Friday, June 27, 2008

Freedom Isn't Free

OK, I know it's a bumper-sticker cliche. But it's still true. The freedoms we have in this country, freedom of speech, worship, association, the press, the right to bear arms--they were all won and preserved at a high cost. And we have to continue to protect those freedoms today.

Here's an excerpt from a really good post on protecting our freedom. You should definitely read it all:
For those of you have yet to see 300, do yourselves a favor and see it. (Warning: Spoiler Alert if you read the whole linked post.)

This movie is not just about the past. It's about today. Right now.

It's about each one of you who stands in the breach against the enemy.

And it's about each one of you who stands against the enemy within, who would happily widen that breach.

Today's enemy is Islamofascism, but it is little different from the hordes following the tyrannical King Xerxes.
Today's enemy within is the left, both at home and across the globe. And they too are little different from the scheming legislator Theron and the vile Ephori, who were willing--even eager--to see all Sparta kneel before Xerxes, just to gain power.

How is the left today any different? Do they not see their own nation, their own people, their own military as the enemy? Do they not seek to withdraw us from the field, to give the enemy the day?

And just as Sparta was the lynchpin that defended all Greece--that great cradle of democracy--is not the United States today the last bastion of freedom defending Western civilization?

But what care the left for Western civilization? They HATE Western civilization. They hate the men and women who defend it. They hate themselves.
It's a great read, maybe put a little strongly but with some very good points about the value of freedom, about the need to protect our civilization against tyranny. (Please note, though, that I'm not necessarily recommending actually seeing the movie. I haven't seen it, and I think it's pretty violent, so you should definitely make that decision for yourself based on how you feel about that kind of content. But it sounds like a really good story!)

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Thursday, June 26, 2008

The Shack: It's Just Fiction! Right?

By Rich Bordner

Recently, the book The Shack, by William Young, has become all the rage. I forget how many copies its sold, but its on its way to becoming a best seller.

Without getting into a detailed review/summary of the book, it seems to have some questionable ideas about God in it. Many are greatly concerned over the book and the influence it is apparently having. I haven't read the book, so what do I know, so I'm not going to attempt a review. What I can do is point you to a review by someone who has read the book, someone I trust.

However, in talking with some about the book, I keep encountering a certain attitude that I can comment on. Many folks, in reaction to the negative criticism of the book, say, "It's just fiction! Why get so worked up over it? The book has incredibly blessed me and taught me about God."
Say I wanted to communicate to the world about God's wrath and justice (these are two biblical character qualities of God, just like His love.), so I wrote a fiction book where I depicted God as the serial killer guy from Saw. You read the book, and (rightfully) express concern (outrage would be more appropriate): 'Rich, I don't think God is like the guy from Saw. Yeah, I know He's just and He exhibits wrath on the unrepentant at the judgment seat, but the way you depict Him...well...That's not quite biblical.'

I respond, 'Relax. It's only fiction! I'm not writing a theological treatise! If you read the book, you will learn about God's justice and be blessed.'

How would you respond? No doubt, you'd respond with incredulity: even though its fiction, I'm communicating something about God, something deeply flawed. The fact that I'm writing fiction doesn't get me off the hook.

It's the same with The Shack. If I'm not off the hook in my flawed attempt at communicating about God's justice, why is Young off the hook when he makes a flawed attempt at communicating about other parts of God's nature, like His love or Immanence?

You see, we usually only express that blasé attitude when the book in question presents God in a soft light. Why the inconsistency?

I understand that fiction is a slightly more fluid genre than, say, theological papers in a professional journal. But that doesn't mean we give fiction authors a free ticket to ride when it comes to speaking about God, truth, and reality.

Far from being the "trash heap" of the written word, fiction is an incredibly powerful and important genre. Brian McLaren and others encapsulate their theological ideals in fiction partly because they understand such ideals will be easier for the rank and file to accept if they are captured in a story. For the most part, this is all well and good, but it has a down side: we can easily let our guard down.

Therefore, we should treat fiction as it is: an important and honorable genre worthy of the utmost consideration.

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Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Totalitarian Times?

Just read a really interesting (and long) article by Bruce Bawer about the way the New York Times has approached reporting on totalitarian regimes and ideas. Definitely worth a read, because we all need to understand the way that the news media can shape our understanding of the world by selective reporting of events. We also need to know what worldview they are putting forth.

Bawer reviews NYT reporting on Stalin, Hitler, Castro, and the Cambodian killing fields, tying it into current coverage of Islamic fundamentalists. Here's a few paragraphs:
Since 9/11, the kind of brazen sugarcoating of Islam that Feldman served up last Sunday has become a convention in the Times and other mainstream media. Routinely, news organizations suppress, downplay, or misrepresent developments that reflect badly on Islam; they go out of their way to find stories that reflect (or that can be spun in such a way as to reflect) positively on it; and they publish professors and intellectuals and “experts” like Feldman, who share the media’s determination to obscure the central role of jihadist ideology in the current clash between Islam and Western democracy and to point the finger instead (as Feldman does) at European racism.

Yet while a number of media consumers are wise to this policy regarding Islam, relatively few realize that it’s a fresh variation on a well-established tradition. This tradition -- which may be fairly characterized as one of solicitude, protectiveness, and apologetics when reporting on totalitarian ideologies, movements and regimes -- involves habitual practices that can be attributed partly to institutional stasis, passivity, and timidity, partly to a desire to maintain access to this or that tyrant, partly to profound failures of moral insight and responsibility, partly to inane notions of “fairness” and “balance,” partly to an unwillingness to face aspects of the real world that need to be acknowledged and dealt with, and partly to an inability to grasp (or, perhaps, to face the fact) that the status quo has changed.
One of the key points here is that modern, multicultural notions of fairness and tolerance lead some people to excuse horrifying, amoral behavior. But read the whole thing, because there's a lot more information there than in this brief comment!

