It’s Enough

 

Saw this witty comment online somewhere:

You can fool some of the people all of the time,
and all of the people some of the time . . .

. . . and that’s enough.

Rand Is Right

George STEPHANOPOULOS (sounds like a disease, doesn’t it?) asks Rand Paul”

You [Rand Paul] wrote in your local paper, that the Fair Housing act doesn't recognize the distinction between private and public property. "Should discrimination be prohibited for public, taxpayer-financed institutions such as schools to reject someone based on an individual's beliefs or attributes? Most certainly. Should it be prohibited for private entities, such as a church, a bed and breakfast, a retirement neighborhood that doesn't want noisy children? Absolutely not." And you went on to write that a "free society will abide unofficial private discrimination, even when that means allows hate-filled group, to exclude people on the based color of their skin." So, if you feel someone doesn't want to sell their house to someone, based on the color of their skin, that's okay?

Kent comments:

Should individuals be able to decide to whom they will sell, rent, or associate?  It almost seems silly that this kind of question should come up.  If you can’t choose to whom you will sell something, then you do not own that something.  And in this we see a severe problem in our culture:  we do not understand or respect ownership.

If I do not want you – for whatever weird reason I might dream up – to come into my store, then we all need to respect that.  It is an unavoidable corollary of ownership.  If the store is truly mine, then that decision must be mine.

Of course, such weird decisions will come with their own punishments.  If I don’t allow you in my store, I am missing a potential sale, and thus a potential profit.  Enough of this sort of weirdness will put me out of business.

Is it not odd how this trampling on ownership in our society only seems to work in one direction?  Why do we so freely allow people to choose from whom they will buy, and then try to dictate to people to whom they will sell?  (I fear mentioning this, as someone idiot in government might decide to make things more consistent in this matter!)

Rand Paul is correct:  a free society will (to be free, it must!) abide private ‘discrimination’ when it comes to both buying and selling, based upon the preferences of owners.  Otherwise, we are a society of slaves to the state.

P.S. – It is a blessing from God to have someone running for national office who is willing to say this in public!

Sunday’s Coming

Have you seen the little spoof video ‘Sunday’s Coming’?  If you haven’t, you should have a look.  You should also check out the comments about it by Cathy Lynn Grossman at USA Today’s ‘Faith and Reason’ section.  Cathy says, among other things, “I once went to a conference of young evangelical pastors and every one of them looked like a character on this video.”

As Cathy says of the video, “it parodies the contemporary worship service style now seen on stage -- or rather the pulpit -- coast to coast.”

It has bothered me a bit for some time to see what unimaginative conformists Christians often are.  About five years ago my family made a little pilgrimage around our area to visit churches.  As my wife noted, nine out of ten ministers wore polo shirts embroidered with their church’s insignia.  It was ‘in’ at that time, and there weren’t many dissenters.  As a song in a musical I once heard said:

Conform, conform, I simply must conform.
To think that I could be myself would cause me alarm.

What is especially amazing is that this little spoof video was produced by a church does exactly the thing being spoofed in the video!  As Cathy our commentator tells us:

Indeed, a video on the church's home page about their for-real Sunday morning experience that looks at first glance like families attending a PG rock concert set amid vast parking lots.

For some time now, even small churches have been attempting to produce their version of this stage show on Sunday mornings – and sometimes Saturday evenings (that’s another discussion).  They are not usually quite as good a show as the bigger congregations, mostly because they can’t afford as much equipment and they can’t afford to hire a truly rockin’ worship leader.  But they try as best they can to be just like everyone else.

If the point of congregational worship is to focus our attention on something and Someone that transcends this world, it seems a bit odd to try to do that in a direct imitation of a rock concert/television production.  But what could I possibly know about it?  After all, I am not the ‘pastor’ of a rockin’ mega-church.

I know that ‘the show must go on.’  But why does it have to be the same show at every church?  Is there not room for a bit of originality?  Are there no ideas for church gatherings that are something other than churched-up copies of current culture?

My favorite image from ‘Sunday’s Coming’ is near the beginning where balding ‘worship leader’ is powdering his head, presumably so the bright stage lights will not send a blinding reflection to anyone in the audience.  But even if that happened, wouldn’t it just be a contemporary church version of the blinding light that came to Paul on the road to Damascus?

Suffer the Little Children . . .

