Beyond The Rim...

With the Republican Convention on television, all over the blogosphere, talk radio, and most newspapers for the next three days, I am being bombarded with words, spoken and written, in speeches and commentaries, in arguments and counter arguments, from everyone with a means to say something. With all that verbiage in mind, I want to narrow my focus to the words, on what they mean, and how their usage influences the message, often without our actually noticing it.

Years ago I attended a conference in which the discussion of the writings of Alexander Solzhenitsyn figured prominently. Alexander wrote books which contained long descriptive sections. The reason, which was the accepted position of the speakers, was that Alexander was trying to reclaim the Russian language from the paramnesia inflicted by the communists on a once proud literary heritage. He had to teach his readers what many words really meant, so he could tie his message together with that of historic Russian literature, not with the hijacked distortions of communist propaganda.

As Christians and Biblically centered people, we should readily understand the importance of the meaning of things and of the words used to describe them. Alexander’s problem and concern should be our problem and concern as we approach the scriptures, especially now with the ever-proliferating and meaning shifting translations that pour out of publishing houses by the truckload. The Bible Gateway currently lists 19 translations in English. The Bible Research site has a regularly updated listing of those available online. One new “translation” (Good As New: A Radical Retelling of the Scriptures) has caused extensive debate as it seems to turn the commonly understood meaning of numerous Biblical passages on their head.

However, it is not just Russians reading Solzhenitsyn, or Christians trying to figure out the meaning of their scriptures who have to be concerned about the meaning of things and the words used to describe them. Politics has always been an arena where verbal slight of hand is an art form. To some degree we expect it, so we parse the pronouncements with a grain of salt. What has made that more difficult in recent years is the devolution of much of the established fourth estate into propagandists, advocating an agenda rather than reporting on events. (see Media Matters: A Devil’s Bargain by Frederick Turner) This they do by many means, not the least of which is their choice of words, if not their outright corruption.

Ok, where are you going with this, you ask? An article in the New York Times is what got all of this started. It was a story on Iraqi radio (requires registration) and it focused on Radio Dijla, Arabic for Tigris, which is the first station whose only programming is talk radio. It is one of the most popular stations in Baghdad and is on air seventeen hours a day. The however, near the end of the piece, is this extraordinary statement, given by Majid Salim, the host. He had asked his audience what they thought of the insurgency causing such problems throughout Iraq.

We asked them, is it terrorism or is it resistance,” he said. “A very large proportion, almost 100 percent, said terrorism. They did not like it. [emphasis added]

Why is this little anecdotal survey important? Because it belies the impression given by most of the media, who call the perpetrators everything but terrorists. They are freedom fighters, resistance, insurgents, rebels, or other words along that line of thinking. Michael Moore, well known “disingenuous filmmaker, at least according to John McCain, has called them patriots, likening them to our founding fathers. So which is it and who has an agenda in their choice of words? My money is on the Iraqi callers as the ones getting it right and I will let you decide for yourself who are the agenda peddlers.

Now more than ever “caveat emptor” applies to everything we hear and read and it behooves us to do our best to step back and engage our critical faculties before we are caught in the spin cycle. For some additional thoughts on this subject you might be interested in my previous article Verbal Manipulation.

You cannot be successful in effectively allocating your limited time if you are not willing to prune the vine of demands that are continually made on your life. As limited beings there is only so much we can do and some things are just more important than others. The important point is that only some things advance the essential meaning or purpose of our lives.

A well traveled Biblical image is that of the vine keeper pruning his vines, removing the deadwood (non-productive branches) so that the available nourishment will be focused on the remaining productive branches. Vineyards know that is the way to better wine and to take that image into the arena of human aspirations, to a better life. However, the Biblical image of pruning, as applied to the lives of believers, admits that the process is inherent painful. It hurts to let go of what we have invested in, even if that investment is draining our resources with no real redeeming purpose.

With grape vines the choice is pretty simple. The purpose of a grape vine is to produce grapes to make wine. Anything on the vine that diminishes that purpose is essentially deadwood and needs to be pruned. Our lives are not so straightforward, since defining a workable purpose for an individual life is inherently a complicated task. It is not for naught that a favorite question many adults ask and keep asking themselves is “What do I want to be when I grow up?” despite the fact that they may be long past the age where the question should normally apply.

One of the central philosophical and religious questions of those inhabiting our post-modern age is what should I do with my life? What will give me meaning? What will satisfy me? How can I realize my full potential. Those questions presuppose the right and expectation of individual choice; that I can decide, I can determine what I am to be. Those are thoroughly modern questions, aided and abetted by the fluidness of our social structures and the exceptional opportunities provided by the dominant capitalistic economic system. There is a predominant belief, specifically voiced in America, that describes the ability of anyone to become anything they want to be, to go from bottle washer to President, to leave behind rags and rise to riches by the sheer force of their own sustained effort. The choice of our destiny is considered to be ours to make and if one has the essential health and mental acuity, any limits on our accomplishments are mostly viewed as self-imposed. We think that these questions are meant to be answered only by the internal desires and will of the individual.