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Monday, June 23, 2008

There is no Charge for Awesomeness...or Attractiveness

By Rich Bordner

I saw KungFu Panda last week. It was a very well done movie, quite entertaining, and quite funny.

As a teacher and a coach, I also appreciated one of the themes. Sometimes, the temptation of teachers and coaches is to be enamored with the ones who show great potential right from the start. We can readily see these talented individuals becoming champions, so we focus our time on them, to the neglect of the not-so-talented. This was Shifu's error. He did not see the awkward, fat, incredibly-out-of-shape, over-eating Panda's potential, so he completely ignored him.

However, there were some themes in the movie that we should guard against. The Oprah-New-Age stuff, of course, was problematic ("you just need to believe;" "there is no secret ingredient, only you."), but that's for another blog. It's the whole "believe in yourself and follow your dreams" bit that I'm addressing here.

You see, as a culture, we've created a bit of a monster. We tell kids that if they just believe in themselves, they can do/accomplish anything they want.

There's nothing wrong with a healthy bit of confidence in one's training and hard work, and there's nothing wrong with having dreams. The problem is that we spout these unqualified aphorisms out at them ("believe in yourself, follow your dreams!"), then we're surprised when they take us at our word and show up on American Idol without a hint of training and thoroughly embarrass themselves. When the judges give them a harsh bit of reality, more often than not these types turn up their noses and self-righteously march out, saying "What do they know? I'M A STAR! They're just jealous." Never mind that Simon, et al have been doing the talent scout thing ever since the stone age, and they've seen it all.

This just goes to show that we need to stop with the aphorisms and sprinkle our words with a dose of reality. This is not pessimism; this is just a plea for balance. It's good to have dreams...but not all dreams are equal (The dreams of fame and fortune are very much inferior to the dreams of starting a soup kitchen for the poor.).

It's good to believe in yourself...well, not really...you're not all that hot.

Yes, you can do it...but success will come only after decades of slow progress and much failure.

And in the end, if you find yourself entertaining delusions of grandeur, put the mic down and focus on getting that engineering degree that your parents have sacrificed so much for...William Hung, this means you.

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Sunday, June 22, 2008

Gay Marriage vs. the First Amendment?

From National Public Radio, no less:
As gay couples in California head to the courthouse starting Monday to get legally married, there are signs of a coming storm. Two titanic legal principles are crashing on the steps of the church, synagogue and mosque: equal treatment for same-sex couples on the one hand, and the freedom to exercise religious beliefs on the other.
The linked article includes summaries of court cases where activists have sued over adoption, housing, religious schooling, in-vitro fertilization, wedding services and facilities, and access of religious groups to public facilities. It's an indication that we need to do some serious thinking about the implications of gay marriage laws.

Update: Just wanted to share some thoughts from one more article on the same subject:
This illustrates exactly why when courts redefine marriage to include same-sex couples, it is no simple matter of letting private individuals do what they wish...

Now we see what happens when this newly redefined right to have strangers regard one’s relationship as particular and intimate crashes into the reality that most of the world’s religions regard such intimacy between two women or two men as wrong in one way or another – as “fundamentally disordered,” as the Catholics put it.

What happens is that judges sweep the religious views aside.

Not that courts are outlawing the mere belief that gay sex is a sin, at least not yet. But as Marc D. Stern of the American Jewish Congress writes in Tuesday's L.A. Times, allowing mere belief or not actually forcing clergy to perform gay “marriages” is an awfully narrow view of religious liberty.

The practical effect is that religions are increasingly stopped from behaving as if they believed that homosexual relationships were wrong. Believers can believe; they just can’t let that belief govern their actions if it in any way impairs what is a new right to have one’s homosexual relationship affirmed by the implicit social approval that comes with marriage. Under this new calculus, so much as merely declining to shoot pictures for pay amounts to an unacceptable “hatred.”

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Saturday, June 21, 2008

High School Baby Boom

From Carol Platt Liebau over at Townhall:

Time Magazine is running a story out of Gloucester, MA, about a group of teen girls -- none older than 16 -- who made a pact to get pregnant.

Apparently the school noticed an increase in girls visiting the school nurse for pregnancy tests and found out a group of them had decided to get pregnant and raise their children together.

Liebau continues:
Remarkably, the piece goes on:

Even with national data showing a 3% rise in teen pregnancies in 2006--the first increase in 15 years--Gloucester isn't sure it wants to provide easier access to birth control.

Wait just a minute. How, exactly, would "easier access to birth control" have impacted this situation? These girls decided to get pregnant on purpose.
Note the mention in passing that teen pregnancy rates are on the rise, and the implicit assumption that handing out condoms in schools--or giving girls birth control pills without their parents' knowledge, which was proposed at this high school--is the solution.

Liebau has done a lot of thinking on this issue and has even written a book, Prude, about our sex-obssessed culture. She has some more interesting thoughts on the Time article.

The problem underlying teen pregnancy isn't practical (access to or knowledge of contraceptives) or even biological. It's an ethical, moral and spiritual problem. It's a matter of inadequate attention being paid to the formation of young people's character and values.

Apparently the girls wanted to have babies so someone would love them unconditionally. Liebau closes this way:

As for being loved unconditionally -- where are the churches? Isn't
the key part of the good news that Someone already has that covered?

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Friday, June 20, 2008

Library shuts out Christians -- and everybody else

OneNewsNow reports:

An Ohio county public library has closed its meeting rooms to the public rather than allow them to be used by a Christian group.

