
The modern day left LOATHES homeschooling. Kimberly and I have started watching Boston Legal, which I probably shouldn’t be confessing here, but nonetheless, we’ve noticed that every time they portray homeschoolers, it’s done in a way to paint the homeschoolers as kooks, weirdos, subversives, or even criminals. I ascribe this loathing to two facts: first, that most homeschoolers are evangelical Christian, and second that those children will not be available for the social engineering that liberals like to try through the public schools (e.g., sex ed).
So, on Drudge today, there’s a link to an interesting case from California. Apparently an appellate court in California has held that, unless the parents doing the homeschooling are state-credentialed teachers, they must enroll their children in a public or private full-time school. The homeschooling parent’s being supervised by a church, private, or charter school is insufficient for the court, it seems.
The ruling has caught the homeschoolers in California completely off guard. They’re promising an appeal to the California Supreme Court. If that’s not successful, then the vast majority of homeschool parents can be arrested for truancy and charged with “educational neglect” - whatever that is. Predictably, the teachers’ union pronounced itself “happy” with the ruling.
I don’t think the homeschoolers will go down without a fight, though:
Homeschooling parent Debbie Schwarzer of Los Altos said she’s ready for a fight. Schwarzer runs Oak Hill Academy out of her Santa Clara County home. It is a state-registered private school with two students, she said, noting they are her own children, ages 10 and 12. She does not have a teaching credential, but she does have a law degree. “I’m kind of hoping some truancy officer shows up on my doorstep,” she said. “I’m ready. I have damn good arguments.” She opted to teach her children at home to better meet their needs. The ruling, Schwarzer said, “stinks.”
Seems as though the gloves are coming off on both sides…..
The title of this blog entry is also the title of a new book just out by Susan Jacoby that speaks to the prevalence of anti-intellctualism in America today. Or maybe I should just say “In the Western World,” given Jeff Miller’s post on the London Mail survey below about fictional characters and historical personages.. The New York Times book review is here. While you (and I) probably don’t agree with all her conclusions, there is no denying the trend. And whatever you do, don’t leave the site without clicking on the YouTube link under the picture that shows the model on the game show about being smarter than a third grader answering the question about Budepest. It is beyond hilarious, or pitiful, depending on how the mood strikes you.
A new book, Against the Machine, by Lee Siegel, attempts to describe the effect of the internet on American culture. The New Your Times review can be found here.
Suffice it to say that Siegel doesn’t care for the Internet, and he warns you that if you sit in front of it for long periods of time, you will be encouraged toward “exhibitionism and asocial behavior.” The book is generally panned by the reviewer but Siegel makes some worthwhile points. See what you think about it.
Glenn Reynolds calls it the “Pee-Wee-Hermanization of the American male,” and I think he and Tim are onto something. There seems to be a definite trend in pop culture to make men effete. What’s wrong with men dressing like men, and, by extension, acting like men? Women out there, would you be attracted to a man who dressed like this? Personally, I wouldn’t be caught dead in it.
Then again, I don’t know anybody who would, really. Am I out of touch, or is Brooks Brothers?
Apparently, All Good Christian Men/Women should not be shopping at Gap, Kohls, Bloomingdales, and Marshalls this year.
Why? Article here.
In other news, if you can’t find me, I’ll be in the Gap.
I’ve been blogging a lot lately about the ‘08 race, especially on the Republican side. Since my last entry, though, two really interesting developments have taken place that involve religion’s role in politics.
The first is Mitt Romney’s speech on the role of religious freedoms in the American political tradition. It was almost universally well received. I read positive reviews from everyone from Chris Matthews (notorious leftie), to Pat Buchannan (notorious rightie), to Dr. Dobson, to Peggy Noonan. You can find the text here and the video is probably on YouTube if you go looking.
Romney made two interesting points that might be considered contradictory. First:
If I am fortunate to become your president, I will serve no one religion, no one group, no one cause, and no one interest. A President must serve only the common cause of the people of the United States. There are some for whom these commitments are not enough. They would prefer it if I would simply distance myself from my religion, say that it is more a tradition than my personal conviction, or disavow one or another of its precepts. That I will not do. I believe in my Mormon faith and I endeavor to live by it. My faith is the faith of my fathers - I will be true to them and to my beliefs.
Then:
There are some who would have a presidential candidate describe and explain his church’s distinctive doctrines. To do so would enable the very religious test the founders prohibited in the Constitution. No candidate should become the spokesman for his faith. For if he becomes President he will need the prayers of the people of all faiths.
Now, I think that there’s an element here of having your cake and eating it too. I agree that no candidate should be required to be an apologist for his religion. But that really isn’t reality, is it? Obviously, as a religion that most folks aren’t familiar with, Romney’s mormonism rightly raises questions about what he believes and how it will affect his conduct as president. I’m not sure that’s the same thing as having a religious test, something Romney implies is the case.
The second event of the last week was the revelation about Huckabee’s speech to the Southern Baptist Convention in 1998. The article describing the speech is here. He’s quoted as saying “I hope we answer the alarm clock and take this nation back for Christ.” This implies that, at one time, the nation was Christ’s. Maybe I’m reading too much into it, but I’m thinking this means Huckabee subscribes to the notion that the US has been blessed for its faithfulness, as a special province of God, a view I do not share.
Here’s another interesting quote from the article:
“I [Huckabee] didn’t get into politics because I thought government had a better answer. I got into politics because I knew government didn’t have the real answers, that the real answers lie in accepting Jesus Christ into our lives.” He compared his entry into politics to “getting inside the dragon’s belly,” adding, “There’s not one thing we can do in those marbled halls and domed capitols that can equal what’s done when Jesus touches the lives of a sinner.”
I’m not sure I understand, then, why he’s in government instead of ministry.
So, for better or worse, religion seems to be figuring prominently on the Republican side this year (almost as prominent as the dueling proxy star power of Bill Clinton v. Oprah on the Democrat side). So I’ll pose two questions for consideration and comment:
I’ve frequently bemoaned the sorry state of the Episcopal Church USA. The Church of England is apparently even worse off, if the recent comments of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, are any indication.
The Archbishop recently gave an interview to Emel, which is described as a “muslim lifestyle magazine.” (I’m not even going to touch that one.) The interview was excerpted in The Times (UK).
Dr. Williams throws out some doozies. Get this:
Williams suggested American leadership had broken down: “We have only one global hegemonic power. It is not accumulating territory: it is trying to accumulate influence and control. That’s not working.”
He contrasted it unfavourably with how the British Empire governed India. “It is one thing to take over a territory and then pour energy and resources into administering it and normalising it. Rightly or wrongly, that’s what the British Empire did — in India, for example.
“It is another thing to go in on the assumption that a quick burst of violent action will somehow clear the decks and that you can move on and other people will put it back together — Iraq, for example.”
Either this man is rabidly ignorant of history and current events, or he is outright lying. Whichever it is, he sounds utterly ridiculous. Does anybody really believe that we went into Iraq, bombed away, and then left for someone else to “put it back together”? Who would that be, exactly? I’m sure the families of the soldiers who are bleeding and dying there would like to know why their loved ones are bleeding and dying if someone else is putting Iraq back together. Probably the folks at the US Treasury would like to know who’s paying to put it all back together, if the US isn’t.
And the British went into India to normalize it? Really? Then can someone please explain to me what all of Ghandi’s protests were about then? The UK got into India for trade, and nothing else. How many decades were they there before granting India independence? Contrast this with Iraq. We invaded in 2003. In 2005, the Iraqis held elections (twice) and began to govern themselves.
Is it any wonder, with leadership like Dr. Williams is providing, that the worldwide Anglican Communion is about to be torn apart? Perhaps he should refrain from political analysis (and probably from interviews with muslim “lifestyle” magazines too) and concentrate on his own problems.
Here’s a start. He should figure out what’s wrong with this quote that he gave in the interview:
He commends the Muslim practice of praying five times a day, which he says allows the remembrance of God to be “built in deeply in their daily rhythm”.
It’s for idiotic stuff like this. NOTE: This link is probably better for adults only (especially the comment threads, some of which are really funny, though).
Ordinary humans (i.e., non-lawyers) probably can’t imagine either 1) having an argument over what falls within such a definition or 2) having to have a definition of such a blazingly obvious thing in the first place.
Ordinary human taxpayers in Wisconsin are probably pretty upset that their supreme court actually had to waste time and taxpayer money ruling on it, especially once they see what the ruling is.
Kimberly hates rules of ethics. Her view is that you either have ethics or you don’t, and if you don’t, no set of rules is going to give them to you. I’d say this proves her point.
So I got up this morning and saw the news that Al Gore had actually won the Nobel Peace Prize. Perusing a sampling of reaction on the internet, I think that the President of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Klaus, hit the nail on the head:
“The relationship between his activities and world peace is unclear and indistinct,” the statement said. “It rather seems that Gore’s doubting of basic cornerstones of the current civilization does not contribute to peace.”
The award committee practically acknowledges as much:
Extensive climate changes may alter and threaten the living conditions of much of mankind. They may induce large-scale migration and lead to greater competition for the earth’s resources. Such changes will place particularly heavy burdens on the world’s most vulnerable countries. There may be increased danger of violent conflicts and wars, within and between states.