The interesting thing about the Christian tradition is that it believes that these questions are not internally determined. Instead, the Bible argues that it is God who directs the course of everyone’s life. A fundamentally Christian idea, gleaned from the framework of the whole of scripture but best said in Proverbs 16:9 “In his heart a man plans his course, but the Lord determines his steps,” was made popular by Thomas à Kempis (1380–1471) in The Imitation of Christ, Book One, Chapter 19 where he says, “Man proposes, while God disposes.”

James in his epistle also adds strength to that idea in 4:13-16

Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast and brag. All such boasting is evil.

With that in mind, we as Christian are continually brought back to the necessity of pruning. However, it seems to me that a Christian should make every effort to consider the steps the Lord has determined for him, before applying a shear to his branches. If God is indeed directing our course then that course includes what to prune. A fair question then is it any easier for Christians to determine their God-given direction in life than it is for secularists to determine their private inner-directed course? Judging by my life and that of most of my Christian and non-Christian friends I honestly don’t think so. While there are some in both camps who seem singularly directed and assured, it appears to me that on average Christian angst is every bit as complicated and real as secularist angst. Yet, I believe that there is one significant difference. The Christian at least believes in the possibility of finding an external answer, a God-given direction. The secularist must come up with his own solution and even if he gets advice from those around him, it is only advice, and as such subject to the whims and vagaries of all human expression. In the end it is still a decision he alone has to arrive at.

This thought process is important to me since for several years now I have been working at pruning the vine of my life and one thing above all others I have learned from this experience, that this pruning is an exceptionally difficult task. I don’t think I am unique in this revelation. Despite that, one thing keeps me hopeful. As a Christian I look to the promises of Scripture that assure me that God will “direct my steps” and if I ask He will give me the wisdom I ask for. So, if I can learn to get out of my own way, the wind of the Spirit will fill my sails and the rudder of God’s providence will send me in the direction of His chosen course. And, anything that inhibits progress in that direction will need to be pruned.

Now let me see, what seems to be blocking the wind?

Do you know a geek? Are you yourself a geek? The common image of geeks is of an intelligent and technically competent, though socially backward, often serious backward, individual. I been thinking about geeks and I think I have hit upon the source of the geek problem. Since I am somewhat a geek (really a nerd, which is a geek with a semblance of a life) I offer this insight to other geeks (and nerds) out there.

I think the problem stems from the uncontrollability and irrationality of most social situations, especially when related to family, or in the case of male-female relationships, potential family. Blaise Pascal, a 17th century French and Christian philosopher, once said, “The heart has its reasons, of which reason knows nothing.” I would like to add that families also have their reasons and sometimes reason has nothing to do with it. There you have it. Geeks need reasons for everything. It is their raison d’être, their reason to be.

You see geeks (and nerds to a lesser degree) flower in technological arenas where they can extend a sense of control over the environment around them. Those environments are reasonable. Early geeks waxed poetic about their first computer program that got the big hulking mainframe to do what they told it to do and not only that but to do it EXACTLY as instructed. If for some reason it didn’t work, there was a logical reason, either because of a mistake by the geek (fixable) or due to a bug in the system (something not your fault but a problem you could work around). Everything was reducible to an understandable set of parameters. However, people and social relationships are not.

People and relationships don’t respond consistently or reliably from a programmable or reasonable frame of reference. As living systems, they exhibit serious chaotic tendencies that surpass even the most complex chaos theories imaginable. They have severely limited predictability and as result, what worked last time might not work this time or may even produce a completely opposite result. People and relationships require one to be comfortable with chaos, to accept an extremely large standard deviation. They demand that you give up a great deal of your control over the situation. It is so much easer for geeks to retreat back to the worlds they understand and, more importantly, can manage, the worlds of technology.

Part of the growth in my own life and what keeps me from real geekdom, is my growing acceptance of an almost manageable level of chaos in my life. Notice I said almost manageable. Recent brain studies have noted that men and women’s brains are radically different. Men have a much more difficult time processing multiple simultaneous inputs and being comfortable with apparent informational chaos. So, part of some men’s tendency to geekdom is biological, and to some extent all men have some geeky characteristics. Hey, tools of all sorts, which most men love, are at their root means of exerting control, of reducing variables, of helping us to focus on the solvable or controllable within the chaos before us.

