I am voting “NO” on Marcy’s Law

On the November, 2018 ballot in Kentucky, there is a Kentucky Constitutional amendment known unofficially as “Marcy’s Law.”  I will be voting “no” on this issue and I urge you to do the same if you are voting in Kentucky, or another state with a similar proposal.  Here is why.

1.  The proposed language to be changed in the Kentucky Constitution is not on the ballot.  The proposal is very general.  It is so general that you cannot know what you are voting for without significant searching, which most people will probably not do.  It was not easy finding the exacting wording of the proposal.  When I did I found a long list of things.

2.  Even if some of these things are good ideas, they do not belong in a state constitution.  Rather, they should be statute law.  That way, if they do not all work out as hoped, they can more easily be changed.

3.  The whole idea of “rights” connected to this proposal is wrong-headed.  You do not, and should not, get a new set of “rights” because you have been the victim of a crime.  For example, if someone accused of a crime against you is threatening you, you have a right not to be threatened not just because of the situation.  It is the same right you had to be free of threats before any crime was committed.

4.  What state governments can best do to protect victims is to quickly, but justly through due process, punish those who commit crimes against other citizens.  If that is not being done adequately, it should be addressed by changing criminal codes, not amending a state constitution.

5.  Other states that have passed similar amendments have had various kinds of problems that were not foreseen.  You will have to look into the details of that for yourself.

6.  Finally, appeals to (truly) pathetic stories of victims is almost never a good reason to amend a state constitution.  It is far too easy to abandon reason in such matters and just accept the emotional appeal of it all.

So I am voting “NO” on the Constitutional Amendment on the Kentucky ballot for November 6, 2018.

I will be surprised, however, if it does not pass easily.  Too many of us vote emotionally rather than rationally.  But I can do nothing to change that.  Only you can.

Mark Galli: Demonstrating Both Ignorance and Stupidity

In a recent Christianity Today article, editor in chief Mark Galli wrote about gun violence.  In this he said:

“So while we support the legitimacy of owning guns, given the violence of our land and God’s hatred of violence, we also see a need to regulate the purchase and use of guns. In particular, we Christians should work to ban weapons whose main purpose is to kill a lot of people very quickly, to keep guns in general out of the hands of unstable personalities, and to ensure that everyone who buys and owns guns can demonstrate they know how to use and store them safely.”

Galli would do well to know something about guns before saying things that make him sound stupid.  Having just reviewed the statistic showing that past “regulation” of guns had no significant effect on gun violence, he still proposes to “regulate.”  He supports the “legitimacy” of owning guns, but has little to say about the right to both own and carry firearms that the “law of the land” declares “shall not be infringed.”  I suppose he supports obeying the law, except when it interferes with his plans to “regulate” something he doesn’t like.

He urges Christians to “work to ban weapons whose main purpose is to kill a lot of people very quickly.”  In the most recent school shooting, a shotgun and a revolver were used.  So exactly which guns have a “main purpose” to “kill a lot of people very quickly”?  Most shotguns would be very useful for killing a lot of people very quickly if some evil person decided to put one to that use.  So does he want Christians to work to ban shotguns?  He leaves that matter very vague, perhaps because he has no idea what he is talking about.

He want gun owners to be required to “demonstrate they know how to use and store guns safely” - presumably demonstrate this to the state.  What, exactly, does this mean?  Must a gun owner somehow prove to the state that he has a certain level of marksmanship before he can even own a gun?  How does one do that without owning one?

What government agency will decide if you are storing your guns “safely” or not?  Must everyone, even people with no children in the house, own a certain kind of gun safe?  Will government inspectors visit the homes of all gun owners (without regard to Fourth Amendment rights, of course) to make sure guns are “stored safely”?  Must all legally-owned guns be locked away so they cannot be easily used in case of a home invasion?  Again, Galli is very vague, hinting that he has no idea what he is talking about.

If we take Galli’s approach, why shouldn’t Christianity Today be subject to government preemptive rules to make sure they do not abuse their First Amendment rights?  Galli says elsewhere that since we regulate driving, we should regulate gun rights.  So why should we not regulate free speech rights?  After all, if we allow Galli to say whatever he wants, he might say something stupid - as he does in this article!

Oh No! It’s Some Cotton!

A recent article has to be in the top examples of the everything-is-offensive culture.  In the Tennessean came this article:  “Lipscomb president apologizes for cotton stalk centerpieces”

According to Randy Lowry, Lipscomb president, “Last night we invited Lipscomb African American students to our home for dinner to discuss their experiences at Lipscomb. Several students shared with me their concern about the material used for centerpieces which contained stalks of cotton.”

Stalks of cotton are now offensive?  No doubt the thought is that cotton was a main crop in the days of the slave-holding south.  But if you are going to be offended by the existence of cotton - stalks, balls, take your pick of the cotton plant – then it might be time to admit that some people just want to find an excuse, no, a pretense, for “offense.”

To jump to everyone’s favorite, stupid example in some of these inane discussions, I notice that every swastika I have ever seen has many right angles.  Should we now expect anyone with any hint of Jewish ancestry to be offended by right angles?

It is time to stop the idiotic cowering every time someone claims to be “offended.”  It is one thing when people actually attempt to be offensive.  It is quite something else when people scrounge, scrape, and dig up something at which they can make the pretense of offense.

If Randy Lowry had any guts or the hint of a backbone (metaphorically speaking, of course) he would politely tell these students, “I am sorry you are so easily offended by something that should not be offensive to any sensible person.  I am also sorry to say that if you lack the sense not to be offended by a cotton centerpiece, you might not be ready for college.  In fact, you might not be ready to function in the world at all.”

Someday sensible people are going to grow weary of this idiocy.  We can only hope that when that time comes, there are enough sensible people left to make a difference.

I hope that someday, at least in the not-too-distant future, the kind of idiocy we are now enduring will come to an end.  But my hope is very slim.

“Note to employees from [Google] CEO Sundar Pichai” - Insanity or Dishonesty?

The inclusive/diversity mind set is very difficult to decipher.  That is because it contains a logical inconsistency.  On the one hand is the desire to include all viewpoints and people.  On the hand is the fact that there are viewpoints that are not as “inclusive and diverse” as you would like them to be.  The advocates of (their version, at least) inclusivity and diversity could avoid falling into insanity by simply being inclusive enough to tolerate even those who don’t completely agree with their views of inclusion and diversity.  It seems that they cannot, but they are loath to admit this.