Got that? There MAY be a danger of conflict. What planet are these people living on? I suppose it escaped their notice that the US Army and the US Marine Corps have been in Iraq actually trying to bring some semblance of order and peace to that country for several years now, and are actually having some measure of success. Or how about the residents of Anbar province, where the locals have turned on Al Quaeda and pacified their cities?
Actually, I know that it didn’t escape their notice. They’re a bunch of political hacks. Consider some of their past award recipients, noted this morning by Scott Johnson at Powerline:
2005
MOHAMED ELBARADEI (joint winner). He’s done such a nice job with Iran.
2004
WANGARI MAATHAI. The Kenyan ecologist peacefully teaches that the AIDS virus is a biological agent deliberately created by the Man.
2002
JIMMY CARTER JR., former President of the United States of America. A true cosmopolitan, he has undermined the foreign policy of his own country and vouched for the bona fides of tyrants and murderers all over the world.
2001
UNITED NATIONS, New York, NY, USA.
KOFI ANNAN, United Nations Secretary General. Among other things, they have respectively served as the vehicle for, and presided over, one of the biggest scams in history.
1994
YASSER ARAFAT (joint winner), Chairman of the Executive Committee of the PLO, President of the Palestinian National Authority. He was a cold-blooded murderer both before and after receiving the award.
1992
RIGOBERTA MENCHU TUM, Guatemala. She is the notorious Guatemalan faker and author, sort of, of I, Rigoberta Menchu.
1988
THE UNITED NATIONS PEACE-KEEPING FORCES New York, NY, U.S.A. Notwithstanding rapes and sex abuse committed by the team in Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea and the Congo, still doing fine work all over the world.
The will of Alfred Nobel, in establishing the Peace Prize specified that it go “to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.” I leave it to the reader to decide whether Al Gore and the luminaries noted above actually fit that description, or are just the most politically correct flashes in the pan at the time.
An article written by Alan Fram (“One in Four Read No Books Last Year,” AP), was printed in many newspapers on August 21, 2007. The Washington Post purchased it and printed it, as did many other papers. You can find the online version here.
As a great reader and a protectorate of all things bibliophilic, Jimmy Hopper alerted me to the discouraging news: Americans are reading less. But more saline was to be sprayed on the wound: the article asserted that (in general) Southerners don’t interact with anything intellectual. To boot, religious people don’t see a need to read as much. Plus, old women, minorities, poor people, Southerners, country-dwellers, and conservative Republicans have an insatiable craving for religious books. Read a section for yourself:
People from the West and Midwest are more likely to have read at least one book in the past year. Southerners who do read, however, tend to read more books, mostly religious books and romance novels, than people from other regions. Whites read more than blacks and Hispanics, and those who said they never attend religious services read nearly twice as many as those who attend frequently…Those likeliest to read religious books included older and married women, lower earners, minorities, lesser educated people, Southerners, rural residents, Republicans and conservatives.
In a recent presentation to a community group, I even cited the article. My point was this: The self-satisfied, non-religious, non-Southerner, library-card-carrier can easily mutter, “That just proves those Red State Christians are crazy and it definitely shows their growing separation from the global cultural conversation.” But, I pointed out, based on the article, (and my presupposition that all mankind craves truth) the non-religious person has to ingest “more crumbs of truth,” whereas the believer enjoys a pipeline of Truth vis a vis his respective religious service.
Hindsight: What a careless and stupid point.
Why?
I failed to read the fine print underneath the article:
The AP-Ipsos poll was conducted from August 6 to 8 and involved telephone interviews with 1,003 adults. It had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
Where Clay Staggs might say, “I am at a loss for words,” I, on the other hand have a barrelful of words at the ready. Some, that I will choose not to use. According to the US Census Bureau, the United Sates has approximately 303,036,000 people living within its borders. 1,003 respondents is hardly representative. That would be like taking “a poll” of Bryant-Denny Stadium and asking only one person a question—if Bryant-Denny held over 3,000,000 people, that is. Out of pure Christian charity, let’s assume the AP/Ipsos Poll was methodologically responsible in the conduct of the poll. Let’s assume that they asked the proper amount of people from each state—based on population (similar to how each state gets representatives to Congress). Thus, (if conducted properly) the pollsters would have called 16 Alabama persons. (MS, 9; GA, 16;SC, 13;LA, 16, AK, 9; TN, 20) California, by contrast, would have had 121 respondents. Sixteen people represent how the state of Alabama reads? That’s not just irresponsible. That’s lunacy. How can a poll like that be the subject for an AP article and also printed in the Washington Post? I haven’t even begun to point out the inherent flaws in modern phone polls, either. What if your more “edgimicated” types subscribe to a “no-call” list? What if college grads are migrating to VOIP and cell phone usage?
Benjamin Disraeli (made popular by Mark Twain) had it right:
“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”
Mea Culpa. Shame on me for not reading critically.
I’ve written before about the disturbing inability of our culture - especially our supposed elites - to make even the most basic moral judgments. That inability is on display again for the world to see at Columbia University.
The president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, will be in NYC this week to address the United Nations General Assembly (who, I suppose, must tolerate his appearance). Yet, inexplicably, Columbia University has extended an invitation to him to speak at a forum.
This probably isn’t necessary, but for the benefit of the morally dense at Columbia, this man is evil, and represents an evil regime that is bent on the destruction of the US and our allies. He’s not even shy about it. He has repeatedly denied the holocaust, threatened the annihilation of Israel, is working feverishly for nuclear weapons, and holds to a very radical, apocalyptic view of his role in ushering in the return of the “hidden imam,” (their equivalent of the final judgment) by starting war with us infidels in the West. These statements are made in public, and frequently in English (though our press just as frequently ignores them). Ahmadinejad is also accused of having been one of the student captors of the US hostages in Tehran in 1980. The Iranian regime he represents is listed by the US State Department as a state sponsor of terrorism, is widely credited with the bombing of the US Marine Corps barracks in Lebanon in the 80s, and, just last week, US commanders in Iraq testified to Congress that Iranian munitions are being supplied to insurgents by Iranian special forces and are used frequently in attacks that kill and wound US soldiers. Finally, the litany of executions, floggings, torture, political repression, and enforcement of barbaric sharia law is too gruesome to detail here. Google it if you can stomach it.
Now, sadly predictably, the powers that be at Columbia, all the way up to its president, Lee Bollinger, when confronted with this outrage hide behind the canard of freely exchanging ideas. The whole concept of a university as a platform for the exchange and debate of ideas is centered around the pursuit of truth. This man represents everything that is antithetical to truth, and every other Western and, especially, Christian value. When one of the most prestigious universities in the US says that it is participating in constructive dialogue, but in fact are allowing a sworn enemy of this country to use them as a platform for his obvious propaganda, what is one to conclude about that university? As if exhibiting pride in their moral obtuseness, one of the deans at Columbia has said that they would have invited Hitler to speak, given the opportunity.
How about adding this to the mix: this same university, Columbia, that warmly welcomes a murderous tyrant, bans the US military’s ROTC programs from its campus. So, the military is banned, but the leader of a nation who is actively working to kill our soldiers is welcomed. We should, then, be very clear. This is NOT about simple relativism, or else the ROTC would be allowed just like Mahmoud. This is what Jeanne Kirkpatrick so accurately referred to as the “blame America first” mentality.
Lest anyone think that this is just another of my GOP-slanted rants, none less than the speaker of the NYC city council has condemned Columbia for this outrage.
These people have no discernment, no wisdom, no moral compass, and no shame.
UPDATE: The folks at the Daily Kos, the leading liberal blog and virtual mouthpiece of the Democrat party, are really jazzed up about Mahmoud’s visit. Check out this post, by a Jewish lesbian who confesses to having a crush on Ahmadinejad, because he’s so right about how evil George Bush is. Money quote:
Monday, when Ahmadinejad speaks at Columbia University in New York, I’ll be listening. Maybe with a bottle of wine and some soft music playing in the background. If I can get past the fact that, as a Jewish lesbian, he’d probably have me killed, I’ll try to listen for some truth.
For about the first time in my life, I have literally no idea what to say.
Sometimes it’s hard to know if I’ve just become too jaded and cynical, or whether American culture has completely gone down the drain.
In the news recently was the story of this college student at the University of Florida who went to a forum where Sen. Kerry was speaking. He overstayed his time at the microphone per the events rules, and the police came to remove him. He resisted the officers, which is completely illegal, so they attempted to arrest him, which he then further refused. After a warning that they were going to use the taser on him, when he still failed to follow their instructions, they used the taser on him.
Here’s the video. (I think there’s a profanity beeped out, but you may want the kiddos out of the room just in case.)
Now here’s my question. Should I feel sorry for him? I really don’t. A hit from a taser is painful, but does no long or short term damage. He was resisting an entire group of officers. What are they to do? They’d be sued if they broke his arm trying to force it behind his back and into the cuffs.
The reaction in the blogosphere to this has been surprising. Most seem to feel that the force was excessive, and that the campus cops were trigger happy. Here’s a roundup of comments.
Have I gotten too hard-hearted? Is this brutality? Or, is it simply acceptable now to refuse arrest, and suffer no consequence for it? Aren’t the police in a no-win situation here?
I’m interested to hear anyone’s thoughts about this.