George and Cathy Vandergriff wanted to host a Crown Financial Ministries "Financial Freedom" workshop in a public meeting room at the Clermont County, Ohio, public library. Tim Chandler, an attorney with the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), says the couple was told that, because the class would be quoting from the Bible, they could not hold it at the library. "The Supreme Court said, more than 25 years ago, that once you've opened up meeting space, you can't exclude anyone just because they're engaging in religious speech. And, here we are, we're still fighting this battle," Chandler contends.

Read more.

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Thursday, June 19, 2008

Top political links of the day

Here's a couple of quick links to some stories that might be interesting to more politically-minded readers out there:

Hugh Hewitt writes about the need to drill domestically for oil and what the Democrats are doing to prevent it:

"The Big Three Democrats are thus all agreed that their party has given up on bringing down the cost of oil and thus the cost of gas at the pump.

Because demand for oil isn't going to drop due to growth around the globe, the only way to bring the cost of a gallon of gas at the pump down is to increase the supply of oil. The only way to increase the supply of oil for the present is to explore for more oil and then bring it to market. that means drilling."

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In related news, at least one Democrat wants to nationalize part of the oil industry: “Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) said, ‘We (the government) should own the refineries. Then we can control how much gets out into the market’.”

Hinchey is actually the second Democrat to threaten nationalization; you might remember that Maxine Waters (D-CA) said the same thing a couple of weeks ago. Yeah, that will help. It worked so well in Venezuela, Russia, Mexico...

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Karl at Protein Wisdom has a great post summarizing Barack Obama's rather thin resume. Have you wondered what exactly a "community organizer" is? Karl has some information. Not all that impressive in my opinion.

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Carol Platt Liebau at Townhall links to this gem: A key foreign policy adviser told a British audience that “Winnie the Pooh seems to me to be a fundamental text on national security.” Winnie the Pooh????

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Watch what you say in Canada


What’s the number one new baby boy’s name in Great Britain? Answer: Muhammad. Now, if I lived in Canada and reported such facts, I would be in jeopardy of facing charges before British Columbia's Human Rights Tribunal for violating recently enacted “hate crimes” laws. That’s exactly what happened to conservative columnist and pundit, Mark Steyn. He, along with the Canadian magazine Maclean's, are currently on trial for inciting “hate” after reporting these and similar findings from Steyn’s book, America Alone in an article entitled, “The Future Belongs to Islam.”


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Wednesday, June 18, 2008

U.S. Marine on trial for evangelism

OneNewsNow.com reports:

An organization is taking up a battle in favor of a U.S. Marine who was sent home from an assignment in Iraq because he handed out coins with a Christian message to Muslims in Iraq.

The organization is Christian Freedom International whose president, Jim Jacobson, says the Marine distributed coins with the words of John 3:16 on one side. The other side asked, in Arabic, the question: "Where will you spend eternity?" The soldier is now on home turf awaiting further word on possible punishment.

Read more.

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Tuesday, June 17, 2008

“Human Rights” in Canada--and New Mexico

A “human rights commission” in Alberta, Canada, has ruled that a Christian pastor, Rev. Stephen Boission, has no right to say anything “disparaging” about homosexuality. Here’s Ezra Levant’s summary:

A Christian pastor has been given a lifetime ban against uttering anything "disparaging" about gays. Not against anything "hateful", let alone something legally defined as "hate speech". Just anything negative.

So a pastor cannot give a sermon.

But he must give a false sermon; he is positively ordered to renounce his deeply held religious beliefs, and apologize to his tormentor for having those views.

And then that pastor is ordered to declare to his entire city that he has renounced his religious views, even though he has not.

That's Alberta's human rights commission.
If you follow the links and read the ruling, you’ll see that the basic issue was an anti-gay-marriage letter to the editor by the pastor, published in the local paper. Frankly, the letter was pretty harsh, and the language in it was probably not the way that I would try to persuade someone of my views about homosexuality. It isn’t exactly a prime example of Christian love. But, Rev. Boisson’s views are certainly based in Biblical passages about homosexuality.

Canada doesn’t have identical free speech protections as our first amendment, but it does have a similar passage in its founding charter. Nevertheless, a government commission (not even a real court) has ruled that Christians don’t have the right to express a religious belief.

It’s easy to say well, that’s Canada, it can’t happen here. And it’s true that we have stronger free speech protections than our neighbors to the north, but at least one state, New Mexico, has its own human rights commission similar to the Canadian system.

From Eugene Volokh, Photographers Denied the Freedom To Choose What They Photograph:
Elaine Huguenin co-owns Elane Photography with her husband… Elane refused to photograph Vanessa Willock's same-sex commitment ceremonies, and just today the New Mexico Human Rights Commission held that this violated state antidiscrimination law. Elane has been ordered to pay over $6600 in attorney's fees and costs.

One blogger summarized the issue this way:

The Huguenins have the right to refuse to photograph any number of things they regard as moral issues, whether it’s a photo shoot at Planned Parenthood, a poster for the Ku Klux Klan, or a keepsake album for participants in a baby seal hunt. The Constitution may offend the politically correct crowd, but it is quite clear that Americans should not be forced to promote a private message that violates their conscience.

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Saturday, June 14, 2008

Pastors: Keep Politics in its Place

Phil Johnson of Grace To You cautions pastors in this piece entitled Politically Incorrect? that preaching “politically-top-heavy sermons” (my words) may not result in an investigation from the IRS or a lawsuit from Americans United for Separation of Church and State (again, my words), but it can stagnate, and even kill, the spiritual well-being of their hearers and their witness in the culture at large.