That is because they are almost always inclusion and diversity hypocrites.  This has been very obvious for a long time, but we see it again in the incident of the software engineer fired by Google after expressing his views about Google’s internal “culture.”

Of course, a private company should be able to hire and fire as desired, or at least I think so.  But it appears that the Google empire has for some time prided itself on being inclusive and diverse.  It just couldn’t “swallow” an employee who held and expressed ideas that did not comport with the views of Google.

The Google CEO could openly admit this.  He could just say, “You can’t express just any ideas here at Google.  We have certain standards and limits, and some ideas are off-limits.”  That would be very honest.  He could do that, but if he made it that clear, it would sound like their inclusion is not quite all that inclusive and their diversity is not really all that diverse.  That would appear to be a little insane at worst, or hypocritical at best.

So, instead, he has to say things that, taken together, make him, and his Google culture, sound a little bit nutty, to say the least, and perhaps a bit dishonest.  Now some examples.

Separated by just a few words the Google CEO says “we strongly support the right of Googlers to express themselves” and then says that the fired employee’s view is unacceptable because he “suggest[s] a group of our colleagues [females] have traits that make them less biologically suited to that work [software coding].”  So Google “strongly” supports the right of Googlers to express themselves unless Google doesn’t like the view that an employee expresses.  That borders on insanity, or if it is not insanity, it is dishonesty.

The memo goes on to say, “there are co-workers who are questioning whether they can safely express their views in the workplace (especially those with a minority viewpoint). They too feel under threat, and that is also not OK. People must feel free to express dissent.”  But wasn’t a Google employee just fired precisely because he expressed dissent?  Is this insanity, or is it dishonesty?

Near the end of the memo the Google CEO says, “The past few days have been very difficult for many at the company, and we need to find a way to debate issues on which we might disagree - while doing so in line with our Code of Conduct.”  But that is just another way of saying that Google employees are not allowed to debate and disagree with a set of ideas supposedly included in the Code of Conduct.  In fact, the section of the Code of Conduct quoted by the Google CEO did not directly prohibit raising the kinds of questions raised by the fired software engineer.  One of his key points was that there might be good reasons, other that some kind of discrimination, why there are fewer female coders than there are male coders.  Is that something that cannot even be discussed in a place where “people must be free to express dissent”?!?  Again, is this insanity or dishonesty?

In a previous memo the Google CEO said, “All your voices and opinions matter . . . and I want to hear them.”  Well Sundar Pichai, apparently you do not.  One software engineer expressed some opinions that you and your company did not like, and you fired him.  That has to mean that you did not want to hear his voice and his opinion, and you didn’t want anyone else at Google to hear his voice and his opinion.  If you continue to insist that you want to hear all opinions while firing those who express opinions you do not like, you are either nuts or a liar.

From this distance, I cannot quite tell which it is.  Could it be a bit of both?

Beware of Biblesoft!

I want to post what amounts to a warning about the company Biblesoft. Find them on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/biblesoft/

I have used Biblesoft's PC Study Bible since the days of MS DOS and command lines. I always liked it, and the way their whole system worked. Now and then they would come out with a program update, and for a modest fee current users could upgrade just their basic program engine. All the collections you owned, which had often been purchases separately as add-on, could continue to be used.

That was both reasonable and to be expected. In the last year, however, Biblesoft has destroyed its good standing with me by attempting to pull off what seems to something close to a con job on its users. I am very sorry to have to say this.

A little over a year ago I received an email from them saying that they would be coming out with an upgrade in the future. Those who wished to make this coming upgrade needed to upgrade, they said, to the latest program engine. I had the next-to-latest, but I was glad to upgrade. Biblesoft promised the cost of this would apply to their coming new version.

The new version has come out, and Biblesoft has been offering all sorts of additional discounts to get people to upgrade. But it turns out that if you own many of their resources, the least expensive upgrade you can use will cost, even with discounts and credits, about $400. That made the need to upgrade to the latest software engine something of a trick. The ridiculous price of the coming major upgrade was not announced at that time, so if you did that but are not now willing to fork over another $400 "ransom" you completely wasted that money.

This I find to be utterly unacceptable and something akin to highway robbery, of the digital variety. Biblesoft claims that people have problems running their "old" program in windows 10. I have had no problems on two different desktop PCs. They continue to send their ridiculous offers for their over-priced upgrade with the warning that your old version might stop working any day now.

So here is my concluding note to Biblesoft: with this customer of long, long standing, you have blown it. I will not pay you $400 "ransom" to keep using the resources I have purchased from you over the years. If at some point Windows 10 stops running your old program, I will just create a Windows 7 virtual machine on one of my PCs and run your old, good program from that. Other than that, I am done with you and your ill-managed company. Rather than put up pointless "devotional" material on your Facebook page, why not run your company with some Christian integrity?

Not “Christian” and not a “Headline”

At something called Christianheadlines.com I saw this amazingly idiotic so-called headline:

Britney Spears Quotes Bible Verse after Being Mocked by Katy Perry

So a messed-up former Mouseketeer quotes the Bible at a rude remark by the wayward daughter of a Methodist “clergy couple.”  It damages a mind to think of something like that as a “headline.”

The short “article” that follows the headline reads like the kind of gossip one might hear in particularly boring small-town circles.  It really still is just that, even if those involved are famous in spite of doing anything important in life.

Hey Christianheadlines.com – somewhere in this world something important is going on in relationship to Christianity.  But this just isn’t one of those things.  It’s not even close.

Don’t Say It!

I read this today: "Business owners have been gifted a much-needed reprieve thanks to Donald Trump's swift action to reduce red tape." My comment has nothing to do with the political side of that statement.

One piece of twenty-first century jargon that needs to be hated is this idiotic word “gifted.”  A “gift” is “given.”  I understand inventing a word when one does not exist.  But what is the point of inventing a stupid-sounding word when a perfectly good one already fills the needed role?

In the sentence at the beginning, “given” does the job needed with elegance, style, and grace.  Those who insist on dropping the worthless jargon word “gifted” in such places need to whacked up side the head with a grammar stick.

There are some other examples of this sort of thing, but this one is perhaps the worst of them.

How About “Closed for Easter”?

