Tom Shetler

Is Faith Obsolete?

2011-12-20T20:07:00.000-08:00

I teach the Hermeneutics course at Bethany. It's always gratifying to see the students deepen their understanding, not only of the Word but of how to more effectively study the Word. Hermeneutics are the methods and principles of properly interpreting the meaning of a text. It is not a strictly theological discipline, all literature must be interpreted, and thus rules of intepretation (hermeneutics) are required. When I was a freshman at the University of Colorado I quickly figured out who the English majors were, they all carried around copies of E.D. Hirsch, The Validity of Interpretation, probably the most important hermeneutics text written in the last 100 years.

I'm going on about hermeneutics because literary analysis lies at the heart of the philosophical revolution we call postmodernism. The battle for truth in the Western world is centered in the interpretation of the major documents that have shaped our civilization. The leaders of the postmodern movement took an entirely relativistic approach to our most important writings. And based on their postmodern beliefs, "deconstructed" them. That is they interpreted them as tools for the oppression of women and minorities. In addition, they based their conclusions on two principles. First, the winners get to write the history books, and second, the powerful use their "history" for suppression of minorities and for personal gain. Because postmodernists are deeply relativistic, they deny the very idea of truth, and are left with the cynical view that everything boils down to propaganda.

Postmodernism is nothing less than radical skepticism. And while this is bad enough, it seeks to justify a "might makes right" approach to politics and governance. If the winners get to write the history books, then it is legitimate to pursue positions of power to enable the advancement of one's agenda. After all, our society was constructed to maintain the authority and privilege of white European males. This distorted and deeply cynical understanding of "power" is the reason our major universities have all the studies programs (Gender Studies, LGBT Studies, Native American Studies, etc.). This distortion in the concept of truth (and of political power) does not bode well for the future of American education and thus for American society.

We are already seeing the effect of postmodern thought on law and politics. On law, it is the sense that the law should change with changing social and cultural conditions, thus the acceptance of abortion as a constitutionally protected right and the growing number of judicial decisions favoring gay marriage. In politics it is the emphasis on creating the "narrative" that will enable the party to maintain its hold on power. Because postmodernism denies the concept of absolute truth, it views words not as conveyors of truth but as tools of manipulation and power. In one sense, Barak Obama is the first truly postmodern president. He, and those who support him, believe that if they craft the right message with the most compelling words they can gain and maintain their power. Thus, when the President spoke of "hope," "change," "fairness," and "American values," those words were just expressions of postmodern constructivism (the capacity to construct the meaning of "truth"), and the desire to use words, not to speak truth but to gain and keep power.

I have felt for some time that while existentialism took its cue from the French philosophers, Camus and Sartre, postmodernism is an expression of Nietzsche's will to power. Gene Edward Veith, Jr. in his book, Postmodern Times, describes the difference.

Whereas modern existentialism teaches that meaning is created by the individual, postmodern existentialism teaches that meaning is created by a social group and its language. ..The old existentialists stressed the alienated individual, dignified in lonliness and nonconformity; postmodern existentialism stresses social identity, group-think, and fashion sense. Postmodern existentialism goes back to Nietzsche to emphasize not only will, but power.

The frightening thing about postmodernism is its social dimension; its emphasis on speech codes and politically correct behavior which is unashamedly imposed on the faculty and students of an entire American university. Gene Veith explains, Those who do not believe in truth are more likely, I believe, to lie. Those who believe that moral values are nothing more than the imposition of power may be more likely to use power to suppress thier opposition, whether in politically correct academia or, when they have political power, in acts of tyrrany.

We must be ever vigilant in the defense of truth, God's truth. The great power of the Bible and the reason so many millions have built their lives upon its teachings is that it corresponds to the realities of life and the human condition. The Bible lays out the path to a full and fulfilling life, and protects from destructive behaviors and attitudes. A significant reason that our society has become increasingly dysfunctional is that we have moved so far away from the influence of biblical teaching.

We must regain confidence in truth, and the best definition of truth describes it as that which corresponds with reality. The Bible points us to God and His life changing grace, and every day millions of Christians around the world demonstrate the absolute validity of its teachings. As we walk in faith and obedience we find the truth of the Bible confirmed in our personal experience. As Paul writes, we then become "a letter from Christ"," written not with ink but with the Spirit of the Living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of the human heart." (2 Cor. 3:3) The time in which we live demands that we not only declare the truth but that we live the truth.

Is Income Inequality the Problem?

2011-12-14T17:59:00.000-08:00

This will probably get me into trouble but it's just too funny to pass up. In the comments to an article on President Obama's speech in Kansas was this terse statement: "Under Teddy Roosevelt we got the Square Deal, while Franklin Roosevelt gave us the New Deal, and now, with Barak Obama we're getting the Raw Deal."

On a more serious note, it is important that we take a look at what the President was saying to us in his speech in Osawatomie, Kansas last week. First he was attempting to make income inequality and the lack of income growth among the middle class, "the central issue of our time." Realizing that we are borrowing 40 cents of every dollar our government spends and that we are facing a 15 trillion dollar deficit, I'm not convinced that income inequality is our most pressing problem.

So, what difference does it make if we say income inequality is our biggest challenge? The simple answer is to look at what is happening in Europe. European societies have for many decades pursued egalitarian policies that are today bringing them to the brink of bankruptcy. If we ignore our deficits in the pursuit of a more "just" society we will end up in the same sorry state. In addition, when we examine the actual income levels of the middle class in Europe, we find that their median family income is much lower than ours. Median income in America is $31,000, in France it is $21,000 and in Greece it is $16,000 (Just google, "median family income in the world"). Thus, while Europe has less income disparity, it also has just plain less income. I would submit that there is a direct connection in these statistics, the pursuit of income equality by government policy results in reduced growth and economic vitality and thus lower family incomes. To be honest, I don't think the American people really want to go there.

For the sake for fairness, we need to dig down into the specifics of what the President was proposing to fix the economic problems we face. In his own words, "The future will be bleaker unless we raise taxes on the wealthy and invest in education, science, and infrastructure." His solution begins with collecting more revenue from a tax increase on the top 1%. But notice, the money will not be used to directly reduce the deficit. It will be used to "invest" in three things that he believes will expand the income opportunities of the middle class.

As we can see from these three "investments," the president certainly has a long term view of things, because the first two elements will take a decade before they make an appreciable difference. In the President's scheme of things, this means an increased emphasis on math, science, and training in green technology within our educational system. If this were the 1960's with a much smaller educational burearacracy and a basic curriculum focused on the three "R's" then maybe we could make these changes, today not so much. Notice, in fact, that the President humself understands this because his vehicle for training in green technology are local community colleges, the least politicized of any of our educational institutions. The very idea of giving more money to the financial black hole that is our educational system makes no sense. We spend too much already with no positive results.

His second investment is in science. With Solyndra, Light-Squared, and Solazyne we are seeing this administration's approach to technological and scientific investment. This kind of crony capitalism is a far cry from the traditional use of government funding for basic research. Research which gave us solid state electronics, the laser, and computer chips by the way. This attempt to fund specific projects and companies has simply not worked, from wind farms in Hawaii and California in the 70's to the latest attempts to fund electric car companies. My fear is that the President has many more Solyndras in store for us, and that they will do very little to acheive the desired goal of job creation and a growing economy.

Finally, he wants to invest in infrastructure. Of the three parts this has the most realistic chance of increasing jobs and even median incomes. Like everything else in our culture, it requires specialized labor. The days of handing an out of work retail clerk a shovel as part of a WPA construction project are long gone. Construction work today is contracted and reqires particular skills and training. Take the Keystone pipeline as an example, it will provide great jobs for experienced pipefitters and welders. I heard recently that the average job will pay $70,000. I don't deny that there will be opportunities for welder's helpers and apprentice pipefitters to get a start in the field, but most of the jobs will be for those with the training and experience required to do the work.

In the end, the President's plan won't do much to grow the middle class or reduce the gap between rich and poor. His approach is part of the progressive nostalgia for the New Deal and the space race of the 60's. We face very different challenges today. We must find a solution for the massive unfunded pension and Medicare liabilities we face at the state and federal level. The President, as our leader, is attempting to change the subject and act as if there is no long term deficit problem and we can operate as if government must plan, tax, and "invest" to solve social problems. Well, we can't.

The recession of 2007 and the subsequent slow recovery we are still experiencing four years later, is part of an economic wake-up call that we really can't afford to ignore. Robert Samuelson wrote an important article today in the Washington Post on the dangers of a bond crisis in the face of our massive deficit spending. Remember, we are in a debt crisis. So the only way to end the crisis is to start getting out of debt. We must not allow the President and his party to change the subject and pursue "business as usual" tax and spend policies, particularly for the sake of an invented problem called "income inequality." I'm really not trying to be partisan in saying this. We are facing the gravest economic downturn of our lifetimes, and we need real solutions not populist hyperbole. There is some real hope for answers, just look at what Canada has done in the last 10 years, Sweden as well. We don't have to just take the word of our favorite pundit, countries of the world have actually cut spending, reduced their debt, and restored their economies, and we can too.

Being an Overcomer

2011-12-01T19:51:00.000-08:00

I am currently reading Walter Wink's book, The Powers That Be, and it has me thinking about how we live in this world while not being ruled by it. Wink's main point is that the structures and institutions of any and all societies are part of a system of domination, what the Bible calls, "The world." And of course, the apostle John commands us to, "love not the world (cosmos), neither the things of the world..." (I John 2:15)

The first question is what does the Bible mean by the "world?" After all, our homes, our communities, and even our families are part of the world in which we live. How do we not love many of the things that are precious to us? Of course, we are assured by pastors and teachers, that those are not the things referred to by the term the "world." John was referring to the world system with its temptations and sins; what would be the equivalent to Christ's warning about "Mammon." The picture they bring to mind is the glitz of Hollywood or the wealth of Wall Street. But is this really what the word means?

Anyone who has read Wink is aware of his political orientation; he is deeply left wing. Despite his politics, his basic point is extremely important. There lies a "power" behind the institutions and structures of society that stands in opposition to God and which seeks to keep us all under its control. And yes, a large part of the world's "control" are the powerful rewards it offers to those who submit to its power. That the Powers have contolled men is undeniable, the only variable is the means they use.

And this brings me to an important related principle. The reason the world has such power over us is related to our nature. We are deeply needy. Years ago, Winkie Pratney gave a wonderful message on the four basic human needs: the need for love, the need for wisdom, the need for significance, and the need to belong. Ultimately those needs can only be fully met by God in our lives. Yet, because of sin we are alienated from God we "look for love (wisdom, etc.) in all the wrong places." The tragic stories of so many people is the result of their seeking to fulfill the deepest needs of their lives by illegitimate means.

The world stands ready to meet and even create needs. In our modern age, such a strategy is seen as the pathway to success. We, thus, "need" the latest product or service that is flashed before our eyes on a daily basis. And we are fed a set of values that justifies the consumer oriented, materistic culture in which we live. It is all, ultimately, a set-up, and that which parades as the source of happiness is really the house of pain and disappointment if we make those things the center of our lives.

To Wink's point, this domination of values and culture is the way the "Powers" rule over the peoples of the earth. It is why we must guard our hearts and keep our minds instructed by the teachings of the word of God. Proverbs 2 speaks of the pursuit of wisdom and understanding that enables discernment. Discernment is the capacity to see beyond the surface of things to be aware of the hidden dangers, both in seeing where it leads and in seeing its true colors. When it comes to the claims of the world upon our lives, all of us desperately need greater discernment.

There is a very real sense in which the world is not a nice place. It is filled with "idols," things that substitute for God and which ultimately lead us far from Him. In Deuteronomy, Moses commanded Israel to "choose life" (Deut. 30:19) and if you read the entire passage, the way they were to choose life is by choosing God, "For the Lord is your life." (Deut. 30:20) To seek life in the things the world promises is to miss life for as Jesus said, "your life does not consist in your possessions."

So how do we choose God rather than "choosing" the world? The Apostle Paul tells us that God ordained the place and habitation of men, "that they might seek for him, though He is not far from any of us." (Acts 17) In other words, we choose God by seeking him, with this caveat, diligently and persistently. With this in mind, I would encourage us all, this Christmas season, to get alone somewhere and think about the meaning and message of Christmas. Considering that God loved you so much that He gave the ultimate Christmas present: His Son, so that you would be rescued from sin and given the gift of eternal life. I can just about guarantee that in that process it will be very clear to you that God really is near. And as the song says, "The things of earth will go strangely dim..." as you commune with God. Doing this on a regular basis is one of the means by which we put the world in its place and keep our focus on God.

It would seem to me that we must keep our needs and the rewards of the world in their proper perspective. Looking at what Jesus said in Matthew 7, "For your Father knows that you need all these things..." Our first priority must be to pursue God, and allow Him to add all the other things.

Have a wonderful Christmas and a blessed New Year.

Is Wall Street the Problem?

2011-10-22T06:15:00.000-07:00

I don't want to sound like a political crazy person, but we are in deep trouble as a society. Just on the economic level, we are facing massive debt that includes unfunded liabilities in the trillions of dollars, and worse, we lack the political will to do anything significant about it. The rhetoric surrounding the growing income disparity in our society is a case in point. According to many, it is the result of a vast conspiracy on the part of the wealthy 1% of our society to accumulate all the wealth and leave the rest of us destitute. For example, Barbara Ehrenreich wrote in The Progressive, "They (the rich) have systematically hollowed out the space around them: destroying the individual working class with the outsourcing and plant closings of the 80's, turning on white collar managers in the downsizing wave of the 90's, clearing large swathes of the middle class with the credit schemes of the 00's-trick mortgages and til-death-do-us-part student loans."

Don't get me wrong, there is a growing gap between rich and poor in our society, and the middle class is losing ground, but it is not a vast conspiracy of the super rich to take all our money. The problem with these types of populist fantasies is that they mis-diagnose the problem with the result that we apply the wrong solutions that not only don't solve the problem, they in many cases, make it worse.

In the context of the challenges we face, and in particular, the need for deficit reduction, the Occupy Wall Street controversy is a massive distraction. In terms of the long term needs of our society, income disparity is way down the list of things we need to change. Some would argue that OWS is dealing with the deficit problem because it wants to increase the taxes the wealthy pay and thus reduce the gap in income between rich and poor while also reducing the budget deficit.

The problem with this option is that it doesn't actually solve the central problem. We are borrowing 40% of what our government presently spends, thus we are dramatically increasing our deficit with every passing day. We are increasing our deficit by 1.4 trillion dollars this year alone. Trying to bring the rich down a notch by reducing the amount of their earned income, will not even begin to address the problem we face.

In addition, this recession has hurt everyone, rich included. Veronique de Rugy, an economist at George Mason University, gleaned from IRS statistics that there were 392,220 people in America who earned over one million dollars in 2007 (pre-recession) and they paid 27.8% of all U.S. income taxes (they were 0.1% of the population). By 2009 (height of the recession) there were 233,435 people who earned over one million dollars. That is a 40% decrease in the number of people who would be considered the "super-rich" Worse, and because their numbers were reduced, they only paid 20.3% of the nation's income taxes. In other words, a great deal of the rhetoric associated with OWS does not reflect the reality of our economic crisis. And, a 40% decrease in the number of millionaires implies that the recession has done a pretty good job, all by itself, in bringing the rich down a notch or two.

Further, this reduction in the number of people in the highest income brackets is a consequence of the shrinking and continued stagnation of our economy. If we do not figure out how to get our economy growing again, we can only expect that there will be fewer ultra-wealthy for us to raise taxes on, and our problems will only get worse. They will get worse because we have one of the most progressive tax policies in the world. The upper-middle class (those earning 10% of the nation's income) pay 70% of all income taxes. The lower-middle class and below) either pay no income taxes (47% of American income earners pay no income taxes) and for many of the working poor, with tax credits they receive unearned income from the federal government amounting to a negative income tax.

We need to get brutally honest with ourselves. We cannot continue to operate our government on borrowed money, especially since we have reduced our tax base to 53% of earners. In addition, we cannot put the burden of the majority of government funding on only 10% of the population. We will end up creating one of the situations that produced the economic crisis in Greece; tax avoidance. To be honest, it is already going on here. Many small businesses and individuals are practicing different tax avoidance methods such as barter and cash only transactions. For the super-wealthy and corporations, tax avoidance is easy. They just off-shore the money, they put the money in tax shelters, or they find clever ways to avoid having to declare the income as income. It is this capacity for tax avoidance that accounts for the fact that even when the highest income tax bracket exceeded 70% of declared income, the government never took in more than 19% of annual GDP in taxes. This 19% of GDP is the historic norm for annual income tax revenue in the U.S. for the last 50 years. We are fooling ourselves if we think we can tax the rich to reduce our deficits and solve our economic problems, including the problem of increasing income inequality.

We must deal with the long-term liabilities we face as a nation. We are not far away from the day when all of our tax revenues will go to pensions and health care for retirees particularly on the local level. When Bob Frum, as partisan a Democrat as I know of, cautions his party to not be overly excited about the overturn of the law in Ohio to end public sector union bargaining rights because the problem of unfunded public pension funds still exists, and the most egregious examples of pension abuse arise with the groups garnering the most sympathy, the public safety workers (police, fire fighters, and prison guards). In other words, the day of reckoning will soon be upon us and the party that has ignored and even worsened the problem will face the ire of the voting public (as they should).

The long-term liability problem is the main reason why we are borrowing 40 cents of every dollar we spend in government. Our first priority must be to reduce and eventually eliminate our deficit spending, and there is only one realistic way to do that. We must reduce overall government spending. Even in the best of economic times, even with the highest conceivable tax rates (income, capital gains, & inheritance taxes), we have never received more than 20% of our GDP in tax revenues. Logic tells us, that the only realistic answer to the deficit problem is to bring federal spending in line with federal tax revenues. Since we only take in an historic average of 19% of GDP in revenue, we must design our government programs so we only spend 19% of GDP to sustain them (We are presently spending 24% of GDP while the recession has dramatically reduced tax revenues to 15% of GDP).

The counter argument is always that we need to spend this much and more to care for the poor and the elderly, to improve our infrastructure, to invest in green technology, and to create a public health care system that is comparable to the other nations in the developed world. The conservative response cannot be that we don't need to do those things, but that we need to do them in such a way they actually achieve the goal, and are affordable and sustainable.

Many of the problems we face are deep and systemic, and have little to do with the amount of money we spend on them. Take my pet peeve, education in America. We spend more per capita on education than almost any society on earth, yet we are well down the list in the rankings of educational results. We are spending obscene amounts of money for a system of public schools that are failing our children. Worse, we have been aware of this problem for several decades and nothing gets fixed. For example, the solution of the 90's and into the 00's was accountability and measurable results - thus No Child Left Behind and standardized test scores for grade levels. The results have been less than helpful. We must acknowledge that these problems don't lend themselves to bureaucratic solutions, and so, we are wasting vast amounts of money to maintain an ineffective educational bureaucracy. It should not surprise us to hear large numbers of Americans calling for the abolition of the Department of Education.