This growth in my life was brought home to me this weekend by a family problem (don’t we all have them?). Like the man that I am I attempted to exert a little control over the chaos. Notice I said “a little". Gone are the days when I try to absolutely control the situations around me. I am now leaving that to God, since it is way beyond, light millennia beyond, my meager abilities. Now I just try to bring a little order into my small area of chaos and I do it with a much larger tolerance for failure, or to state it positively and somewhat geekily, with an acceptance of a larger standard deviation than I previously allowed.

That brings me to America, which in some ways is the land of geeks. How much of the disconnect between us and the rest of the world, both Europe and Asia, can be traced to our incipient geekiness? I wonder.

There is a war breaking out all over our culture. It is not between Islamists and defenders of the West though that war is real. It is not between Democrats and Republicans though sadly that war appears to be real also. No, it is between the former gatekeepers of information and expression and the new media. You can see this war in the John Kerry versus The Swift Boat Veterans For Truth issue. But you can also see it in many other places beyond politics. You can see it in art and music and religion among others, wherever the old gatekeepers try to hold sway.

Let me give you a few examples. Mike Wretched of the Belmont Club, in his article Battle in the Clouds discusses how the old gatekeepers of news and opinion have approached their recent Waterloo.

The Mainstream Media responded to accusations by Swiftvets that Kerry had misrepresented his combat record in Vietnam by creating their own alternative news object, whose methods were restricted to OutrageAgainstBush( ) and SympathyForKerry( ), with read only properties Responsible and Respectable. They could no longer block the data, but they could still transform it.

Yet for good or ill, the genie is out of the bottle. Before the Gutenberg printing press men knew the contents of the Bible solely through the prism of the professional clergy, who could alone afford the expensively hand copied books and who exclusively interpreted it. But when technology made books widely available, men could read the sacred texts for themselves and form their own opinions. And the world was never the same again. [emphasis added]

Yes, the genie is out of the bottle and we will never go home to the old way of doing things. It all began with Gutenberg. As milblogger (military blogger) Laughing Wolf points out.

Just as the secular and religious nobility were justly frightened by Gutenberg’s press, so too do the Old Media see themselves frightened and threatened by the new press of the Internet…

Just as the press provided each family with a Bible to read and interpret for themselves, the new “press” that is the internet theoretically provides each individual with access to the source of information flow. It reduces the number of gatekeepers effectively to one; and, unlike past technology, there can be multiple sources to view the source. In this way, if one gatekeeper blocks or distorts, then other access will clearly show this.

And this revolution is not just on blogs discussing politics and war; it has spread to the arts. Fred Turner, writing for The New Bohemia said in his article New Media, Old Beauty.

Readers familiar with this site will already be aware that a new artistic ferment is in the air. They know that exciting artists in many forms have emerged in the wake of the decline of modernism into postmodernism, that they have begun to meet and exchange insights across artistic disciplines. They know that the artistic establishment is trying to downplay or co-opt the new consciousness. They know that the new arts possess aesthetic, cultural, and philosophical ideas that render much of the theory and vocabulary of modernism and postmodernism obsolete. They know that the riches of the artistic past are being rediscovered as artists of all kinds teach themselves–or find older mentors to teach them–the classic crafts of drawing, melody, poetic meter, storytelling, dramatic mimesis, humane architecture…

The problem is an old one: the gatekeepers. They kept out the French Impressionists, they kept out the early Romantics, they burned early Renaissance humanists at the stake, they got rid of Jesus and Socrates. How, then, do we break through the barriers that separate the people’s artists from the people?

Fred’s answer is interesting.

But–and here is the point–when the times have called out loudly enough for new media, human technology has often responded with a revolutionary new instrument of communication, free from the coercive control of the gatekeepers, an “underground” “beneath the radar” form of publication and discussion that becomes the carrier of a new culture.

He then goes on to explain that it is not just the new medium that is significant; it is not just the Internet itself.

It took at least a hundred years for the presses of Gutenberg and Caxton to begin to fulfill their promise of radical transformation in society: until then they merely speeded the work of hand copying, and made pornography and sacred Latin texts available for their respective clienteles. Many more years had to pass before such legal, economic, and conceptual instruments as copyright, publishing houses, critical periodicals, bookstores, public libraries, freedom of the press, libel laws and so on would permit the profitable literary mass market that nurtured the works of Dickens, Emerson, Tennyson, the Brontës, Longfellow, Balzac, Hugo, Dostoyevsky, and Hemingway. As with printing, we must invent new institutions and new habits of life to put the internet to its best cultural use.

The whole article is well worth reading for examining the issues surrounding the “new Gutenberg press” that the Internet promises to be. I could go on, talking about MP3s and how they are changing the face of music and how technology and the Internet is allowing bands to spread their music outside of the traditional music companies, but you get the idea, the genie is truly out of the bottle. You are reading this, so of course you understand.