Churches Close for Easter
as “reported” by Kent B. True

In a move that came as a surprise to some, one area church has decided to cancel services for Easter Sunday this year.  While some expressed concern with the change, church leaders defended the move as Biblically correct and practically necessary.

Pastor Ben Right of The Church of What’s Happening Now refused to be interviewed about the matter, but earlier in the week spokeswoman Ima Chatterly issued statements to the press about her church’s decision.

“Easter is all about eggs, bunnies, and families,” she said.  “Our focus has always been on families, although we have absolutely no objection to eggs or bunnies if families decide to use those” she added.

But Chatterly insisted that there were even more important reasons to cancel services at What’s Happening Now on Easter.  “It requires approximately 17.8 church member volunteers to induce each unchurched individual to attend services here at What’s Happening Now,” said Chatterly, “and we decided that those dedicated people needed another Sunday to spend with family and friends.”

The Church of What’s Happening Now was one of the first in the nation to cancel services on Christmas Sunday, and Chatterly cited the great success of that idea as one factor in the Easter decision.  “We noticed that after our Christmas Sunday break last year, only 12.3 volunteers were needed for several weeks to draw each unchurched person to our church.  The volunteers seem to work a lot harder if you let them rest now and then.  That made us realize just how important these Sunday sabbaticals can be for a healthy mega-church,” although Chatterly quickly added that they do not call their church a “mega-church.”

But in an unexpected move, Pastor Right addressed the canceled Easter controversy in his sermon last week.  In his sermon, on a stage decorated with thousands of plastic Easter Eggs and flanked by all the members of his church’s “Advisory and Affirmation” Team dressed in Easter Bunny suits, Right made an emotional defense of his decision.

“The Advisory and Affirmation Team and I met, prayed, and cried over this decision for several hours this week,” said Right in his Thursday afternoon sermon last week, “and in the end we decided to make a stand in favor of families.”  At one point, Pastor Right said, “Easter is for families.  We don’t want ‘church’ to get in the way of that.”

But it wasn’t only about saving the family, according to Pastor Right.

“It’s not just an Easter thing,” said Right.  “It’s a change I have been studying for some time now.  In fact, as a result of this study, I was granted my D.M.A. (Doctor of Megachurch Administration) from the prestigious World Christian University.”  W.C.U. grants this degree only to students who have completed its intense ten-month program.

Right told his mesmerized congregation, “I have been able to do some detailed New Testament study, which I don’t suggest you ordinary people should try at home.  But what I found was that in first-century Judea, Sunday morning actually fell somewhere between what we call Thursday afternoon and Friday night.  This follows from a careful consideration of time zones, calendar changes, church controversies, and the international date line.  So beginning on Easter Sunday, our church will be observing the correct meeting time for the church, which is Friday evening.”

Right sees this as a way to make his church more Biblical.  “Easter is really a pagan holiday,” Right explained in one of the less emotional moments in his sermon.  “So if we can overcome all this societal Easter pressure, we can help make our church a less pagan place than it is right now.”

Later in his sermon, Pastor Right reminded his congregation that not only was Friday evening a time, indicated by Biblical studies, when the church should meet, but it also happened to be the church meeting time preferred by 8.6 of every 10 unchurched persons.  “We want to be unchurched-person sensitive,” said Right, “and you can’t do that if your church insists on meeting at times the unchurched find inconvenient.”
               
Right hinted that some who disagree with his Easter cancellation policy might be a little jealous.  “It’s hard to argue with success.  In fact, you shouldn’t even try.” Right said.  “People at smaller churches shouldn’t be wasting their time disagreeing with us.  Instead, they should be trying to become more like us,” Right insisted.

Right’s sermon at What’s Happening Now was interrupted several times with lengthy standing ovations punctuated with cheers and whistles from the thousands of unchurched who were present.  After the sermon, many of the unchurched present at What’s Happening Now offered their support for Pastor Right’s decision.

“I’m an atheist,” said Patti Pettibrain,  “but I love What’s Happening Now, I love Pastor Right, and I’m a regular here.”  She added with tears in her eyes, “I don’t know why all the mean people around town are attacking Pastor Right.  After all, he can’t be wrong when his name is Right.”

One of the elders of What’s Happening Now, twenty-three-year-old I. B. Yesmann, told this reporter, “Church isn’t about days of the week.  Our church’s critics are, like, way too worried about Sunday.  Friday is just as much one of the Lord’s days as Sunday, isn’t it?”

While it is not clear if other churches will follow the lead of What’s Happening Now, it is clear that the Easter controversy will probably affect churches around the country.  One What’s Happening Now member, who asked not to be identified, said, “Some churches are just stuck in the past.  But we are, just like our name says, ‘What’s Happening Now.’  God’s always doing new things, and we are the latest and greatest.”

Christmas Falls on Sunday - Again

Christmas past.  Long past?  It has been some time, but what was somewhat strange then is rather common now.  Strange things happened at some churches in December 2005 when, as it does every few years, Christmas falls on Sunday.  The strange thing that happened was: nothing.  It turned into nation-wide news after a Lexington, Kentucky reporter published his story.  Club members can thank our agent - we will called him “Snow 007" - for tipping us off to that article.  Over the next few days many papers picked up a version of the story.  I stopped reading with the few mentioned below, but there were probably more.  The Christianity Today weblog called it “Megachurches Cancel Christmas.”  Why would a church cancel Christmas?  Let’s find out as we examine . . .

Christmas Past Strange

“Why do churches close on Sunday?,” Lexington Herald-Leader, December 4, 2005
“Some Megachurches Closing for Christmas,” Associated Press, December 06, 2005
“Evangelical churches such as suburban Willow Creek will close on Christmas,” Chicago Tribune, December 6, 2005
“When Christmas Falls on Sunday, Megachurches Take the Day Off,” New York Times - December 9, 2005

One thing was obvious in all these articles: the secular press thought it was strange that churches would make a point of closing on Christmas.  It was almost as though some of these writers were C & E (Christmas and Easter) Christians, and they were puzzled as to why churches would cut out one of the two days they might show up!  (By the way, all the citations below are from one or more of these stories.  But I won’t try to identify them more than this because it quickly becomes far too complicated.)

Beyond what the newspaper writers might have thought, it was clear that for many of these church people, it became a matter of Christmas trumping Sunday.  I know that sounds strange, but this is the Strange Club, after all.