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Thursday, June 12, 2008

Obama is Far, Far Left on Abortion

Every pro-life voter should know about Senator Obama’s positions on abortion. The short version is that he is very, very strongly pro-choice and will fight very hard against any proposal to limit abortion in any way. But here’s some details:

From his own website:

[Obama] has been a consistent champion of reproductive choice and will make preserving women’s rights under Roe v. Wade a priority as President. He opposes any constitutional amendment to overturn the Supreme Court's decision in that case.
Obama is endorsed by NARAL. If you want to see NARAL’s summary of Obama’s stand on abortion, just follow the link. It's written from a pro-abortion viewpoint, of course, but there's still a lot of good information in there.

What about partial-birth abortion? Well, here's what Obama said last April when the Supreme Court upheld the federal partial birth abortion ban:

I strongly disagree with today's Supreme Court ruling, which dramatically departs from previous precedents safeguarding the health of pregnant women. As Justice Ginsburg emphasized in her dissenting opinion, this ruling signals an alarming willingness on the part of the conservative majority to disregard its prior rulings respecting a woman's medical concerns and the very personal decisions between a doctor and patient.

I am extremely concerned that this ruling will embolden state legislatures to enact further measures to restrict a woman's right to choose, and that the conservative Supreme Court justices will look for other opportunities to erode Roe v. Wade, which is established federal law and a matter of equal rights for women.

It actually gets worse--even if the baby survives an attempted abortion and is alive outside the womb, Obama doesn't think he or she has a right to life. As a state senator, Obama opposed a bill modeled after the federal Born Alive Infant Protection Act. Former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum comments:

That bill was the Born Alive Infants Protection Act. During the partial-birth abortion debate, Congress heard testimony about babies that had survived attempted late-term abortions. Nurses testified that these preterm living, breathing babies were being thrown into medical waste bins to die or being "terminated" outside the womb. With the baby now completely separated from the mother, it was impossible to argue that the health or life of the mother was in jeopardy by giving her baby appropriate medical treatment.

The act simply prohibited the killing of a baby born alive. To address the concerns of pro-choice lawmakers, the bill included language that said nothing "shall be construed to affirm, deny, expand or contract any legal status or legal right" of the baby. In other words, the bill wasn't intruding on Roe v. Wade.

Who would oppose a bill that said you couldn't kill a baby who was born? Not Kennedy, Boxer or Hillary Rodham Clinton. Not even the hard-core National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL). Obama, however, is another story. The year after the Born Alive Infants Protection Act became federal law in 2002, identical language was considered in a committee of the Illinois Senate. It was defeated with the committee's chairman, Obama, leading the opposition.

Let's be clear about what Obama did, once in 2003 and twice before that. He effectively voted for infanticide. He voted to allow doctors to deny medically appropriate treatment or, worse yet, actively kill a completely delivered living baby.

Arguably, one of the ways in which a president can most influence the abortion issue is through the appointment of Supreme Court Justices and lower court judges. It’s quite likely that the next president will appoint 3 or 4 justices to the Supreme Court--and possibly even as many as 6. So, what kind of justices would Obama appoint? Here’s an excerpt from an article by Jennifer Rubin--the first paragraph is Obama himself speaking, the second is some analysis from the article:

Now there’s going to be those 5 percent of cases or 1 percent of cases where the law isn’t clear. And the judge then has to bring in his or her own perspectives, his ethics, his or her moral bearings. And in those
circumstances, what I do want is a judge who is sympathetic enough to those who are on the outside, those who are vulnerable, those who are powerless, those who can’t have access to political power and as a consequence can’t protect themselves from being -- from being dealt with sometimes unfairly. That the courts become a refuge for justice. That’s been its historic role. That was its role in Brown v. Board of Education.

Steven Calabresi, professor of law at Northwestern University and co-founder of the Federalist Society (who also serves on John McCain’s legal advisory committee), says “I think it means he has completely the wrong idea of what a judge is supposed to do.” He notes that since the first Congress all judges have taken an oath to “do equal justice unto the rich and the poor,” but, by asking judges in essence to side with the less well off, Obama is “calling on judges to disregard this.”
If you’re a pro-life conservative, you probably think that unborn children are exactly the kind of vulnerable, powerless people a judge should protect--but you also recognize that the sort of liberal judge being described here doesn’t think that unborn children, even those old enough to survive outside the womb, are people.

By now you should be getting the idea that Obama is, as columnist Amanda Carpenter put it, “more pro-choice than NARAL.” So just one final quote, from an article about an Obama campaign stop during the Pennsylvania primary:

And now Obama has oddly claimed that he would not want his daughters to be "punished with a baby" because of a crisis pregnancy -- hardly a welcoming attitude toward new life.

Granted, virtually no one wants their child to experience a teenage pregnancy. But the phrase “punished with a baby” seems to me to betray a rather negative view of the miracle of life.

Check back in a couple of days for a look at John McCain's pro-life record.

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Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Evidence showing worldview matters


FRC.org cites another example showing how what one believes impacts one's behavior. Across the ideological spectrum, Peter Schwizer writes in his examiner.com commentary, recent surveys suggest conservatives possess more integrity than liberals.

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Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Males are oppressed

Onenewsnow.com blog reports that radio commentator Dennis Prager believes the influences on boys in our society are leading to their emasculation: He chides, "And then women looking to marry a man wonder where all the masculine men are."

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Subjection to God & Subjection to the State

This post is in response to Amanda's post yesterday. It may be no coincidence that I just recently finished listening to John Piper's sermon series on this very subject. The profundity of his messages and the clarity by which he delivers them is worthy of your time.