Many of us on the conservative side of the ledger see reducing government spending as a no-brainer. The standard argument of the other side is to emphasize all the well intentioned purposes of government programs, not only to justify the continued investment but to prevent any and all reductions. The question will only finally be resolved, when all of us, liberal and conservative, come to see the perils we face, and arrive at some level of agreement as to the sacrifices we will need to make to escape them. In many ways, this recession is a foretaste of the time when we all must face up to the consequences of our reckless economic policies. We speak of kicking the can down the road, there will come a day when we no longer face a can, but the edge of a cliff.

Are we Headed for Trouble?

2011-08-22T19:27:00.000-07:00

Several years ago I sent a letter to the editor of the Minneapolis Star & Tribune in which I expressed my conern about the unintended consequences of our unquestioning commitment to secularism. Two recent events reminded me of the point I was trying to make in the letter. The first event were the riots in London, Philadelphia, and Chicago, while the second was the brouhaha created by Gov. Perry's remarks about evolution and global warming. Now what, pray tell, could riots have to do with a politician's controversial opinions, and beyond that, with secularism?

While it's not readily apparent, they are connected, they both arise from our current view of our world and of ourselves. The legacy of the Enlightenment is that a large number of people in the Western world believe we live in a world shaped entirely by natural forces. The famous British philosopher Bertrand Russell explained where this belief takes us,

That man is the product of causes which had no provision of the end they were achieving that his origin, his growth, his hopes, his fears, his loves, and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve individual life beyond the grave; that all the labors of the ages, all devotions, all inspiration, all the noon day brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and the whole temple of Man's achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins-all these things, if not beyond dispute, are, yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the foundation of unyielding despair can the soul's habitation henceforth be safely built. (Bertrand Russell, A Free Man's Worship)

Ideas affect the way we live, and this idea has deeply impacted modern Western culture. Russell is expressing the logical conclusion of the enlightenment. If the religious beliefs of mankind are the product of the superstitious imagination of pre-scientific men, and the assured result of 300 years of scientific research is that matter and material forces are the only reality, then we are left with the world that Bertrand Russell describes. It is a world devoid of significance and meaning. Russell is not alone in his deductions, most of the art, philosophy, and music of the twentieth century were a reflection of his "unyielding despair." All one has to do is read Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman or visit a modern art gallery or listen to a composition by John Cage to see the loss of hope and faith in the modern world.

There is a term for this philosophy of nothingness, it is called nihilism. The goal of the enlightenment was unlimited human freedom. But to achieve this end it had to kick God off the stage of human history, the unintended consequence of this rebellion is the elimination of every sustaining influence for good, including freedom, in the world. We are left with (according to Richard Dawkins) only the illusion of a human soul and so, "free will," our sense of control over our thoughts, actions, goals, and our conscience is only our brain playing tricks on us. We are, thus, reduced to a short life span in a meaningless universe, in which all of our thoughts and acts are attributed to stimulus-response mechanisms. A more cynical view of human nature could hardly be imagined.

It seems to me that nihilism has arisen as the unintended consequence of the desire for purely secular societies. In a nihilist world, there are only two options: pure hedonism or existentialism. The vast majority, and that includes those who have no idea of the philosophical principles behind it, have embraced hedonism. The riots in London and Philadelphia are part of the breakdown of decency, honesty, and concern for others (and their property) that accompany an "anything goes" culture. The world of Jersey Shore is a classic example of the nihilism of modern youth culture. It is "eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we may die," lived out for all to see. This is essentially cultural child abuse, as we leave our children without faith and therefore without hope.

There is no future for a generation that embraces the non-values of nihilism. It is definitely one of my fears that as the "nones" grow more numerous (15% of our youth now mark "none" for any religious affiliation and it is projected to become 20-25% in the next decades) we will be ill prepared as a nation for the many challenges we will face in this new century. The response to austerity by the youth of London (Europe is way ahead of us in the influence of secularism) was definitely not re-assuring.

We talk a great deal about the importance of education, but if we aren't teaching our kids the right things then education is not the solution, it becomes part of the problem. So, if our goal is to promote secularism through education then we are really promoting the worldview of "unyielding despair" that Russell describes. By the way, Christians are often accused of seeking to "impose" their values on society. But whose values are actually being forced upon us through the classroom, in the media, through the courts, and by legislation? Just look at what is deemed illegal; prayer, Bible reading, the posting of the Ten Commandments, even Christmas trees, and then tell us what is being imposed upon whom. A high school calculus teacher was recently ordered to remove banners from the classroom that declared, "In God we trust," and "All men are created equal, endowed by their Creator with these inalienable rights..." We are sending a very loud message to our children, religion is illegal, even harmful. We are no longer neutral, we have made secularism the politically correct worldview of Western culture.

This is where evolution comes into the picture. I argue in my book that naturalism and therefore secularism are built upon the theory of evolution. Without evolution they can not have a naturalistic and atheistic explanation of life and mankind. The approach the educators, judges, and leaders of our society have taken is that the science is "settled" and the only acceptable answer to our origin is evolution. But what if the science isn't "settled," and this is another example of the abuse of science for the sake of ideology and poltical control?

At the heart of the secular worldview is the philosophy of naturalism. Naturalism, the way it has come to be defined today, excludes any and all spiritual forces or causes. God is eliminated from any explanation of the universe by definition. According to Naturalism, if you say that God created the world you are being unscientific and by implication irrational and superstitious. This is the central argument used to justify the exclusion of any alternative to the teaching of evolution in our classrooms. This is primarily a political strategy rather than an attempt to promote science and scientific education. And this brings us to Gov. Perry's comments about global warming and the teaching of evolution.

We live in an era in which science has been politicized, because science is used to support ideological (political) agendas. Evolution is the first and foremost example of this phenomena. A naturalistic explanation of the world in which we live is impossible without the theory of evolution. I wondered for years why evolution was so irrationally defended, why so many scientists would ignore or deny the weaknesses in the theory and the lack of any direct evidence of the types of macroevolutionary change that should be crucial to establish the theory. Instead they rely upon hypothetical explanations, and establishing the cause (evolution) by observing its effects (geological column, fosil record, and DNA patterns). But none of these things come close to answering the crucial questions that would normally be required of a scientific theory. We have no realistic explanation for most, if not all, of the great mysteries of the origin of life, of DNA, or of the internal structure of the cell. So why is evolution so fiercely defended? It is because without evolution the only option is God and creation. And, more importantly, without evolution there is no justification for imposing a purely secular ideology upon society.

This brings us back to Bertrand Russell, and the fact that this is not a "so what" question, this goes to the core of who we are as human beings. And, I am not arguing that we should adopt a religious view of reality in order to "feel good" about ourselves and our place in the world. I do not want us to believe in fairy tales. My belief in God is based in both reason and experience. I have a bachelor's degree in physics and my scientific education has only strengthened my conviction that a personal creator God is the only reasonable explanation for the clear evidence of design in nature. I am convinced, based on probability theory and other relevant facts, that all the billions of creatures, organs, and organisms on earth could not have developed by a purely accidental process. In my book, I cite the example given by David Attenborough of the development of flight in insects. But flight would require at least three things to all occur at the same time: wings (with proper weight, shape, and strucure), fatigue resistant muscles, and pattern of wing movement that provided lift and didn't just fan the air. I know, evolutionists claim all these things developed slowly over thousands of years. But it seems hard to imagine how all those crucial elements could have developed gradually and added to the survival capability of the creatures involved.

Stephen Jay Gould, one of the most well known biologists of our time, wrote a book in which he attempted to deal with the inordinate probability of life arising by accident. His point was that, as low as the probability is for the accidental development of life, earth "won the lottery." His argument would be valid if the origin of life and evolution were a single event, and in this single instance we got incredibly lucky. However, we must account for billions of events that are restrained by levels of probability so low they each make the odds of winning the powerball look like a sure thing. In other words, evolution requires that we get "lucky" not just once but billions of times.

My career has also taken me into the realm of theology and philosophy, and here I find God the only reasonable explanation for human personality and conscience. Naturalism is, of necessity, reductionistic. It must reduce everything to chemical processes and stimulus-response mechanisms. But this leaves no room for the personal and there is nothing more obvious to human observation than that we are personal beings. All attempts to see human beings as machines to be programmed or animals to be trained has rightly been rejected as de-humanizing. A major part of the counter-culture of the 60's was a rejection of this mechanistic and reductionistic view of mankind. For this reason I am convinced that the only rational explanation for human nature is that we are the creation of a personal God.

Finally, I became a Christian in my sophomore year in college. I had a personally undeniable conversion experience. In all the years since, my belief has only been strengthened by the answers to prayer and the ways that God has made Himself known to me. And, I am not alone in my experience. As a teacher in a Christian college, I have heard the stories and seen the fruit of God's work in hundreds of people's lives. It is the undeniable reality of His presence in the world that accounts for the fact that the vast majority of Americans believe in a personal God.

The bottom line is that we must acknowledge that the enlightenment picture of reality is incorrect. Part of the reason we can assume it is not true is that it must operate in denial and intimidation in order to maintain its dominance of Western society. Further, secularism doesn't work. I am not calling for a theocracy or imposing religious education on our kids. What I am asking for is the simple common sense approach taken by American society prior to the 1960's and an end to the war against Christianity being waged in the name of secularism. Our nation was founded in the pursuit of both faith and freedom, what we have proven in our 200 years of existence is that the two are related. If we would continue to be a free people we must leave room for faith.

Postmodern Intellectuals

2011-07-04T07:00:00.000-07:00

I know, only Christians use "postmodern" as a perjorative, but as I considered so many of the public intellectuals of today, I realized how deeply this philosophy has influenced the world of academics and education. Postmodernism is supposed to be a rejection of "modernism" which was the enlightenment emphasis on rationalism and scientific objectivity in the pursuit of truth. Going back to at least Immanuel Kant, philosophers of the last 250 years have understood the limits of unaided human reason to answer the really big questions of life. The philosophy we call postmodernism is the latest rendition of this lack of confidence in human reason, and is born out of the influence of French existentialism and the will to power as described by Fredrick Nietzsche.

The problem with postmodernism is that it is taking us to places we were never meant to go, such as the redefinition of marriage, of gender roles, and even of gender and personal identity. We are left with a situation where people, and most often the younger among us, must decide who or even what they are at an entirely unprecedented level. It was hard enough being a teenager in my generation, but I cannot imagine what so many kids face today. They must not only decide on a career path and the education required, they have to figure out if they are gay or straight, a man or a woman. And in case you think I'm making this up, the website Mercatornet.com posted an article this May by Mary Hasson about the growing level of gender confusion in the Western world. Boston Children's Hospital has a "Gender Management Clinic" where they give children as young as 9 years old hormones to prevent normal sexual development in puberty. The perverse reason for this is so that their subsequent sex change operation will be less difficult. As the article reported, these clinics (there are several in the world) aren't there to help confused kids and their parents but to advance their transsexual agenda. The victims of this agenda will pay a terrible price in this attempt to redefine human nature. Ms. Hasson makes the important point that an adolescent or pre-adolescent is in no place to decide on something so catastrophic to their future, such as, everyone who undergoes these kinds of sex change operations are rendered sterile. The door of family and offspring are closed to them. Not to mention the emotional damage of reaching an adult perspective on their teen or pre-teen emotions.

This tragedy is a consequence of the loss of the moral compass and standards of the Judeo-Christian system and the belief in Natural Law. In reality, these principles are built in to human nature and human society and to ignore them is to invite diaster. In the 1950's Dr. Spock wrote his famous book on child raising. My parents along with millions of other parents raised the 60's generation following his advice. His advice then; go easy on discipline, it will only stifle the child's creativity and development. In the 70's, as he looked on the consequences of his advice, he recanted and admitted that he had been wrong. As he put it, "I have helped to raise a generation of spoiled brats." In other words, we ignore Biblical values at our peril. In many ways, the Bible is "owners manual" for humanity, and in rejecting its teachings we are endangering people's lives.

How did we get to this terrible place? Jean Paul Sartre is the most famous of the French existentialists, and his philosophy was built upon the principle of personal responsibility for our existential status in this world. Sartre turned the classic philosophical principle, Essence precedes Existence, on its head. Thus instead of saying that a person's nature determines their characteristics, he taught that people by their choices and intentions can shape their destiny. Postmodernism has taken this even further, postulating that we can change our very nature, thus women can be men and men can be women. This has, in fact, become the politically correct dogma of the feminist and GLBT world.

We have come to believe that we can change our very natures because we have lost our moral and rational moorings. As the Bible says, "Professing to be wise, we have become fools." We have abandonded much of the wisdom of the ages, wisdom that protected human happiness and fostered the values of peaceful and prosperous societies. We have abandonded wisdom because we followed the pied pipers of academia, whose postmodern assumptions led them to abandon wisdom and truth in the process of "deconstructing" Western values. One of the great dangers of the intellectual life is the belief that one's learning gives one the authority to impose one's obviously correct views on everyone else. Our universities are filled with large numbers of agenda driven intellectuals (To be fair, there are also many fine teachers, who truly seek to pass on the accurate and relevant understanding of their field to their students).

The bottom line is that we must take what comes out of the intellectual centers of our society with a grain of salt. Because of the influence of postmodernism, I expect that a professor from Yale or Berkley will be spouting dangerous nonsense. We must ground our own thinking in the Word of God and in the moral and spiritual wisdom that is being so quickly abandoned by our society. This is what Jesus meant by describing us as the light of the world. My fear is that as the influence of postmodernism grows it will envelop more and more of the church, and more and more of the "dangerous nonsense" that emenates from it will be brought into the church. It is already happening, "Christian" books are already being written that promote the nonsense. We, as followers of Jesus, must stand our ground.

What about the Middle Class?

2011-06-12T08:00:00.000-07:00

For the sake of full disclosure, this post is a reaction to the television ad that is currently being run by Gov. Mark Dayton and his party to gain public support for their approach to the budget deficit and the problems with our economy. What I'm most concerned about is their assertion that these policies are all about protecting the middle class. I recognize that this has been the strategy of the Democratic Party in the last two elections: that they are the party concerned about protecting the middle class. As a child of middle class parents and someone who is a member of the class myself, I disagree strongly with the claims that these policies will "preserve" the middle class. In my view, the ideology and policies of the party of FDR, LBJ, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and Barak Obama oppose the values, needs, and aspirations of the middle class.

I begin with the central fallacy behind their claim that they are the party of the middle class. Writers on their side such as Frank Rich and Robert Reich claim that Republican tax policy is responsible for the growing separation between rich and poor in our society and thus for the financial set back suffered by the middle class. Matt Taibi of Rolling Stone Magazine wrote, "The last ten years or so you have seen the government send massive amounts of money to people in the top tax brackets, mainly through two methods: huge tax cuts and financial bailouts."

Notice the chosen word "send" in regard to government activities. First, the government doesn't send money through taxation, it takes it. Taxation is legal confiscation that we agree to for the common good and the rule of law. One of the significant problems in Greece today is that the level of taxation has risen to such an outrageous level that a vast number of wealthy Greeks feel justified practicing tax evasion. At some point, raising taxes in any nation is counter productive as people take steps to protect what they have earned. In our own society, the use of tax shelters, off-shore investments, and other forms of legal tax evasion have been the means by which tax revenues rarely rise above 19% of GDP no matter the tax rate.

Why is the left so concerned about how much the wealthy pay in taxes? Is it merely an issue of "that's where the money is" or is something else behind this concern? Notice that when they speak of the issue they often appeal to "fairness." The rich must pay their fair share or raising the capital gains tax is the fair thing to do. But the wealthiest 1% provide 40% (they earn 24% of the nation's income) of the revenue from income taxes now. They are already paying far more than their "share" of the expenses of government. Looking at this statistic one must ask, what does the left mean by the word "fair?"

Closely related to fairness is the notion of leveling. We often hear of the need to "level the playing field," what they appear to mean by that is the profits and incomes of the top earners need to be brought down so the incomes of the poor and middle class can be brought up. But if we expect the government to do the "leveling" we asking for the redistribution of income and a process that contradicts traditional American economic values. So, it mystifies me how tax policy can have anything significant to do with restoring the middle class. It seems, rather, an act of class warfare and an attempt to bring rich people down a notch or two.

To relate this to middle class values, both my father and my grandfather were small business men. They reflected one of the central values of the middle class; self-reliance. They literally hated the idea of getting something they didn't earn or deserve, and government charity was at the top of the list. The very idea that we should sustain the income level of the middle class by redistribution of income from the wealthy, the "spread the wealth around" statement by President Obama, is an utter contradiction of middle class values.

Further, while government does have an important role in society, much of what is does is counterproductive. One of the great frustrations of the middle class is that their taxes are squandered for programs that don't work, for an educational system that never seems to improve, and for a welfare system that is incapable of dealing with the root causes of poverty and thus only perpetuates the problem. It is the middle class, by the way that pays the tax bills, they and the wealthy provide 97% of government revenues. So explain to me again, how the party of big government is also the party of the middle class.

The irony is that enlightenment philosophy, the philosophy that drives so much of liberal ideology today, is radically opposed to what many call, "middle class values." Among those values are life-long marriage, the work ethic, the traditional family, the importance of religious faith, the moral and spiritual education of children, thrift and savings, and charitable giving. Just about every one of those values (except possibly savings and charitable giving) are under attack today from the very party that claims to be the party of the middle class. Because of this obvious animosity to what are core values for my family and I it is very difficult for me to take the claims of the Democratic Party seriously. They may be concerned about income inequality and the economic difficulties facing the middle class, but their solutions and policies end up not helping because they end up weakening the very principles and freedoms that produced the American middle class in the first place. For the middle class, with friends like the democrats, they don't need enemies.

A Time of Great Moral Confusion

2011-05-02T18:58:00.000-07:00

Sam Harris, one of the group of secular intellectuals who call themselves "the new atheists," has written a new book to present a rational and scientific basis for morality. The Moral Landscape is the latest attempt to provide a unchanging and unchangeable set of moral values to govern human behavior while also denying the existence of God. From the time of Charles Darwin, leaders of the enlightenment have understood the need to find a secular and rational replacement for the moral values provided by Christianity. Thomas Huxley (called "Darwin's bulldog") advocated for Bible classes in the British school system to teach morality. They recognized that in seeking to destroy religion, in this case Christianity, they were also, as an unintended consequence, greatly weakening morality, and how can we have a healthy society without moral values? They were right, by the way, and we have watched a serious deterioration of moral consciousness and behavior in the last 50 years.

Dr. Harris, as a member of the new atheists, is deeply antagonistic toward organized religion. His organization, Project Reason is established to spread secular values and oppose organized religion. His book on morality is an attempt to both provide a secular, scientific, and rational basis for moral values and to refute the view that religion is necessary to provide morals and give meaning to human life.