The Puritans (and modern day political conservatives too) have been accused of being deathly afraid that someone, somewhere was having fun. Today, undoubtedly, that distinction belongs to the political left.
I ran across a couple of stories today about food. PETA is unhappy with Al Gore for eating meat. Why pick on poor Al Gore, you might ask? Well, you see, PETA claims that the animal husbandry industry produces more greenhouse gases than all forms of transportation combined. So, in their view, Gore is an eco-hypocrite because he’s not a vegetarian. They even plan to protest his next appearance in Denver.
Couple that with the LA city fathers, who want to place a moratorium on any new fast food restaurants opening in south central LA because there are just too darn many and it’s making the locals fat. Now, this could be fodder for lots of different rants - nanny-state bureaucrats, loss of economic freedom, etc. But I want to go in a different direction.
The PETA activists and liberal LA politicians would absolutely have a conniption fit if someone suggested that the government regulate any personal sexual conduct whatsoever. They are quite emphatic that in the sexual sphere, anything must go, and no one has any right whatsoever to say differently. So why would they care what anyone ate?
Personally, I lay all of this at the feet of relativism. The answer to my question is that, purely in the world of the hard political left, sex is not taboo, but a quarter pounder with cheese at Mickey D’s is just tacky. So, since they don’t like fast food, it should be banned. But wait, you may object, what about all the bad health consequences of those burgers and fries (or whatever carnivorous delicacy the Gores enjoy)? Well, what about the fact that STDs are virtually eliminated if everyone has only one sexual partner? I guess some public health problems are more equal than others, huh?
Really, if you think about it, moral relativism is doomed by its own self-contradiction. If all viewpoints are equally valid, and some think that private sexual conduct should be regulated, and some think that food consumption should be regulated, what, if anything, do we actually regulate?
Take another example: some cultures think honor killings are acceptable. Others don’t. So how is the moral relativist to reconcile this when it actually comes to either outlawing or allowing honor killing? There is a real world (much as relativism may want to deny this) and a given activity will either be legal or illegal, and there isn’t much gray to it. Relativism can’t cope with this reality.
Relativism is very much in vogue now intellectually, but, eventually, I think, it will fall of its own weight. And, who knows, maybe the thing that will get that started is when they come for your Whopper.
So I guess everyone has heard about the brouhaha on the beach in San Diego over the holiday weekend. In case you missed it, a fight on the beach escalated to the point where the police had to be called in. Read all about it here.
And guess what’s to blame? That’s right, Carrie, it’s demon rum. Nevermind asking anyone to take responsibility for their own actions, even if they have been drinking. People aren’t to blame. Booze is.
So, because alcohol is so clearly to blame, what’s the natural course of action if you’re a craven politician? You propose a total ban on alcohol on all public beaches, natch. Thus has SD City Councilman Kevin Faulconer stepped up to the plate and done just that. Surely this will make the beaches family-friendly again, right? If we just ban the alcohol, it’ll be a swell place - a place where Ward and June could take Wally and the Beav without fear of them being exposed to that most wicked of substances, corrupting their immortal souls.
What garbage. And, not only to I have my own opinion to back me up, I have that most coveted of things in our postmodern American culture - a study! According to a 2004 study published in the Journal of Adolescent Health, kids whose parents allowed them to attend unchaperoned parties where drinking took place were twice as likely to binge drink as other kids. No shocker there. However, the study also found that kids who drank at home with their parents were one-third as likely to binge drink as other kids. Who could have foreseen this? I mean, alcohol is so evil - how can this be? When children are taught to drink responsibly by their parents, they become responsible drinkers as adults. It’s craziness, I tell you.
An excellent piece citing this study appeared on the Wall Street Journal ’s opinion website on Monday. I recommend all of you read it here.
Now, the oh-so-cocky Councilman Faulconer laid down this challenge regarding his proposed ban:
For those who believe an all-out ban is too extreme, I invite you to convince me otherwise.
Well, I submit this scientific study in response to Mr. Faulconer’s challenge. It’s good public policy to encourage families to drink together to reduce binge drinking. Pour up a beer for Wally! It’s good for him!
Somehow, I still don’t expect Mr. Faulconer to be convinced.
No, that wasn’t a typo. And, yes, this is going to be as blazingly stupid as the title suggests. In fact, when trying to categorize this entry, I was sorely tempted to create a new category called “Too Dumb to Believe.” Honestly, sometimes I read real news stories and wonder if I’ve accidentally clicked over to the Onion.
So earlier this month, a group of 600 (probably frozen) morons decided to get naked and have their picture taken on a melting Swiss glacier. It’s hard to say what’s the worst aspect of this whole spectacle. It could be the fact that the photographer, who’s done lots of shots of large groups of naked people in public places, seems to have a very weird obsession with what would ordinarily be considered indecent exposure. It could be the respect that the AFP writer pays to this highly questionable cause, referring to the photographees as “eco-conscious volunteers.” It could be the nauseating self-congratulatory do-gooder pose that the organizers of the event strike:
Volunteers for the Swiss photoshoot were asked to turn up by train and cable car, to avoid generating carbon dioxide emissions that contribute to global warming.
But, winning by a nose is the brain-numbing illogic of stripping naked on a glacier to “draw[] attention to melting Alpine glaciers, one clear sign of global warming and of man-made climate change… .” Can someone please explain this to me? Is there anyone that really and truly looks at this and thinks about global warming? I dare anyone to see this picture and think of anything except the fact that there are a bunch of naked doofuses on a sheet of ice. I think the local mayor’s quote pretty well sums it up: “There’s no need to get undressed, I can show you very nice pictures of the glacier.”
Oh, and I LOVE the agenda journalism - the melting glaciers are a “clear sign … of man-made climate change.” Note the immediate leap to the conclusion that because the glacier is melting (as glaciers have been since the last ice age), it’s man’s fault. BUT WAIT! According to researchers in Norway, moose flatulence produces more greenhouse gases than driving a car. So I guess those “eco-conscious volunteers” took the train for nothing.
All this is just so ridiculous. It’s like all semblance of logic has left public debate. The emperor, literally this time, has no clothes.
Last night I discovered the perfect answer to the celebrity idea that they, because they are famous, attractive and rich, have all the answers to all political and social ills. The answer lies in two words: CELEBRITY JEOPARDY. Despite the softballs lobbed up and categories designed for their specialties (i.e. Movie History); the questions they can’t answer and the dumb answers they give is really pitiful.
We return again today to a perennial favorite on this blog - the battle between wacko environmentalists and the rest of us. Be warned: this one is ridiculous even by the already-low standards of the debate on this issue.
We humans have now been accused of being too greedy for the sun’s resources, and using a disproportionate share of them. Truly, I am not making this up. Read it all here.
Now, the first thing anybody reading this is going to wonder is how any one thing on the face of the earth takes more of the sun’s resources than any other thing. Ah, well, you see, they’re talking about that great biological storehouse of solar energy - plants. We apparently are guilty of using more plant resources than any other species on earth.
Folks, I couldn’t dream up quotes like this:
An agriculture professor at the University of Melbourne, Snow Barlow, said … humans were taking up too much of an important natural resource. “Here we are, just one species on the earth, and we’re grabbing a quarter of the renewable resources … we’re probably being a bit greedy.”
Now, I’ll drop the sarcasm for a minute to actually point out what should be blazingly obvious to everyone. There are a considerable number of those “renewable resources” that are only renewed by HUMAN ACTIVITY. To read this article, you’d think that corn, wheat, soybeans, etc., just magically spring forth from the ground, and rapacious humans descend on them like locusts, leaving nothing for the subsistence of the myriad innocent (and totally not greedy) species.
That’s just coming at it from a non-Christian perspective. As Christians, we understand that the reason that it is good and proper for us to plant and harvest crops, use trees for wood, etc., is because a) God has given the Earth to us so that we can exercise dominion over and be stewards of it, b) the earth is made for man, not man for the Earth, and c) we worship the Creator, not the creation.
So, all of this is really dumb, and probably not worth the pixels I’m devoting to it. However, if there’s a substantial part of the environmentalist movement that buys into this, consider this line from the article:
[T]he increased use of biofuels - such as ethanol and canola - should be viewed cautiously, given the potential for further pressure on ecosystems.
How’s that going to be for an internecine environmentalist feud? The plant-huggers vs. the alternative fuels crowd. It ought to at least be entertaining to watch. Get the popcorn. Oh, wait….
Ecclesiastes 1:9 says the following: “That which has been is what will be; that which is done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun.’ While reading Henry Morton Stanley’s (“Dr. Livingston, I presume”) memoir of his explorations in equatorial Africa in the 1870’s, I ran across this passage. Stanley and his party are north of present day Uganda and are staying in a village for the night. “Mirambo” is the great chief and overlord of the area with whom they have negotiated for permission to cross his country:
Zegi, swarming with a reckless number of lawless men, was not a comfortable place to dwell in. The conduct of these men was another curious example of how “small things make base men proud.” Here was a number of youths suffering under that strange disease particular to vain youth of all lands, which Marambo had called “big head.” The manner in which they strutted about, their big looks and bold staring, their enormous feather head-dresses and martial stride, were most offensive. Having adopted, from bravado, the name of “Ruga-Ruga,” they were compelled, in honor, to imitate the bandits custom of smoking bhangi (wild hemp,) and my memory fails to remind me of any similar experience to the wild screaming and stormy sneezing, accompanied day and night to the monotonous droning of the one-string guitar (another accomplishment de rigueur with the complete bandit) and the hiccuping, snorting and vocal extravangances which we had to bear in the village of Zegi.