In the days of yesteryear, it always seemed to me that most church people considered it an extra-special bonus when Christmas fell on Sunday.  Here was the day of the year traditionally set aside to celebrate the birth of Jesus the Christ falling on the same day of the week the church is supposed to meet to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus.  Of course, Christmas has, for a long time, been a big social event as well as a religious celebration.  So sometimes churches would adjust their schedules somewhat to accommodate all that.  But the idea that we would “cancel Christmas” never crossed a churchman’s mind, at least as far as I ever knew.  But in “the year of our Lord” 2005 - if we should still so call it - all that has changed.

The really interesting question is: why?  While the answers were not identical, there were some mysteriously common threads.

Let us begin up on Willow Creek:

Cally Parkinson, a spokeswoman for Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Ill., said church leaders decided that organizing services on a Christmas Sunday would not be the most effective use of staff and volunteer resources. . . "If our target and our mission is to reach the unchurched, basically the people who don't go to church, how likely is it that they'll be going to church on Christmas morning?" she said.

The decision makes sense in today's hectic world, said Willow Creek spokeswoman Cally Parkinson. "It's more than being family-friendly. It's being lifestyle-friendly for people who are just very, very busy," she said.

"At first glance it does sound contrarian," said Rev. Gene Appel, senior pastor of Willow Creek. "We don't see it as not having church on Christmas. We see it as decentralizing the church on Christmas--hundreds of thousands of experiences going on around Christmas trees. The best way to honor the birth of Jesus is for families to have a more personal experience on that day."

So, up on Willow Creek, they think church on Sunday, when Sunday is also Christmas, is a waste of resources, because the “unchurched” won’t come to church on Christmas morning, since they are “very, very busy.”  So the Willows decided to “decentralize” church on Christmas Sunday.

I admit that I am still confused.  Of course the “unchurched” are “too busy” to come to church - otherwise they would be “churched.”  But aren’t there any “churched” people up on Willow Creek who might like a great Christmas Sunday of assembled worship?  If calling off Sunday worship is just “decentralizing” the church, why not “decentralize” every Sunday?  That way ALL of the unchurched would become the “Church of the Decentralization”!  Wouldn’t that be great?

But since I really don’t understand things up on Willow Creek with their women elders and Rev. Gene, I think we should just move south - south to “God’s country” down in central Kentucky where Cindy Willison, a spokeswoman for the evangelical Southland Christian Church, said at least 500 volunteers are needed, along with staff, to run Sunday services for the estimated 8,000 people who usually attend.

"If we weren't having services at all, I would probably tend to feel that we were too accommodating to the secular viewpoint, but we're having multiple services on Saturday and an additional service Friday night," Willison said. "We believe that you worship every day of the week, not just on a weekend, and you don't have to be in a church building to worship."

I am not a big fan of conspiracy theories, but I could almost believe that these spokespersons had a little phone conversation before these interviews.  Southland, like the Willows, didn’t want to waste the time of their volunteers, and they want us to remember that the church doesn’t have to get together on Sunday to worship.

So again, I have to ask: since the church need not worship together on Sunday, why not save the time of these 500 volunteers every Sunday and just let people stay home and worship separately?  (Remember, up at Willow Creek they call that “decentralized” worship.)

Since I don’t have a ready answer for that question, we move on to another central Kentucky - which I think still might be God’s country - church.

Crossroads [Christian] Pastor Glenn Schneiders says Dec. 25 is no longer considered sacred by many Americans -- especially those who are not regular churchgoers. "It's viewed more as a holiday than a holy day," he said.

The unchurched are more reachable on Dec. 24, said Schneiders . . . "Studies would say the best opportunity to invite people is Christmas Eve. It's, for whatever reason, the least threatening service of the year to attend ... so what we do is really point all of our energy in that direction," Schneiders said. "We don't think we're compromising. We're actually reaching more people by doing that."

I thought the main reason the church gathers each Sunday is so that those who have been “reached” can worship God together.  I wasn’t aware that what non-regular churchgoers thought about this was a deciding factor.  In fact, I thought the church was obligated to gather on the first day of the week to celebrate the Lord’s Supper together.  But apparently pastors, reverends, and spokeswomen don’t think that anymore.

Now I don’t know who Laurie Goodstein is other than the writer of the New York Times’ story mentioned above.  But here is what she commented concerning all this:

What some consider the deeper affront is in canceling services on a Sunday, which most Christian churches consider the Lord's Day, when communal worship is an obligation.

Laurie has a bit of insight here that mega-church spokeswomen seem to lack.  But she still needs to dig deeper for her reports.  There appear to be many Christian churches these days that do NOT consider Sunday the Lord’s Day.  Rather, they seem to think that (sing it, now!):

The Lord’s Day can be on a Friday, a Thursday, a Saturday - whatever you like best,
but never, never on a Sunday, a Sunday, a Sunday, ‘cause that’s our day of rest.

You know it’s true when Christmas trumps the Lord’s Day.

Perhaps the pastors, reverends, and spokeswomen need to expand their thinking.  There are other holidays that are no longer holy days we should consider.  When Independence Day - another big family time in the U.S.A. - falls on Sunday we might want to consider canceling church meetings.  What about New Year’s Day?  All the “unchurched” will be hung over from New’s Year’s Eve celebrations, so when Sunday falls on New Year’s day, there will be no one to reach and thus no reason for the church to meet.  (This was the case in 2005, and yet no one seemed to consider calling off New Year’s Day Sunday meetings.)  How about Super Bowl Sunday?  (It’s always on Sunday, of course.)  The unchurched will be far too busy getting ready for Super Bowl parties to come to church and get reached on that day.  So there’s another candidate for cancellation.

But there is one more “problem” Sunday we need to ponder.  Another big family holiday that is no longer a holy day is Easter.  That pesky little thing always falls on Sunday, given our Western church calendar.  So keep an eye on the newspapers to see if any churches are canceling Easter.  It’s definitely next.

A Few Thoughts on Thanksgiving Eve

Thanksgiving: we have celebration day for it every year.  It’s a very American holiday, and it is deeply ingrained in our culture.  We devote a day just to thanksgiving - at least that is what we claim.  You wouldn’t think it would be all that difficult.  But it turns out to be difficult than you might first think.

Think about what the origin of the word “holiday.”  It is a day that is, for some reason or other, “holy.” Besides the demands that holy things can make on us, there are other reasons why “holy” days can make people a little uncomfortable.