Subjection to God and Subjection to the State, Part 1
transcript listen watch

Subjection to God and Subjection to the State, Part 2
transcript listen watch

Subjection to God and Subjection to the State, Part 3
transcript listen watch

Subjection to God and Subjection to the State, Part 4
transcript listen watch

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Monday, June 09, 2008

Walking with God during the Silly Season

The presidential election race has been referred to as the "silly season." It's not a bad name--it often feels pretty ridiculous as reporters, pundits and partisan bloggers watch the candidates' every move and pick ever smaller nits. And I find myself getting caught up in it, because I'm a political junkie and because I think this election is really important. We are making decisions that could have a profound effect on both the security of our country and the direction of our culture. But it's easy to let things go too far.

The sermon last night at church was based on I Peter 3:13-17 (copied from Bible Gateway):
13 Submit yourselves for the Lord's sake to every authority instituted among men: whether to the king, as the supreme authority, 14 or to governors, who are sent by him to punish those who do wrong and to commend those who do right. 15 For it is God's will that by doing good you should silence the ignorant talk of foolish men. 16 Live as free men, but do not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil; live as servants of God. 17 Show proper respect to everyone: Love the brotherhood of believers, fear God, honor the king.
First, note what this passage doesn't say. It does NOT say, of course, that we Christians shouldn't participate in politics at all. Obviously I believe that we should work to represent Godly values in the public square, or I wouldn't be writing this. We can and should vote, discuss issues, and be informed citizens while supporting candidates who are in line with our values. We should also be really thankful we live in a democracy where we can worship freely and have an impact on the political system!

What the passage DOES say is that God wants us to submit ourselves to the earthly authority of our government. It doesn't give any exceptions--it doesn't say that we don't have to submit if we think the president is misguided, or wants to raise our taxes, or makes a national security decision we disagree with. Even if we think the authorities are wrong, we are still supposed to respect them--and ordinary citizens on the other side of the aisle--because it is God's will.

Another passage on a similar theme is Romans 13:1-7. In fact, Romans is even clearer: "Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, he who rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves" (13:1-2).

Note that there is a slight contrast in the passage in Acts 4:15-21 where the Jewish Sanhedrin tries to order Peter and John not to speak in Jesus' name--basically, they are ordered not to share the Gospel. Peter and John replied, "Judge for yourselves whether it is right in God's sight to obey you rather than God. For we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard" (4:19-20). This incident would suggest that we don't have to submit to the government if they are actually ordering us to personally take some action that contradicts God's laws. But in all other things, it seems pretty clear we still owe respect and submission.

Wow, that is something I am really going to have to work on remembering for the next few months.

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Sunday, June 08, 2008

Why Engage the Culture?

This article in City Journal by Andrew Klavan is a great summary of why conservatives need to be engaged in the culture. Here's a few key paragraphs:

Beating poverty in America nowadays is largely a matter of personal behavior. Get a high school diploma, don’t have kids until you’re married, don’t get married until you’re 21, and you probably won’t be poor. It also helps if you work hard, show up on time, act courteously, and avoid anything felonious.

But where are these kids going to learn such things? It’s the stuff you just sort of absorb in a healthy, traditional, two-parent home, and that’s exactly what they’re missing. If they learn what they’ve lived, they’re done for--the girls too likely to “come out pregnant” like their mothers, the boys to be underemployed and maybe even do time.

You can’t legislate responsibility, either. Personal behavior in a free society has to be a matter of choice--choice without which there is no virtue--virtue without which a society can’t be free.

It seems to me that leaves these kids only one recourse: the culture. Where the institution of family is broken, only the surrounding culture can teach people the inner structures required for a life of liberty.

Many conservatives often seem to have given up on culture or not to care. There’s a strong strain of philistinism on the right. When we talk about “culture wars,” we usually mean preventing the courts from redefining marriage or promoting abstinence instead of birth control: culture, in other words, as the behavioral branch of politics.

Culture, in the true sense, is more than that. It’s the whole engulfing narrative of our values. It’s the stories we tell. Leftists know this. These kids get an earful from the Left every day. Their schools serve up black history in a way guaranteed to alienate them from the American enterprise. Their sanctioned reading list denies boys the natural fantasies of battling villains and protecting women from harm. Any instinct the girls might have that their bodies and their self-respect are interrelated is negated by the ubiquitous parable of celebrity lives. And I hardly need mention the movies and TV shows that endlessly undermine notions of manly self-discipline, feminine modesty, patriotism, and all the rest.

Conservatives respond to this mostly with finger-wagging. But creativity has to be answered with creativity. We need stories, histories, movies of our own. That requires a structure of support--publishing houses, movie studios, review space, awards, almost all of which we’ve ceded to the Left.


If you read the whole article, you'll also see a really heartbreaking anecdote about an entire classroom of students who didn't understand why someone's last name would be the same as her father's.

As Klavan says, we can't afford to withdraw from the world, or to wag our fingers and judge the culture as wrong without offering an alternative. Even if we can't personally go out and make a great movie, we can at least support good conservative offerings. We can also talk to our friends and neighbors about the culture and encourage them to check out some of the positive influences out there.

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Friday, June 06, 2008

Caught on Tape

Last month, a pro-abortion advocate is caught on tape disrupting the free speech rights of a pro-life campus organization. After being posted on youtube, the video has kind of gone viral.

As OneNewsNow.com reports:

“[The vandal] stated that the pro-life group had no right to challenge abortion [vis-à-vis their pro-life display] because [abortion] was made legal in 1973 following the Roe v. Wade decision by the U.S. Supreme Court.”

Based on that kind of logic, civil rights activists would have had no right to challenge racial segregation because it was made legal in 1896 following the Plessy v. Ferguson decision by the U.S. Supreme Court.