There is very little in that description that I thought doesn’t apply to the young street gangs of today. There is the ridiculous dress, the posturing, the violence, the drugs, the imitation of the most violent aspects of society, and if you substitute the one string guitar for the incessant bass that rocks automobiles (I think the monotonous droning applies both to the bass and to the lyrics): the music is even the same. Maybe the social engineers of today can examine the Zegi society and find out how the Ruga-Ruga were disenfranchised and determine that they are only seeking a “family” to which to belong. On the other hand, maybe it’s a fallen world and man is flawed….
Ah, the wisdom in God’s word. There is truly “nothing new.”
As the 4th of July approached, I saw again church signs and even billboards that indicated that the worship of God in certain churches has been changed to a “patrotic celebration” advertising all the fervor for country associated with that particular endeavor. Last Saturday, I read an editorial column in the Tuscaloosa News from Cary McMullen, who writes a religion column for the Lakeland , Fla. paper that is syndicated throughout the country that addresses this tendency. While Mr. McMullen and I don’t always agree, I have found him to be an excellent, often perceptive observer of religion in America. However, this is a column in which he and I agree totally in every respect (except he is probably more lenient toward it than I.) The link is here. http://www.tuscaloosanews.com/article/20070630/NEWS/70629010/1005/SPORTS0106
Some of you have already read this since I sent the link out earlier but I thought it would be good to put it on the Riverblog since, as someone noted below, we’ve discussed the state of Christiandom quite a bit here. If you have e-mailed me with a comment, please feel free to repeat it here.
I read an article published in a recent New York Times about the death of Jerry Falwell and a shift in emphasis for what the authors say is a “new breed of evangelicals.” You can read the article here. This “new breed” still adheres to some base issues such as abortion and same sex marriages but are described as being more open to other social issues such as the environment, world poverty, and AIDS. Many of the leaders are megachurch pastors such as Rick Warren, author of the mega best seller, The Purpose Driven Life. Although the movement is still basically Republican, the authors see some problems with the upcoming GOP presidental candidates for various reasons. One of the really fascinating things about the article is that it doesn’t mention, even in passing, Joel O’Steen and the other light weight minds that comprise the “get rich off Christianity” group, thus dismissing them as any sort of factor. Maybe they never were taken seriously by anyone.
I found their views interesting, especially on the political evolution of this movement, and I have been almost totally critical of Christian political involvement and don’t see that changing. If you live by the sword, you will die by the sword, and I prefer not to see Christianity judged by the actions and standards (or lack thereof) of some of these people. Especially interesting to me was the quote by Gabe Lyons, raised in Falwell’s church, who has shunned politics and advocates involvement in the general culture, including the arts and media. That quote comprises the next to last paragraph in the piece and says that politics does not shape the morality of a culture but only reflects that culture. To change anything, you have to change the culture. One facet of this is something Jeff Miller continually advocates in his Salt and Light articles; Christians should work to take back the arts instead of a miserable concession, because “Ideas are important”!
ap•ro•pos
1 : at an opportune time
2 : by way of interjection or further comment : with regard to the present topic
As I was studying for the first part of Thessalonians, I came across this quote:
After watching clip after clip on CNN of comments by Jerry Falwell, I wanted to create a blog about how my faith differed from Mr. Falwell. And although Mr. Falwell and I seem to be world’s apart, I could not escape the video clips that showed him affirming and proclaiming almost every orthodox tenet that I, too, believe. Sans his political activism and Arminianism, Mr. Falwell and I are brothers in Christ. (That was an incredibly difficult sentence to write.) But Calvin’s quote reminded me that in my Reformed-Intellectualism, I must affirm the supernatural up and against the Cynic, Diogenes, and Epicurus of our day. So, I guess that was me in the background to the right of Mr. Falwell. Yes, I was almost falling off the stage, but I was there.
As noted in the bulletin this morning, we are providing a forum on the Riverblog to discuss our current Movie Night movie, Jesus Camp. The suggestions below are just that, suggestions, and everyone is free to discuss any ideas as comments. Please join in with your thoughts on the important concerns raised by this movie.
-The New York Times reviewer of this feature stated that this movement is “partly a response to the steady coarsening of mass culture in which the dominant values are commercial and the worldview is Darwinian in its amorality.” Is this completely accurate? Is commercialism really widely considered to be an enemy of evangelicalism? Will Christianity always be at odds with the world?
• The methods of Ms. Fischer and her group are obviously very effective in achieving their goals. Mass manipulation always seems disturbing when seen from outside but seems especially odious when the ones manipulated are children. How is this type of manipulation different from Joel O’Steen , Benny Hinn Billy Graham, James Dobson and Don Wildmon?
•These children are home-schooled and so are many reformed Christians. This obviously doesn’t lead to Kids on Fire. Are the motives different? If so, how are they different?
•There are scenes of children in camouflage with wooden swords in mock fights to heavy metal Christian music. There is also much talk about how Muslims indoctrinate children to go to war. Is this a viable response for a Christian? Are these the weapons of the New Testament for the cause of Christ?
•Ted Haggard makes an appearance ironically speaking against homosexuality. Should evangelical Christianity have someone who speaks for them on a high political level? Can any man really do this? Is it truly effective? Is it right and ethical?
•One of the children has been told and speaks of Protestant churches whose services are like Riverwood as being “dead churches where Jesus doesn’t visit.” Is emotionalism a requirement of the Church in the New Testament ? Can this be maintained? What is the proper place of emotionalism in Christianity?
•Ms. Fischer declares that “Extreme Liberals who look at this should be quaking in their boots.” Is she correct? Is this something to be desired?
•The interaction between Ms. Fischer and Mike Papantonio, the Air America talk show host, is very telling. Papantonio is a protestant Christian of Ms. Fischer’s “dead” church variety. Who “wins” the debate? What are their respective attitudes after the debate?
•All “evangelical” Christians tend to be perceived by the world as if their children were part of Kids on Fire. We are all lumped together. Can this be addressed? If so, how?
•What is laudable about the evangelicals that were portrayed?
Most adult Sunday School attendees at Riverwood have heard me speak about the (comatose) state of American culture by commenting on the New York Times Book Review bestseller lists. Well, I’m something of a movie fan also and I was interested in the article in the entertainment insert of the Tuscaloosa News about “Summer Blockbusters” coming to the local movie emporium. My interest turned to amazement as I read it and was once again convinced of the incredible truth and wisdom of H. L. Mencken way back in the thirties when he said, “Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.”
The reviewer lists 45 summer “blockbusters” (I can’t type that without smiling) of which seventeen, more than a third, are re-hashed previous releases (started to say sequel but that has some validity.) Fully 75% of these are the third time around. Maybe they need to go to the Madison Ave. guys who make TV commercials and try to find some originality. Eight are horror movies, always (incredibly) a staple in America. Seven are animated and, believe it or not, three of those are based on children’s toys! One of the live action movies is actually based on a video game.
One of the re-hashed entries is called “Evan Almighty,” a re-hash of “Bruce Almighty” which, were it not for George Burns in “O God,” might have been the worse movie in history and is based on a concept that is offensive to me. One of the new trends seems to be movies about pregnant women but with a certain twist. The woman in “Waitress” gets pregnant by her “worthless” husband. In “Knocked Up,” (what a title) the villainous male is a “slacker” one night stand. In “The Ex,” he is also a “slacker” but at least they were married. One has to wonder if it’s the worthless ne’er do well men or the brainless women who choose them that are the problem. I think we already know the politically correct answer to that question.
I guess there may be a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel. Two movies look to be interesting to me (i.e. worth giving a shot in the event that it might be good.) In percentage terms of the total releases, that’s 4.4%. There is a movie called “Imagining Jane” about the early life of Jane Austen, and a comedy about dueling, romantic chefs called “No Reservations.” If it turns out badly, it does have Catherine Zeta-Jones in it, which is compensation of a sort.Obviously none of these will make the Riverwood Movie Night list.
Well, this is a far cry from the gravity of the discussions about the movie (which I’ve thoroughly enjoyed by the way). But, it was so ludicrous, I just had to post it and offer a brief comment.
Sheryl Crow has now proposed a limit on how many squares of toilet paper can be used in any one sitting - only one - in order to combat global warming. Read the whole thing here.
Now, there are so many things that are just blazingly stupid about this, that it’s not even worth the pixels to detail them. I just ask this question. How completely and utterly divorced from reality do you have to be to even offer such a suggestion in the first place? I mean, this is just downright gross. Is there anything too extreme for these Hollywood enviro-types to suggest? Consider the insular, sycophantic world a person would have to be living in to even suggest such a thing in public.
If anything saves the world from the designs of these radical environmentalists, it will be their own extremism. I’m pretty sure that toilet paper rationing is a big political loser.