A Candle in the Darkness

The president of Compassion International tells his story of childhood abuse and deliverance in a West Africa boarding school.  Wess Stafford | posted 5/07/2010 09:08AM

[excerpt]

Mission policy dictated that all MKS leave their parents at age 6 and travel 700 miles (a week by truck) to this isolated jungle school. They, like me, had experienced unspeakable cruelty in this place. The people in charge were missionaries who had gone to Africa to save souls but, I don't know, perhaps did not measure up linguistically or cross-culturally, so instead had been assigned to the least desirable task on the field: taking care of other missionaries' children. Unsupervised, they took out their frustration and rage on their most convenient targets: the children in their charge. I learned early that terrible things can happen when children are deemed unimportant, the lowest of priorities.

Kent comments:

There is a companion article to the one above (A Badly Broken Boarding School) which gives some more of the background of this situation.  These articles caused me to recollect some very unpleasant matters.

This is a worst-case scenario, of course.  But consider what has happened with missionaries in some cases in which the boarding school was a good one.  Missionary children are separated from their parents for most of the year.  Missionary children grow up without their parents.

During our Bible college years my wife and I made many friends with the children of missionaries.  Some of them had gone to boarding schools far from their parents.  And while the parents were saving the world, some of them lost their own children.  The ones we knew were not lost to the faith, but resentment was clearly present.

It wasn’t just missionary kids.  (I must assume that is what ‘MKS’ means in the article above, though that is never directly stated.)  At Bible college we also knew plenty of PKS - ‘preacher’s kids’ who clearly, while they were never sent to boarding schools, were clearly out of touch with their parents who were busy ‘saving the world.’

Here is something interesting I have noticed.  Alexander Campbell, perhaps the brilliant mind behind the Restoration Movement in the United States, was absent from his home much more than he was present.  As important, influential, and brilliant as he clearly was in the early American church, none of his children seemed to have been much involved or important in the church.  My survey of their attitudes – to the extent it is possible and which I admit is limited – seems to reveal some of the same attitude I found among my friends who were MKS and PKS.

What better day to say this than Mother’s Day, though Father’s Day would do nicely too:  the Great Commission does not supersede the Parental Commission:

You shall teach them to your children, talking of them when you are sitting in your house, and when you are walking by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.  (Deuteronomy 11:19)

Generally speaking, the ‘them’ here is the word of God.  Notice how the very assumption is that parents will be with their children most of the time.

If you think God has ‘called’ you to anything that takes you away from your children, you are very wrong.  The Great Commission does not trump Deut. 11:19.  This does not mean that parents of young children cannot be missionaries.  But it does mean that, if you are, you must never neglect your primary mission field, which is your children.  It could mean that our modern sent-to-a-foreign-land missionary work might have to be worked around one’s children.  It might mean that many things ‘churchish’ have to be worked around the Godly attention we owe our children.  It is not at all ‘noble’ to devote oneself to the ‘professional’ ministry in any way that neglects one’s children.

No amount of so-called ‘leadings’ or ‘callings’ can ever trump the Parental Commission.  If you want to devote your entire adult life to traveling to a far away place that will make it impossible for you to fulfill the Parental Commission, then you had better not have children.  There is far too much emotional baggage that is often thrown around Christian circles about this matter, but the truth is very clear.

If you think you have saved some part of the world, but you have neglected you children in the process, you are definitely NOT making happy the One Who said, “Let the little children come to Me . . .”

The Not-So-Common ‘Common Good’

Breakpoint with Charles Colson

Special Interests or the Common Good?
The Finance Reform Bill

May 3, 2010

On Friday’s BreakPoint, I said passing a “sensible, effective finance reform bill” is a “moral and economic imperative.” The lack of moral restraints, which has turned financial markets into a kind of casino, has made regulation necessary and politically inevitable. . .

And when the debate is over, I’d like to say we saw Congress embrace reform that reflects the best of our democratic and biblical heritage—creating a financial environment where the poor are not exploited but may “glean” from the fields, as the Scripture says; where merchants use honest scales; and where justice prevails, yes, “rolls down like living waters.”

Kent comments:

Christians can be such dunderheads when it comes to things like this.  It’s as though we think that, with just the right kind of legislation, all economic problems will be solved.

‘Financial markets’ will always involve more or less risk.  Markets are, in part, situations in which people are free to experiment financially.  ‘Schemes’ of finance and investment do not have to be dishonest to be risky – sometimes very risky.  When someone is attempting to make something new, something he thinks people might find useful or desirable, he typically needs people who will supply money to make it possible to try the idea.  Many such ideas fail, some succeed, others succeed wildly.  That is part of human freedom and the economically free interaction of human beings we sometimes call ‘the market.’