The existence of the “holy” implies the existence of God.  When you start talking about God, try as you might NOT to identify this God, it becomes very hard to avoid that question at some point.

A “holy” day brings up this very question, a question asked and answered very often in the Old Testament: just who is God?  Is everything God?  Are human beings their own god?  Are there lots of gods, one for one locality and a different one for another locality?  Holidays bring up these very sticky questions that a lot of modern people would just rather avoid.

Still, people love “holidays” because we get to change our routines and can, if we allow ourselves, have a little rest from the normal “grind.”  So we run into a very interesting, and somewhat depressing, modern phenomenon.  People want  holidays, but we wish they were just “days” and not “holy.”

I have noticed how this has been handled lately.  Christmas has become just “the season” for which we send “season’s greetings.”  It’s a pretty slick trick if you think about it.  You don’t have to bother about that worrisome, politically incorrect “Christ” part of Christmas.  Thanksgiving has faired no better.  It has become “turkey day.”  But this nifty little arrangement takes the “thanks” out of Thanksgiving.

There is, however, a little milder version of the holiness avoidance syndrome (you can call this H.A.S. if you like).  This milder version keeps the word thanksgiving intact, and it even let’s us talk about being thankful, but we just don’t specify TO WHOM we are being thankful.  While you can try that, at some point inquiring minds want to know, “thankful to whom?”

For those who think much about it (and many do not) Thanksgiving Day and the whole season is a traumatic experience for our society.  The old saying tells us that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, but the apostle Paul tells us that the skids to hell are greased with thanklessness.  You can find that in Romans 1:21.  People are sliding down those horrible rails all the time.  Again, there is no excuse for this, but if you think about it, it has a certain kind of understandability because thankfulness is very hard for us humans.

Thankfulness is especially difficult when we have so much stuff.  We are so accustomed to our abundance of stuff that we don’t even realize just how much stuff we really have.  When I take a moment to think about it, I am awed by what I see in department stores and supermarkets.  Almost anything you could ever want is there, and even those of us the most modestly provided can buy everything we need and much of what we want.  The only reason we don’t notice this abundance is that we are in the habit of having.

Even people like my parents, who lived through the “Great Depression” (hey, what was so great about it?) were VERY aware of abundance when they were young adults.  But the memory of depravation is fading, even with some of them.  Those of later generations have no memory of depravation.  Let’s face it - we have STUFF, so much stuff, in fact, that it rather engulfs us sometimes, making us unable to move around in our houses, making it impossible to see some of the best things in life.  That doesn’t make stuff somehow evil.  It just reveals that we can be.

You might think that people with very little stuff would have a more difficult time being thankful.  But surprisingly, the Bible presents just the opposite picture.  Notice what the Apostle Paul says:

    Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment.  (1 Tim 6:17)

It is those with much who are more likely to be ensnared by thanklessness.  That’s a little ironic if you think about it, but it’s true.  It’s not only true, but especially dangerous for Christians in our society, because we have all the stuff, and we also have salvation that comes from the grace of God through Jesus Christ.

Thanksgiving Day is a good idea.  But if you think through what it implies, it is not easy, because it makes us think about the things that often make us the most uncomfortable.  But that is part of what makes it a good idea.

Have a very happy and very uncomfortable Thanksgiving!

“WELCOME WHITE WEEK”

It is the perfect example of matters gone very wrong on university campuses and across America.  It’s the “Welcome White Week!” poster at NKU.  Both the Cincinnati Enquirer and The Northerner (NKU campus newspaper) carried stories about it this week.

Before I begin, I know this example is about race, and race is something that can be discussed only in approved terms and categories these days.  But it is not just this example that interests me.  It is, rather, a whole attitude of what can be said in public about many topics.  Race is just one of those.  So we will wade into this in spite of the prohibitions.

The gist of the matter is this: African American Programs at NKU placed officially approved posters around campus which read “WELCOME BLACK WEEK” in which the “O” is replaced with what appears to be a black power clenched fist.  There is at NKU a welcome back week for students in general, which is presumably the basis of this poster.

But, after these posters were in place, someone placed alongside each of them a poster which is very similar except in place of “BLACK” is WHITE” and the clenched fist in “WELCOME” is white rather than black.  At this, a demonstration was directed at which the president of the university spoke words of sympathy and encouragement for the protestors.  And, as you might guess, the university had more official response:

    University spokeswoman Amanda Nageleisen said the “Welcome White Week” flier did not go through university approval process with the Student Union and the student organization named is not active or registered with the university. There is also no record of any of the events on the flier scheduled at NKU.
   
    “We’re still looking into it,” Nageleisen said, “but all signs point to this not being a legitimate organization or flier or activity.”
   
    She said the fliers first came to university's attention Tuesday and they were quickly removed, mostly by students.

I have no idea of the motive of those who posted the parallel white welcome posters.  But for my purposes, that does not matter.  What does matter is this interesting, even distressing, situation in which we find ourselves in which a poster with “BLACK” in it receives official approval from a university, which a parallel one with “WHITE” receives implicit and explicit condemnation.

For example, one department at NKU offered this statement:

“African American Programs and Services stands in solidarity with students, staff and faculty who were offended by the intolerant flier created by individuals who chose not to embrace the recent 'Welcome Black Week' activities.  Moving forward we value and respect dialogue regarding all viewpoints and will create educational spaces to build awareness and move towards the common good.”

Which is it, AAPS?  Is this poster intolerant, something at which we should be offended, or is it a viewpoint that you will “value and respect”?  That is the kind of question that universities have not been able to answer coherently for a long time.

There is, of course, a horrible history for black people in this country.  How could it have been otherwise when most of their ancestors came as kidnaped slaves?  But that problem will never be solved by trying to create a society in which you can’t post a “WELCOME WHITE WEEK” poster.  After all, isn’t a university supposed to be a place where all ideas get an equal hearing, even the bad ones?

While that is how it is often billed, it is not that way now, and has not been that way for a long, long time.  This incident just puts an exclamation point behind that problem.

According to the reports, at the demonstration, “students, both collectively and individually, discussed the underrepresentation they feel on campus and the challenges they face as black students.”  Under represented?  Perhaps, but while admitting that I do not know all the details here, there is a complete “Office of African American Student Affairs” at NKU.  Not every ethnic background has such an office there.