May God bless your day and may all of us who approach this new power remember the words of Peter’s (Spiderman) uncle, “With great power comes great responsibility.”

Matt Wretched of the Belmont Club, one of the most, if not the most, insightful blogs analyzing military issues and other insights related to the War on Terror, yesterday wrote one of the most stinging indictments of the Democratic Party and what it has done to John Kerry that I have ever seen. Titled Both Sides Now, his post ends with the following:

But the Democratic Party decided to package this man, who was decent on his own terms, in the most dishonest possible way: to use his Vietnam service to deodorize the monstrous fraud at the heart of their own platform. Kerry’s problems with Swiftvets are not because his credentials as a warrior are insufficient. Rather they are because no credentials are sufficient to foist this bait-and-switch on the American electorate without exciting adverse comment.

If any proof were needed that the Sixties were dead, the subterfuge of the Democratic Party would be Exhibit A. Instead of running under their own colors, or barring that, changing them, they have decided to sail beneath a false flag, as if under a cloud of shame. That in itself is tacit admission that they can no longer walk in their own guise; and what is worse that they cannot look themselves in the face, nor go into battle daring to win nor willing to lose in their own name, as is the mark of men.

“…as is the mark of men.” Matt is essentially saying that the Democrats have ceased to be men and have become something less, something without the honor and dignity that men gain by being willing to stand up and be counted for what they believe, because that is the right thing to do, not because it polls well or gives a good spin, but because that is what you are. Read the whole article.

Ben Stein is three years older than I am, but the circles in which he has run are light years from mine. He is a writer and actor who visits with Samuel L. Jackson and Warren Beatty and I once ate with John Stott and another time sat at a table with Malcom Muggeridge. However, despite our social and cultural differences, the circles in which our thoughts roam are surprisingly close together. In his closing article for E! Online, How Can Someone Who Lives in Insane Luxury Be a Star in Today’s World?, Ben said that Hollywood actors and celebrities were not really stars; they “can be interesting, nice people, but they are not heroes to me any longer.” Instead, following in the tradition of the post 9/11 elevation of those who lay their life on the line for our safety, he said that police, firemen, soldiers, and others performing similar duties are the real stars. Some examples of real stars to him are:

A real star is the soldier of the 4th Infantry Division who poked his head into a hole on a farm near Tikrit, Iraq. He could have been met by a bomb or a hail of AK-47 bullets. Instead, he faced an abject Saddam Hussein and the gratitude of all of the decent people of the world. Some examples from his article include:

A real star is the U.S. soldier who was sent to disarm a bomb next to a road north of Baghdad. He approached it, and the bomb went off and killed him.

A real star, the kind who haunts my memory night and day, is the U.S. soldier in Baghdad who saw a little girl playing with a piece of unexploded ordnance on a street near where he was guarding a station. He pushed her aside and threw himself on it just as it exploded. He left a family desolate in California and a little girl alive in Baghdad.

There are plenty of other stars in the American firmament. The policemen and women who go off on patrol in South Central and have no idea if they will return alive. The orderlies and paramedics who bring in people who have been in terrible accidents and prepare them for surgery. The teachers and nurses who throw their whole spirits into caring for autistic children. The kind men and women who work in hospices and in cancer wards.

Think of each and every fireman who was running up the stairs at the World Trade Center as the towers began to collapse.

Now you have my idea of a real hero.

Then Ben Stein said something that absolutely surprised me.

Last column, I told you a few of the rules I had learned to keep my sanity. Well, here is a final one to help you keep your sanity and keep you in the running for stardom: We are puny, insignificant creatures.

We are not responsible for the operation of the universe, and what happens to us is not terribly important. God is real, not a fiction, and when we turn over our lives to Him, he takes far better care of us than we could ever do for ourselves.

In a word, we make ourselves sane when we fire ourselves as the directors of the movie of our lives and turn the power over to Him.

After that revelation, Ben tells us what caused this epiphany in his life.

I can put it another way. Years ago, I realized I could never be as great an actor as Olivier or as good a comic as Steve Martin–or Martin Mull or Fred Willard–or as good an economist as Samuelson or Friedman or as good a writer as Fitzgerald. Or even remotely close to any of them.

But I could be a devoted father to my son, husband to my wife and, above all, a good son to the parents who had done so much for me. This came to be my main task in life.

I did it moderately well with my son, pretty well with my wife and well indeed with my parents (with my sister’s help). I cared for and paid attention to them in their declining years. I stayed with my father as he got sick, went into extremis and then into a coma and then entered immortality with my sister and me reading him the Psalms.

This was the only point at which my life touched the lives of the soldiers in Iraq or the firefighters in New York. I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters and that it is my duty, in return for the lavish life God has devolved upon me, to help others He has placed in my path. This is my highest and best use as a human.