Monday morning, driving in the early morning fog to take my dogs to the Riverwalk, I turned on NPR and heard one of their detailed news items about world affairs; human interest division. This particular item had to do with the coming beatification and canonization of the recently deceased Pope John Paul II, a subject that would normally be of little or no interest to me. What grabbed my attention was a statement that rushing sainthood through would help to make the Catholic Church more “relevant” in Europe. In their rush to make themselves “relevant,” they have waived every rule of the centuries required for “sainthood” and, as the reporter stated, put John Paul on the “fast track”to sainthood. There was a five year after death wait rule. Waived. There was a long investigation into his virtues that generally takes decades. Not waived but started immediately and quickly completed; led by the Polish Cardinal who is behind the big push for beatification. There is the need for one “miracle” for beatification and one more for canonization. Lo and behold, a French nun reported last week that she prayed, not to God, mind you, but to John Paul, about her Parkinson’s Disease and she was miraculously healed. Now John Paul knew nothing of this prayer or this healing but he gets credit for the miracle. Can anyone doubt that a second miracle is forthcoming?
This follows the two previous posts regarding the “artistic” effort of making a statue of Jesus from chocolate and the on-going “selling” of the Evangelical vote. One wonders how long this “artist” studied his situation and tried to find a controversal way get his name and “art” in the papers for some “pub.” It finally came to him that connecting Christ and the chocolate candy that has become associated with Easter at Easter would deliver the proper shock value and someone would complain. At that point he could make a statement about artistic integrity akin to repudiating book burning.
One has to wonder what exactly happened between Fred Thompson and James Dobson, who was one of the key players in delivering Ohio and the presidency to George W. Bush. Probably nothing happened. Thompson probably simply didn’t pay the proper homage to Dobson, one of the godfathers of evangelism; even though his voting record as a senator is spotless regarding the issues Dobson regards as central.
And finally; back to John Paul II. I guess that, in a relativistic world; being willing to throw away all of the rules and traditions of centuries for expediency is looked upon as a virtue. If that is where they are going, it’s all irrelevant anyway. What I hate about all three of these is they are all represent “bad pub” to any thinking man. They are also bad pub to me because I name the name of Christ. However, I can live with that personally because I hold no allegiance to any of these men; don’t need to defend them, and I hope and believe that I could defend my own beliefs against this sort of thing. The real problem I have with it is that these attempts at influence peddling also name the name of Christ and that is truly offensive and disgusting to me.
I’ve previously criticized Dr. James Dobson for his negative comments about Sen. McCain and some statements McCain had made about gay marriage. It appears that Dr. Dobson has again thrust himself into the 2008 GOP primary, this time to slam a guy who isn’t even a candidate (yet).
Drudge posted a link to this story, where Dr. Dobson opines about Fred Thompson, former Tennessee Senator and actor on the TV show Law & Order. Key excerpt:
“Everyone knows he’s conservative and has come out strongly for the things that the pro-family movement stands for,” Dobson said of Thompson. “[But] I don’t think he’s a Christian; at least that’s my impression,” Dobson added, saying that such an impression would make it difficult for Thompson to connect with the Republican Party’s conservative Christian base and win the GOP nomination.
Wow. That’s pretty strong stuff to allege that he’s not even a Christian, even while acknowledging that he’s been supportive (“strongly”) for Dobson’s agenda. Why would a heathen support Dobson’s political agenda?
Thompson’s supporters immediately countered that he is in fact a Christian, and is a baptized member of the Church of Christ. Dobson left it to his spokesman to reply:
In a follow-up phone conversation, Focus on the Family spokesman Gary Schneeberger stood by Dobson’s claim. He said that, while Dobson didn’t believe Thompson to be a member of a non-Christian faith, Dobson nevertheless “has never known Thompson to be a committed Christian—someone who talks openly about his faith.”
So, now get this: unless you’re a noisy Christian, in evangelical politics, you aren’t a Christian. Do I have that straight? I think I’ve put my finger on the real problem here, too: evangelical politics. Now, I don’t want to be misunderstood. I hope many, many Christians are elected to public office. I think they should run, and I think their influence if elected will be salutary. However, having one man with a radio show in Colorado be the arbiter of who’s really a Christian for political purposes is completely insane.
I know that many folks respect Dr. Dobson, mainly for his views on raising children, and especially boys. The buzzword for this in the business world is “core competency.” And when a business gets outside its core competency, it runs a tremendous risk of failure. (Anyone remember Coca-Cola clothes?) I think that Dobson should stick to his core competency and quit trying to be the Christian political kingmaker.
If anyone is left out there that needs an object lesson in the perverse intersection we have in this country with the public schools and the First Amendment, then let me tell you about Bong Hits 4 Jesus.
Believe this or not (and this actually makes my point here) this week the US Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case called Morse v. Frederick. Morse is the high school principal where Frederick was a student. The Olympic Torch was coming through town. The school apparently encouraged students to turn out to see it. Frederick did, and when the torch passed by, he unfurled a banner that read “Bong Hits 4 Jesus.” Morse took the banner away and suspended him for 10 days. Frederick later admitted that the banner had no meaning, was intentionally absurd, and that he did it just for attention.
This, folks, is before the United States Supreme Court. I know, you’d think they’d have better to do. The question in the case is whether the principal had the power to effectively censor the student’s speech at a non-school event. A good summary of the oral argument can be found at Prof. Althouse’s Blog.
Now, the reason I post this is that it exemplifies perfectly the problem with having the government be in the business of running schools. Because the principal is a government actor, this matters. Had this principal been running a private school, she would answer to her customers for her actions privately, and the US Supreme Court could consider more weighty and less sexy issues.
It’s not the fault of the schools that they’re run by the government. You’d think that governments would be tired to the point of exhaustion with dealing with endless federal court litigation over the schools. When any action that a teacher takes can result in a federal lawsuit (maybe even all the way to the top), it’s inevitable that teachers are going to have to spend a not insignificant amount of time basically learning federal civil rights law.
Is it only me that thinks that effort could be better spent?
Oh well, looking on the bright side, as Prof. Althouse points out, this case will make for no end of bong jokes in Constitutional Law classes for decades. At least there’s that.
Just when you thought that you had read every asinine, hysterical, over-the-top moronic thing that could be written or said about global warming, along comes Paul Hellyer. Mr. Hellyer used to be the Defense Minster of Canada. He has figured out the way to save the planet from all the destruction that mankind is wreaking through greenhouse gas emissions. Ready?
That’s right. If the government will just give up the secret alien technologies that it has in Roswell, NM, then we can use those to save the planet. After all, those aliens had to have some more kind of energy source to fly all those light years to earth. And they’re sooo smart, they’d never use fossil fuels. Right? Right??
In a strange way, I feel very sorry for Prince Charles. He’s an extremely important person, but yet he’s utterly irrelevant. That is to say, he will never wield any real power. But since he’s the Prince of Wales, the media will hang on his every word. So, he has this bully pulpit, but is completely impotent to do anything other than talk - or maybe I should say nag.
Today the UK Evening Standard carried a report (read it here) quoting Charles as saying that, in effect, McDonald’s fast food should be banned. How noblesse oblige of him to determine what his lowly little subjects should and should not be eating. It’s for their own good you know.
But my sarcasm aside, he can say that all day long, and yet he’s without the first whit of authority to do anything about it. That must be extremely frustrating. All the riches and splendor in the world, and all he can do is rail against Big Macs. What’s actually sadder is that he obviously can’t appreciate the simple pleasure of a good, greasy hamburger and fries.
Anyone who knows my political leanings will not be surprised to learn that I’m no fan of the New York Times editorial page. Yesterday’s editorial about the price of corn, however, was one of the most astonishing things I’ve ever seen them print.
For anyone who’s not heard about this yet, a bit of background is in order. For years, ethanol made from corn has been pushed as an alternative fuel for cars. However, with gasoline approaching $3 per gallon, and with the abject hysteria in some quarters over alleged human-induced global warming, alternative fuels have taken on a new urgency, and the demand for ethanol has increased, meaning, of course, a greater demand for corn.
What do we (well, those of us who acknowledge free markets, anyway) know is going to happen when demand for ethanol made from corn increases? Surprise, Surprise! The price of corn has gone up. OK, big deal, right? So the bag of Doritos costs a few cents more - so what? That’s all well and good here in the good old USA, but south of the border, it’s a different story.
It seems that in Mexico, there are protests in the streets over the spike in the price of tortillas. According to the AP, “[Mexican] workers earning the minimum wage of about $4 a day could spend a third of their earnings on tortillas for their family.” The article goes on to explain that poor Mexicans get 40% of their protein from tortillas. It’s as much a staple for them, or even more so, than bread is for us. If they can’t afford it, malnutrition is a serious possibility.
This seems very, very bad. The poor are being squeezed by this turn of events. Surely something should be done. Ah, yes, but that inflexible law of supply and demand. It puts the impoverished workers of the developing world at cross-purposes with the zealots of global warming. With whose side will the all-compassionate NYT editorial writers cast their lot?
Since their site is registration required, I’ll reproduce that editorial below:
The current price of corn is $3.23 a bushel, more than half again what it was a year ago, and beginning to bring to mind the record $5.545 a bushel set in July 1996.
There are many reasons for this price spurt. The ethanol boom has created a sharp new demand for corn. The Department of Agriculture revised its estimate of the 2006 corn harvest downward by some 200 million bushels because of weather and other factors. There is also a smaller corn reserve on hand than usual — the smallest in a decade — which parallels shortages around the world.