By the way, it was in 1954, that the Supreme Court finally got it right when they handed down their decision in Brown v. Board of Education which overturned Plessy v. Ferguson. Perhaps, one day soon, the highest court in the land will correct another egregious error from the past, by finally protecting another class of citizens – the unborn.

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Thursday, June 05, 2008

The Falcon Cannot Hear the Falconer

I read an interesting blog post yesterday. It’s a long post with a lot of really great links to news stories that might be of interest to you political junkies out there. But the start of the post really caught my attention as a metaphor for the Christian walk:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
- Verse 1, The Second Coming, William Butler Yeats

What a useful poem Yeats concocted - so many applications. Today let’s look at some stories that flesh out the idea of the “widening gyre” - think of the falcon, tossed off the leathered glove, ascending ’round and ’round in ever-broader circles. Think of a cyclone. Think how hard it is for us falcons - as we move further away, caught in all the noise of wind and air - to hear the voice of the Falconer who set us free.

What things are distracting you today? Are you letting the world pull you further away from the One who should be your center? What keeps you from listening to His voice?

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The "Doctrine of Multiculturalism" in Action

Here's another story from Britain that highlights the problems with tolerance and multiculturalism as they are commonly practiced by liberals in Western society (see The "Doctrine of Multiculturalism" below):

The evangelists say they were threatened with arrest for committing a "hate crime" and were told they risked being beaten up if they returned. The incident will fuel fears that "no-go areas" for Christians are emerging in British towns and cities, as the Rt Rev Michael Nazir-Ali, the Bishop of Rochester, claimed in The Sunday Telegraph this year.

Arthur Cunningham, 48, and Joseph Abraham, 65, both full-time evangelical ministers, have launched legal action against West Midlands Police, claiming the officer infringed their right to profess their religion.

Mr Abraham said: "I couldn't believe this was happening in Britain. The Bishop of Rochester was criticised by the Church of England recently when he said there were no-go areas in Britain but he was right; there are certainly no-go areas for Christians who want to share the gospel."



Mr Cunningham said: “[The officer] said we were in a Muslim area and were not allowed to spread our Christian message. He said we were committing a hate crime by telling the youths to leave Islam and said that he was going to take us to the police station."

Update: Here's another story about the evangelists, along with a bunch of links to similar incidents and issues in Britain.

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Wednesday, June 04, 2008

Living Buddha, Living Christ

By Rich Bordner

At the request of a colleague, I recently read a book titled Living Buddha, Living Christ, by Buddhist Thich Nath Hahn.

The author seems to be a man of character. He makes some good observations about character virtues, the fruit of the Spirit, and the Holy Spirit in his book. But other things he says are misguided, I think.

Below are some of the things he says in the book, followed by some of my thoughts.

Hahn:
People kill and are killed because they cling too tightly to their own beliefs and ideologies. When we believe that ours is the only faith that contains the truth, violence and suffering will surely be the result. The second precept of the Order of interbeing, founded within the Zen Buddhist tradition during the war in Vietnam, is about letting go of views: "Do not think the knowledge you presently possess is changeless, absolute truth. Avoid being narrow-minded and bound to present views. Learn and practice non attachment from views in order to be open to receive others’ viewpoints." To me, this is the most essential practice of peace.
My thought:
Of course, being open to a change in perspective can be a good thing. I’ve found that far too often, rather than engaging opposing viewpoints and either being changed by them or refuting them, we put our hands to our ears and shout "LALALALALALAAA!!!" Sometimes we’d rather stick our heads in the sand than consider the possibility that we’re wrong. But this is only one side of the coin. Sometimes it’s good to be "bound to present views" and attached to them. It can be good to be zealous for your beliefs... what matters is not your zealousness, but the truth of the belief you are zealous about. Martin Luther King, Jr. was definitely attached to his beliefs in the equality of all human beings, and the world is a better place as a result. William Wilberforce was "bound" to his abolitionist beliefs, and we should thank him for that. Other examples abound, but you get the point.

Another thing that bears commenting on is Hahn’s remark that "When we believe that ours is the only faith that contains the truth, violence and suffering will surely be the result." This is a very passive-aggressive way to argue against a religion or point of view. His book is peppered with statements like this, but all throughout the book, Hahn himself believes he gets it right. That is, he believes that his pluralism ("all roads lead to god"), as opposed to more exclusivistic faiths (i.e. fundamentalist Christianity, Islam, etc), is the faith that contains the truth. This is a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black. Better to just admit you (as well as everyone else) think your point of view is correct, and that this is ok. Then, argue for your point of view. Simple as that.

Hahn:
If we say, "According to Buddhism, this exists," or, "This does not exist," it is not Buddhism, because the ideas of being and non-being are extremes that the Buddha transcended.
My thought:
Interesting. And ironic, given the fact that his whole book is an exercise in pointing out what is true and false, what exists and doesn’t exist. Kinda like the vegetarian who walked into In-n-Out and ordered a double-double.

Hahn:
When we see something overflowing with love and understanding, someone who is keenly aware of what is going on, we know that they are very close to the Buddha and to Jesus Christ. (emphasis mine)
My thought:
Anyone see any contradiction between this and Hahn’s previous comment? Just checking.

Hahn:
In this small book, I shall try to share some of my experiences of and insights into two of the world’s beautiful flowers, Buddhism and Christianity, so that we as a society can begin to dissolve our wrong perceptions, transcend our wrong views, and see one another in fresh, new ways. (emphasis mine)
My thought:
Time and again in his book, Hahn critiques those who are judgmental and intolerant (meaning: those who think other’s religions are wrong), like Pope John Paul II, yet also time and again he does the same thing himself.