I am reminded of the indictment made by Jesus in Matthew 25:42-45 of those who do not think and act like Ben Stein.

For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’ “They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’ “He will reply, ‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’

I share your convictions Ben and I wish you Godspeed Ben Stein, Godspeed.

No matter where you fit into the political spectrum you are facing significant choices during this election cycle. One of the significant factors I use to evaluate such situations is my view of history and historical events. My undergraduate degree is in Ancient History, which leads me to consider historical lessons with more import than the average person. That is why I found this paragraph from the editorial review by Gregory McNamee to Strange Victory: Hitler’s Conquest of France by Ernest R. May genuinely disturbing, especially considering our current security crises. (emphasis added)

May continues in this penetrating study, while in the wake of his French victory, Adolf Hitler “became so sure of his own genius that he ceased to test his judgments against those of others, and his generals virtually ceased to challenge him.” The outcome is well known. Still, May suggests, Hitler’s comeuppance does not diminish the lessons to be learned from the fall of France–notably, that bureaucratic arrogance, a reluctance to risk life, and a reliance on technology over tactics will quickly lose a battle. Students of realpolitik, no less than history buffs, will find much to engage them in May’s book.

We have to be very careful that those we choose to lead us will not fall into the trap of repeating history. France tried to build an impregnable fortress rather than engaging Germany as it was building towards war. It had the Maginot Line, better tanks, and was in many ways technologically superior to Germany. However, contrary to its illustrious history, France after World War I had an aversion to risking its forces. It failed miserably.

The new war we are fighting against Islamic terrorism has significant issues that history can speak to. Fore example, areas such as the effectiveness or failure of grand alliances (such as the United Nations) when dealing ideological threats; the weakness of using law enforcement approaches as the primary methodology for facing what amounts to a guerilla enemy, and the dangers a government faces when it becomes difficult to identify even where the threats are coming from, all have historical precedents and historical lessons to teach us.

We live in perilous times and we can either learn from history through thoughtful analysis and study or we can have it unwillingly teach us as we become object lessons for future students. It is our choice, both by whom we choose to lead us and by what we demand of them.

I have been distracted for the last two days because of difficulties with my older dog. Clifford is a four and a half year old brindled Akita who has been in severe gastrointestinal distress, with problems coming at both ends. We had him at the vet all day yesterday and he is back there today, which has reduced my blogging to zero. I had to be close to him all last night, just in case there was a blockage and a problem ensued (the x-rays and barium were not definitive at that point), checking him every hour or so.

Everyone loves Clifford, including the whole staff at our veterinary hospital. He is the only Akita that our vet would ever consider letting near her children. An 85 pound mass of snuggling goodness, Clifford is our fuzzy bear and will lick you to death if you let him. My daughter lived and breathed his initial adjustment for the first two weeks we had him. He was coddled, hugged, snuggled, brushed, and was generally the center of her attention from morning to night. At the end of that effort he was fully housebroken and already the lover he would later prove to be.

The exceptional start she gave him shows in his wonderful demeanor and temperament. While it is sometimes possible to help an animal recover from early mistreatment, nothing beats a really good start in life. With animals, as well as most things, I am reminded of the aphorism that Socrates said was ancient to him, “Well begun is half done.”

I will resume regular efforts shortly.

I have been thinking a lot lately about repentance, about changing the desires of my heart. It is not an easy process. Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote:

If it were only so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?

That is the question isn’t it. Jesus addressed the root of this question in Matthew 5:28-30:

But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell.

In this passage, Jesus tells us that we have to be willing to have serious surgery to deal with serious problems. This sheds new light for me on Paul’s argument in Romans 2:28-29

For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh; but he is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the Spirit, not in the letter; whose praise is not from men but from God.

So, in answering Alexander’s question, all who call themselves Christian must be willing to have a piece of their heart cut out, no matter how long or painful the process might be, because that is what circumsizing the heart is all about, cutting out the evil that has taken up root there. We who believe have the hope that what Paul said to the Thessalonians will happen in our own lives: (2 Thes 3.5)

Now may the Lord direct your hearts into the love of God and into the patience of Christ.

Aa well as the hope of Hebrews 10:21-22

…and having a High Priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.

May God bless your day and continue to work in your heart for His honor and glory.

I read George Will only sporadically, but I did catch his Wednesday article on Ignoring History In Iraq in the Washington Post. (Note: the link requires registration and will only work for two weeks or so when it will go into the paid archives). One sentence in the article caught my attention:

A government that is all sail and no anchor might produce popular choices that lead through anarchy to civil war, or national fragmentation, or fragmentation forestalled by Bonapartism, Francoism or some other variant of authoritarianism. [emphasis added]

That phrase jumped out at me: “all sail and no anchor". I immediately remembered Paul’s lament about his Jewish brothers in Romans 10:2 “For I can testify about them that they are zealous for God, but their zeal is not based on knowledge.” Zeal without knowledge, all sail and no anchor—what an appropriate image for the danger our nation now faces.