Junior James Johnson, one of the organizers of the demonstration, was quoted as saying, “The ignorance that stands on NKU’s campus is no longer acceptable.  It’s starting to become deliberate. Just like this person who deliberately copied our flyer.”

I would say to James that, while I don’t know the motives of those behind the “Welcome White Week!” poster, it has nothing necessarily to do with ignorance.  And of course the copying of the “Welcome Black Week” poster was deliberate.  That was, obviously, the whole point of the thing.  It could just be someone’s way of saying to those who don’t want to hear it that the emperor has no clothes.

The “He’s Not Hillary” Argument

I am more than a little upset with those who voted for Trump in the primaries.  Some of them are friends of mine, and I am sorry if this angers you, but I can’t change that.

It should not have taken long to figure out that Trump is nut job candidate.  The "he is not Hillary" argument is worthless when the guy who is not Hillary is Trump. I try to listen to him, but he sounds like someone who has never put two rational thoughts together.

My son attended a Trump rally recently.  Some of the things said there, with the encouragement of those who organized the rally, were reprehensible.  They were things that should not be said in polite company, let along in public.  Screaming about who you hate is not something that attracts people to a cause or a candidate.  (And there was plenty of that at the Trump rally, according to my son.)  The tenor and behavior at the Trump rally was not something that would even attract conservatives.  Who thinks it would attract those who are undecided?

Who can predict what a president Trump might do.  He seems to change his mind almost daily.  He has spoken strongly during his campaign about using protective tariffs to punish certain counties.  Do we understand that tariffs are a tax on us?  Do we understand that protectionism was a key factor in the Great Depression of the 1930s?

Having a lot of brass and sass might be OK if a candidate were advocating a consistent set of good ideas.  But Trump seems to have no idea what his ideas are, why he holds them, or if he might change his mind (if he has one) in the next few minutes.  Who can expect reasonable people to vote for the package that is Trump?

So I am ready to announce that, should Hillary be elected, it will be due to those who voted for Trump in the Republican primary. There were other choices - there always are. You folks made a very bad choice.  Did you not know what you were voting for, or did you just not care?

So now, the realistic possibilities (third parties just don’t get elected) are the mafia-like Hillary (no offense to the mafia intended) or the incoherent maniac Trump.

We might all have to suffer the consequences, no matter who is elected.  I hope you Trumpers are happy.

We Don’t Approve Your Disapproval

The list of things we can’t talk about continues to grow.  I am thinking here of behaviors that not so long ago were generally disapproved, but that are now being forced onto that list of things of which we must not dispprove.

First came homosexual behavior.  Next came the pretense that marriage is even possible between two people of the same sex.  Now comes the act of behaving as though you are male when you are in fact famale, or vice versa.

This is not to say that these kinds of bad behaviors are not human tragedies.  But that is not the point here.

The point here is that there is almost a mania lately for this strange and contradictory phenomenon of encouaging, and even demanding, the condemnation of those who disapprove of things that almost everyone once knew are bad behavior.  And that “once” is often not that long ago.

This approach is both insidious and a bit of genius.  Once you convince most people that it is wrong to dispprove openly of something, a very large obstacle to the promotion of that something has been removed.  What better way to do this than to convince most people that the only really bad thing is the open expression that something is a bad thing.

The latest example is the whole transgender business.  People may think what they will, of course.  But when women who wrongly believe they are men want to dress up like men, insist on being called men, and watch me take care of private business in the men’s restroom, we have a problem.

Not so long ago that problem, and others like it, had some built-into-society controls.  All those amounted to vaious ways people would openly disapprove of certain behavior.  These ranged all the way from verbal expressions of disapproval to how we associated with others.

Most of those avenues of disapproval have been successfully shut off in a massive campaign of the disapproval of disapproval.  From gradeschool classrooms to the strong arm of centralized government, disapproval has been banned.  The whole weight of society has been re-engineered to disapprove of disapproval.

That this is a blatant contradiction seems to be of little weight.  The open disapproval, especially of whatever has become the latest fad of misbehavior, must be stopped.  Disapproval, at least of those things, is something we must be convinced, or even required, to vehemently and vigorously disapprove.

Could Less “Safety” AND Less Diversity Be Better?

There is an interesting article in FEE today titled, “Safe Spaces Can’t Be Diverse.” It is very reserved in tone, pointing out the rather obvious point that “We don’t need to dismiss either ideal to recognize that a space’s safety and its diversity will be inversely related. The more you have of one, the less you must have of the other.”
In case you have not kept up with such things, there is a recent demand by some college students to make colleges and universities “safe” spaces. They are not talking about safety from gunfire. The continuing policies of most universities that prohibit firearms make it a relatively sure thing that evil people who want to gun down others will have an easy time of it on most campuses.
The “safe” places here are places free of any ideas that make people feel offended or even uncomfortable. Like many stupid trends in society, advocates of “safe” spaces have not always realized that “safe” and diverse are in conflict. Long before people were fretting about “safe” spaces, “diversity” had been enthroned as the god of the university.  Now people are starting to notice you can’t have both.  But what about going for less of both?
What slips between the cracks in this whole discussion is this: there is nothing wrong with a society that mostly, at a purely social level, in some way shuns or socially disapproves those who insist on behaving badly. This is not a matter of governments making laws about such things, far from it. It is about people expressing general disapproval of bad behavior, and even bad ideas.
As Paul the Apostle, Aristotle the philosopher, and many others throughout history have recognized, our wills are weak. Social “nudging” in the right direction can be a very positive thing. This all requires, of course, that we can know what the “right direction” is. But, if we can, such nudging will involve a reduction of both “diversity” and “safety” in the senses mentioned above. And that reduction would be a good thing. I intend to explore this matter in more detail.

Of Courts, County Clerks, Gutless Officials

We have a problem and it is a serious one.  The national government decided to define marriage in a manner contrary to the nature of marriage.  As if that were not bad enough, it is not even the case that all the branches of our three-branch central government did this.  One branch, the Congress, had reaffirmed that marriage is what it is: something that involves one man and one woman.  What makes this situation even worse is that it was five members of the nine-member judicial branch who decided to redefine marriage.