Hahn tries to compare the Buddha to Christ, but at the end of the day, the two are as unlike as aspirin and arsenic. Sure, both aspirin & arsenic are white and come in tablet form, but the differences are legion, and they make all the difference. Likewise, both Christ and Buddha might have spoken about living a moral and peaceful life, but only One has risen from the grave in history, and only One claimed to be God in human flesh, the only One who can eradicate your sin debt.

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Tuesday, June 03, 2008

Obama's "Faith"

I just read an interview that Obama had with a reporter from the Chicago Tribune in 2004. The reporter, Cathleen Falsani, was working on a book about politicians and faith, and she asked some very pointed questions about his beliefs. Here are some excerpts ("GG" is "God Girl", Falsani's Internet nickname):

GG: Who’s Jesus to you?
(He laughs nervously)
OBAMA: Right. Jesus is an historical figure for me, and he’s also a bridge between God and man, in the Christian faith, and one that I think is powerful precisely because he serves as that means of us reaching something higher. And he’s also a wonderful teacher. I think it’s important for all of us, of whatever faith, to have teachers in the flesh and also teachers in history.

Note that there is nothing in this answer that indicates that Jesus is Emmanuel, God with us in the flesh, part of the Trinity. And the part about Jesus being a bridge to God is true as far as it goes, but it's also pretty vague and wishy-washy. Does Obama understand how Jesus is the bridge, why we need a bridge? I can't tell for sure, but later in the interview, he suggests that he really doesn't understand that Jesus is the ONLY way, the ONLY truth, the ONLY life. For starters, he mentions Gandhi as one of his main spiritual inspirations. Then there's this:

OBAMA: I think that the difficult thing about any religion, including Christianity, is that at some level there is a call to evangelize and prostelytize [sic]. There’s the belief, certainly in some quarters, that people haven’t embraced Jesus Christ as their personal savior that they're going to hell.
GG: You don’t believe that?
OBAMA: I find it hard to believe that my God would consign four-fifths of the world to hell. I can’t imagine that my God would allow some little Hindu kid in India who never interacts with the Christian faith to somehow burn for all eternity. That’s just not part of my religious makeup.
OK, I know the fact that millions of people will end up in hell is hard. It's not a pleasant thing to think about, and I wish it wasn't that way. But it is a clear Biblical principle and a tenet of our faith. Obama again seems a little confused on this point.

GG: Do you believe in sin?
OBAMA: Yes.
GG: What is sin?
OBAMA: Being out of alignment with my values.
GG: What happens if you have sin in your life?
OBAMA: I think it’s the same thing as the question about heaven. In the same way that if I’m true to myself and my faith that that is its own reward, when I’m not true to it, it’s its own punishment.

Wow, just wow. It's sad that someone is so confused about sin. He wants to believe that he gets to define for himself what is right and wrong--sin is about his values, not God's values. This is moral relativism on full display.

(Aside: It also has eerie resonance with Michelle Obama's comment in a stump speech at UCLA in February: "That is why I am here, because Barack Obama is the only person in this who understands that. That before we can work on the problems, we have to fix our souls. Our souls are broken in this nation." These comments suggest that the Obamas think we can determine both what is wrong and how to fix it on our own, without God. In fact, Michelle comes dangerously close to suggesting that Barack is the one who can save our souls.)

I think this interview is interesting and important, not just for what it tells us about Obama's beliefs, values, and judgment, but also because it's a reminder that not all churches or all Christians have their theology straight. Obama makes comments about how he's suspicious of dogma, and he doesn't think one faith has a monopoly on truth. I've looked at the website from his (former) church, and I'm guessing a lot of other people there are confused and misled too. There isn't much indication that the Gospel from the Bible gets preached in that church. There is a lot of stuff about the evils of capitalism and the need for social justice--not so much about the need for Jesus. And for sure Trinity United Church of Christ isn't the only church with that problem.

This is the danger of moral relativism creeping into Christianity. We need to keep paying attention and making sure that our religious leaders are preaching the truth, and that our friends and acquaintances who call themselves Christians aren't following some secularized, untruthful version of the Gospel. We each have a responsibility to think about what we're taught in church and by other religious leaders and measure it against Biblical truth.

Other, more political points from the interview: If you read the whole interview, you'll notice that Obama talks about his close relationships with Reverend Jeremiah Wright and Father Michael Pfleger. He's also a little down on the intelligence of conservative voters--he thinks American voters have a surprising amount of common sense but have been confused by Fox News and talk radio.

Update: I've been thinking about this some more, and I just want to clarify in case I conflated politics and religion in a confusing way. As a voter, I don't require theological purity from my presidential candidate; I'm making my choice based on policy positions, judgment, and experience. As a voter, I'm concerned with Obama's faith/church only inasmuch as I would like to know how much he agrees with the anti-American, anti-capitalist, race-based preaching that seems to be fairly common there and what it says about his judgment. He did attend for 20 years and contribute a substantial amount of money, after all. As a Christian, I'm concerned with Obama's faith/church as an example of the creeping moral relativism that seems to be so common today and the need for us to combat it.

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Monday, June 02, 2008

Enter At Your Own Risk

As of last Friday, it is now legal in the state of Colorado for men to enter women’s locker rooms. This radical law was the product of gay activists as they continue their campaign to normalize homosexuality in our culture.

Worldnetdaily.com article

The Denver Post makes it seem like this new law is no big deal.

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Sunday, June 01, 2008

Generation Me

By Rich Bordner

Lately I’ve been reading a book called Generation Me: Why Today’s Young Americans are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled--and More Miserable Than Ever Before by Jean Twenge.