Add to this the growing weight of commodities funds investing in agricultural markets, and you have daydreams — or nightmares — of that $5 mark.
Yet all this has taken place against the backdrop of three record harvests in a row, a sure sign of how strong the ethanol appetite for corn production is turning out to be. It’s tempting to assume that the effect of sharply higher prices is confined primarily to the agricultural sector. But where corn is concerned, we are all part of the agricultural sector. The historical cheapness of corn has driven it into nearly every aspect of our economy, in the form, most familiarly, of corn syrup. The low price of corn over the past half-century lies at the very foundation of America’s historically (and unrealistically) low food prices.
Gratifying our two major appetites — cheap food and cheap gas — used to seem easy because both corn and oil were abundant. Cheap oil helped keep corn prices low because it cost farmers less to run their tractors and combines.
But we are entering a new dynamic now. While there has been talk recently about refining ethanol from sources other than corn, that could take a while. So at the moment what we are trying to do is gratify those appetites from the same resource: agricultural land. No matter how high prices go, what will need to change isn’t the amount of corn acreage available or even the size of the enormous harvests we are already getting. What will need to change is the size of our appetites.
Get that? The Mexican poor had just better change the size of their appetites. I guess we know now where the NYT’s priorities are. Keep Al Gore and his acolytes happy, and the peasants can just eat cake, or something.
OK, confession time. I am hooked on Grey’s Anatomy. It’s one of my favorite shows on TV. That said, there’s nothing to ruin a perfectly good movie or TV show like knowing what the actors are like in real life.
I have been reading about a recent dust-up on the set of the show where one of the lead actors (Isaiah Washington, who plays Dr. Burke) allegedly used a slur on the set to describe a castmate who has recently let it be known that he’s gay (TR Knight, who plays George). You can find some gossipy type articles about it here. Washington subsequently issued a statement apologizing. It’s here, and it seemed pretty thoroughgoing to me.
The reason that I even post such trivialities is the latest installment of the off-set drama. It seems that in today’s world, simply apologizing for doing something wrong is just not good enough. You need to go to rehab, and that’s exactly what Washington has done. You can read the whole ridiculous tale here.
This is not meant to excuse Mr. Washington’s behavior in any way, but rehab? Rehab for using a bad word (that he’s already profusely apologized for using)? When I first saw the article, I figured that he was going into rehab because he had some drug or alcohol problem. Nope. According to the ever-present “insider”, the honchos at ABC told Washington that to keep his job, he must “enter a program to examine why he would say such hateful words.” This means there’s actually such a program in existence. Really. I am not making this up.
As a Christian, intellectually, I know that the world has it’s priorities exactly backwards. But in my mind, I still have this (obviously ridiculous) expectation that the offended castmate will just say, “OK, apology accepted” and everyone just move on with their lives. But no. Off to the “treatment facility” with Mr. Washington. After all, why would anyone ever say hateful words?
It is always fascinating to see what the unbelieving world thinks about Jesus Christ. In today’s Sun (UK) newspaper, we get a glimpse of that.
Apparently the leader of the “church” of Scientology, David Miscavige, believes that Tom Cruise is going to be “worshiped like Jesus for his work to raise awareness of the religion.”
That was what Jesus did, after all, right? Now, I know that darkness cannot understand the light, however, this doesn’t even make sense. Raise awareness of what religion? Judaism?
The inevitable “source close to the actor” says the following of Cruise: “Like Christ, he’s been criticised for his views. But future generations will realise he was right.”
Follow the circular logic here. Christ was criticized all right, but for claiming to be both the Son of God and the only way to the Father. Have future generations realized that? If so, why are they looking for another christ (and in Tom Cruise of all places)?
I once heard Rob Looper say that man was created to worship, and if that worship isn’t directed at God, man will put something else in God’s place and worship that. I think this pretty much proves that thesis up. QED.
If everything goes as planned, after next week, all the investitures for public and civil offices will be completed. These ceremonies make everything official, honorable, and serious, and they culminate in “the swearing in” of our candidates for public office. Traditionally, the oaths have been made while the candidate places his/her right hand on the Judeo-Christian Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments (aka the Bible).
Last month The American Family Association (AFA) sent out an email alert to all American Christians decrying the intentions of Representative-elect Keith Ellison (Muslim, D-MN) to use the Koran during his swearing-in ceremony. You can find most that email’s contents here:
The AFA was ignited mostly by Jewish columnist Dennis Prager’s article earlier that week. Prager insisted that, regardless of faith, the United States should use the Bible for all inductions, ceremonies, and swearing-ins. You can find his article here:
However, since we are a nation of laws, (as Clay Staggs often reminds me) there is no law that conscripts any official-elect to use the Bible for any vow/oath as a requisite for office. He found an excellent clause in the U.S. Constitution that was very plain:
The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the members of the several state legislatures, and all executive and judicial officers, both of the United States and of the several states, shall be bound by oath or affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.
In fairness, the AFA finally figured out that they could do nothing (legally) except express outrage—outrage which I believe is unfounded and unbiblical. But they did manage to issue an action point for all concerned Christians:
Take Action
1. Send an email asking your U.S. Representative and Senators to pass a law making the Bible the book used in the swearing-in ceremony of Representatives and Senators.
Now, several things first: 1) I want people to become believers in Christ—the exclusive and only Savior of souls. 2) I can appreciate activism. 3) I like America 4) I like families. With that out of the way, my statement is this: The duties of the office dictate the requirements for the office. Simple, I know. Additionally, I am against petitioning for such a law that would propose this as requirement. I know this may bring up the aged discussion in regards to the separation of Church/State, but this is another example where belief simply does not have the biblical mandate to force others (alien beliefs, persons, or cultures) to comply with God’s laws. It is only within the context of the covenant community (read: Church universal) can these be made requirements.
Interestingly, Dr. Dobson has poked his toe into the political waters of the GOP 2008 presidential primary. He is opposed to John McCain’s candidacy. Apparently McCain’s position on gay marriage is unacceptable to Dobson.
I find this interesting on a number of fronts. First of all, McCain has always been solidly pro-life. This makes me wonder whether there’s a new litmus test politically for being a social conservative. Does being squishy (assuming McCain is that) on gay marriage trump being pro-life?
Second, I can’t help but wonder whether this is cover for having other problems with McCain. The reason I suggest this is that McCain’s position, set in full context, seems non-controversial to me. McCain made the comment which was the basis for Dobson’s criticism on a TV talk show. That comment was:
I think that gay marriage should be allowed if there’s a ceremony kind of thing, if you want to call it that. I don’t have any problem with that. But I do believe in preserving the sanctity of a union between man and woman.
However, moments later, in the same event on the same show, McCain clarified what he meant:
On the issue of the gay marriage, I believe that if people want to have private ceremonies, that’s fine. I do not believe that gay marriages should be legal.
You can read McCain’s whole exchange here. Dobson appears to have neglected to mention the later clarification.
Now, I think there’s LOTS to disagree with McCain about, and in the spirit of full disclosure, I’ll say he’s not my first choice (or my second) for the GOP nomination in 2008. That said, I think it’s a bit disingenuous to attack him for being soft on gay marriage when all he said was that it’s OK for folks to have ceremonies (that are legally meaningless). How can you stop that anyway? It’s going on right now.
The core problem here, really, is Dobson’s wading into the political arena. Though as an individual citizen he certainly has the right to speak, as a religious leader, he’s painting a bullseye on himself and his organization. The IRS is already suspicious of these non-profit groups’ activities that blur the line between their tax-exempt purpose and political advocacy (which is forbidden for non-profits). Making comments like this, no matter how careful you are to distinguish between your personal views and those of your organization, doesn’t help your cause. And it surely won’t serve them well if in January 2009, we’re inaugurating President McCain.
Sunday night at the latest Riverwood movie night, we viewed “Chariots of Fire,” and I was again amazed at what a fine movie it is and how clearly it speaks to the Christian message. I saw it when it first was released and remember distinctly telling Carolyn during the telecasting of the Academy Awards that this was one movie that had no chance to win, simply because of its theme. I also distinctly remember my total shock when it won Best Picture. At the time I thought that I had misjudged the “culture wars” and maybe there was some creative integrity involved (it was easily the best film of the year, in my not so humble opinion.) As you know, the film tells the story of the 1924 Olymipics in Paris and of the excellent British track team that competed that year. It focus on the interaction between Eric Liddell, born in China to missionaries; and Harold Abraham, the son of a Jewish financier. Within this framework, it speaks to the Christian life lived out.After watching it again Sunday night, I thought I might offer some thoughts on how it particularly displayed Christianity.
There were several interesting themes. There was the question of whether Eric should run at all but perhaps should concentrate on the mission work. His sister in particular puts pressure on him not to run, afraid that he will be intoxicated by it and won’t return to China. Eric explains that he needs to do so; that God made him for the China mission, but he also made him fast. He will run to glorify God who made him as he is. The idea is that we, as Christians, are not to turn away from God’s good gifts in the world but are to enjoy and utilize them to his glory, as did Eric Liddell.