Just to remind us, the crux of what Anthony Kennedy said was this:  “Under the Constitution, same-sex couples seek in marriage the same legal treatment as opposite-sex couples, and it would disparage their choices and diminish their personhood to deny them this right.”  He got to this conclusion first by pointing out that marriage has changed over time.  For example, we generally don’t have arranged marriages and we now allow inter-racial marriages.  So if marriage is changeable, we should be able to change it in any other way some wish, or so claims Kennedy.  Of course, arranged marriages were still marriages, as are inter-racial marriages.  They required a man and a woman.

But the crux of what Kennedy claims is that “the right to marry is a fundamental right inherent in the liberty of the person” so that the Fourteenth Amendment requires that those who want to “marry” the same sex have a “fundamental right to marry.”
 
The pretense of appealing the Fourteenth Amendment as the grounds for this redefinition are non-sense.  If a state decides to issue certificates of recognition to the owners of horses, no one has been treated “unequally” if that state refuses to issue such a certificate to the owners of dogs.  If it needs stating, this is just because dogs are not horses, no matter how much anyone, including Anthon y Kennedy, wishes they were.  Marriage is what it is.

The fact that Anthony Kennedy and a few of his cohorts decided they do not like the nature of marriage is not the real problem.  Anthony Kennedy thinks all sorts of things that do not comport with reality.  The real problem is that we have forgotten what to do when something like this happens.

Well, not quite everyone.  Because there was one, small, insignificant little county clerk in Rowan County, Kentucky who refused to go along with the great and powerful.  She refused to issue marriage licenses to those who, in fact, cannot be married.  She was doing exactly what the Constitution of Kentucky required her to do.  After all, she is a clerk of Kentucky.

But as Nathaniel Darnell reminds us, even in the case of officials of the United State, “Under Article VI of the Constitution, each official must take an oath to uphold the Constitution, not a judge’s possibly faulty view of the Constitution.  Otherwise, the oaths are effectively to the judiciary.”

But what are almost insignificant little state officials like a county clerk to do when they do their duty rather than the will of Anthony Kennedy?  As Constitutional lawyers Herbert W. Titus and William J. Olson point out:

“In a better time, a President could have explained to the American people why the Fourteenth Amendment has nothing to do with same-sex marriage, and protected her. Failing that, Clerk Davis should have been able to call on her state’s Governor to protect her - to interpose between her and the five Justices.”

Many people have never even heard of this idea, but it is not new.  It goes back at least to the Reformation era when Martin Luther went head-to-head with the Holy Roman Emperor and the Pope.  The Emperor would have executed Luther, but a more local official, the Elector of Saxony, protected Luther by putting the power of his position between Luther and the Emperor.  That is, the Elector of Saxony “interposed” himself between Luther and the Holy Roman Emperor.  The Reformers generally adopted this approach because, rather than being and exercise of anarchy and lawlessness, it was one official correcting another official.

Our system of government was designed with this sort of idea defining its very structure.  As either Hamilton or Madison put it in Federalist No. 51:

“In a single republic, all the power surrendered by the people is submitted to the administration of a single government; and the usurpations are guarded against by a division of the government into distinct and separate departments. In the compound republic of America, the power surrendered by the people is first divided between two distinct governments, and then the portion allotted to each subdivided among distinct and separate departments. Hence a double security arises to the rights of the people. The different governments will control each other, at the same time that each will be controlled by itself.”

In other words, in case you missed it, in order to have many officials at multiple levels who can protect the rights of the people, we (supposedly) have not just a republic divided into somewhat competing branches.  We also have a “compound republic” with “two distinct governments” - the United States government, and the governments of the states.  And like the United States government, the governments of the states have competing departments.  Why have two governments, each with sub-divisions?  One reason is to have a lawful way to control things like an out-of-control Anthony Kennedy.  It is a system designed to be inefficient, in part to provide for the protection of the powerless.

So far the system has not worked in the case of the imprisoned Kentucky county clerk.  Could the system work?  We will never know until the other branches and divisions of our governments are populated with something other than the gutless wonders (like the current governor of Kentucky, just for one example) who now inhabit them.

Thank God for the Anti-Federalists

In the era when the U.S. Constitution was being formulated, there was a rather large and significant group, usually called anti-Federalists, of those who thought it was a bad idea. They are often seen today as an obstacle that had to be overcome to give us “the United States.” I dissent from that view, and instead thank God for the anti-Federalists. They undoubtedly helped mitigate, as least somewhat, the erosion of our liberties today.

To illustrate this, come with me to merry old England. Recently, as reported here:

Mike Overd was convicted under the Public Order Act after he quoted the Bible when preaching about homosexuality in Taunton in June 2014.  The judge at Bristol Crown Court said Overd should not have used the Leviticus 20:13, which uses the word “abomination” . . . Overd has been fined about $200 and is required to pay another $1,300 in costs and compensation to a homosexual man, who was listening to Overd preach.

As far as I can determine, this would not stand in the United States: not yet, at least. Why?

Because of my beloved anti-Federalists. They were opposed to the Constitution in varying degrees, but one thing most of them did agree on was that any constitution needed a “Bill of Rights,” that is, a list of specified areas of liberty where the government to be created under that Constitution may not interfere.

It is not that the Federalists of the time were against liberty. They simply saw no need for a Bill of Rights because they thought they had put together a Constitution of specified, and thus limited, powers for the central government. In other words, according to the Federalists, the Constitution states what the central government can do, and that clearly means it can do no more.

The anti-Federalists resisted rather vigorously, to the point that, to placate them to some degree there was something of a gentlemen’s agreement that if the Constitution were ratified, the first order of business for the new government would be amending said Constitution to add a Bill of Rights.

The British have no Bill of Rights, partly because they have no written constitution. So when the regime there decides that freedom of speech and freedom of religion must bow to social engineering, there is nothing to stand in the way.

Our government has an increasing record of simply ignoring, or creatively reinterpreting so as to eliminate, or Bill of Rights. A couple of them have simply been ignored throughout most of our history. But they have provided a barrier of some kind against things like not being able to cite Lev. 20:13 in public so as not to offend someone.

You can easily imagine that, apart from our Bill of Rights, you would not be able to do all sorts of things that our social engineering state finds objectionable. Our Bill of Rights does not always protect us because, as mentioned before, sometimes it is just ignored.

But even now, and at some key points, our Bill of Rights does keep the hounds of statism in check. And for that you can thank God for the anti-Federalists.

State Controlled Education–A Good Idea?