As I watch the political process, with its attendant media frenzy, both Will’s and Paul’s images strike home, not about the danger inherent in Iraq’s fledgling political process, but the danger facing ours. Everywhere you look there is zeal. The messages scream at you, tease you, upbraid you, and if you believe the charges and counter-charges, lie to you. What appears to be missing, at least from my perspective, are the anchors, the requisite knowledgeable discourse that would bring a reasonable perspective to the whole process. Even those who are supposed to be analysts don’t really analyze, but instead apologize and propagandize for their chosen position. They all spin, spin, spin. (See my previous article on spin entitled Verbal Manipulation.) Whose fault is this? Personally, from a sociological perspective I blame the traditional media and the institutions of learning that have produced the current crop of journalists. To again use George Will’s image, they have produced a generation of journalists that approach their craft with the utmost zeal, their sails filled with the wind of purpose, but they have no anchors. Instead, they have rhetoric without the constraints of logic, slipping into propaganda without even noticing it. There is an arrogance in their pontifications reminiscent of the charge made by Isaiah, “You have trusted in your wickedness and have said, ‘No one sees me.’ Your wisdom and knowledge mislead you when you say to yourself, ‘I am, and there is none besides me.’ (47:10).

How did we get to this point? Frederick Turner examines the problem in detail in Media Matters: A Devil’s Bargain, an insightful and damning article at Tech Central Station. It is a must read to understand the hurricane on the horizon and the damage it is leaving in its path. One wonders where are the wise men to guide us through this morass? Who can we appeal to rescue us from this destructive slide?

As a Christian, I hear an echo of Paul’s cry in Romans chapter 7:24 in my own lament. Paul painfully asked, “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” His answer is the answer that we all need, the answer that many will reject, because it is a spiritual answer; his answer is Jesus Christ, the anchor for our sail, the knowledge to temper our zeal.

With that in mind, I call all of the Christians I know to repentance and prayer. The solution is not out there, instead we must start with our own souls, our own unbridled zeal. We must first anchor ourselves in the knowledge and love of Jesus Christ and in his righteousness. We must repent. Only then can we pray the prayer that James tells us will be heard and answered, “Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.” (5:16). Effective prayer for healing, and in this case it is for the healing of our nation, comes only from the mouth of a penitent and forgiven sinner, not the self righteous and zealous advocate. We must start with ourselves. If we do that, and then pray earnestly and righteously, the rest will take care of itself, because God will be the author and finisher of the work.

Let he who is wise listen and do.

Reuters has published a story (see Yahoo News) on the anti-depressant Prozac being found in drinking water. The last sentence of the article noted, “Prescription of anti-depressants has surged in Britain. In the decade up to 2001, overall prescriptions of antidepressants rose from 9 million to 24 million a year, the paper said.”

One wonders why they were testing for Prozac in the first place and whether any other pharmaceuticals are creating similar problems? Maybe it is all a plot to begin somafying the population, ala Brave New World and this is just a test to see how the drug propagates. Maybe it is a CIA experiment to see at what distribution levels pacification of the population becomes detectable; a preliminary test before widespread utilization in Islamic trouble spots. That’s the ticket. I can see the headlines now. The Great Satan’s anti-Islamic CIA attempts somafication of Arab countries. I am waiting for the conspiracy hounds to try and make this dog hunt.

All jokes aside, this is a prime example of unintended consequences. Try to solve one problem, depression, and create another, drug propagation in the environment. It just goes to show that we are not very effective stewards of what the Lord has given us.

Which is worse? Not being able to function by forgoing an addiction, or functioning perfectly but by doing so you shorten your life span?

What really makes the historic American dream and the nature of the country and society it has nurtured different from the goals of Islam and the nature of the countries and societies it has spawned? This is an important issue facing America, indeed all Western societies, as they deal with the radical Islamic terrorist threat now facing them.

What I see at the heart of the differences between these two fundamentally different systems is the nature of virtue and whether compulsion is a means to achieve it. I take a large view perspective when examining this subject, informed by my Christian faith, and I have to admit that there has been a change in my opinion as I have grown in my life as a Christian. I started out being very much on the side of compulsion, but over the years experience has tempered my view. My current thinking is reflected in the words of Dinesh Souza, an immigrant who arrived at the age seventeen from India, who said in a recent book about America (What’s So Great About America?), “Compulsion cannot produce virtue; it can only produce the outward semblance of virtue.”