This can be done in very large ways through large financial institutions.  It can be done in very small ways as when a few friends pool their resources and try something new.

When such things fail, no one has necessarily been robbed or cheated.  Regulations and laws cannot take the risk out of investment.  Such laws and ‘reforms’ can only transfer the risk to others, or prohibit risk-taking.  Of such transfers and prohibitions is tyranny made.

Do evil players ever enter the market?  Of course – in the same way that evil politicians are often elected to office.  Is there a small role for government action in the market?  Yes, but it is very limited.  Players in the market must be required to live up to their contracts, however they decide to construct those.  The injustice of theft or fraud should not go unpunished.

But risky, even unwise, financial schemes do not constitute theft or fraud.  And attempts to outlaw stupidity in the marketplace are bound to fail for many reasons.  For one thing, there is no legitimate way to distinguish stupidity from risk-taking.  More importantly, we are MUCH more likely to get stupidity from Congress than from the marketplace.  Also, stupidity in the marketplace is occasional and voluntary.  Stupidity from Congress is constant, and imposed on everyone by force.

Christians need to stop being naive about economics. Justice will prevail – to the extent that it can among sinful human beings - only when the marketplace is free.

Choose This Day Whom You Will Serve – Earth Day 40

It’s finally here – Earth Day 40 – and what a grand and glorious day it is.  It is a day that was appropriately founded on the centenary of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin's birthday.  (He’s a famous Commie - in case you don’t know.)

Earth Day is a very religious day, in the very worst sense of the word ‘religious.’  It is, interestingly enough, a religion that is not only welcomed in government schools and other institutions of government, it is well-established there.  It seems that First Amendment requirements don’t apply to the religion of environmentalism.

Even more amazing is the fact that, for many Christians and in many churches, the religion of environmentalism trumps the Christian faith on some very key points.  The religion of environmentalism is styled ‘Creation Care’ by Christians who would like to mix it with the Christian faith.  The problem is, the two are not compatible.

At this point someone is bound to be thinking, “What’s wrong with liking nature and not wanting to pollute my neighbor’s property?”  The answer is, of course, “Nothing at all.”  But that is not the essence of environmentalism, or “Creation Care.”  These views tend to see the earth as an end in itself.  The Christian faith knows that the earth is the means to an end, and the Bible makes this very clear.  The ‘prime directive’ for human beings in regard to the earth:  ‘subdue’ in Genesis 1:28.

“Despite recent interpretations of Gen. 1:28 which have tried to make ‘subdue’ mean a responsibility for building up, it is obvious from an overall study of the word’s usage that this is not so. . . Therefore, ‘subdue’ in Gen. 1:28 implies that creation will not do man’s bidding gladly or easily and that man must now bring creation into submission by main strength.  It is not to rule man.”  (Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament, Vol. 1, p. 430)

Some will try to say that this was only before sin came into the world, and that after sin human beings, as sinners, had no business ‘using’ the earth for anything.  You find exactly what God said about this in Gen. 3:17-19.  Sin did not change the command to subdue, it just made it more difficult.  Before sin it would have been relatively easy to subdue the earth.  With the coming of sin, a lot of very toilsome effort would be required to subdue the earth.  But the command to subdue did not change.

One constant theme of devotees of the religion of environmentalism is that human beings should leave no “footprint” on the sacred earth.  (If you doubt this, check out a place the The Wilderness Society sometime.)

But it is impossible to subdue the earth without changing it.  The demand that humans leave no ‘footprint’ is thus anti-Christian.  God very clearly meant for human beings to extract the potential of the creation for our use.  We are commanded by God both to rule and subdue the earth.

This is Christianity.  Then there is that other religion, environmentalism.  Choose this Earth Day whom you will serve.

Environmentalism In the Balance

In April many celebrate "Earth Day."  It began in 1970, so we were at ED40.  We ought to celebrate "Earth Day" with all the enthusiasm that the British celebrate the 4th of July.

A broad range of people and groups are called "environmentalist."  Some are really wacky, like Earth First!, while others, like the Sierra Club, go for a more main-stream image.  But when you examine environmentalists of all sorts, you do find some common themes.

According to environmentalists, people and their productive activities are a problem at best, and a plague at worst, for the earth.  For example, Thomas Lovejoy, tropical biologist and assistant secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, has said, "The planet is about to break out with fever . . . and we are the disease.  We should be at war with ourselves and our lifestyles."  -- does this Lovejoy fellow have the wrong last name, or what?