I ran across this interesting headline at National Center for Policy Analysis:

State Controlled Education: Still A Good Idea

The point under the headline is that it would be a good idea for states to control education rather than the Feds.  Maybe – but a question that needs asking is this:  why do most assume that some government must “control” education?

What about recognizing the liberty we all should be free to exercise over our own education?  Why do we think that governments know what is best for us and for our families?

Higher education, lower education – pick any category you like.  Why involve governments in this?

Why should anyone agree that education needs “control” outside of the individuals who want it and others who might provide it?

This is not a new question, but it is a question that is never adequately answered, and cannot be asked too often:  if people are unable to control their own education, how does installing other people to control it for them solve the problem?  Who will control the controllers?

IRRELEVANT Thinking

Allow me to get myself into serious trouble today.  I stumbled upon an article in RELEVANT today that expresses something that deserves a bit of comment.  The article is “5 Lies American Culture Feeds Us Every Day.”  (I might add that one such lie, not mentioned in the article, is that being “relevant” is important.)

A couple of the five “lies” are good points.  One, “You Can Be Anything You Want to Be” is perhaps something our culture does not tell us as much, or in the way, the author supposes.

But the one I bring to your attention is “Individualism is a Noble Pursuit.”  The author’s explanation of this lie society feeds us is this:

We might not directly say it, but we sometimes believe it: “Who cares if Jesus said stuff about losing your life? Who cares about all of that radical sacrifice stuff? God gave you a brain, He expects you to use it.”  Tragically, Christianity in America often confuses faith in God with just faith in self with some Godly values attached.  Translation: God thinks logically. He would never expect you to make a decision that flies in the face of self-reliance. Don’t sell your house. Don’t give your savings to feed the hungry. Don’t move into the inner city. It is dangerous there.

This kind of thought seems to be the offspring of the “Crazy Love” fad in Christianity.  I was once asked to review that book, and in spite of its popularity, I found it to be full of what I call enthusiastically shallow thinking.  In fact, it is an interesting case of “poisoning the well.”  That is, if you disagree with this approach, you are just exhibiting that kind of individualism that we all know should be condemned.

We need to remember that Jesus sometimes spoke in hyperbole.  He once told us to cut off one of our hands if required.  Should we simply “shut off our brains” as implied in the quotation above and start cutting?  Or should we think about what Jesus no doubt meant by what He said?

I realize that this is one of those uses of the mind that author of the RELEVANT article condemns, but let us suppose that every Christian sold his house and gave away all his savings to feed the hungry.  Let’s suppose these Christians convinced a significant part of the population to become Christians and join them in the selling and giving.

Soon, all these people would join the ranks of the homeless and the hungry.  But not only that, since their savings would no longer be part of the pool of capital that buys the tools that makes the things that people need to exist, at some point there would be no way to make the wealth that everyone is supposed to give away.  Would God simply begin to do a daily “feeding of the five billion” miracle?  Or does God normally care for us via means that we must carefully manage, say, like stewards?

And if the inner city is dangerous but we are required to live there anyway, should we step in front of a bus once in a while too?  For that matter, I don’t remember Jesus or the Apostles even talking about where we should live.  Did not the Apostle Paul say that failure to take care of the needs of your family made you worse than an unbeliever?

That, of course, is thinking.  And the author rejects thinking – except, we must suppose, for his thinking about culture and its five lies.

It is not “faith in God with just faith in self with some Godly values attached” to be both generous and to provide for your family, as the Apostle commands.  And it is not loving to take actions that you know will make you and your family dependent upon others in some attempt to fulfill the fantasies of the “crazy love” misguided way of looking at life.

The Rape of Morality and the Morality of Rape

There was a note-worthy article mentioned today in Breakpoint.  It is titled “The Wheels Are Coming Off the Sexual Revolution.”  This article is from National Review Online, and while I am not a conservative in the most common sense of that word today, the author makes some good points in reflecting on the recent discussions about rape on college campuses.

Part of the author’s point is that many colleges and universities have created conditions that, in the end, encourage rape.  It is worth a look to see just how that has happened.  In essence, the set of pet projects pursued by many universities today have created moral conditions is which rape (and many other things, for that matter) should not be a surprising event.

I don’t think many if any university officials who have helped put these conditions in place had any thought of encouraging rape.  But their commitment to promoting certain attitudes and views among students made them at least unwitting participants in the problem.  It’s as though they scattered weed seeds and then hoped that the weeds would not grow – and then they became alarmed when the weeds did grow and produce more weeds.

The problem behind all such symptoms at universities today can be traced to the broad failure to examine moral foundations.  If there are no moral foundations, then why should rape, or anything else, bother anyone?  But if there are things, like rape, ought to disturb us all morally, what is the basis of that ought, why does it apply to us all, and how can we know what it is?

University officials, especially the higher ones who make policy, don’t like to answer those questions.  Most of them operate as though there are ‘oughts’ that apply to us all.  Some of these they are very busy imposing on students in various ways.

But when you ask them things like “Why is your policy on moral matters correct?  How do you know it is true?  What is your ultimate basis for all this?” the answers are never intellectually satisfying.  There is simply the assumption that something or other about human beings and society justifies it all.  But, in my experience (and I have a bit of it) the answers to the question “What makes this right?” are often shallow or pointless – if indeed an answer is even offered.

It is time for those who make policies about moral matters at universities tell us the basis of their policies.  If they cannot or will not, they reveal part of the cause for problems like rape on campus.

Thanksgiving

The other day I received a mass email greeting from the president of the university where I direct a campus ministry.  It was a Thanksgiving greeting.  In it the president thanked the recipients for their “friendship and support” of the university.

That’s nice.  It is good to thank those who have done things for us, or for groups or causes of which we are a part.  But it impoverishes and even bastardizes the American tradition of Thanksgiving.

The point of the day is to focus on expressing thanks to God.  I know university presidents probably cannot officially endorse that today.  But it might be better, if you cannot participate officially in the spirit of Thanksgiving, to just ignore it and let it pass.

In fact, there is very little reason to thank other people for things if there is no God.  If God does not exist, then all things are morally permissible, including ingratitude to other people.  Why are other people important at all, except for your own purposes, if there is no Creator to Whom we owe thanks?

One of the tragic and ironic things about modern higher education is the attempt to pursue learning in an atmosphere of pretended religious neutrality.  In the end, everything is “religious.”  Until we understand that, we will understand nothing.