The book is about, well, you and me. How we’ve been weaned from birth in the American uber-individualistic, autonomous, follow-your-dreams culture where high self-esteem trumps almost every other consideration. It’s seen as an unmitigated good. Yet, you can’t change reality, so folks in my generation are often cynical and jaded as a result of the dissonance created by our crash into the brick wall of reality.

Twenge comes from a secular perspective, but there’s a lot in the book I can agree with. Though she’s a bit over-opinionated at times, and though she sometimes exaggerates, she has done her research for the most part, and it’s hard to deny there’s something going on that’s cause for concern. It’s hard to deny, for instance, that our education of self-esteem has not produced appropriately confident individuals, but has backfired and produced a bunch of narcissists and blame shifters.

Yeah, not everyone’s like that, but there’s so much of it out there that it’s hard to deny that things have gotten out of hand.

Some of the comments she reports from her research subjects I hear commonly.

Just the other day, I watched The Bee Movie. The theme was a familiar one: the main character bucks the system and follows his dreams. Everyone thinks he’s crazy, but he goes for it, and eventually gets what he wants. He overcomes the obstacles; doesn’t listen to what others tell him he should do; doesn’t follow his society’s expectations, etc. It’s basically the theme of about every Disney movie and show in the last 20 or so years.

Another example: I was perusing myspace pages the other day. I came across the page of one of my "friends" (actually, they were all "friends" pages). I rarely talk to this gal. She seems to want nothing to do with me after my car broke down and I had to cancel hanging out with her once... this happened over 2 years ago. But that’s another story. Anyway, she had a blog of quotes/thoughts, and one of them encouraged people to "believe in yourself."

While there’s an ounce of truth to that, perhaps, it comes straight from our individualistic, "who-cares-what-others-tell-you" culture.

If you pay attention, you see stuff like this anywhere. The author of a popular 70s self-help book argued that you can do anything you put your mind to, and not to let others’ opinions get in the way. "Don’t tell me what to do...you ain’t the boss of me anyway."

While well-intentioned, those who espouse this advice without qualification miss some critical things. Yes, you can get far with hard work, very far, and sometimes people’s opinions do get you down. But many times you need to listen to others, cuz they are looking out for you, and they can see through your blind spots.

And clearly, the sky’s not the limit. If you think so, you are setting yourself up for depression.

Example: Every year thousands upon thousands of teenagers who sincerely believe they can do anything they put their minds to put their minds to going to top notch colleges. They all work extremely, extremely hard... crazy hard. A perfect SAT score, a long list of extracurricular activities, and countless AP courses do not guarantee you admission into the college of your choice. Not even close. In 2003, for instance, Notre Dame rejected 39% of high school valedictorians who applied. Swarthmore rejected 62% of applicants with a perfect 800 verbal SAT score and 58% of students with a perfect math score.

Grad school is worse. Think of the numbers of uber-high achievers who try to get into grad schools every year, and think of the rejection rates. Yale law school lets in only 7% of applicants a year. U of Maryland law, 13%. Harvard Med, 4.9%. UCLA, 4.5%. In 2004, more than half of medical school applicants were not admitted to any program.

The point here is not cynicism. Cynicism will be the result if the "follow your dreams" attitude isn’t mitigated with a bit of reality. And yes, working hard is a necessary lesson to learn. I preach it to my students daily. All I’m arguing for is that we turn it down a notch on the "you can do anything you want to do" mantra.

My life is a testament to this...I was hardest worker on my grade school wrestling team. Same for middle school. I was one of the most dedicated in high school. I’d drill for 2-3 hours a day in the summer. Lift until I could barely walk. College was no different. I’d come in with my drill partner when others were relaxing. All for one goal: to be an NCAA division I wrestling champion. Did I accomplish that? No... not even close. I didn’t even start in college. I never even went to the Big Ten tournament once, much less the NCAA’s.

Do I regret that experience and consider my efforts a waste? Not by any stretch of the imagination. I loved it. I got further than most expected me to, after all. But I worked my butt off and never came close to "following my dream." I can only think of how much a basket case I’d have been had I sincerely believed the spirit of the age.

Teaching kids this will save them a lot of stress and grief.

Another one: "Be yourself." I have a friend on myspace whose page runs that theme. "I’m gonna just be me. I’m me...who are you?"

Yes...but what if you’re a jerk? What if you’re annoying?

You get the picture. I know I have certain character flaws. I don’t want to "be myself" and in the process run all over someone else with my flaws. I don’t want to be more myself; I want to become more like Christ. There is room for this in manifesting your personality traits. But character traits that get in the way of you becoming more fully human are another question.

A third popular trait of Generation Me the leveling of authority. Twenge relates the story of Peter Sacks, a community college professor who expressed frustration over the attitude of his students. Despite the fact that he’s a PROFESSOR and has spent years upon years learning in his field, the COMMUNITY COLLEGE students felt uncomfortable with the notion that he knew more than they did or that his skills/knowledge were relevant. Not that he intentionally bragged about it, mind you; he just got tired of hearing "that’s just your opinion" when he corrected their writings.

We really can take this "question authority" attitude too far. Granted, some folks are really crackpots, but that doesn’t mean that your "opinion" is just as good as theirs, and it doesn’t malign authorities as a whole. Some people just have a more principled position of knowledge.

This is especially the case with wise men and women. We should humbly listen to them, because they really DO know more than us; they’ve "been there done that." The "fear of man" that pushes us to do things contrary to God’s will just for human praise is something totally different. I’m talking about real wisdom here, even when we might bristle against it.

There are countless other places which our "ME" attitude shows itself. I’m starting to see it ALL over the place. The good thing is that I’m beginning to question the "me" attitudes and thought habits that come so natural to a guy of this generation.

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