This premise is at the heart of how American democracy and its root, the historic Judeo/Christian worldview, works. This central tenant effects all of our decisions about how to direct or change the nature and course of our country and culture, as well as our response to things like the radical Islamic terrorism or European anti-Americanism we now face.

You might rightfully remind me that compulsion is often necessary, which is clearly demonstrated by the enduring institutions of courts, police, armed forces, and even government itself. You would be right, but you would miss the point. While those are the accoutrements of all functional societies, within American democracy (as different say from communism or European socialism), they only constrain the outward edges of our behavioral boundaries.

Historically, police kept general public order, the courts enforced the minimum laws necessary to make the society work, which citizen government passed only as they were needed, and armed forces were primarily defensive in nature. Traditionally, America has been governed primarily by its social mores, agreed upon morality, and the community norms that generally determined the extent of our compulsive efforts, in short its virtue. American experiments with more draconian efforts of compulsion have proved destructive to our society and did little, if anything, to change the behavior of most of us. The criminalization of alcohol and drugs did not prevent their use. We gave up our efforts to stop the consumption of alcohol, but not until it had succeeded in creating an entrenched criminal class, financed by profits from illegal booze sales, which also ended up corrupting everything else, including those very institutions which were supposed to be enforcing the compulsion. The same destructive cycle has repeated itself with drugs, building not just an expanded American criminal class, but a worldwide criminal underworld financed by the sale of illicit substances that compulsion cannot eradicate.

That said, how are we different from Islam and its means of compulsion, Sharia law? As I said, American democratic principals, formulated from Roman common law and tempered by basic Judeo/Christian theology, touched only the edges of compulsion, while Islam seeks to control, with the compulsive force of intrusive law, every aspect of human existence. It not only sets the outer boundaries of behavior, but it defines everything inside those boundaries. In addition, since in true Islam there is no separation between church and state, Islamic societies are at their heart radical theocracies. But they are not theocracies in the sense of the Holy Roman Empire or early Israelite government, in which mercy and forgiveness played a fundamental part. No, in Islam there is no mercy because no man can forgive another’s sin or pay another’s debt, which also extends to government, law, and the courts. At the heart of America and its Judeo/Christian heritage is the extension of mercy and forgiveness, of atonement and freeing of those held by the bonds of their failure. It is no accident that slavery was abolished in the Judeo/Christian West and America, while it is still practiced to this day within Islam in the subcontinent of Africa and in some sense generally encouraged when you consider what Islam says about the women of conquered enemies. This has been seen recently in Islamic religious opinions, as well as in material taken from school textbooks in Islamic countries that argue that conquered Jewish woman will become Arab sex slaves.

The all encompassing, absolute demands of Islamic law, embodied in the state and untempered by mercy, causes an ongoing progression that when taken to its logical extreme states that the law is absolute and not just proscriptive, but prescriptive, invading even such common physical actions as which side to sleep on and how to wash upon arising. As fatwa is added to fatwa, the prescriptive nature of Islam eventually leads to the extremes of the Taliban, which far from being an aberration of Islam is the natural progression and expression of its fundamental requirements.

We Americans, still holding the memory of our Judeo/Christian heritage within our national soul, want to forgive Islam for its excesses, to extend mercy and redemption to our enemy. We seek to change them, not to compel them, only doing so as a last resort. We want to reason with them, meeting them with reasonableness and mercy. However, they will not and cannot return the favor. There is no forgiveness for us. They cannot offer it, for they do not posses it. They only have compulsive judgment available for them to offer us as fitting expressions of Sharia law, which by fundamental belief they must extend where ever they place their foot, and that foot is coming. A dread Armageddon calls from the Islamic heart of darkness and no forgiveness can be offered to those who reject it, which includes all Jews and Christians, as well as Hindus, Buddhists, and any other non-Islamic faith. The only options for us are conversion or judgment, slavery, and death.

So, how do we, who touch only the edges of compulsion and by nature offer forgiveness even to the worst of enemies, deal with what seeks to overwhelm us? Knowing from experience the limits of compulsion, how do we deal with those who would use our forgiveness and freedoms to destroy us? In the past we would have called upon the virtue of the nation to step forward and fill the gap that compulsion cannot cross. It now appears that the well of virtue is nearly dry, as corruption upon corruption appears to be the order of the day.

We are stuck, caught between the rock of increasing, but ineffective compulsion to deal with the threat, which we know from experience will eventually fail, and the hard place of the loss of fundamental virtue, which in the past would have bridged the gap. We are desperate and in need of revival, of a resurgence of faith and the virtue it engenders. Not only our survival, but our national soul is at stake, for if we lose that would survival even have any meaning? It is time to pray and to pray earnestly for I believe that we are at a historical nexus point, at a point of choice that will seal our fate.