The theme that dominates the movie, however, is the contrast between the fast Christian and the fast non-Christian. Harold Abraham runs, and runs well, but he must win, or he suffers. Part of this is his perceived victim status as a Jew operating in the British upper class and at Cambridge University. One of the most subtle moments in the movie is when Abraham, after decrying his status, sings “He was an Englishman” from a glee club presentation. He can’t be happy, even when he wins, because he is driven only by his own desires and self glory. He ends up winning, but not against Liddell, since Eric wouldn’t race on Sunday and runs in a different race. This seems to taint Abraham’s triumph to some degree. When Abraham takes a gold medal in the Olympics, he waits on the train at the London station until the rest of the happy, celebrating team leaves, and then exits by himself, meeting Sybil and leaving only with her.
Eric Liddell, on the other hand, runs and wins (God did make him fast) but the movie makes it plain that his enjoyment is in the act of running. His joy overflows when he runs, and his joy (and his life) is securely founded in his status as a child of God. At the station, he celebrates happily with the team, filled with delight at the victory of all.
Both young men have run-ins with authority and both rebel for different reasons that are significant. Abraham hires a coach, and when his amateurism is questioned by Cambridge, refuses to run for Cambridge anymore because he feels that the coach is necessary for him to beat Liddell. Liddell refuses to run also because the Olympic trials for his race are on Sunday. His run-in with authority comes when the committee (including the Duke of Windsor) try to talk him into running against his principles. The Duke informs him that his country and king come before God. This fairly drips with irony since the Duke will abdicate his throne a few years later, not from principle but from the desire to marry a divorced American woman.
There is much more; it was a rich movie; but I’ll close with this. Our movie night movies are picked to be thought provoking and to help us deal with our culture as Christians. The next movie night will show Shadowlands, whose theme is Christians dealing with grief and is based on the life of C.S. Lewis. I encourage you to attend and enjoy fellowship, popcorn, drinks and a thoughtful movie.
Years ago now, in my early days of being a Christian, I stood before a groaning buffet table with my pastor, Dr. Robert Ostenson, in his home at Christmas. As we stared at what seemed to be acres of delicious food, I remarked jokingly, “Dr. O, I don’t think I’ve ever heard you preach on gluttony.” He replied with a twinkle in his eye, “And you never will.” That incident crossed my mind a few days ago as I read an article in the Tuscaloosa News about “Books that rely on faith to sustain dieters.” The reviewer, a woman from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, looked at five books, all the while noting that it was only a sampling of many, that connected a successful diet with religion, or, as the reviewer put it; “when the Ben and Jerry’s in the freezer is calling your name, you gotta have faith. Or a dash of old-time religion.”
The books range from an irrevant Our Lady of Weight Loss to the spectacularly sober Living in Divine Health (by the author of the best selling What Would Jesus Eat, and with a foreword by Benny Hinn.) All of this is relatively harmless, although apparently, given the number of entities hinted at in this field, extraordinarily profitable but this time it brought me up short. In the Riverwood Book Group, we have been reading and discussing Marilynne Robinson’s wonderful book of essays, The Death of Adam. In her essay, “Puritans and Prigs,” she discusses the negative (and false) connatations attached to the word, “Puritan” in our culture. She says that priggishness has replaced puritanism, and that it is “useful in the absence of true morality.” She defines this trait further as being “highly predictable because it is nothing else than a consuming loyalty to ideals and beliefs that are so widely shared that the spectacle of zealous adherance to them is reassuring.” As an example, Ms. Robinson speaks of modern dietary “laws,” i.e. what foods are considered healthy by the “in” group. She speaks of this tendency to zealotry as “archdefenders of the obvious” and “simple snobbery.” In short, the new zealot is a prig rather than a puritan, and these types of things have become the new secular “religion” and have replaced the more rigorous puritanism that is so out of favor that the word itself brings up certain unacceptable connatations.
This obviously came to my mind as I read the newspaper article. The extreme religious group that partakes of Tim’s “Christian Chaff” and can’t eat in moderation and excercise apparently need to adopt a Christian zealotry to their attempts instead of simply doing what they know they need to do to lose weight. This strikes me as being on something of the same level as praying for a football victory against the “enemy,” another high school team, as depicted at a Birmingham high school recently on MTV. I’m sure God’s love for you is not dependent on your weight and that “Divine Health” is almost certainly spiritual and is centered only in Christ and the Gospel. Thus, if Ms. Robinson is correct, this entire business has only to do with self satisfaction and snobbery. It is often amazing how well the church has adapted to the mores of the world. Perhaps next we will see a tome on “Spiritual Shopping.” Wearing out of style clothes certainly lends itself to snobbery and prigishness.
Leave it to a Presbyterian minister to take all the fun out of cursing. I realize that this discussion could possibly be quite volatile. But, again, leave it to a Presbyterian minister to coldly and systematically approach the subject.
Most importantly, as the Shorter Catechism (Q#2) reminds us, the Scriptures should be our only rule and appeal for the glorification and enjoyment of God. In other words, we should let Scripture guide our beliefs, not cultural mores or conventional sentiment. This is especially important when it comes to swearing and cursing—since it is not an issue where you find many moderates.
There are 5 basic groups [my personal arrangement only] of “swear/cuss” words that I will address. I have addressed them in the order of their severity (#1 being the worst offense).
1) Profanity
There is actually only ONE form of true “profanity.” Profanity is to directly blaspheme or attack the Creator. Profanity is “to treat the sacred with abuse or irreverence.” Profanity demeans what is good, holy, and pure. This is done in many ways. For example: “Oh my G-d!” or “G-dd-mnit” or “Jesus Christ” (In a perjorative /exclamatory way) or “Jesus H. Christ.” And there are others. Many people do not realize that saying “Oh my God” is really much, much, worse than saying the “F-Bomb.” Profanity blatantly trivializes and dismisses our holy, powerful God as common and capable of defamation. In effect, profanity is “taking the Lord’s name in vain,” which is clearly laid out in the third of the 10 commandments. I have told many people that I would actually rather hear the “f-word,” than to hear the Lord’s name in vain. People do not understand the gravity of this sin. Instead of mocking or deriding the creation— they boldly and brazenly mock the Creator. Yet, you will hear this with greater frequency: “Oh my God!” And, yet, it does not carry the negative stigma across our social strata. The remaining categories are simply an intellectual discussion compared to this one. This one is non-negotiable. The ancient Hebrews referred to God as YHWH(Yahweh), and yet, in prayers, they referred to him as Adonai. With any other verbal reference to God they used “Jehovah,” (transposing the vowel pointings of Adonai over the vowel pointings YHWH) so that they would not even come close to violating the third commandment. Even in historical rabbinical literature and modern English, orthodox Jews will type “G-d” to show the greatest reverence for his name.
2) Cursing
The biblical definition/and record of cursing is very clear: Cursing is the act of wishing ill fortune to come to the hearer. Job cursed the day he was born, and he also cursed the life of the person who told his parents that he had been born. (Job 3) Almost every single prophet was used by God to pronounce cursings on the people of Israel and also the alien outsiders/foreigners/invaders (eg. like Babylon, etc…) The biblical definition of cursing does not include swearing. Cursing is wholly limited to the calling out for bad things to descend upon the one being cursed. Also check out Prov. 26:2 “Like a sparrow in its flitting, like a swallow in its flying, so a curse without cause does not alight.” In other words, there are times when cursing is fully godly and appropriate— if there is just cause. However, curses are meaningless if there is no real reason for you to utter them. Are we to believe that we must be holier than Job— the “most righteous man on earth?” Must we be cleaner than the bible itself and all of the prophets. That is being a Pharisee. (Making stronger rules to prevent from breaking the real ones.)
Another word that must be inserted in this category is “d-mit.” Most likely, in its etymology there almost certainly is an implied “(‘God’)d-mit.” I would agree that frequent/undiscerning/loose use of this word is not advisable nor godly. However, there are times that the human soul finds proper expression of the longing and ache for the heavenly kingdom by this very utterance. What do I mean? Affected by the Fall, man AND creation are constantly falling apart. The works of man are always frustrated by imperfection and sin. Nothing will be perfect until Christ comes back again. And anything that is not perfect will not find a place within the future kingdom. One of my professors gave this example: If a chair that was poorly designed to accomplish what it should do (hold a person up), and then, the chair breaks, a possible response to that occurrence would be to say “d-nit!” Why? We are expressing that all bad things— even badly designed things should be dismissed from the heavenly kingdom. That badly designed chair has no place in the kingdom of God. However, due to ignorance and our own times of when our anger becomes sinful, the proper usage of this seems to be very rare. An additional caveat: God alone has the right to damn or to redeem, so it is imperative that we “damn” the things that God himself damns.
3) Swearing/Oaths
This is probably the most misunderstood of all the biblical references to “swearing.” The biblical intent and definition of “swearing” is the act of taking an oath based on the validity and power of the one sworn by/to. We are commanded not to “swear” in God’s name. In other words, this is never appropriate: “I swear to God.” Why? Because you are making God culpable and responsible for the act that we are swearing to. This is not good. The bible also places “oaths” in this category. Unless vows/oaths/swearing are taking place within the context of accountability, then they are improper. In fact, our Book of Church Order views “oaths/vows” as one of the elements of worship. It happens every time we accept new members, perform a baptism, or ordain a new minister.