He actually creates something of a strawman argument when he speaks of the issue. He states that Christians teach that a person can't be moral without belief in God. Actually the Bible says the opposite. Paul tells us that Gentiles (those with a wrong concept of God or no concept of God) instinctively follow the moral principles of God's law, because it is "written on their hearts." (Rom. 3:16) This notion, that morality is built-in to human nature, lies at the foundation of the principle of natural law and Christian ethics. For this reason, an atheist not only can be moral, he/she actually wants to be moral. It is one of the ironies that escapes Dr. Harris, his argument against God and Christianity is grounded in his moral sensibility (Religion is the source of war, evil, and oppression in the world), yet he has no explanation for how an entirely amoral, natural process such as evolution could have produced these moral inclinations in man. It's not that they don't try, which explains much of what the book is really about.

The moral system of the book is built upon classical utilitarianism, which holds that morals is about creating or protecting well being for the largest number and likewise, avoiding pain and suffering for as many as possible. Utilitarianism has two serious problems that has been demonstrated in its use in human history. The first is that it's logic tends to de-value the individual in the debate over good and evil. The well being of an individual (or a few individuals) is not as important as the well being of the larger community. This results in two problems, first, if you are not one of the lucky ones who is part of the "larger community" you get to be the sufferer. In other words, it leads to justifying the elimination or exclusion of those not fortunate enough to be the greater number. Second, it endorses a moral reductionism. Immorality is bad for very pragmatic reasons, it harms society or makes it difficult for people to trust one another, rather than because it is just wrong. So, in the extreme, drugs might be considered wrong because of the harm they do to communities but not because of the harm they inflict on the individuals who take them.

The danger in any attempt to create a rational foundation for morality is that human beings are much too good at rationalization. We are wonderful excuse makers and at using our minds for all types of self-justification. Look at the response of most politicians when they are exposed and accused of wrong doing. It is always some form of "I'm innocent of all charges." The larger problem with utilitarianism is that it is too easily set aside and rationalized or worse, twisted into the justification of actions that are both evil and deeply harmful. As a case in point, I would simply direct you to eugenics and the forced sterilization of thousands of people in the 1930's in the name of science and utilitarian moral principles.

The danger in invoking science and reason in morality is that these have no transcendent foundation. They are based on limited human knowledge and experience. We are too short sighted to understand the good or the bad of chosen behaviors or lifestyles. Only decades later, after we have weakened the institution of marriage, do we discover the damage the arises from no-fault divorce and single parent households.

Worse, since the enlightenment, we have rejected much of what human society assumed to know from history and thousands of years of human experience. We think we can change the rules about marriage and the family simply because we are so advanced, but in doing so, we are not acting reasonably, we are rationalizing. I believe that later generations will look back at our time as a time of outrageous arrogance. As we have sought to create a "new" morality that is really the old immorality, and that will, in the end, not acheive the greatest good for the greatest number, but will produce massive damage to the majority that always ends up following the cultural pied pipers.

Our own society was not founded on utilitarianism, even though it was a powerful concept that emerged from the enlightenment. We value the individual and we seek to protect minority rights. As we state in the Declaration of Independence, "All men are created equal, endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights..." Many have argued that we were not (or were) established as a "Christian" nation, and I would be one who would say that we were not in the direct and intentional sense. The founders understood that we were religiously diverse, even at the end of the eighteenth century. They wanted a free and just society open to all, but founded upon Christian principles. There is no question that in regard to the value of individual and the importance of a transcendent moral structure for society, that they were influenced by Christianity and not by the enlightenment thinking of their day. For not only do they invoke the importance of the individual, they invoke "inalienable rights" these rights are not given by the state or by society at large, they are inherent rights based upon an inate structure of right and wrong built into the universe itself.

Based on the success of the great American experiment, one could assume that a transcendent view of morality gives better results and fits human nature far better than the innovations of utilitarianism. Like so many attempts to create a secular and rational morality this latest attempt by Dr. Harris crashes into the rocks of human fallibility. We are Romans 7 creatures, "For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out." (Rom. 7:18) Not only do we need a set of transcendent moral values, we need the grace of God to keep them.

What's at Stake in the Budget Crisis

2011-04-06T19:33:00.000-07:00

With Paul Ryan's budget proposal we are seeing the beginning of a serious discussion on entitlements and the size and scope of government. I would refer you to two articles that reveal what is at stake in the national debate over the budget and deficits. The first was written by Yuval Levin at National Affairs. You can read it here. The second is from Walter Russel Mead at the American Spectator which you can read here. Mr. Levin's article should be read by every politician and voter in this country. He presents the tragedy of the American welfare state. We have spent trillions of dollars to create a nearly permanent underclass. The reason for this sorry state of affairs is that the political left, which drove the welfare agenda, possessed a distorted view of the central institutions of American culture; marriage, the family, and the church. As a result, policies were developed that undermined the "glue" that held communities together, and provided the means for sky rocketing numbers of single parent households, which led inevitably to the increase in family poverty and cyclic welfare dependency. In other words, the mis-distribution of wealth between the economic classes and the differences between the educational and social achievements of the races is not primarily because of de-regulation and the excesses of capitalism, it is one of the consequences of the social welfare policies of the American government.

The collapse of the family among the poor-powerfully propelled by the ethic of social democracy and by a horrendously designed welfare system that was not improved until the 1990's-has vastly worsened social and economic inequality in America, and the capacity of generations to rise out of poverty.

Walter Russell Mead puts it in even more graphic terms.

The failure of the blue social model to solve the problems of the underclass in American inner cities was one of the great tragedies of the last thirty years. Hundreds of billions of dollars were spent; tens of millions of lives remained blighted, and a culture of violence, degradation, and despair has taken hold among some of our society's most vulnerable and needy people.

We have spent vast amounts of money on programs and policies that simply have not worked as we had hoped. Mead, who is a self-declared Democrat, believes that there have certainly been benefit from all that money and effort. In other words, the "blue social model" was not a total waste of money and effort. The anti-poverty programs and affirmative action has helped produced a large and increasing Black middle class and beyond. One need only read Barak and Michelle Obama's stories to see the positive effect he is talking about.

But the tragedy of the story is that these individuals are the exception to our approach to social progress. Looking closely, in fact, we see many of the influences of family and friends that kept the Obamas from being swallowed up by the vast malaise that accompanied the welfare world.

So, why are we spending yet more trillions to perpetuate this failed model of public assistance? In the debate over the budget, can we begin to talk about results and not just about intentions. Part of the reason we are in this mess is that the politicians have told us we need this or that program for the "poor," for "children," or for "education," without telling us how it was going to actually solve the underlying problems. Worse, there has been no accountability for the failure of these programs, nor a demand that they be fundamentally changed from within the political class. Criticism and demand for change have come from outside government, and thus have little power to change the model. And political correctness prevents the types of faith based, family and church oriented approaches from even being considered.

The problem extends to our assumptions about health care (we forget that the current health insurance connected to employment model is the result of government intervention), taxation, and entitlements. We claim to be caring for the middle class and the elderly while never asking if what we are doing will actually help based on real life example and experience. This becomes particularly important because Europe has already operated on many of the same assumptions we are using with horrendous results. Whether we look at Greece, Spain, or even Great Britain, we see that the social democratic welfare model cannot be sustained. To solve this problem, Sweden, for example, has already adopted some of the elements included in the Ryan budget plan, such as vouchers for education and health care and stands as a real time demonstration that they actually work. And Canada has dramatically improved its economy by a strong commitment to deficit elimination and ongoing fiscal responsibility.

As we face the upcoming battle over the budget and as we approach the 2012 elections, we must keep in mind that business as usual and the old political assumptions cannot be allowed to continue. This is not just about deficit reduction, it is about ending failed policies and approaches. It will not be easy, there are a great many entrenched interests that will fight to maintain their positions of power and priviledge. Just look at what happened to Michelle Rhee and Gov. Scott Walker when they attacked the status quo. We must prepare ourselves for a long and difficult battle, but we must also keep before us that we are fighting for the very future of our society as a bastion of prosperity, freedom, and goodness. May we declare with our patriot forefathers, "We have only begun to fight."

Tucson: Evil Exposed

2011-01-14T06:48:00.000-08:00

Moral relativism breaks down when it encounters the kind of monstrous evil we saw in Tucson a few weeks ago. This type of evil is not a "mistake" nor is it a matter of taste or preference, it is dark and cruel and destructive. There can be no possible justification for such a heinous act. None. There are no mitigating circumstances to explain it, no moral dilemma to be resolved. In this act, we saw evil in all its ugliness.

Roger Simon on the Politico blog states the dilemma for moral relativism. On January 18 he wrote, "In modern times, are we embarassed by the term 'evil?' To some it seems too primitive or too religious or both." Yet, what else can we call the heinous acts of that day? And yes, evil is a religous issue.

This act reveals the monstrous capacity for evil in the human heart. While the murderer appears to have been severely mentally disturbed, insanity does not adequately explain the cruel inhumanity of his actions. As the facts of the case unfolded, I was often comparing this act of murder by a madman with the similar mass murder of men, women, and children in a public place by a suicide bomber. Mass murder can be rational or irrational, it is still murder.

Evil exists as a fearful reality in our world. We are confronted with its horrors every day. The death of a child at the hands of a molestor, death and dis-memberment of rivals by drug war lords in Mexico, or a car bomb blowing up a church in Baghdad are just some examples of the tragic events that fill our daily news broadcasts. There is no escaping the awareness of this monstrous reality.

The murders in Tucson were different in one aspect however. They gave us a glimpse of the sinister nature of evil. Who can forget the look on Jared Loughner's mug shot. It is almost enough to convince one of evil as a transcendent or metaphysical reality. Or to put it in biblical terms, to convince one of the demonic. The kind of evil displayed by these murders is inhuman, as beyond human. Dostoyevsky is said to have described the transcendent nature of human evil. It is un-natural, in that it cannot be explained just by the fulfillment of natural appetites, it goes beyond nature. As he wrote, "To call human evil 'bestial' is to insult the beasts, for no beast was ever as cruel as a man."

The existence of evil in the world is often used as an argument against God. Yet no system of thought or belief whether religious or non-religious deals as clearly and honestly with the existence of evil as Christianity. I would put Isaiah 59 up against any explanation for the existence of evil in the world. Particularly since it declares that our God does not just "explain" evil, He has acted to end its reign. "Now the Lord saw, and it was displeasing in His sight that there was no justice. And He saw that there was no man, and he was astonished that there was no one to intercede; then his own arm brought salvation to Him, and His righteousness upheld Him." God was not only disturbed by the evil in the world, He sent His Son and did something about it. Christ came, He bore our evil in all its monstrous cruelty on the cross, and by His death and resurrection liberated us from its power.

In the midst of the terrible evil of that day, there shone the light of faith. I was deeply moved by testimony of the parents of Christina-Taylor Green, as they expressed their conviction that their daughter was in heaven. And of Dorwan Stoddard who shielded his wife and died protecting her, confident of the reality of everlasting life through faith in Christ.

Evil is real but it will not have the final say. Even in the midst of such a tragedy we saw another transcendent presence: faith, hope, and love. May we display some measure of the courage, the faith, and love that were manifested on that day of infamy. And may we draw near to the God whose grace was present on that day and whose love is available to all who who will put their trust in Him.

Why Belief Matters

2011-01-02T07:16:00.000-08:00

In the past year I began working on a seminar on the importance of faith for the future of the church and our society. It is driven by the fact, recently reported, that a disturbing number of young people no longer consider themselves religious and experts expect that number to increase dramatically. Today, the number stands at 1 in 7 young people who delcare "none" in the religious affiliation box of an employment or academic application. Many experts predict that this number could grow to 1 in 4 in the next 20 years. This group, now designated as "nones," are a reflection of the growing influence of relativism and secularism on our culture.

Relativism is affecting the church too. A recent American Thinker article stated that 64% of Christians believe there are no absolute truths (some say it's 91% of Christian youth). In addition, a recent Barna survey declared that 50% of Christians no longer believe that the Bible is totally accurate in all that it teaches.

This does not bode well for the future of the church or our society. We are as Jesus said, "salt," but if we lose our saltiness how do we have any beneficial impact on our world? Even worse, we are losing our kids. Just last year, an alarming prediction was made that the size of the evangelical church in Americal will shrink by 1/2 in the next several decades, and most of the shrinkage will take place within the next generation.

The reduction of Christian influence upon our culture will have drastic consequences. It will become more dysfunctional and even dangerous as we turn away from the core values of our civilization in the pursuit of a hedonistic utopia. The problem with utopias is that they are imaginary, they cannot exist in the real world because the basic assumptions upon which the utopia is built do not match reality. Communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union fell under the weight of its hypocrisy. It's promise of a worker's paradise was founded upon a false view of human nature and economics; it didn't "fit" the world we actually live in and crumbled in a heap of contradictions.

There is only one antidote for this poison; the truth. And yes, truth actually exists. One of the goals of my seminar is to defend the core values that flow from the Bible, not in some type of political defense of my personal point of view, but out of a concern for the loss of benefit that arises when we fail to adjust our decisions in life to the brute facts of reality. The reason that I am deeply convinced that absolute truth exists, is that I see the consequences of its disregard every day. Our present educational crisis is not primarily a crisis in what we teach our children but more a crisis in the things we assume about their character and nature, and thus our assumptions about how they are to be treated in the educational process. I am certainly no expert in education, but looking at the current rank of American schools in global education standards, one must assume that many of our approaches such as enhancing self-esteem, and emphasizing diversity have not led to improved results. Those methods were based upon both a rejection of the former Judeo-Christian assumptions about human nature and the assumption of enlightenment utopian beliefs that have now been shown to be counter-productive. Truth is real, and denying it only leads to tragic consequences.

The Bible tells us that judgment begins with the household of God. In other words, Christians must first deal with the issues of sin and unbelief before they can turn and speak to the outside world. Thus, any attempt to deal with the influence of relativism must begin with the encroachment of relativism in the church.

None of this encroachment has taken place at the official or formal level. You will never hear a "relativistic" sermon from an evangelical pulpit. The encroachment has taken place at the personal and private level of individual Christian lives. All of us who follow Jesus are confronted by all the same pressures and influences of our deeply secular society that have produced the terrible confusion of our time. So, while every church publicly stands on the authority of Scripture and its teachings, many of the members don't in the recesses of their own personal convictions. This contradiction cannot remain hidden, it is already breaking out in things like the emerging church movement and the lack of church growth in the West. It stands behind the predictions of shrinkage in the next decades. The reason given for the shrinkage is that we have not given our children sufficient understanding for their faith to survive the arguments and attacks of secularism and relativism. We have not taught them how to defend the Bible or the historic doctrines of the Christian faith in the face of the increasing opposition we see in our culture. And, we have not taught them (nor has public education) the basic history, wisdom, and logic that stands behind Western civilization.

In a nutshell, then, my hope is to be able to speak to these issues in Sunday school classes, Bible studies, and week night services in any churches that will have me. I've already developed a powerpoint and many pages of notes, along with all the material I've accumulated in teaching apologetics and writing a book on apologetics in the past 19 years. I've given a title to the material, "Why Belief Matters," and I hope to get going on this as soon as possible. If anyone is interested in having me speak or teach in your church on this vital topic, please contact me by email, facebook, or through this blog. May we work diligently to enable a "yes" answer to the Lord's question while He walked the earth, "When the Son of Man returns, will he find faith on the earth?" (Luke 18:8)

A Solution to Poverty?

2010-12-14T19:05:00.000-08:00

In the past year my view of global poverty has changed dramatically. It all began when I read the book, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid by C.K. Prahalad of the University of Michigan. The book later became central to my online course in cultural transformation, and I added insights gained from research into the micro-credit revolution. So, what big new thing have I discovered?

My big new idea began from the first pages of the book. Dr. Prahalad begins with what should be obvious, but isn't. The poor are people too, with all the aspirations and capabilities of adult human beings. They are, in fact, as clever and in many ways, more resourceful than the rest of us. They have to be to survive. We need to begin to treat them this way.

In point of fact, we either patronize them or denigrate them. They are not helpless nor are they lazy. They will do whatever it takes to stay alive and care for their families. Because so many are so poor, they have no access to many of the things we take for granted such as a bank account, licenses, and permits. Most of them face deep prejudice and are considered outcasts or aliens. They have no choice but to operate outside the formal regulations of the law and the economy. They build their homes/shelters out of whatever materials are available, they drink whatever water they have access to, and they basically live hand to mouth.

It is also important to realize that the vast majority (2/3rd's) of the world's population lives on less than $1,500.00 per year, and as many as 3 billion people live on less than $2 per day. The people I described above, who live on one or two meals a day, and who are just surviving make up 1/2 of the world's population. Those numbers are staggering, and they make our complaints about recession and the shrinking middle class sound petty and petulant.

The good news is that something is being done about it. The bad news is that up until the last few decades not much of it was very effective. The UN, the World Bank, and countless NGO's poured billions of dollars into the economies of the developing world, only to have most of the money stolen or given to grandiose infrastructure projects that helped the political leadership but did nothing to help the poor. Even those programs that directly targeted poor communities failed because of their patronizing approach. As Dr. Prahalad explained, these programs viewed, "The poor are wards of the state." (p. xi, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid) In other words, bureaucratic solutions will never solve personal problems, and poverty is extremely personal.

The problem of third world poverty is being addressed in another way by a different group of leaders. These leaders are taking the more personal approach and the results are amazing. As one of my new heroine's, Ingrid Munro explained it, the poor can not be helped by charity. Charity keeps people poor because it communicates that they cannot help themselves and must live in dependence upon their benefactors. Ingrid Munro's solution has been to give the poor a ladder by which they may climb out of poverty by their own efforts. The ladder has several rungs. It begins with community and relationship that encourages and provides accountability. Everywhere that microcredit has succeeded it is built upon a foundation of small community based groups. The next rung is the development of the personal disciplines of saving and delayed gratification. Once a person has learned to save, they are helped to develop a business/entrepreneurial plan. Finally, the member is enabled to take out a small loan to fund their plan.

Ingrid and the members continued to support one another, to help one another, and to speak into each other's lives. In just 15 years, her organization has helped lift 130,000 former beggars and thieves out of poverty.

This, then, is my new paradigm. We must not patronize the poor. We must treat them as viable and capable adults. They need training, encouragement to eliminate wasteful and destructive habits (drinking, drugs, gambling, etc.), and personal support for the positive habits of saving and paying back the microcredit loans or for finding and keeping a job.

One of the reasons that government is so ineffective in this process is that it is inately impersonal. Microcredit, wherever it is practiced in the world, is built on the foundation of small groups with a coach or mentor that connects the group to the lending institution and provides the instruction and guidance that makes the group successful. The larger the governing body, the less capable it is of this level of community and personal involvement. Even in the U.S. this small group and community based approach to microcredit and microenterprise is showing remarkable benefit. There is an organization in Seattle that is doing amazing things in helping people receive the type of coaching, encouragement, and accountability to climb the ladder out of poverty.

I am actually reluctant to call this a "new" understanding because it so confirms by own view of personal and Christian responsibility. It is new however in that it involves real programs that have originated in the last 30 years that are making a tremendous difference in people's lives around the world. As we enter a new year, may we look for ways to help or to become involved in some of these amazing efforts to lift the poorest people of the world out of unimaginable poverty. There are any number of Christian organizations that are involved in these efforts that are worthy of our support, these organizations include World Vision, Step Ahead, and the Chalmers Group. May God show us ways to get personally involved in these kinds of life changing activities.