According to environmentalists, the problems caused by people are leading to an imminent catastrophe for the earth.  According to environmentalists, the only way to avert this catastrophe is by immediate and massive government control of the activities of people.

You can see that it has some stressful internal tensions.  Some of these internal tensions are amusing.

Environmentalists are always concerned about the things people do.  People, according to many environmentalists, get in the way of "nature."  I find this at least a little amusing because, according to most moderns, human beings are a part of "nature."  "But," the environmentalists often say, "human beings change nature."  Well, so do many other things that are part of "nature."  The vast herds of American bison that roamed North America at one time left some definite changes in their wake.  (Think about that for a moment!)  But they are not condemned by environmentalists -- only human beings are worthy of such condemnation!  After reading some environmentalists on the problems that people cause, one wonders why many of the environmentalists don't just link up with Jack Kavorkian and begin to solve the problem by killing themselves.

Next we come to all those problems caused by people.  One amusing little tension here is this:  environmentalists often worry about people -- about there being too many people.  Then they worry about the alleged disasters that human beings are going to cause.  But they seem to forget that if these catastrophes are going to be as destructive as they claim, they would get rid of most of the human population, thus solving the problem of "too many people and their pollution."

Environmentalists are sometimes anti-technology.  The "Unabomber" made clear that he was blowing people up, in part, because of their connection to technology.  One of the items found in the Unabomber’s hideout was a marked-up copy of Al Gore’s book Earth In the Balance.  When you think of what the alternative to much modern technology is (harder work, more suffering, and earlier death, to name a few things!) it is hard to sympathize with this -- but don't forget, most environmentalists think there are too many people anyway, so to them some death is always a good thing, as long as it is someone else.

But the environmentalist funnies don't stop there.  To solve the problems allegedly caused by people, the environmentalists want the government to do something.  This is amusing for a couple of reasons.  First, environmentalists usually believe that "small is beautiful."  They want to decentralize production, scale-down the economy, simplify life, and make everyone “economically independent” - which is another way of saying “poor.”  But if anyone decides not to go along with these moves, the environmentalists want a big, powerful, centralized government to force you to do it!

It seems to escape the notice of the environmentalists of our world that governments are composed of people!  Of course, as the environmentalists envision this, these government people are not just common, ordinary, stupid people.  They are upstanding, intelligent environmentalists like Al Gore.  Such human beings transcend the frailties and ignorance of mere mortals.  They are the elite.  They are the priests of the religion of environmentalism.

For all of the amusement that can be derived from environmentalism's internal tensions, there is plenty to cause alarm in the posture and program of environmentalism.

One problem with environmentalists is their lack of honesty.  Most environmentalists want the state to take action to curb the current productive practices of human beings.  They want government action, and they want it now.  They do not want humans doing anything that might change the earth.  But human beings do not change easily, or without some compelling reason.

Environmentalists need an impending disaster.  A mere problem to be studied and solved is not sufficient.  In fact, one thing that bothers a lot of environmentalists is that when careful, scientific studies are done on the problems that concern environmentalists, the seriousness of the problem often pales in the light of the evidence, and the solutions proposed are just not drastic enough to suit the environmentalist mentality.

I have, in effect (in case you missed it in this mess of verbiage) just called many environmentalists a bunch of liars.

Consider an admission from Stephen Schneider.  He is a scientist who went from "we are all going to die from global cooling" in the '70s to a "we are all going to die from global warming" in the '80s.  In one of his more honest moments of self-examination, he said this:

On the one hand, as scientists, we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but -- which means we must include all the doubts, caveats and ifs, ands, and buts . . .On the other hand, we are not just scientists, but human beings as well.  And like most people we'd like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climatic change.  To do that we need to get some broad-base support, to capture the public's imagination.  That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage.  So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified,  dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have.  This 'double ethical bind' we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula.  Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.

We could try to help Mr. Schneider decide what the right "balance" is by reminding him that it is the truth that sets us free.  But at key junctures and at important points, environmentalists have taken pains not to reveal the truth.

The truth is this: Earth Day is the Pentecost of the Environmentalist religion.  It is a religion whose god is ‘nature.’  This religion despises humanity, even though it is the religion of many human beings.  It is a religion that is welcomed in the government’s schools, where Christianity is not.  Most of all, it is a religion of lies.