4) Perversion and Degradation
This category is somewhat difficult to exhaustively explain, since there is an endless supply of sexual euphemisms available to the human language. However, this category represents all words that demean, belittle, pervert, or soil the created order, creation, and the beautiful acts of creation. Most often, it is a reference to sexual activity. Since this is an ordained and beautiful creation of God— it would be wise to not to treat these words lightly. I would include “hell” in this category, as well. An often ignored word is also in this category: “fool.” The Proverbs warn about the gravity of calling someone a “fool.” Sometimes, it is biblically warranted— but it shouldn’t be thrown around loosely, either. One other item might be mentioned here: it doesn’t take a “cuss word” for us to communicate hate or perversion. The most innocuous word could be used in a context of rage and perversion.
5) Linguistic inelegance/Rough language
This final category can hardly be in the same discussion with the first 4 categories. But because of misunderstandings, I will include it. Dorothy Sayers(fellow Inkling with CS Lewis) writes that these words are “at worst, inelegance— no more.” This would include words like “-ss,” “sh-t,” “b-tch,” “b-stard,” and others….These words have been simply ascribed severity by their social context. There are other acceptable words that mean exactly the same thing. We MUST pay attention to what words mean— NOT what they sound like! Would you find it cute if I said “arse” or “butt” or “gluteus maximus” or “heiney” or “backside?” They all mean “-ss.” Someone once wrote this response to this assertion: “When used in a way that is meant to bring down people, or even to interject strong feeling, it is morally and biblically wrong.” I could not dissagree more with this sentence! Our friend has said that these words are morally and biblically wrong! Evidently she does not know her own Bible! Paul uses the word “scubelo” or “sh-t” in Philippians 3. But the NT is a kindergarten classroom compared to the OT. All of the major translators (RSV,NIV,NAS) have chosen to render “explicit” words with more amenable word choices. Are we cleaner than God’s holy word? NO. A thousand times no! These strong words were used for a reason! Are we to change them so they suit are social context? I know that this is merely an introduction, however, the serious OT scholar would want to investigate the scribal transmission of text (especially concentrating on the use of “Kethibh” and “Qere”(the actual text and the marginal notations of explicit material) Kethibh is the term used for the original uncorrected text which would remain in all copies of the Scriptures. Qere would be any marginal notation that would actually be the words used in public reading (to preserve decorum, we presume.)
The final thought: We reserve our mouths at times— not because the specific speech is intrinsically or spiritually “bad,” but, rather, through our propriety we are showing deference and respect to all of our weaker brothers and sisters. Similarly, we are preserving the witness of Christ to an unbelieving world who may misunderstand and associate these words with “anti-Christian” beliefs. It is my wish that we 1) regain awesome reverence for God’s name 2) respect those around us 3) and not attach improper moralistic restraints to words that are not truly profane, curses, or perverse.
I noticed, though, that the President of the European Union has seen fit to condemn the death sentence. Now, that’s probably to be expected, but notice that it’s done without the slightest hint of the internal self-contradiction that it demonstrates.
Nowhere on earth does post-modern moral relativism reign more unchallenged than in Europe. Now, if a moral relativist were true to himself, he’d look at Saddam’s sentence and conclude that, since every value system is different, and none is either right or wrong, that the local Iraqi value system that allows for death by hanging must be respected and cannot be criticized. Yet, the EU does the exact opposite. They condemn the sentence of hanging. Why? Well, because they’re against it, of course. Get this, from the EU’s official statement:
The EU opposes capital punishment in all cases and under all circumstances, and it should not be carried out in this case either.
Is that a scream or what? It reminds me of the end of Animal Farm: “ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL, BUT SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS.”
A column in the Tuscaloosa News that I almost never miss is that of Cary McMullen, who appears each Saturday on the Religion page. I’m not sure why I’m so faithful to read him because He is obviously a bit to the left of my stance on most things. Maybe it’s because he’s thoughtful and articulate, and that’s relatively rare today; maybe it’s becaue he’s obviously a believer; maybe it’s simply because, looking at his picture, he’s at least close to my age. He writes for a newspaper in Florida and has been picked up nationwide.
His column today is written in the style of C.S. Lewis’ Screwtape Letters (with, he notes, apologies to his memory,) and in it, he discusses Jerry Falwell’s latest faux pas during a meeting of the Value Voters Summit. It seems that Falwell stated that Hillary Clinton would “energize ‘my’ constituency” even more than if Satan himself ran. McMullen discusses this as a memo between the two demons Lewis used in his book, Screwtape and Wormwood. Wormwood, the underling, had written his boss, Screwtape, complaining that this was an insult to their leader, Satan himself. Screwtape tells him not to worry, that “Insults are our domain.” He says that Christians were led to believe that “hating this woman is an act of serving our enemy,” who is, of course, God.
There is more, but McCullen’s final argument from Screwtape’s perspective is fascinating and, to me, right on. He has Screwtape, Satan’s demon, say this: “You see? Any time we can persuade people that their faith must be tied to a particular political platform or party, we distract them from the practice of what one of their more influential writers called ‘Mere Christianity.’ And the more they think Christianity has to do with comfort, political influence and something nebulous like values, rather than the hard disciplines of unselfish worship, prayer, study of scripture and service to the less fortunate, why then, the better our chances of making them ours.”
I think “distract” is putting it mildly. What happens is all too often we develop a wrong view of our faith and a wrong view of the gospel when it becomes part of some kind of secular crusade. Christians are free to vote on and support political causes they believe in but I believe none of them are a part of our faith. When we make them part of our faith, just as when we make patriotism part of our faith, we then have to accept the bad and even the downright evil that is in them also as part of our faith because the world will insist on it. Since we set the terms of the argument, there is no logical way out of it.
One of the pleasures I enjoy each week is receiving by e-mail the New York Times movie guide each Friday and the Times book review each Sunday. In addition to enjoying reading about books and movies, I generally find that there is no better barometer of our culture than these commentaries on what we view and read.
This is a documentary that I want very much to see, although I really don’t know where, since I’m sure it will never play in Tuscaloosa and Birmingham is probably doubtful. After reading the review and viewing the trailer, and being shocked by the contents of the documentary, I think that the situation described in it needs to be made known to the Reformed Church.
The movie describes a type of kids boot camp for evangelical children called Kids on Fire. It is located, ironically, in Devils Lake, ND. The camp is run by Pastor Becky Fischer, who states that its purpose is to indoctrinate children, preferably between ages 7 and 9 years, to become “soldiers” in “God’s Army.” The review states that Ms. Fischer compares it to the Palestinian training games that teach children aggressisive Islamic fundamentalism. This indoctrination is accomplished in part with camoflauge, face paint, fights with wooden swords, and Naizi style straight arm salutes. The accompanying music is “Christian” heavy metal rock and in the trailer I viewed, the chirldren are really into it. One of the really fascinating scenes the reviewer describes is the children bowing before a life sized image of George W. Bush and praying. While I won’t go far enough to mention the word idolatry, blasphemous does come quickly to mind.
The reviewer, Stephen Holden, states that this movement is a response to the unmitigated trashiness of American culture. A few days ago, I was in my car in line at Eastwood Middle School with the radio on my granddaughters favorite station. The two “songs” I heard while waiting consisted of the first one repeating “Let’s get started” about six hundred times and the second repeating “Do it” another six hundred times. This amazes me in much the same way as slasher movies in that I am stunned that there is an audience. However, there is not only an audience for both the “music” and the movies but this is the state of American culture for a significant percentage of young America. Holden is correct in his characterization but this militarization of Christian youth in the name of Christ is, to me, the worse possible response that could be made. It is very troubling to see the weeping of small children as they are being emotionally manipulated or hear them confess a desire to die for Christ in much the same sense as Islamic suicide bombers.
The responses by viewers is also fascinating. While some speak of the true teachings of Christ, most are either totally against this movement or totally for it. There is an obvious polarization in this divide among Christians. This is certainly a subject for all Christians to dialogue about since it depicts a particular culture in whose colors, unfortunately, all Evangelical Christians are painted by the world. One of the interesting aspects of the charismatic, evangelical, radical Christian group is their marginalization of Christians of any other ilk. This is something I’ve noticed personally in certain dealings with others as part of being an elder. According to Ms. Fischer, many of those (us) are “dead churches’, traditional Protestant churches where the congregations sit passively and hear the Word preached. She declares that these are places that “Jesus doesn’t visit.” According to her, I’ve really been fooled because I have been sure of the presence of the Holy Spirit of God while we worshiped Him and celebrated Jesus at Riverwood.
It has been suggested that this might be an interesting Movie Night presentation when a DVD is released. Riverwood, after all, is not afraid to examine anything in the light of the Gospel.
Entering into the mix, a mega-church called Lifechurch has begun simul-casting their morning worship services into a Second life virtual church also called Lifechurch.
Truth in blogging journalism: we have a row of VT DVDs in our movie collection—and I am not exactly sprinting to throw them out. Guilty of ownership, your honor. My point is not to stop watching the VT, or even destroy our current collection.
My wife let me know of a good approach to viewing the VT videos. She would have her kindergarten class watch the VT episode, read the real Bible story, and then discuss its similarities and differences. She said they did a fantastic job of dissecting them. It would seem that this approach would equip our kids to be critical thinkers, without dismissing the merits of any form of media.