Have a happy and blessed New Year.

On Steven Hawkings New Claim

2010-11-06T07:11:00.000-07:00

I consider Steven Hawkings one of the most remarkable men of our generation. He is a medical miracle, having survived with Lou Gerig's disease for over 40 years. In spite of his condition, he is regarded as the most brilliant theoretical physicist of our time, and has been compared with Albert Einstein. He earned this reputation because of his description and explanation of black holes.

One of the reasons that we are familiar with his name and career is that he is also a popular writer. He has taken his theories and sought to explain them to the general public by writing two significant books for the mass market. In doing so, he has sought to give a non-supernatural explanation for the cosmos.

In his first book, he attempted to explain the current theory of the origin of the universe called the Singularity. The Singularity means the universe we live in is not eternal, and this has serious metaphysical and theological implications. Rober Jastrow's famous quote about science confirming theology comes to mind. In order to explain the fact that our universe is not eternal and yet could still be the result of purely natural causes, Hawkings had to resort to quantum theory. He concedes that before the Singularity (Big Bang) nothing of this universe existed. His claim is that the quantum level of negative energy was exactly equal to the quantum level of positive energy thus producing zero actual energy. This condition of "zero" matter/energy had to have existed for an eternity of past time until, as some cosmologists try to explain it, this state was disturbed by a "quantum fluctuation" that destroyed the balance and produced the Big Bang.

Without getting too deeply in over our heads, it is important that we apply some simple logic to these questions. J.P. Moreland has pointed out that "nothing" is no thing, it is not positive and negative energy states that cancel each other out. If "nothingness" ever were the condition of the universe, then we wouldn't be here. You can't get something from nothing.

Hawkings is using a high degree of theoretical speculation in his claim, for which there are some serious unanswered questions. First, "where" was this massive amount of energy located, and how did it break through to literally create our universe? Second is the problem of equillibrium. If the "stuff" of the universe has existed forever, as naturalism requires, then it long ago reached a state of equillibrium (we're dealing with eternity remember). Equillibrium means nothing happens unless something from the outside acts upon it. How this something acted and/or what caused it is the significant dilemma that naturalism faces in explaining the origin of the universe.

In his latest book, Hawkings has gone evern futher, based on string theory, he stated that the existence of gravity provides the capacity for the universe to create itself. In other words, he is assuming that gravity exists as the ordering principle for the emergence of a universe capable of sustaining life as we know it. In terms of the current theories of galaxy formation, etc. such a claim makes sense in describing our sun and even planet earth. I have to assume that he and other naturalistic thinkers feel that if they can find an explanation for the development of the chemical chart and the planets they have done their job because evolution takes over from that point.

As someone who doesn't accept the "theory" of evolution, I find that assumption more of a leap of faith than a fact of science. The existence of hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen do not DNA or life make, and gravity has no capacity to change that fact. It is at this level, the crucial level of organization from non-living matter to life that I found most outrageous in his claim. To be fair to him, he is making the assumption that I described in the last paragraph. He is assuming that the development of life is "automatic" given the pre-historic conditions on earth and that evolution is a self-evident fact of nature.

The level of complexity is still, and will continue to be, the problem for these naturalistic theories. I often think of Stephen J. Gould's attempt to make the comparison between the chance development of life and winning the lottery. Such a comparison would work if there were just one chance event that had to take place to produce life as we know it, but there are billions of events (at least) for which the chance explanation completely breaks down. We can be lucky once or twice or even ten times, but not billions of times.

While Stephen Hawkings is a brilliant theoretical physicist, his explanation of the origin of the universe needs to be taken for what it is, an attempt to provide a naturalistic explanation for the universe. As such, it faces the same problems as all naturalistic explantions, the universe is too complex to be accidental. While gravity is a remarkable force, it has no capacity to take the place of our Creator.

How Did We Get into This Mess?

2010-10-23T06:59:00.000-07:00

With the mid-term elections soon to be over and a new set of players involved in setting the direction for our country, it is important that we figure out what the real problems are that must be solved. One of the problems with politics is that both the explanation for problems and the proposed solutions become standardized by political ideology. Thus, the democrats say it's all the fault of greedy corporations and the republicans blame big government liberals. Further, these one-size-fits-all approaches develop around specific issues whether it is the approach to education reform or health care.

Our problems are much too complex to be so simply defined and solved. One of the reasons that none of our approaches to improving education have made much of a difference in test scores and our standing in the world is that we have not understood the cultural forces that have had a greater influence on our children than anything the Department of Education is capable of doing with programs or policies. We have legislated according to political sound bites and then we wonder why our laws have so little effect on the serious long-term problems we face.

I have wanted to write an overview of our present situation from my own, Christian and biblically instructed point of view for some time. This election is about economics so I want to start there.

First of all, our employment and financial problems have not sprung up in the last 10 years as the president and his party have claimed. George W. Bush and the republicans are not the sole source of the massive budget deficit or the shipping of American jobs overseas. We have been Keynesians for a very long time, seeking to drive economic growth by fiscal stimulus and inflation. We forget that cars used to cost $5,000.00 and homes $50,000.00 just 40 years ago. Even though wages and salaries were much lower than today, it was possible, because of a much lower cost of living for nearly every family to have a single bread winner. Inflation has so driven up the cost of living in our society that now both husband and wife must work just to make ends meet.

But inflation is not just the rise in prices and wages (with inflation, people needed raises just to keep up with the cost of living), inflation affects product quality and methods of finance. Electric drills for the home handyman used to be made entirely of metal. Black & Decker revolutionized the field by only using metal where it was needed for wear and durability, everything else they made of plastic. Engineers have been working for decades at taking cost out of products while still maintaining product value. Technology has played a major role in this process both in the development of materials and in using computers and robots in the manufacturing process. But this has resulted in a reduction in the number of people required to make and assemble these products. This is as much of a factor in the loss of jobs as outsourcing. All this was required in order to remain competitive in the marketplace and to keep the price they must charge for their products as low as possible while still making a reasonable profit.

American (and global) industry have a remarkable track record when it comes to innovation. From my background in quality assurance I can tell you that they have developed products that are lighter, stronger, and more reliable than the products sold just 40 years ago. Without these advances in product development and manufacturing our cost of living would be unimaginably higher than it is today. There have been other benefits as well. The fuel efficiency of our cars have improved and the strength, weight, and durability of tools and materials have increased significantly.

But the need to control product costs produced serious problems for society. First, one of the largest expense items in manufacturing is the cost of labor, therefore engineers worked very hard for many years developing machines and methods for eliminating the number of people required to make the products we buy. What this has meant is that machine shops and factories hire far fewer people than they did just a few decades ago. In addition, outsourcing (purchasing parts and materials from overseas) has been going on for decades. Foreign made parts are much less expensive because of lower labor and materials costs. And foreign made parts mean less jobs available for American workers.

Let me try to explain outsourcing from the context of something I know about personally; snommobiles. The first snowmobiles made in the 1960's all had American made engines. As the sport advanced snowmobile manufacturers began looking outside the U.S. for lighter, more powerful engines. They turned to the Japanese motorcycle companies because they had already developed cast aluminum engines with hard plated cylinder walls for durability. No American manufacturers could compete with the price, performance, and durability of these engines, and just about every snowmobile manufacturer in the world bought their engines from Japan.

Like it or not, we live in a global marketplace and companies today are searching the entire world for the best materials and products. In order for us in the United States to see our economy grow, we must work hard to maintain our innovative edge. It's really is all about innovation. Those companies that make the best products for the lowest price where ever they are in the world will have the competitive advantage. This is why Toyota and not GM sells the most cars in the world. This is why Sony, Samsung, and Vizio sell far more television sets than RCA or Zenith (the best sellers when I was a kid).

The same principle applies on the personal level. The main reason the trade union movement has failed in the private sector is that they stifle personal initiative and advancement. The job market today requires people who already possess knowledge and skills necessary for the position. In addition, they must be people who are capable of learning and adapting to the advances that are inevitable today. The most successful will be those who are capable of developing new methods, new approaches, or even new products.

What does this mean going forward? It means we must work to increase our competetiveness in the global economy. We need to lower our corporate tax rate, we must reduce capital gains tax rates to enable investment. We must pass the important trade agreements that await our approval. Finally, we must expand oil exploration and other means of increasing our access to the energy available to us here in America to reduce our energy costs and improve the prospects for the growth of our economy.

The question will be, can our new congress do anything to make any of these changes possible? To be honest, government at whatever level is not the answer. Innovation and the remarkable dynamism of the free market have always been the engine that pulls us out of these economic doldrums. I know it is trite, but the best thing that government can do for business is to get out of the way.

"Fixing" our Economy

2010-10-13T19:19:00.000-07:00

The crucial question for the next year is how do we achieve economic recovery. The current administration has been telling us for some time that we are already in recovery, and that if we are just patient and willing to re-elect their party, we will see the benefits of their policies. The problem is there are no real signs of recovery, with unemployment still very high and the housing market abysmally low. What concerns me most is that I don't see any "engine" of recovery.

In the past, certain key industries have pulled us out of recessions. Whether it was the auto industry, personal computers and the internet, or the housing market, the recession ended when these products and services became ultra attractive due to pricing, innovation, and low interest rates. All of those drivers are unavailable this time; they are all subject to the same lack of demand that plagues the rest of the economy. So what will pull us out of this mess?

According to the President and his progressive advisors, the drivers of recovery are green jobs and re-building infrastructure. Many to the left of the President, want him to go further and establish a new WPA of government building and employment projects. What they don't realize is that much has changed since the 1930's; the restrictions, work rules, and environmental regulations of today prevent even the government from hiring people off the street to build dams, bridges, and libraries. What used to take a few months to plan and initiate now takes years. The President admitted as much when he declared, "there are no shovel-ready projects." He is right. Even the progressive agenda is subject to the crisis of a bloated government.

So what about green jobs - wind, solar, renewable energy? If we are willing to be honest, we will have to admit that these alternatives to coal and petroleum are not yet viable. The only way that we can go to these options is through subsidies. We have been subsidizing wind generation and solar power since the late 70's with little or nothing to show for it. After decades of government subsidy, we spent six billion dollars to enable American ethanol production and to prevent sugarcane ethanol from being imported from Brazil. In other words, the idea that these "green" industries may be drivers of growth in our economy is not even a pipe dream, it is a complete fantasy.

The central question is how do we promote growth? In my opinion, government is the last group that should be attempting to answer that question. Politicians are under the influence of special interests and incapable of seeing what really needs to be done to bring the economy back to health. I would point to two examples: the cutting off of water for irrigation in California to protect the delta smelt and the takeover of GM and Chrysler. It is a political talking point, but true none-the-less; government needs to get out of the way for business to grow.

Government gets out of the way by reducing the corporate income tax, by approving the various free trade agreements that are held up by the special interests, by reducing (not increasing as planned) the capital gains tax, and adopting any number of other business-friendly policies that would release the engines of investment and entrepreneurship that enable the economy to grow. The next engine of growth is probably out there, but the government will never find it. The free market will take it forward as it did the auto industry, the internet, and the housing boom. The recent success of Apple's I-phone and I-pad show the amazing capacity for innovation in American industry. It is this kind of creative development that gives us a sense of optimism about the prospects for growth.

If we look at the difference between the economic conditions in Texas and California, we see the advantages of conservative policies over progressive policies. Texas is a low tax, business friendly, tort reform state. Over half of all the jobs created in the private sector in the last six months (which the President has alluded to as a sign of the recovery) were created in one state: Texas. While California is losing population as a consequence of its high taxes and restrictive regulations, Texas is the fastest growing state in the union. California has an unemployment rate of 12%, while Texas is at 8.4%.

With the mid-term elections in two weeks, we need to vote for those leaders who will adopt the policies that are working in Texas and reject the policies that had such a disastrous impact on California or Michigan or New York.

Even if the Republicans take control of congress, I do not see a dramatic change in our economy. We face so many difficult challenges and a divided government will make it even more difficult to get legislation written and passed. Nor do I see President Obama making the kind of shift to the center that saved Bill Clinton's presidency in 1994. (Here's irony for you. The democrats brag about the budget surplus and strong economy under Bill Clinton, but it wasn't progressive policies that produced that surplus, it was the conservative policies he adopted after '94.)

It is important that you vote on November 2. Much is at stake in this election.

Let me also say that in these uncertain times we must be Habakkuk Christians. The housing crisis is not going away, and employment will be weak for some time to come. We can expect to be facing a struggling economy for some time. Our hope rests not in our visible means of support, our job or bank account, but in the faithfulness of our God, who gave Himself for us and promised to never leave us or forsake us. Now is the time for us to live by faith and not by sight, and to reveal a hope that cannot be shaken by any of the challenges of our uncertain economy.

Who was Colbert mocking?

2010-09-25T20:37:00.000-07:00

At the risk of making a mountain of a molehill, I am about to air my concerns about Stephen Colbert's testimony in character before the congressional hearing on immigration reform. His performance was a masterful expression of the irreverence and cynicism that plagues so much of our popular culture. Imagine it, a well know comedian is invited to testify before congress on an important public policy question, and he uses the opportunity to both enhance his own hunger for publicity and to mock the powers that be.

If I may unpack the significance of the event, Colbert is an expression of the modern view of events and institutions. He is first of all mocking formality and the idea that an institution should be respected and taken seriously. While this has been happening for a long time, I have never seen it taken to the level of dis-respecting the United States congress. It is one thing to wear blue jeans and a baseball cap to school or to church, it is another to treat a congressional hearing as a comedic opportunity. This takes the nihilism of this generation to a new level.

But there is more to mocking than dis-respect, it is an expression of denial. It is saying that what you stand for is not good nor true, it is evil and wrong. Mockery is not just opposition to a point of view, it is the attempt to demolish it. It doesn't just oppose what it mocks, it despises it.

Then the question becomes, what does Colbert despise. Well, his character is patterned after Bill O'Reilly and the conservative view point of Fox News. This is what he is really mocking and this is what he despises. The point is not to defend O'Reilly (he can take of himself pretty well) or Fox News, it is to defend the conservative values that they alone in the media support. It is also to raise concern about the rejectionist approach in our political discourse. We don't even argue anymore, we deny and denigrate. There is only one thing that can come next, repression and persecution of those who hold contrary views. (I am quite concerned about the rhetoric directed at Evangelical Christians in some circles. We are being demonized, and the stage is being set for the public approval of the repression and persecution of Christians.)

So, let's talk about what the Bible says about mockery and those who practice it. Mocking is actually the end point of a progression. Psalm 1 warns us to avoid walking "in the counsel of the wicked." In other words it tells us to avoid taking the bad advice that comes from those who reject sound moral principles. Next, we are warned to avoid standing "in the path of sinners." A path is a track worn by repeated use, and a sinner is one who habitually sins. Notice that this condition is less mobile and more entrenched than the first. The first is innocent, looking for guidance on life decisions, the second has already made a number of choices and has taken a position of identification, he is a sinner. But the final stage brings us to the place of the "scoffer" (mocker). This is the ultimate expression of rebellion against God and goodness. It is the person sitting "in the seat of the scoffer." This person is completely immobile, he cannot move and thus he cannot change. He is totally dedicated to his position, as if his life depended on it. Whatever he has given himself to now has him completely in its grip and he will defend it to the death.

Sitting in the ancient world was also seen as taking a position of authority. A scoffer speaks as if he has the final word and that only a fool would disagree with him. But it is all bravado, they are mocking the true and the good, because the evil has them completely in its grip.

The lesson of Psalm 1 for us is that we should never start down the road that begins with the false wisdom that predominates in our hedonistic, self-centered culture. Because it will take us to the place where sin is habitual and very difficult to overcome. And, if we aren't careful can lead us to the place where we will be literally addicted to sin, and couldn't let it go even if we wanted to.

How much better to follow David's advice in the second half of the Psalm, to delight in the Torah (teachings) of God and to meditate upon them day and night. Here we find wisdom for our daily choices. Here we find a path that leads to life and ultimately to Jesus for He is life. Here we find a place of true conviction and authority based upon the proven certainty of God's word and ways.

I feel truly sorry for the Stephen Colberts of the world. I certainly don't know any of the details of his life, nor can I stand as judge over him. Only God knows his heart. But his choice to mock things he doesn't fully understand or appreciate such as the core conservative moral vaues of American society do tell us where much of the popular culture that he represents stands or rather sits.

Are we facing a sea change election?

2010-09-15T18:40:00.000-07:00

The story of the twentieth century in America has been the influence of progressive ideology on our government and society. The democratic party, at least the liberal wing of the party, calls itself "progressive." But we must make a distinction between what I am referring to as progressive ideology and modern American liberalism.

Progressive ideology has been in the driver's seat of our government and politics from at least the 1940's. Both political parties have operated from its basic assumptions for the last 70 years, and it has brought us to the current economic mess we are facing today.

Progressive ideology is a product of the Industrial Revolution and is concerned about three things; the "equitable" distribution of income within a given society (no extremes of wealth or poverty), a scientific management of society and the economy to achieve important social ends (universal access to health care, proper nutrition for all, old age security, etc.), and the continual pursuit of "moral progress" (the reduction of racial prejudice, an increased concern for the environment, the pursuit of a more humane treatment of prisoners, etc.).

These three goals were front and center in the administrations of Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and saw their greatest advance under Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Progressive ideology was certainly well intentioned, and has produced many of the values and institutions that we take for granted today and that bring great benefit to our lives. Both parties have endorsed and advanced the progressive agenda, and many of its fundamental institutions such as social security, federally governed public education, and medicare/medicaid are "third rail" issues that cannot be touched for fear of the political backlash.

On the other side of this equation, stands some serious unintended consequences to this attempt to create an improved society. Included in this is the massive growth in the size and reach of the federal government, with unsustainable deficits and a gigantic inventory of unfulfilled promises. We are failing at the education of our children, our entitlement regime is breaking down, we just saw a dramatic increase in the percentage of Americans below the poverty line, and we see a reduction in our economic competitiveness.

All of these things are adding up to a serious questioning of all the assumptions of the progressive ideology. When the Tea Party candidates talk about a return to the constitution and to federalism (more power returned to the individual states), this is exactly what is going on. It seems to me that we are at the beginning of a sea change in the way we view the federal government and how it operates. The question will be, do we have the political will and wisdom to restore the freedoms coupled with the sense of individual responsibility that made America so successful?

At this point, it is very important that we, the American voters, understand that this is what it is going on. We have the chance, with this election, to begin to bring America back from the brink of bankruptcy and to start down a long road of reforming many of the basic institutions of our society in order to make them a reflection of our constitutional government. A government, by the way, that has provided more abundance and freedom to all classes of people than any other government in history.

The United States is not the first to pull back from the financial brink. Great Britain under Margaret Thatcher went through a dramatic transition that privatized whole industries and reduced the power of labor unions throughout the country. Many of the European nations are taking dramatic steps to reduce government deficits and reduce entitlements. They have been forced to by economic reality, a reality that is just now beginning to become apparent to the American people. It is no accident that we presently have the second highest corporate income tax in the world (Only Japan exceeds ours and who wants to imitate Japan right now?).

Our goal in the next two elections (2010 & 2012), must be to substantially reduce the size and reach of the federal government. We must next have an intelligent conversation about reducing the long term costs of entitlements and discovering a way to make them sustainable for the long run. My other hope is that the Tea Party movement will have some influence on the debate over education in America. The best case scenario would be much greater local control and parental involvement in a meaningful way that includes vouchers and school choice.

My hope is that this truly is a watershed moment for American society, and not just a short lived conservative backlash against a struggling economy. The liberal narrative about the Tea Party is that it is just a lot of old white people afraid of losing their medicare. There are two things about the Tea Party that should give us all hope for the future, and of which the liberal media is either unaware or mis-understands. The Tea Party is focused on restoring constitutional government to the United States, and more than any movement before it, is committed to reducing the size and cost of government. If we don't appreciate what they are trying to accomplish, our children and grandchildren certainly will.

The Cut Flower Society

2010-08-25T19:04:00.000-07:00

One of the most memorable analogies used to describe modern Western culture is the description, "the cut flower society." I'm not sure who first used the metaphor, but it is a brilliantly accurate description of our civilization. The West took mankind down a path toward freedom of opportunity, racial and gender equality, and economic prosperity that is unprecedented in human history. It shouldn't be overstated, our societies were not perfect, but our core values and our record of moral and social progress was very impressive when compared to previous civilizations.

The strength and vitality of our society was connected to the values and worldview of its people and its worldview and values were shaped by the Judeo-Christian faiths. As we passed through the Enlightenment we rejected the rationale of the Judeo-Christian faith and we cut off the the strength and vitality of those core values. The result has been the fading of the glory of our civilization.

For example, we blame the high dropout rate and poor performance of students in our public education system on either inadequate funding (Liberal) or poor performing teachers protected by the teacher's unions (conservative). To be honest, the problem is way more complicated than either of those political slogans. The decay of our educational system is part of the moral and personal degeneration afflicting our popular culture, which can be directly attributed to our rejection of many of the Judeo-Christian values that shaped our civilization. Moral relativism doesn't go very far in encouraging our children to pay attention to their teachers and work hard on their studies. What we see in much of the youth culture of today is a rejection of any serious pursuit in life and thought. We are instead immersed in the world of "Jackass the Movie," Brittany Spears, and Lady Gaga. We can trace the decreasing vitality of our culture by the steady decline in SAT scores in the past 50 years.

We can trace a similar degeneration in the percentage of marriages that end in divorce or in the percentage of children born to unwed mothers. We are quite simply, as a society, moving in the wrong direction.

One of the central principles of the Enlightenment was the belief in progress. This belief was based on the marked improvement in social conditions that had taken place in the past 200 years in Europe. These improvements included the outlawing of slavery, prison reform, universal education, and the beginnings of women's sufferage. The process was appropriately described as "moral progress." What the people of the Enlightenment didn't understand is that all of those advances were the result of Christian influence and leadership. William Wilberforce and other English Evangelicals were the driving force behind the outlawing of slavery in Great Britain, as Charles Finney was a leader in the abolitionist movement in America. Prison reform in England was a direct consequence of the Wesleyan Revival, and Women's Sufferage in America was led by Evangelical women.

After the devastation of the two world wars and the rejection of Enlightenment optimism by most modern philosophers, the idea of moral progess was largely abandoned. This abandonment is part of the cut flower phenomenon, and today we see a steady decline in moral values and behavior.

Which brings me to the issue that inspired this post. The New Yorker magazine had an article some weeks ago now, on delayed adulthood. They cited studies that reveal that young adults today are having a hard time making the shift from adolescence to full adult responsibility. They have toyed with creating a new "life-stage." (Just as "adolescence" was added to our vocabulary in the late twentieth century.) This article wanted to call it "emerging adulthood," and implied it could consume much of a person's 20's.

But what is it, really, I see it as the prolonging of adolescence (which was a prolonging of childhood), both were part of the moral decline that is part of the "cut flower" phenomenon. In other words, our society has become increasingly bad at preparing our children for adult responsibility. We are prolonging childhood (Bar Mitzvah is at 13, that is when a Jewish boy was considered a man.), first from the early teens to the early 20's and now all the way out to the early 30's. This reality is most pronounced in men and it does not bode well for the future of our society.

While this makes another case for the need for a spiritual awakening in America and the West, it also calls us to "Seek the Lord while He may be found." We need to re-connect our own lives into the Vine so that He can work out His grace in our lives. Society may be a dying flower, but we can be new and fresh and blooming as we discover the life and joy that are found in living close to Jesus.

Relativism and the Law

2010-08-14T07:33:00.000-07:00

In the past several decades we have both legislatively and through judicial decisions made many of the principles that emerged from moral relativism into enforceable laws. To be honest, this is the codification of immorality and we will pay a terrible price for this as a society. Relativism was an attempt to justify behavior that previous generations considered unacceptable. Relativism was central to what was called the sexual revolution and it has produced any number of serious social problems. The sexual revolution targeted the traditional values related to sexuality, marriage, and the family. The consequences of this revolution are that over half of all marriages end in divorce and over half of all births among some communities in our society are to unwed mothers. This must be coupled with the fact that living in a single parent household is the single greatest contributor to deliquincy, drug use, and trouble in school among children.

We are paying this terrible price because of Natural Law. Morals are not just the opinions of a culture or a society, nor are they the invention of the ruling classes to maintain their power. Morals are not the imposed restrictions of a religious majority. Morals are built into the structure of the human condition.

We are not alone in this view. The ancient Chinese expessed the principes of Natural Law through the Tao and the Egyptians called it Ma'at. Mankind has always recognized that certain behaviors are beneficial and others are dangerous, particularly in the long term. The Bible describes it with the words of the Apostle Paul,

Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, this he will also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit, will from the Spirit reap eternal life. (Gal. 6:7 NAS)

Behavior and the consequences connected to them have been apparent to human beings for centuries. Cultures, both ancient and modern, have some significant expression of Natural Law. The arrogance of our age is to think that we can re-define human nature and the moral principles of human civilization. We have already paid dearly in social and personal dysfunction for our hubris in ignoring the wisdom of the ages. And yet, we continue to assume that because these behaviors have been made politically correct we can impose them upon this and future generations by law and by judicial fiat. We will rue the day. Remember, God is not mocked.

Our Globalized Economy

2010-08-05T18:18:00.000-07:00

With the terrible recession we are currently suffering through, the focus has been on our national economy. We must remember, however, that we are part of a global economy that has dramatically effected our own.

We speak to this issue whenever we discuss trade, jobs going "overseas," the value of the dollar, and in the case of the recent oil spill; multi-national corporations such as BP. In nearly every case, these elements of globalization are portrayed as gigantic negatives. They are believed to be the reason for the loss of manufacturing jobs, for our "shrinking" middle class, and the threat of "structural" unemployment (permanently high unemployment because many jobs are gone forever).

Our friends on the Left and those in the labor movement believe we should push back the hands of time and undo these forces of globalization. We need to "re-negotiate" our major trade agreements, which in their interpretation means they are effectively recinded, and replaced by tariffs and trade restrictions. They would also like to see laws passed that would prevent American corporations from moving jobs overseas. How they might do that in a free country they never really explain.

So, let's talk about the forces of globalization. First, this has been going on for a very long time. When I was working for a snowmobile company in the 70's we were purchasing significant parts of our snowmobiles and clothing line from Japan and Korea. We were also looking for more ways to automate our welding, painting, and plating of parts. We even started looking at robot welding, which now dominates automotive assembly. We were forced to do this in order to remain competitive within the industry. The loss of manufacturing jobs is not just due to off shoring, it is also the result of greater levels of automation.

Everyone should read Thomas Friedman's description of the forces of globalization, The World is Flat. He is certainly correct to say that no significant corporation can survive today without being plugged into the global economy. And that includes all of the amazing technological innovations of our time that enable us to network and communicate from anywhere in the world. Demanding a provincial or national economy is like trying to keep the horse and buggy as a major source of transportation in the face of automobile industry.

The cat is long gone from the proverbial bag when it comes to a global economy. We must do everything we can to increase our capacity for innovation, creativity, and entrepreneurship. Continuing education and life-long learning will be a must, as we adapt to the technological changes in our industries and workplaces. As an example, at age 62, I have been learning how to prepare courses and teach online. It is a necessary change that fits our mandate to train and support missionaries. It has actually been a bit of an adventure, as I've learned new methods and developed new materials, as well as tackling subjects I've never taught before. The reward has been that I get to help missions professionals, many located on the field while taking the classes, gain insights and ideas that will increase the effectiveness of their ministries.

There is another aspect to this globalization thing; it has the potential to improve the lives of the poorest people of the world. As followers of Jesus, this possibility should make us big fans of viewing the world economy as an integrated whole. People like Ingrid Munro in Kenya, are helping former beggars and thieves escape crippling poverty. She is very clear, she is not giving people "charity." She is teaching them the skills and self-discipline necessary to earn an income and care for their families. Ingrid Munro is part of the global microfinance revolution that is improving countless lives.

C.K. Prahalad of the University of Michigan has done significant research into the aleviation of global poverty. His research is documented in the book, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid. His premise is that the 4 billion people (2/3rds of the world's population) that live in poverty (less than $1500 per year) are people with all the capacities of any other human being. They are, in fact, 4 billion potential customers and entrepreneurs. Dr. Prahalad's goal is to create a gigantic global middle class and change the economic pattern of the global economy from a pyramid to a diamond, with a small minority of the wealthy at the top and small minority of poor at the bottom. As we help the poor improve their lives, we dramatically improve the state of the global economy. But like Ingrid Munro, Dr. Prahalad makes the point that improving their lives involves improving their character by eliminating the wasteful habits in their lives (drinking, gambling, etc.) and helping them acquire the self-disciplines of a work ethic, regular saving, and care for the needs of their family. (It is a perfect fit for the Gospel, discipleship, and church planting.) In other words, this globalization thing is a pretty cool deal.

So, how do we get out of the ditch?

2010-07-21T19:17:00.000-07:00

It appears that we are going to hear a single slogan from the Democratic Party all through the upcoming electoral season. President Obama started it when he said, "Why should we give the keys to the car back to the people who drove us into the ditch?" That would be a good question if the financial crisis we recently experienced and the current recession were entirely the Republicans fault, but it isn't. Both parties and several branches of government had a very large hand in creating this mess, and because we aren't willing to be honest about what caused the car to go into the ditch, we may not be able to get out of this proverbial ditch for a very long time.

One of the reasons that the Democrats are in so much trouble in the 2010 elections is that they have controlled congress from 2006 and their legislation and oversight neither prevented the crisis nor reversed the terrible consequences of the recession. In terms of acutal legislation and programs congress has the steering wheel and the President is a back seat driver. Just look at the hash that was healthcare reform, the President was as much of an observer of the process as the rest of us. It seems odd that we call it "Obamacare" when it should be called "Reid and Pelosi Care" since they are the ones who actually wrote and passed the bill. To be fair, it was the President and his administration that set the agenda and drove the process. And that brings us back to talking about being in the ditch.

The President and the Democrats are fond of telling us that they "inherited" this mess, yet with 18 months of controlling both branches of government (a privilege the democrats have had for a majority of the years since the Great Depression, by the way), they have not restored significant economic growth to our ailing economy. I am inclined to believe, based on a lifetime of observing politics and the parties that they haven't fixed the economy because they simply don't know how to fix an economy. Their basic ideology keeps them from the kinds of solutions that enable trade, investment, and economic expansion. The Democrats connection to organized labor makes them protectionist, their tendency towards populism (John Edward's "Two Americas") and suspicion of corporations and business, and their loyalty to the environmental movement prevents them from enacting the policies that can get the economy growing again. Look at their agenda. They want to tax the "rich," who already bear most of the tax burden in this country and who are the investors and small business owners that have the greatest potential to create new jobs and bring us out of this recession. If the goal is deficit reduction and greater amounts of government revenue there is only one solution: broaden the tax base. You can't practice class warfare and bring the country together to defeat a challenge as great as we face today.

The Democrats, in an attempt at creating something that moves us closer to universal health care, have only increased the level of uncertainty for business. This legislation will not help our economy in the long or short term, and is contributing to the reluctance of small businesses to expand and hire. While the program will increase access to health insurance, it will not reduce health care costs without draconian cost and price controls. To prove this point, one only need to look at what is going on with price controls on health insurance in Massachusetts. The appointment of Dr. Berwick is a foreshadowing of what lies ahead for both the health insurance and health care industries.

Finally, the democrats passed much expanded financial & banking regulations. My fear is that there will be any number of unintended consequences associated with this legislation. One of the by products of this recession has been a reduction in availability of credit. I don't see how expanding banking regulations will enable credit to flow out to the engine of job growth in this country; the small businesses. Fin. Reg., it seems to me, was an attempt to demonstrate liberal populism by showing Wall Street and the banking industry who's the boss. So, while it may feel good ideologically to the Left, it not only doesn't get us out of the ditch, it may plunge us into a canyon.

The argument the President and the democrats will make is that we can't "go back" to the old policies that put us in the ditch, and that we need to give them more time bring us into a full recovery. The problem is, and will be for the democrats in November, there are few if any signs of progress that might give us hope that their plans will really work. And my point in all of this is that if we look closely at what they've actually done; from stimulus to health insurance reform to financial regulation, they haven't actually solved any of the problems that caused the recession in the first place. They are instead taking us in another direction entirely, toward the progressive Nirvana of a managed economy. My question is, why should we let them keep the keys when they are driving us, not out of the ditch but toward Greece?

The End of Metaphysics II

2010-06-11T06:40:00.000-07:00

In the same week that I read John Derbyshire's article on genomics, I saw Peter Singer's editorial, "Should This be the Last Generation" on the New York Times website. It was the perfect juxtaposition of idea and conclusion. If we embrace the logic of Derbyshire we eventually come to agreement with Singer. This is one of the terrible, unintended consequences of the enlightenment, it takes us to the place of hopelessness. Derbyshire alludes to this as the cost of honesty, he writes, "If self-deception gets more difficult, so will happiness." In other words, religion is a form of "self-deception" that enables us to face life optimistically. And, a "realistic" view of religion forces us to face the music in regard to the end of our existence.

The enlightenment began as a grand liberation movement that was supposed to release human potential. Central to the enlightenment hope was the belief in progress; enlightened science will eliminate disease and extend life spans, enlightened philosophy will end fear, prejudice, and inhibitions, and enlightened politics will create an educated, enlightened citizenry free of the burdens and insecurities of previous generations. The problem is that the leaders of the enlightenment never looked behind the curtain labeled, "the end of religious belief," which was one of their central goals.

The famous British philosopher Bertrand Russell pulls back the curtain for us.

That man is the product of causes which had no provision of the end they were achieving that his origin, his growth, his hopes, his fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collucations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve individual life beyond the grave; that all the labors of the ages, all devotions, all inspiration, all the noon-day brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of our solar system, and that the whole temple of Man's achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins-all these things, if not beyond dispute, are, yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair can the soul's habitation henceforth be safely built." ( from A Free Man's Worship)

Peter Singer clearly describes the "unyielding despair" of modern enlightenment faith as he questions the value of human existence. He asks in the editorial if it is right for a couple to bring a child into the world based on the possibility that the child will suffer or contribute to the suffering of others. He asks at a crucial point in the article, "If there were no future generations, there would be much less to feel guilty about." His causes of guilt are such things as over population and global warming.

The irony in all of this is that guilt is an expression of the moral sense in man, it exists in that upper storey of abstractions that includes truth, beauty, goodness, and love. If human consciousness is nothing more than a biological accident, then guilt is as much of an illusion as religion, and ethics is reduced to "only to thine own self be true." It is no wonder that the primary consequence of the enlightenment has been the kind of self-absorbed hedonism we see in American popular culture.

The evolutionary scheme of things provides no explanation for guilt and the other abstractions of human consciousness. Nature only knows survival, the moral arose with the personal and the rational, both of which are unique to humanity. The aspirations to hope, faith, and love are inate, as are conscience and our sense of moral obligation. They stand as a transcendent reality in the midst of an impersonal, material universe.

The Bible declares that men are made in the image of God. It is these inner hopes, desires, and obligations that affirm that claim. How ironic that Peter Singer would invoke an aspect of his nature that he denies, yet which are fundamental to his motives and actions. He has lost all hope in the significance of life because he has lost hope in God, but his sense of obligation to prevent present and future suffering arise from that which is most deeply personal and even spiritual in his nature.

We must never give in to the nihilism of modern thought. We are not a cosmic accident. Too much about us, from consciousness to conscience, are beyond an accidental or natural explanation. We must never give up our hope in God, for goodness and God are linked. Without God there is no good, only darkness, hopelessness and despair. It is not that we embrace a fantasy to give ourselves hope, but that we see the deep need for hope in our hearts as evidence of the God who put it there.

The End of Metaphysics?

2010-06-01T18:50:00.000-07:00

John Derbyshire has written an interesting article for National Review Online on the making of an artificial genome of a one celled creature. It is not quite artificial life, but it is close. Derbyshire's point is not journalistic, to report on a scientific advance, but philosophical, to declare the end of metaphysics and vitalism. This is a remarkable leap of logic. To say that because we can manipulate strands of DNA in the laboratory, and because we have "decoded" the genomes of several creatures, including man, that "life is essentially information" and thus we have removed any possiblity of mystery or of spirituality from nature and life. This is modern reductionism at its worst.

Mr. Derbyshire goes further, he invokes the Freudian view that religion is a delusion created to avoid the fear of death. Several generations of atheists have patted themselves on the back for being truly "courageous," completely rational, and fully accepting of the implications of modern science without ever questioning their own assumptions and the gigantic gaps in knowledge that their view of science prevents them from discovering.

At the top of this list is conscience and the sense of moral obligation. Immanuel Kant, in spite of his profound agnosticism, saw this as clear evidence of the existence of God. It is rather easy in your 20's and 30's to boast of your courage in rejecting religion, while never disclosing that your real motivation is to be free of moral restraint. Most people dislike the idea of God because they see Him as the enemy of their pleasures.

To return to the argument about the manipulation of the DNA of a single celled creature to make a new lifeform as a deathblow to metaphysics and vitalism. Just because we have acquired godlike knowledge that enables godlike power to manipulate lifeforms doesn't mean we have proven there is no God nor a non-physical, spiritual reality. We must keep in mind the fact that naturalism requires that DNA and all the creatures that inhabit this planet are the product of the random forces of nature. It is one thing for intelligent human beings, with all their equipment and technique to manipulate the chemistry to "create" a new single celled creature, it is another for the purely chance processes of nature to do the same thing. In fact, the chances of it happening accidentally is beyond any real possibility. It is unquestioningly accepted by evolutionists because they assume right from the start that there is no supernatural source thus it must have happened through natural processes. They allow themselves no other option than nature. We shouldn't be surprised, then, when they declare the end of metaphysics.

I am no fan of vitalism, but I understand the reason that many thoughtful writers, such as Gordon Ratty Taylor and Will Durant, have resorted to it. It provides a purposeful explanation for the amazing levels of organization and complexity we see in organic life. Even as great a critic of religion as Fredrich Nietzsche declared, "The development of matter into a thinking subject is impossible." He understood the utter inadequacy of pure materialism (matter is all that exists) to explain the world in which we live. There are far too many creatures, which all display levels of intricacy and design that defy any possibility of a chance explanation. Vitalism is the attempt to explain design and purpose by means of a "force," in other words without resorting to a personal creator God. The problem is that forces don't provide design or purpose. Forces are powers or tools that must be directed by intelligence which is ultimately personal. If we are going to invoke purpose and design, we are left with only one choice, a personal God.

Bio-engineering is a remarkable field. We certainly shouldn't deny its potential for curing disease, and improving life, but we must also be wary of its potential for abuse. We are not gods and we need to proceed very cautiously in assuming power over life, even the life of single celled creatures. In addition, our knowledge of nature is not as great as we think it is. We are basing many of our conclusions on unwarranted (and often unconscious) assumptions that we will surely come to regret. The Bible tells us, "The fool has said in his heart, 'There is no God.'" (Psalm 14:1) Even in this era of dramatic scientific advances foolishness is alive and well.

Why All the Rage?

2010-04-25T06:32:00.000-07:00

We are currently having a debate about political anger. The tea parties, in particular, are accused of being driven by anger toward this current democratic administration. In response, conservative commentators are pointing out the heated rhetoric that has been displayed on the liberal blogs and cable networks toward Dick Cheney or Sarah Palin. Anyone paying attention to politics in the past three years will have heard many angry words directed toward political opponents. So, what are we so mad about?

Political anger is rooted in moral sentiment. People justify their anger because they believe bad, harmful, or even evil things are being done. Conservatives and liberals see their anger as righteous indignation. The difference between the two groups are their definitions of right and wrong.

While we hear a great deal about moral relativism, it is in some ways a chimera. Relativism is a philosophy of convenience, allowing people to ignore moral obligations they believe interfere with their pursuit of personal pleasure. The side of the political spectrum most supportive of relativism, liberals, are just as capable of righteous indignation as any member of the religious right. It's not that liberals are relativists and conservatives are moralists, it is that they fundamentally disagree about what is right and what is wrong.

Since at least the 1960's the left has assumed the role of moral leadership for American society. Prior to that time, the moral consensus was shaped by widely understood Protestant values, such as marital fidelity, the work ethic, self-reliance, thrift, and personal decorum and responsibility. To see an example of this consensus watch a Doris Day movie from the 50's or a Leave it to Beaver re-run. With the freedom marches and the victory over racial segregation in the 60's, we saw one of liberalism's finest hours, and its rise to the place of defining acceptable and unacceptable behavior in our society.

Today they define what should be legal or illegal (Same-sex marriage-legal, hate crimes-illegal), what is important (stopping global warming) and what is unimportant (religion). What becomes disturbing is the lack of a real opportunity to debate the merits of these beliefs, and to question the qualifications of those defining these important decisions about our values and our laws.

Sadly, apart from their absolutely correct opposition to racial segregation, the left has defined its moral causes by the distorted values of the enlightenment. Over time, the anger of the left was directed at most of the previously held values of the American middle class. Eventually, they added the issues of environmentalism, sexual orientation, and economic egalitarianism to their list of things to be mad about. So, while the left has achieved moral leadership because it has achieved political leadership, that doesn't mean that its proscriptions for our values and behavior are right or beneficial.

The values of the previous generations and of the social conservatives today were built upon the foundations of the Bible and natural law. These values have been proven in the crucible of human history. They are a significant reason that America has been as successful as it has been. We turn our back on these values to our own peril, and a great deal of the anger generated by the Tea Parties is founded on the concern that we are endangering the future of our society by the rejection of these fundamental values.

In the end, the question isn't which group has the right to be angry. The more important question is which group has the right values upon which we should build our society. The testimony of history supports the Tea Party.

No Prayer Allowed

2010-04-17T06:49:00.000-07:00

In a pre-emptive strike against the National Day of Prayer, first established by President Truman in 1952 and re-affirmed by President Reagan in 1988, an atheist-agnostic group in Wisconsin took the issue to court and received a favorable opinion from the judge. Judge Barbara Crabb wrote in her opinion that government must operate in regards to prayer under the bizarre constraint of serving "a significant secular purpose and is 'not a call for religious action on the part of its citizens.'" (quoted from Worldnet Daily article, "National Day of Prayer Ruled Unconstitutional," April 15, 2010) This becomes an impossible standard for how could prayer ever be for a significant secular purpose and not call for religious action on the part of citizens?

Here is another example of what Alexander Solzenitsyn described as "legalism" in his landmark speech at Harvard in the 1970's. His criticism of American society was that we use the legal system for political purposes rather than the maintenance of justice and morality. He spoke of the perversity of using the courts to justify activities that undermine the moral and social fabric of society such as traditional marriage and the family. In this instance, we see the courts used to strike another blow at the Judeo-Christian faith which forms the moral and spiritual foundation of American culture.

As I argue in my book, this use of the courts to prevent any public expression of the predominant Christian beliefs held by most Americans, implies that the government views Christian faith as a dangerous and destructive activity. Why else would it be considered illegal? It really is the courts, and thus the government of the United States, siding with the secularist view of Christianity as a great evil whose actions should be outlawed and its influence reduced or eliminated. By making public prayer, posting of the Ten Commandments, and Bible reading against the law the government can no longer claim to be neutral in regard to religious belief. It has taken a firm stand in opposition to any and all public expressions of the Christian faith.

We are only continuing to fool ourselves if we think this elimination of a national day of prayer is no big deal. It is another nail in the coffin of the influence of Judeo-Christian values on American society. We are sawing off the limbs of personal morality, unselfish concern for our fellow man, the Protestant/American work ethic, and the value of delayed gratification as we sit on them. We also rob our younger generations of faith and hope, because the two are related. We must recognize that God and goodness are entirely related. Nietzsche was the first of the modern philosophers to understand this fundamental truth. In denying God we face the unintended consequence of denying the good. I believe the descent into the relativistic darkness that characterizes so much of Western popular culture is merely the result of our embrace of a radical secularism that allows no place for God.

How ironic. Just when we need prayer the most we find it's not allowed.

The Problem with Taxes

2010-04-15T18:10:00.000-07:00

April 15 seems to be the perfect day to think about the why's and wherefore's of taxes. In case you haven't noticed, an entire movement has risen in opposition to the expansion of government programs and the taxes needed to pay for them. As a conservative, my sentiments lie with the Tea Partiers. Yet, one of my frustrations with the conservative movement in America is our inability to explain why we are the party of No to those who don't buy into our point of view.

So, let me take a shot at explaining why we are opposed to increasing taxes. First, conservatives are as compassionate and as concerned about helping those in need as anyone. Our opposition to the present condition of our government is not based on a selfish desire to keep more of our hard earned money. It has much more to do with the way our taxes are being spent, and with the ever increasing deficits and debts that will dramatically reduce our capacity for economic growth. We are concerned about the impact this deficit spending will have on the economic conditions our children and grandchildren will inherit. We cannot attack the engine of our economy, which is the profit and income from the private sector, by designating an ever increasing portion of Gross National Product to government programs and entitlements without severely weakening our capacity to provide full employment and a decent middle class income.

Secondly, we are not opposed to paying taxes. We understand the proper role of government, and it's not just providing defense and infrastructure. Public education, social security, medicare, medicaid, and many forms of public assistance are important parts of a modern civilized society. My problem is not that we are spending money on these things, but that we are spending so very much with so little real results. It's really about efficiency and effectiveness. So many of our policies and programs are driven by ideology rather than pragmatism. Only government can mindlessly continue to spend countless billions on an educational system that has failed to adequately prepare so many of our young people for the demands of today's global economy. And no part of the public sector is more ideologically driven than public education. When we face the disastrous test scores and frighteningly low graduation rates of many of our inner city schools, we have every right to question how our taxes are being spent. When more emphasis is placed upon political correctness than upon mastering the basics of reading and writing, of science and math, of history and literature, and of critical thinking, we have every right to be concerned about our approach to K-12 education in this country.

What has made it worse is that non-ideological, proven solutions exist but cannot be applied because of the political power of special interest groups. The scandal that was the elimination of the school voucher program in Washington D.C. is a perfect example of politics and ideology trumping what is best for our children and what actually works in solving the serious problems we face as a society.

In addition, taxation is involuntary. We are forced to pay them under penalty of law. Yet, when we see our taxes used for programs and policies that offend our personal beliefs and values, our only recourse is political opposition. The Tea Parties are American conservatives declaring loudly, "No mas!" One of the great dangers of modern liberalism is its capacity to justify the imposing of its values and policies on others because it is being done in the name of "justice" or "equality" or "rights." The recently enacted health care bill is full of progressive attempts to make America "fair." The problem will be, as it always is, all the unanticipated consequences and expenses that end up making the policies un-fair.

As tax payers, it is our right and even our responsibility to question how our taxes are being spent. And with the massive bailouts of the financial industry, the ineffective and politically driven stimulus plan, and now, with the passage of mandated health insurance we have reached a tipping point. I fully expect this November to be a tax revolt via the ballot box.

Shaky Times

2010-03-14T13:16:00.000-07:00

We are living through what is being called the Great Recession. Everyone I know is feeling the effects, not the least of which is a certain level of anxiety about the future. As believers, we shouldn't be taken by surprise. God warned of times of shaking before Jesus returns. Hebrews 12:26 says, "Once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heavens." He is doing this to reveal the things that cannot be shaken. One of those things that are unshakable should be our confidence in Jesus.

One of the metaphors used to describe the Lord is as a "Rock." He is also described as a "fortress." Both of these picture our God as our place of refuge, protection, and security. In fact, there is no other shelter from the coming storm, because He is the only one who cannot be shaken.

If we think that by will power or self-discipline or the accumulation of wealth we can become unshakable, we are only deluding ourselves. There is no aspect of our natural capacities that can stand up to the challenges that await us, and while these are difficult times, we must see them as practice for times of testing to come.

This thing we are calling the Great Recession is, therefore, a time to press into Jesus. We need to spend more intentional time in Bible study, in prayer, in worship, in meditation upon the word and listening to the Lord. Now, more than ever, we need to deepen our sense of God's presence and grace upon our lives. He is the only unshakable One, and only in Him will we become those who cannot be shaken.

The Problem of Gridlock

2010-03-04T18:39:00.000-08:00

I have wanted to write for some time on the problem of partisanship in American politics. It stands as one of the serious drawbacks to our system of governance. It's part of what makes American democracy, as Churchill said, "the worst form of government, except for all those other forms..."

What bothers me specifically about partisanship is its capacity for exaggeration, distortion, and polarization of the issues we face. It is a wonder we get anything accomplished through this highly contentious and downright dysfunctional process. Nor should it surprise us when the results promised by our elected representatives don't materialize, a.k.a. stimulus packages that don't actually stimulate the economy, education policies that don't improve education outcomes, or trade policies that don't reduce our trade deficit.

For full disclosure, I've never knowingly voted for a democrat, yet I find republican partisanship as distasteful and counter-productive as that coming from the democrats. Both parties are infected with this virus, and it is severely reducing our capacity to solve the serious problems we face as a nation.

When we exaggerate for the sake of political ideology, we often lose sight of the best approaches to solving our deep seated problems. We often turn irrational such as claiming that a limited option for private accounts would "deprive" seniors of the their social security benefits or calling the commission established to control medicare costs a "death panel." We make common sense, pragmatic solutions almost impossible particularly if they require acknowledgement of the merits of the other party's point of view. One gets the impression that for most politicians, politics is far more about winning than about solving problems and improving our society.

In the past, our blatant partisanship was an annoyance, today it is a major impediment. We face serious economic problems, of which the Great Recession was the first symptoms of the potential decline of our presumed prosperity. In the post-world war II era, we have always been able to climb out of recessions because of our dominance in manufacturing, technology, and personal prosperity. We could count on the auto industry or silicon valley or a pent up demand for housing and real estate investment to bring us out of a down turn. This time, economists ask what will be the engine of growth? Green jobs? Not likely, we are realistically not that far ahead of where we were in the late 70's in regard to bio-fuels, solar panels, wind energy, fuel-cell technology, and nuclear. None of these things are in a position to provide the millions of jobs necessary to restore us to the unemployment levels we enjoyed two years ago.

When experts tell us that so many of the jobs lost in this recession are "never coming back," it should cause us some serious concern. Yet, I don't sense that concern from many of our politicians. For them it seems to be political business as usual. How can we be talking about a massive new health care entitlement supported by all the disingenuous rhetoric we have come to expect from partisanship? It is like planning for a week of shuffleboard tournaments while the Titanic is sinking. Actually, our problem is that we are far enough removed from the actual sinking of the ship, that we can continue to live in denial.

What we need, before we get to a crisis far worse than we face today, is a set of truly honest political leaders. The problem is, I don't know how any of them can get elected. It may be that things are getting so bad that we are finally ready for leaders who will tell us what we need to hear rather than what we want to hear. In other words, how can our leaders overcome partisanship unless we do.

Our Entitlement Problem

2010-02-24T20:00:00.000-08:00

One of my favorite economics journalists is Robert Samuelson. Early this week he wrote about the crisis in Greece as the first of many days of reckoning for all the welfare states of the world. Samuelson included the U.S. on the list of nations facing a serious debt crisis as a result of unfunded entitlements. He sees the problem as primarily an issue of demographics; too much being promised to an aging population or to public service employees or to some other needy group than can be paid for by a shrinking body of tax payers. Our problem is that this shrinking source of revenue means we are financing these entitlements through debt, and it is the debt that will bring us to the day of reckoning. We may claim that we are only taxing the "rich" but this strategy guarantees either that we will have less "rich" to tax (either through tax havens or through reduced activity) or a reduction in GDP growth and overall prosperity as taxes pay for entitlements rather than remaining in the economy for investment and growth.

What has made the problem virtually unsolveable is the fact that the dependency created by the entitlements makes it impossible to ever reduce much less eliminate them. Once a group within society is granted an entitlement, that group becomes a powerful constituency that prevents any reduction. The senior citizen lobby is a perfect example, making social security a "third rail."

It is this constituency/dependency problem that should make us very cautious about expanding entitlements. As we watch the chaos in Greece (and coming soon to California and New York), it should cause us to think twice about moving 1/6th of our economy on the path toward becoming an entitlement. We can argue all we like about the merits of comprehensive health care coverage, but if we don't think carefully about how this will contribute to both our entitlement obligations and long term debt we are fools of the first order.

It is because of this stark reality that the American people should have paid close attention to the statements of Rep. Paul Ryan at the health care summit on Thursday. He was the voice both of economic reason and long term realism in pointing out not only how expensive the bill will actually be, but also how much it will contribute to the deficit. And the problem isn't just an additional entitlement, it is how it will exacerbate the problem with the already bankrupt Medicare and Medicaid.

The one ray of hope in the economic crisis in Greece, California, and New York is that it will force the American people to demand of their politicians the kind of difficult choices required for entitlement reform and debt reduction. I actually think we are closer than we were even a year ago to having a serious discussion about long term debt. If we do have this discussion, we can thank two groups: the Tea Partiers and the Greek rioters.

Thinking Long Term

2010-02-06T12:54:00.000-08:00

Having just finished reading Justice Robert Bork's critque of modern culture, Slouching Toward Gomorrah, I was reminded of the long term danger we face as a nation. We are literally heading toward a moral and spiritual black hole.

While we still use the term "truth," we, for all intents and purposes, have rejected its actual existence. If "truth" is relative or culturally constructed then we can claim that all sorts of things are true when they aren't and conversely claim that historically accepted truths are actually false. In either case, declaring the false true or denying historic truths, we are left with nothing that is authentically true. We have rejected what our forefathers knew to be true to replace it with the byproducts of unproven ideologies. It really is no wonder that ours is an age of growing dysfunction or that so many young people define themselves by their maladies.

Here's the problem. Truth matters, we deny it or delude ourselves about it to our peril. It matters because there are real consequences connected to our behaviors whether permitted or forbidden. We have already proven that being raised in a single family home is the largest factor behind juvenile crime, drug abuse, teen pregnancy, and failure in school. In other words, we reject the traditional view of marriage at great risk to children and society not to mention the adults in the relationships.

We could multiply this instance by the many other assumptions in play today about men, women, morality, religion, or economics that are based upon a rejection of tradition and the acceptance of some form of modern ideology. We will pay a very high price for this exercise in social experimentation.

My fear is localized on our college campuses. So many of the departments and courses in our colleges and universities are driven by ideology and the assumptions of postmodern thought. Twenty years from now, we will see the consequences of this anti-education that has passed for education, and bemoan our foolishness. We actually are already seeing some of the early consequences of the emphasis on feminist ideology with the reduction in male graduation rates and reduced number of males entering college. This is not just an abstract sociological statistic, it will have terrible repurcusions for a society with a large number of dysfunctional men.

It is our universities that produce our public school teachers, and thus it dramatically impacts K-12 education in America. When you couple the influence of the schools with the influence of popular culture (movies, music, video games, etc.) you have a dangerous mix moving us away from the values and traditions of our forefathers and into the uncharted territory of ideologically driven assumptions. We will not like the place this journey takes us.

Our Generational Problem

2010-01-24T13:51:00.000-08:00

Some years ago I spent a day at a family gathering of a large Roman Catholic family. The parents appeared to be practicing their faith. Their adult children, however, were involved in practices and lifestyles that contradicted their parent's values. Two were living with a boy friend or girl friend without being married, one of the women had an abortion, and none were following their parent's faith. As I reflected on this I marveled at the fact that the values of these parents had not been transmitted to their children. Why?

All I could come up with were speculations and suppositions. After all, I only had a superficial knowledge of that family, but it was a marked contrast with my parent's generation, whose personal values (and life choices) had been profoundly shaped by their parent's values. My mother raised her children based on what she learned from her parents and grandparents. My Dad's work ethic and commitment to personal integrity were instilled by his parents and his aunts and uncles. And both of their religious beliefs had been influenced by their parents. So why was the transmission of values from parents to children missing in the present generation when it had been accomplished in the previous generation?

In trying to answer that question, I set out some possibilities based on observations of modern culture. First, parents are no longer the primary shapers of their children's character. With both parents having to work to make ends meet, children spending many more hours per week with peers than with parents, and with the powerful influence of music, television, and the internet (not to mention video games), it is no wonder that parents have less influence in their chidren's lives.

Second, since the 1960's we have engaged in the wholesale rejection of traditional values; the values of those parents. In particular, many of the elements of the youth culture go out of their way to mock and ridicule the values of their parent's generation. Movies, lyrics, television, and advertising contain large amounts of sexual inuendo, gratuitous violence, and boorish behavior. The internet has only increased this process of degeneration, with shock videos, access to pornography, and lots of anti-religion, anti-traditional values sites. For too many kids today, their parents don't stand a chance against the influence of their peers.

What can we say in the face of this discouraging picture? Are there any contrary voices speaking into our children's lives? The public schools try, but are no match for the peer pressure students face every day. Athletics certainly develop character, but only a relatively small percentage of young people are involved. Yet, while athletics teach personal discipline and teamwork, it doesn't touch many of the important issues of personal morality.

Far and away the greatest ally parents have is the church. Youth groups, summer camps, and missions trips are some of the powerful tools available to shape young lives. We need to continue to support and pray for our youth pastors and the various youth ministries in and outside of our churches. Many of these ministries not only help the children (and families) of their church, they end up touching the lives of non-believing neighbors. Many stories are told of a young person invited to a youth group who becomes a Christian and is instrumental in enabling his or her entire family finding the Lord.

In this dark age, we really are the light of the world. So let that light shine.

Postmodern Climate Change

2009-12-02T18:17:00.000-08:00

The present controversy surrounding the climate research unit at the University of East Anglia causes me to wonder about the present status of academia. I can say without hesitation that the liberal arts departments of our universities have been taken over by postmodern philosophy. Postmodernism is built upon a radical view of relativism that not only denies absolute truth, but takes the cynical view that "truth" is determined by the people in power as a means of re-inforcing their power. The postmodern technique of "deconstructing" truth is the process of disclosing the winners and losers in the culture. For example, the postmodern view is that Western culture is the product of white heterosexual males who have, by their beliefs and values, marginalized non-whites, females, and non-heterosexuals. Since in the postmodern view truth is all about power, e.g. the winners write history, then it is appropriate for the marginalized to seek political power in order to advance their agenda. Political correctness in our colleges and universities is not about "truth" it is rather the pursuit of justice for an oppressed class.

As a result our universities are filled with courses and departments oriented toward these marginalized groups, whether it be feminist studies, African-American studies, or GBLT studies. The consequence of postmodern thought is that these departments "advocate" for their group, and if truth is relative they feel justified in taking a political rather than an objectively neutral approach to their subject. Because of this lack of objectivity and outright advocacy, postmodernism has dramatically changed the environment of post-secondary education in America.

There are two academic disciplines that must never be subjected to postmodern thought: law and science. These two areas of thought and life are too important to the health and future of our society to be subjected to the radical relativism and political correctness of postmodernism. Sadly, both seem to be effected. In law, we saw "empathy" become the test for a proper leagal decision. Empathy, which implies a postmodern view of class or race, undermines the objectivity of the law and leaves us with a politcally correct leagal system. Now, in this global warming scandal, we see scientists playing fast and loose with data in an attempt to attain a politically correct goal. The approach of these scientists appears to be to defend a pre-ordained conclusion and the political approaches to solving the "problem." My fear is that with environmentalism being a cause celeb for the intellectuals of the West, scientists have allowed their commitment to the scientific method to be subverted by their politics. I hope I am wrong, but I also fear that I am not.

Is the Battle Actually Between Science & Religion?

2009-11-15T08:49:00.000-08:00

I am working my way through the companion book to the PBS special, "A Glorious Accident." In the documentary, several important intellectuals discuss the development of human consciousness and the mind/brain question. The title of the program comes from a quote by Stephen J. Gould who describes the development of consciousness as, "a glorious accident." Dr. Gould was reflecting a shift in the way that evolution was conceived by many of today's scientists. Previous generations of evolutionists believed natural selection drove the increase of complexity in the progress of organic life from simple organisms to human beings. It was the observed complexity of the biological world that needed a serious explanation, and evolution provided a naturalistic explanation. The idea that evolution was a progressive force was central to the doctrine. Dr. Gould, in rejecting the inevitability of progress, is embarking on a major departure from this view. Logic told him the development of human consciousness was a stroke of pure luck. He said, "No species now alive is predictable, and any species that exists does so by the merest good fortune of tens of thousands of antecedent events that went one way and not the other" (A Glorious Accident, p. 92).

It is not that Dr. Gould was rejecting evolution or natural selection, rather he was affirming that nothing in evolution was predictable or inevitable. It was all just one great big accident. (Actually it was trillions of accidents, many of which would require several integrated steps and parts. It boggles the mind to think that "luck" could have operated so many times in nature.) Dr. Gould was part of an attempt to redefine evolution in the light of several serious problems such as the scarcity of transition forms, the proven stability of species, and the lack of experiemental evidence for gradualism. The new explanation was called "punctuated equilibrium." It attempted to say that species are normally resistant to genetic change until subject of dramatic stress. For example, it was a gigantic meteor strike that changed the earth atmosphere, caused the extinction of the dinosaurs, and produced dramatic evloutionary change in the birds and mammals. In explaining his theory, Dr. Gould said that evolution was not a straight line gradually inclined upward, but rather a line shaped like a set of stair steps.

These questions are not as much scientific as they are logical since the lack of direct scientific evidence has led to the need for a reformulation of the theory grounded in the use of logic to find a more reasonable explanation. It seems to me that this is the crux of the entire controversy. Since there is no direct evidence of evolution, either by being able to re-create it in the laboratory, of by direct observation of evolution in nature. The questions are not really matters of "science" but of logic. So the matter revolves around which of all the explanations for life on earth makes the most sense. When one thinks of the astounding complexity of life, from spiders weaving webs, to bats flying by sonar, not to mention all that is involved in digesting ice cream, the most logically satisfying answer is the Grand Designer God whose handiwork is seen in all that He has made.

God Consciousness

2009-10-17T09:37:00.000-07:00

I was recently struck by Paul's statement in Acts 17 that, "in Him we live and move and have our being." (Acts 17:28) Even those of us who believe in Jesus tend to see ourselves as self-possessed individuals living an independent existence in this physical world. We may have a relationship with God, but we believe there is a separation between us. God is in some distant realm we call, "Heaven," while we inhabit a physical body and face a series of daily choices in this material world. God may visit us and help us from time to time, but as far as our perceptions of things go, we're on our own. This becomes a source of anxiety for some of us, because we believe we will be required to face God one day and give an accounting of both our deeds and mis-deeds. This, it seems to me, heightens the appeal of doctrines that assure the security of the believer. The problem with the perception and the remedy is that they lead Christians to live what an earlier generation called, "defeated lives." In other words, this belief that we are on our own and that God is out there somewhere evaluating our lives does not prevent moral compromise, it too often enables it. So, when we find our temper get the best of us, when we lie or cheat, we chalk it up to, "nobody's perfect," and "I'm not perfect, I'm just forgiven." Both of these things are true for Christians, by the way, but they are not the ideal. They are not what God really had in mind in sending His Son to rescue us from sin.

When Jesus told Nicodemus, "You must be born again," He was referring to the need to be born of the Spirit. We believe, as a theological doctrine, that Christians are born of the Spirit and thus have the Spirit of God, "living in their hearts." We agree with Paul's statement in I Corinthians, "you are the temple of the Holy Spirit." The problem is that while we believe this in the abstract, we don't believe it on the level of our daily choices and reality. I assume, actually, that this is exactly why Paul gave this reminder to the Corinthians. They were engaging in immoral behavior and he had to bring them up short by pointing out the indwelling presence of Spirit in their lives.

The Kingdom of God operates on the principle of faith. If we believe, we receive. Part of the reason God is not as real to us as we would like Him to be, is that we don't really believe that He is with us. I would encourage us to spend some time reading and meditating on John 14:15-21. It explains to us how we truly live and move and have our being in God. He is our life, as we abide in Him by faith, our life will be filled with the fruit of His grace, love, and presence. Remember faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God, we must cultivate our sense of the presence of God through prayer, worship, and pondering the incredible truths of the word. May we all realize the absolute validity of Paul's declaration, "In Him we live and move and have our being."

A Changed World?

2009-09-06T11:04:00.000-07:00

With the death of Senator Edward Kennedy, we were given another snap shot of the liberal agenda for America (and, we might add, Western civilization). Several commentators eulogized Senator Kennedy by saying he was working toward, "a new world," or a "new era." Without exaggerating the implications of these terms, liberalism in the modern West is built upon two assumptions: the benefit of progress and the pursuit of the ideal. Every liberal from the beginning of the Enlightenment has sought to create a "new" world.

Central to the Enlightenment worldview is/was belief in the inevitability of progress. Human history came to be interpreted as the story of human progress, whether in science, medicine, social policy, or education. At the horizon of the story stood a set of Utopian aims: the eradication of deadly diseases, the elimination of abject poverty, the end of war, ethnic equality, gender equality, and universal education. This is only a partial list of the grand goals of Western liberalism, but it reveals the two assumptions of progress and idealism.

No one would question these noble goals, the problem arises when we talk about execution. The Enlightenment takes credit for creating the modern world, but, in fact, it hasn't. The end of feudalism and the emergence of representative democracies are a product of the reformation, not the enlightenment. The Magna Carta, William of Orange and the ascent of British Parliament, and the founding of the American colonies were expressions of reformed theology being worked out in the larger society. In contrast, the enlightenment produced the French Revolution with its subsequent reign of terror and the attempt by Napoleon to create a global empire. In terms of its political impact, the Enlightenment inspired Utopian socialism and the great Marxist experiment in world communism. Max Weber, the famous sociologist, wrote a famous discussion of the origin of Western capitalism. He saw its connections to Protestantism and its subsequent work ethic. I would argue that it also flows out of the emphasis on individual liberty and the rights of man that arose because of the influence of Protestant theology during this period of history. Adam Smith may not have quoted Bible verses, but his understanding of the importance of private property and economic freedom come right out the works of Luther and Calvin. In other words, our freedoms come, not from the writings of Rousseau or Voltaire, but from the grammatical-historical interpretation of the Bible that lies at the foundation of the Reformation.

How ironic that the great promise of a changed world came not from "modern" thought but from the much older "Good Book." The truths of the Gospel have the power to change lives, this has been shown to be true from the time of the Apostles all the way to our own day. The reason that this Gospel created a new world in the eighteenth century is because so many of the people of that day had been personally transformed by its message. So too in our day, God wants to make your world "new," and He will if you will put your trust in Him.

"Therefore if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!" (2 Corinthians 5:17 NIV)

Intellectuals and Liberalism

2009-08-11T18:52:00.000-07:00

The majority of faculty and administrators in our colleges and universities have liberal views and values. The result is that the educated professions such as law, education, and journalism are dominated by liberals. This has significant implications for the future of our society, and as I said in the last post, since liberals have so much influence, we need to ask about their beliefs and goals.

It is not my intent to demonize liberalism or to exagerate the consequences of its ideology. I want take an honest look at what liberals believe and their reasons for doing so. Keep in mind that it is the dominant political philosophy of the most educated among us. If the best and the brightest believe it, there must be some compelling reasons behind it. So what do liberals believe?

The modern left arose from the enlightenment, and shares its basic beliefs and values. The enlightenment was high point of rationalism or faith in the power of unaided human reason. Men like David Hume, Bertrand Russell, Richard Dawkins, and Anthony Flew (before he became a deist/theist), to name just a few, believed that reason led them to naturalism/anti-supernaturalism. Liberalism, therefore, puts a significant emphasis on secularism which must be interpreted as the removal of religion and religion's influence upon public life. The emphasis upon separation of church and state and all the attempts by progressive organizations such as the ACLU in removing all vestiges of religious (and primarily Christian) experession from public schools, court houses, and public events demonstrate their intentions and the extent of their influence upon American public life.

We have to ask the question, however. In removing religious influence from society, are we improving or harming? The supporters of secularism believe they are eliminating one of the main sources of intolerance and ignorance in the world. In their view, without religion there is no reason to hate the outsider, no reason to believe that certain actions (being gay, having an abortion) are evil, and, of course, no justification for doing harm to evildoers. But, what if this view is a myth? What if religion (and in particular Christianity) forms the very foundation of our agreed upon moral customs and values? What if religion provides the grounds for the development of conscience, tolerance, compassion, honesty, and moral concern?

It is my personal goal to spend the rest of my life speaking to this most important question. My book was written to speak to this question, and I have developed a seminar/lecture series that I call "Why Belief Matters," to answer this important question. I find it interesting that some of the early leaders of the enlightenment in Britain (possibly because of influence of Christianity upon British culture) understood that in eliminating organized religion from society they were facing the danger of moral chaos. Thomas Huxley, for exampled, argued for teaching the Bible in public schools because of the need to provide moral instruction to British children. His son, Julian, recognizing how unpopular Christianity was among enlightenment thinkers, organized the Humanist movement. Julian Huxley was responsible for the first Humanist Manifesto and influenced later versions. He was attempting to provide a secular and rationalistic substitute for the Bible and Judeo/Christian values.

The problem that liberalism faces is that rationalism cannot provide an eternal/universal standard of right and wrong, nor can it compell men to choose against self-interest and personal pleasure. If it weren't for conscience and the deep sense of moral compulsion and conviction within human nature, we would be at the mercy of purely animalistic impulses. Here's the irony, liberalism operates from a deep set of moral convictions (equality, justice, peace now, tolerance) which arise from a realm of human nature that they soundly deny and reject; the human soul. On the basis of pure rationalism, every one of their moral principles can be co-opted and rationalized away. Their convictions do not come from their minds, they come from their hearts. In a very real sense, I can say, "I rest my case."

Where Are We Headed?

2009-07-05T12:41:00.000-07:00

David Warren, writing for the Ottawa Citizen, tells us that liberalism, "has established control of the bureaucracies, the courts, the universities, and the media." While their control of Congress and the Presidency has been temporary and sporadic thanks to a public that is mostly conservative, liberals have over many years steadily increased their control of the levers of power in our society. Whether we consider ourselves conservative, liberal, or independent, it is important to ask where liberalism wants to take our society now that they have so much power.

The liberal or progressive agenda has dramatically affected Western society as seen by the fact that even the conservatives of today support without question the changes produced by the progressive influences of the early twentieth century. Much of that agenda is positive and important, and could not nor should not be abandonded. For example, only the most ultra-conservative/libertarian would argue for the abolition of social security. And no one would support the return of racial segregation. In many ways, we are all liberals now.

It is important, however, to realize that there has been another side to their agenda that has not been positive. We are facing today a whole host of very difficult social and personal problems that were created or exacerbated by progressive policies. This sad reality is made worse by the fact that liberalism's only solution to these problems is to continue doing more of the same things that caused the problem in the first place. For example, the progressive answer to our failing educational system is to spend more money on the programs, policies, and personnel that have already proven they can't compete. We spend more per-capita on education than any nation on earth and we stand far down the list on student performance. How can spending more money be the answer, when we spend so much for so little benefit now?

Harry Jaffa points to a fundamental error of progressive thought, "I was aware that I was a member of that comparatively small class, the univeristy professorate, that today is the decisive source of the ruling opinions in our country...[C]hanges generated by this class have been in the direction of denying the existence of any objective standard whatever." In other words, liberalism has given us moral relativism.

Relativism is born of two influences. The first is rationalism, which attempted to discover truth by the power of unaided human reason. According to Immanuel Kant, human reason is limited and incapable of finding the answers to life's greatest mysteries. Thus rationalism led the intellectuals of the West to the conclusion that truth, and particularly moral truth were unknowable. The second, and probably more influential factor was the desire for social and sexual liberation. No one stated the principle more clearly than Sigmund Freud. Freud spoke of our need to be free of inhibition and of the malady of repressed desires. So these two forces, moral agnosticism and sexual liberation stand behind the emphasis on moral relativism.

The loss of moral boundaries produced by relativism has been the opening of Pandora's Box for Western culture. Relativism has created moral and personal chaos of unimaginable proportions. The fact that 40% of live births in our society are to unwed mothers or that only 1/2 of the students in many of our high schools graduate is related to the fact that relativism is the predominate view of progressive intellectuals in our society today.

Does reason lead inevitably to relativism? Only if we take a very narrow empirical and naturalistic view of the world. If we are open to a larger, metaphysical view, we find that reason
must account for human conscience and evidence for natural law confirmed by thousands of years of human experience. Using reason this way leads one to conclude that moral values are very real and objectively true. Sadly, the chaos unleashed by realtivism becomes one more piece of evidence for the belief in a universal set of objective moral principles.

Relativism is just one of the tragic errors of modern progressivism. In future posts, we will examine other aspects of the liberal agenda and their impact on our society.

Teenage Abortions

2009-05-24T12:32:00.000-07:00

The Daily Mail recently reported that of 40,000 teen age pregnancies in the U.K. last year, 20,000 or 1/2 ended in abortions. They reported the level of acceptance of abortion among British teens by telling of one young woman who had four abortions before she turned 20. This is a breath-taking statistic, because of its reflection upon these young women's view of abortion and child-birth. Whatever we are doing in the process of educating our children and preparing them for responsible adulthood, these statistics should tell us that it isn't working.

By the way, some might ask why we should be concerned about British young people? All Western societies are connected, and the European societies are "ahead" of American society in the influence of secularism and enlightenment thought. The same forces that gave rise to this abortion tragedy in the U.K. are at work here in the United States. In many ways, Europe is the "canary in the coal mine" for us in the U.S.

Speaking of forces that are at work in this process, the Daily Mail quoted Ann Furedi who works for the British Pregnancy Advisory Service. The BPAS was established in 1999 to "reduce teen pregnancy by 1/2 in 10 years." The service provides contraception, sex ed programs, and pregnancy counsel. (They didn't even come close to achieving their goal, teen pregnancy increased in the decade.) Ms. Furedi called the tragedy of 20,000 abortions for British teens, "a positive sign" that these teens don't feel bad about having an abortion.

No society can succeed that does not prepare its young people for adult responsibility. The reduction of teen pregnancy is a proper goal for a modern society, but it must be part of a larger social and educational program of endorsing traditional marriage and the family. One of the tragedies of the modern era, reflected by the comment by Ms. Furedi, is that the family, the one institution that has proven to be most beneficial to the happiness and success of individuals and communities has been denied and denigrated. Thus, we want to reduce teen pregnancy while opposing traditional values. If we believe it is "positive sign" for young women to voluntarily terminate their pregnancies, what are we saying about those young women's view of children and child-raising? Are their babies a gift to be cherished, and loved, or a burden to be avoided? We must ask, seriously, what kind of parents will these girls become?

I couple this with a further statistic that does not bode well for Western civilization. Many young couples on both sides of the Atlantic are foregoing marriage, and simply living together. Secondly, large numbers of both married and unmarried couples are choosing to remain childless. The implications are that marriage and the family could become an anachronism. Some commentators see this as leading to the death of, at least, Western Europe.

In the end, we must affirm that morality and a moral life are essential for a healthy society. We, by denying these moral values, are weakening the very moral and social fabric that holds us together. What is worse is that each of these young women who aborted their babies is a personal tragedy (not to deny the consequences in the lives of the young men involved in these relationsnips). No society can afford to teach their children that marriage, birth, and family are out of date and unimportant. We will be left as a culture with no future, and we will be increasing, not decreasing the personal pain that will mark so many people's experience of relationships and life.

The Decline of the Church?

2009-03-31T18:27:00.000-07:00

Michael Spencer wrote a provocative essay, "The Coming Evangelical Collapse," which was published in the Christian Science Monitor on March 9, 2009. Mr Spencer predicts that the number of evangelical Christians in the United States will decline by 50% in the coming years. I profoundly hope that he is wrong just for the sake of the damage that will ensue for our culture. The New Atheists such as Richard Dawkins may want a world free of religion, but they have never lived in one. The only recent examples we have of "religion free" societies are Stalin's Russian, or Mao's China, or worse yet, Pol Pot's Cambodia. They were not places of live and let live freedom or tolerance, they were cultural gulags. The less Christianity is allowed a place of influence in society, the less moral and the more brutal it becomes.

I understand why Mr. Spencer made this prediction. He correctly sees the rising opposition to Christianity in Western societies. Atheism is on the march, and secular humanist organizations are becoming much more aggressive in their opposition to all things religious. Secularists are putting signs on buses and in subway stations promoting atheism and opposing religion. Several books defending atheism have been best sellers in the past year, and of course, Bill Maher did an anti-religious movie entitled, Religulous.

Opposition to Christianity has existed since at least the time of the Apostles, and of itself, is not the problem. The problem is that today, the evangelical church is ill prepared for it. As Mr. Spencer writes, "We evangelicals have failed to pass on to our young people an orthodox form of faith that can take root and survive the secular onslaught." I am afraid that statistics support his statement. Ministries that prepare young Christians for college regularly point to studies that show that at least 50% of students who say they are Christians as freshmen lose their faith by their senior year. The growing unpopularity of Christianity in the larger society will only increase this terrible problem.

It is this very problem that contributed to the writing of my book. What is so sad to me is that the evidence for the truthfulness of the Gospel is so strong. Yet we seem to be losing the battle, primarily because we don't know how strong the historical, philosophical, experiential, and even the scientific evidence is for the validity of Christianity. I would hope that every Sunday school program and youth group in every church in this country would incorporate a basic apologetics course. We must prepare our children for the attacks upon their faith that they will surely face.

It is, of course, not just an intellectual or educational issue. The strength of our faith is based on our real experiential knowledge of the living God. We must also teach our children to love Jesus and to know Jesus, to have a living faith born of the Holy Spirit's presence in their lives. We and they must be people who know the reality of prayer, of worship, and of the real presence of the Lord in our lives. My prayer is that God will move on our society in this generation and upset these trend lines toward secularism. In the end this is the only real solution to this problem.

Mister President you're scaring me

2009-03-10T10:42:00.000-07:00

I don't mean to be an alarmist, but I found our President's decision to fund and expand embryonic stem cell research using federal tax dollars truly frightening. First, he told us that in doing so, he was defending "science" based on "facts and not ideology." Those are strong words. He is in effect, demonizing the former administration and his present political opponents as anti-science and pro ideology (another word for lies and propaganda). One must be careful in how one defines the people on the other side of an argument. Can the people who have deep moral misgivings about destroying human embryos to produce stem cells be written off as ideologues? Does their opposition to this kind of research really make them anti-science? As a Christian, I found his dismissive attitude toward my concerns about the sanctity of human life profoundly disturbing. He claimed to be a uniter and the post-partisan candidate. On this issue, he has proven to be the great polarizer and as deeply partisan as any leader we have ever had.

In defending his action in this way, he is elevating science to an almost sacred status. Because his opponents are opposing science, they are opposing all that is good, true, and beneficial. Science becomes something that should never be questioned or opposed. To be fair, he did acknowledge that there were legitimate moral concerns behind these issues, but he assured us that the science would take place under the guidance of our "humanity and conscience." The problem is these assurances aren't very re-assuring. A great many terrible things have been done in the name of "science." The forced sterilizations that resulted from the "science" of eugenics is just one example. One must be careful about invoking science. Science has been a wonderful tool for the benefit of all mankind, but it has also produced weapons of mass destruction. We have used science both to cure and to kill. We must be careful in giving it free reign because it is morally neutral. It will kill or cure depending on those controlling it. So we must ask the question who controls science and to what standards will they and it be held accountable. It appears that President Obama is releasing it to the control of the scientists themselves, but this, it seems to me is a dangerous choice. Science, in the last 100 years at least, has been enlisted in the service of methodological naturalism and the implicit denial of any religious or spiritual reality. I know of no moral system that can be built upon naturalism except a rationalistic utilitarianism. Even with the addition of "humanity and conscience," utilitarianism gives us no protection from the unthinkable and the unspeakable.

Finally, we must think long and hard before allowing human beings to be defined as just biological organisms. At that point, we have given up our humanity and even our conscience, since these can easily be explained away in biological and naturalistic terms. If we are just organisms, even the constraints the President imposed are gone, and we are left at the mercy of pure utilitarianism. Already, we see the fruit of this view. We may want to write him off as an eccentric, but Dr. James Watson, the co-discoverer of the DNA molecule, was a proponent of the "new eugenics." He openly endorsed human genetic engineering in 1998 and asked three telling questions that science can not answer, "Why shouldn't we do it? What's wrong with it" and "Who's telling us not to do it?" On a PBS special not long ago, he advocated for the mercy killing of the insane and the retarded. Dr. Watson was not crazy, read what he says, watch the videos in which he defends his policies. He is certainly rational in the sense that he is consistent with his naturalistic and atheistic worldview. The problem is that science as we define it in our culture today, has no answer for his three questions. And if we make the issue of Embryonic stem cells, which is really about how we define human life, merely a biological question, we have no answer for the three questions either.

Be very afraid.

Words Words Words...

2009-02-17T18:48:00.000-08:00

Last weekend was the annual L'Abri conference in Rochester. The power of L'Abri is its capacity to bring the Gospel to bear on the relevant issues of our time, and this year's conference was no different. One of the workshops that caught my eye was a session that covered the topic of cynicism in contrast to the message of hope and change in the election of Barak Obama. The speaker referred to the prevalent cynicism of the 90's as expressed by television programs like Seinfeld and Simpsons. I have noticed this move to the "dark side" by the youth culture of the last 20 years and have been very concerned by it. It was this emphasis on cynicism that drew me to the workshop.

What I wasn't expecting was the discussion of the Obama phenomenon and the appeal of his message of hope and change to this same generation that seemed mired in cynicism. Why would this skeptical and critical generation be drawn to President Obama and his optimistic message?

There are two possible explanations that come to mind; first, people (even cynical people) long for hope. When one combines President Obama's message with his demeanor, his race, his background, and his skill as a communicator we shouldn't be surprised at the numbers of people who are attracted to him. Maybe it was the cynicism in me, but I kept asking what specific things he was going to change, and therefore, what should I be hopeful about? It seems to me that this is a phenomenon similar to the New Age Movement or existentialism. It is the (likely unconscious) rejection of the rational (which produces cynicism) for the embrace of the irrational. Thus the "hope" that Obama is tapping into is the hope for hope. It is an emotion and a longing based on people's trust in what they consider to be the outstanding character of their new president. He is a remarkable man, but I am afraid that many are destined to be disappointed, simply because one man, even with the power of presidency, can't provide the change or hope we all long for.

A second possible explanation is the power of words. I have noticed over the years that political liberalism in the West has been very adept at co opting words. A recent example was a liberal church group providing asylum to an illegal immigrant in a church in California. Above the sanctuary of the church the group had hung a banner explaining their cause. The banner declared, "We seek Justice." The problem is, they were not seeking justice at all. Justice is the prevention and punishment of evil and the reward of the good. When they assist someone in breaking the law, they are not seeking "justice." I know, they can consider the law unjust, but they are using the term to justify illegal action nonetheless, and thus they are misusing the term for the sake of political manipulation.

It seems to me, as Christians, we need to be careful with words. Not only in how we use them, but discerning in how we understand them. The grand manipulators of history have always been primarily manipulators of language. They have known how to use the power of words to persuade their followers. I am not accusing President Obama of being manipulative, I think he himself believes he can initiate a mass movement that will bring about beneficial change to American society. I view him as part of the larger body of Western liberalism that has mistaken terminology and intention for pragmatic reality. So liberalism can claim to be concerned for the poor, and to be working to eliminate poverty, by creating programs that lead to welfare dependency and cyclical poverty. Or liberalism in America can proclaim its concern about education, yet have created an educational system that is more expensive and less effective than almost any in the world.

It seems to me that the problem is primarily one of definitions and understanding of truth. The great appeal of liberalism in the West are its ideals. Ideals that we all should support and even long for. Who does not want world peace? Who would not want equality and justice for all? Who does not want the elimination of poverty? On the basis of these ideals, liberalism has replaced the church (and Christianity) as the moral leader of our society. Liberalism, for at least the past 50 years, has defined the issues of good and bad in our society. In fact, their moral leadership has been a mixed bag, they were for the most part correct in dealing with race and racial prejudice, but are sadly mistaken in their views of sex and marriage. The vast majority of their diagnosis of our problems and their prescribed solutions are incorrect and will not acheive their goals.

As followers of Jesus, I donot believe it is our job to try and restore Christianity to its place of moral leadership. We exist now, and probably will until Jesus returns, as a counter-culture. Jesus calls us to be salt and light to a world filled with darkness and decay. We also are called to be "wise as serpents," that is able to clearly see what is going on in the world around us. Therefore, we can and should evaluate the "solutions" our political leaders put before us, and based upon our biblical understanding of things support or oppose them. We also need to live out our faith before our fellowmen in such a way that they see the glory of the Gospel. Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Those aren't just words. As we walk with Him through this world, our lives will exhibit Life, Truth, and the one and only Way to the knowledge of God. Jesus called us to the greatest priviledge a person can have, "live in Me and I in you" (John 15:5), a personal relationship with God. May each of us, from this day onward, be living expressions of this realtiy.

Thoughts on Postmodernism

2009-01-23T08:56:00.000-08:00

Having just finished attending a series of Wednesday evening studies on the subject of postmodernism at our church, I want to put down my thoughts on the impact of this philosophy on our society. Postmodernism comes out of the enlightenment's skepticism about ultimate truth. One of its foundational principles is that there are no "meta-narratives;" a meta-narrative is an overarching explanation for all reality. One of the world religions would be a meta-narrative, because it claims to describe God, the human condition, moral values, and the final destiny of everything and everyone. Since postmodernism says there are no meta-narratives, the truths and values that shape our lives are a product of the culture in which we live. And, in a very cynical assessment of particularly Western culture, those who have been historically in power have crafted those "truths" and "values" for personal benefit and to retain their power. This evaluation of the beliefs of a culture is called "deconstructing." Thus in deconstructing Western culture, the postmodern view is that it favors white heterosexual males to the detriment of all others. This has created a deep seated suspicion, if not outright rejection of traditional values, not to mention traditional roles and institutions in society.

As a result of postmodernism in academic circles (namely just about every college and university in the land) we have Women's Studies Departments, African-American Studies, GLBT Studies, and so on. Each of these departments are developing their own versions of history, often not to discover the facts or significance of history, but to advance their agenda and defend their previously accepted values. As well, no small part of their efforts are to gain political power and influence in order to achieve their agenda in the larger society. They feel justified in doing so because they believe they are overthrowing an oppressive system that, like everything else, is only one group's "version" of history anyway. In our relativistic age, if everything is true then in actual fact, nothing is true. Postmodernism leads to the most cynical of all conclusions; "might makes right." The people who can accumulate the most power have the right to make the rules and set the agenda. And gaining power is the end justified by nearly any means.

This has frightening implications for the future of politics and governance in our society. I have begun to wonder, if some of the heated rhetoric, exaggerated accusations, and apparent personal hatred that we see in politics today are the beginnings of postmodernism's influence. I don't believe we have crossed the line yet, but I fear we are headed in the direction of a postmodern dividing up into political "tribes" and the fearsome world of political correctness that we see on so many of our college campuses.

It would seem to me that we must be more dilligent than ever to explain and defend our traditional judeo-christian values. And the best way to explain and defend them is to live them out. Jesus called us the "light of the world;" by living out Christian values we show their reality and validity to an increasingly skeptical postmodern world.

Facing Uncertain Times

2009-01-12T18:59:00.000-08:00

Even as people of faith, we must confess that much of life and its circumstances appear shrouded in mystery. We really do, as Paul wrote, "see through a glass darkly." In good times, we make plans with a sense of hope and expectation. In hard times (which appears to be on our horizon), hope and expectation get replaced by anxiety and skepticism. These reactions may be natural but are they right?

In particular, how do we deal with the fear and discouragement that may accompany the economic downturn we are facing? These emotions are the result of both not knowing what the future holds and of imagining worst case scenarios. God told us (and Israel) why He takes us out into the "wilderness." First, He wants to humble us (Deut. 8:2). Humility is one of the essentials of a life with God. One of the repeated principles of Scripture is that God resists the proud and gives grace to the humble. Humility is the key to experiencing grace. So in the face of these difficult times, admit your need and call upon Him for grace.

God also used the wilderness to reveal the heart condition of Israel and the condition of their character (Deut. 8:2b). Our greatest needs are not material, they are spiritual. God wants to strengthen our character and purge our lives of those distractions, attachments, and omissions that keep us from being all He wants us to be. God, therefore, will threaten or even weaken the material in order to strengthen the spiritual.

If you are in the wilderness or fear you maybe soon, remember that one of God's great promises is the promise of His presence. "I will never leave you nor forsake you," He said. Cling to Him and His promises, and allow the uncertainty and the difficulty to move you closer to Him. You may find that He is taking you "through" the wilderness to bring you in to the Land of Promise.

Who Are You?

2008-12-31T12:35:00.000-08:00

As we face the prospect of a new year, it is important that we remember who we are. You and I are unique. No one else has the same combination of capabilities, experiences, and opportunities that you and I do. And as Mordacai said to Esther, "Who knows whether you have come to the kingdom for such a time as this?" (Esther 4:14) As one who believes that God has a plan for each life, I would apply Mordacai's statement to each of us. God wants to use you this year to make a difference in your family, your workplace, your church, and maybe even your world.

In order for that to happen, we need to first look at our opportunities. How can we make a difference in our families, in our friendships, in our work, in our hobbies, and even in our problems this year? All of these things are opportunities for us to let our light shine, and even to walk out God's will for our lives. Remember, "For it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to do His good pleasure." (Phil. 2:13)

Secondly, we need to look into our hearts. What good thing do we really want to do? In fact, we've wanted to do it for years, but never find the time or the opportunity. Well, now is the time. Because time is something you make. Set a date to start, and plan out blocks of time to do the thing you've dreamed of doing, and then really start. Believe me, as you start to do what you've deeply desired to do you will discover an energy and a strength you've never known before. You are really doing His good pleasure, after all. And as for the opportunities, they lie right before you, so take advantage of them, and use them as they were meant to be used. Creativity is almost never making something entirely "from scratch," but is rather, taking something we already know and improving it or adding to it. God may have already given you the tools you need to accomplish your dream.

One final word of caution, we make plans but the fulfillment of those plans are out of our hands. So be patient, but also be resolute. And one more thing, delight yourself in God. Those desires, those dreams that you've had for years, they were placed there by Him. They are part of His will for your life. So, "Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart."

May 2009 be a "Delightful" year for you and yours.

Making Sense of the Senseless

2008-12-21T14:19:00.000-08:00

The recent tragedy in Mumbai, India reminds us of the terrible potential for evil in the human heart. That ten young men could be induced to kill men, women, and children in a deliberate attempt to create terror and instability, seems incomprehensible, particularly to us who live in the relative peace and security of the West. Yet kill they did and with a vengeance for the perceived crimes of the Christians, Jews, and Hindus.

And that brings us to the irony of it all. The terrorists claim that their actions are justified by the terrible injustices their people have endured whether during the Crusades, the era of colonialism, the imposition of the state of Israel upon Arab Palestine, the battles over Kashmir, and the recent wars in Iraq and Afganistan. They have a long list of offenses that are used to fuel their rage against the infidels. These perceived injustices do more than fuel anger, they enable a sense of moral outrage, and allowed these young men to believe they were serving God through the slaughter of innocents.

It seems to me there are two important implications to be taken from this tragedy. First, we see again that evil is a corruption or distortion of the good. That the moral indignation connected to injustice could be used to bring about the murder of over 140 people shows the depravity and deceitfulness of sin. This crime goes further, it shows that evil is diabolical and demonic. As Jesus said, "The Thief (Satan) comes only to steal, kill, and destroy." (John 10: 10) There is a capacity for evil and violence shown here that transcends nature, animals kill to satisfy hunger, men kill to satisfy hatred or worse. Thus, while human beings possess conscience and a moral sense, they also demonstrate the capacity for cruelty, heartlessness, and unspeakable violence. In the end, we see man's spiritual nature both in our connection to the moral and holy and in our connection to the cruel and the diabolical.

The second implication, for me, is the tragic connection of these actions to religious belief. God is love, His ultimate desire is a world where "They will beat their swords into plowshares." (Isaiah 2:4) He sent His Son into the world to break the power of sin within the human heart. How then can He be blamed as the inspiration for these unspeakable actions in India? It really shows the importance of theology; what you believe about God; His nature and character. When these young men cried out, "God is great!" while spraying bullets toward their victims, they did not have in mind the God revealed in the Old and New Testament. When John wrote that "God so loved the world" (John 3:16), he was speaking of the entire world; the men of "every tribe and tongue and people and nation" of Revelations 7:9. God, as revealed in the Bible, has extended His love to Jew and Gentile, to Christian and non-Christian, to the religious and the irreligious, and even to muslims and infidels. These events show how important it is for us to not just believe "in" God, but to believe the right things about God.

One final irony in all of this, is that the event that compelled Jesus to request that God "glorify" (demonstrate its greatness) His name, and that invoked the response, "I have glorified it and will glorify it again." (John 12:28) was the Cross. In Jesus' death for our sins do we see most clearly and powerfully the greatness of God. He truly is the God who longs to save, who longs to set the captives free from something as powerful and diabolical as sin. It was Jesus and His sacrifice that more than any other thing declares for all the world to hear that "God is Great!" In this we see again the wonder of the Gospel, that the greatness of God and indeed the justice of God is revealed in the Lamb of God, slain to rescue us from sin. This Christmas may we celebrate the greatness of God, marveling that this God entered our world to rescue its inhabitants from the power of evil and the evil one.

Update on Pay Pal

2008-12-18T09:23:00.000-08:00

There was a glitch in my pay pal account that prevented visitors to my site from being able to use the pay pal button to buy a book. Thankfully the issue has been resolved and the pay pal button should work now.

Please accept my apologies for this inconvenience. And thanks for checking out my book.

The Book

2008-11-08T06:55:00.000-08:00

On Wednesday, November 5 my book, Can We Know? was bound. Many thanks to all the people at Bethany Press International who contributed to the printing and binding of the book.

It was very gratifying to hold the book in my hands for the first time. The process has taken many years and seeing the finished product was a happy moment.

My prayer now is that the book will make a real difference in people's lives; strengthening their faith, drawing them nearer to God, and even enabling those who don't know Him to find Him. If other benefits result, such as deepening concern about the condition of our culture or the need to resist the onslaught to secularism, so much the better. The matter is now out of my hands, the baton has been tossed to the reader and to the Lord; may much blessing ensue.