This I pray. God have mercy. Remember Sodom and your promise to Abraham. You needed only ten to avert the coming destruction. We offer millions, many millions of hearts bowed to your will, asking for your mercy. Hear us, O Lord, and restore in us the virtue we need to meet the coming threat. By your grace give us the wisdom to choose rightly and act justly, with mercy and compassion tempering our justice and retribution. Do not abandon us, O Lord, to our sin and weakness, but empower us to change the heart of our nation so that its virtue will reflect your goodness and our actions your will. Amen.

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. — Aristotle

Taken from my article on Habits.

Reno, the comedic politico, is a self-describe 46-year-old Latina lesbian with radical political leanings. She said the following Rimdim while discussing John Walker Lindh, the American Taliban captured in Afghanistan and serving 20 years in federal prison, in a recent Salon interview:

It’s a real chiller, the way they treated that kid. Think of all the 22-year-old kids in the country, dreaming of the time they can travel across the world … it’s going to have a negative effect.

Let’s hope so, since the moral relativism of our age can’t seem to separate those “kids” who go to terrorist training camps from those spending the summer at Montmartre and visiting Picasso’s studio, van Gogh’s apartment, or the hangouts of famous poets and authors.

Alas, alas. What have we wrought upon the house and its inhabitants, this land, this once noble abode?

This week’s Christian Carnival is being hosted tomorrow at Parableman. It’s a great way to get recognition for your blog. Submit your best post from the past week , since last Tuesday at midnight, on a Christian-related theme (it can include politics but only if it’s from a Christian perspective). If you don’t have a post you want to submit, maybe a friend or favorite blogger does.

Please include the following information in an email and put Christian Carnival in the subject line:

Blog name
Blog URL
post name
post URL
trackback URL for your post if you would like a trackback
brief description of post

Email your submission to jrpierce at syr.edu and include a read receipt request to make sure he received it. Remever, put Christian Carnival in the subject line, or it may be deleted as junk mail.

[Update] Jeremy at Parableman made the following comment that I don’t want missed:

A read request doesn’t ensure that I read it, because all the junk mail I delete gets marked as read so I’ll know if there’s anything that got diverted to my junk mail folder that might not be junk.

I deliberately didn’t put the midnight marker on it because I think such beginning deadlines are immoral. If someone is ahead of the game and submits something on Monday and then writes a killer post the next day but already submitted something that week, I think it should be eligible for the next Carnival. That’s why I use the deliberately vague “since the last Carnival", since it doesn’t say whether it’s since the last Carnival was posted, since the last deadline, or since the last time you submitted a post. Also, the submission deadlines vary from week to week, and it’s a pain to go looking through the last week’s host’s entries to find the time, though in your case you know it because it was you.

You should never read something that starts your intellectual juices after midnight; it will probably prevent you from getting very much sleep as the thoughts race back and forth across your mental topography, pushing sleep further and further from its necessary threshold. I made the mistake of looking in on the John Eldredge - An Example of Reductionism thread on Jollyblogger. I had made a few quickly crafted comments and I was reading through various reactions to what I had said. Since an adequate answer to those responses would take both time and column space, I decided to write a post here instead of trying to make an elaborate comment there.

Let me say right off, that while I have a degree (Ancient History) and am fairly well read, I do not consider myself an expert on exegesis or Biblical interpretation. I am, however, a relatively mature Christian who, while not ordained as clergy, has taught, led Bible studies and cell groups, and preached in the churches I have been part of for over 20 years. With that in mind, take my opinions with a large grain of salt, but realize they have been arrived at through experience in the battleground of teaching, of preparing lessons from scratch, and observing how a large number of diverse people have used the scriptures and their Bibles to formulate their arguments and responses within that context.

In response to David’s article on John Eldredge, the man who is Wild at Heart, I posted the following responses:

I think you hit the significant point when you said, “Furthermore, he has made these three points the controlling paradigm for the way in which he views God and interprets Scripture.”

Besides reasonable linguistic and logical frameworks to approach scripture, I believe most of the problems the Church has faced throughout its history has been related to “controlling paradigms.” This goes for Calvinists and Catholics, Baptists and Anglicans, and helps explains detours like Seventh Day Adventists.

One thing I think we all ought to make a daily part of our Christian life is to ask the Holy Spirit to demolish all of the improper controlling paradigms that distort our view of what He has revealed to the Church and the people of God throughout the history of man. We need to see the Word as the Holy Spirit sees it. I think Romans 12:1-3 and Philippians 1:9-11 are good starts in addressing this issue.

Then I added:

I had some additional thoughts while out weedwhacking my front walk. (Nothing like work to make the mind work) I believe that the problem develops when we use scripture to create a framework for looking at some specific issue in life. It does a good job of clarifying certain problems and possible solutions. Then we fall into the trap of thereafter adopting that framework as our hermeneutical paradigm for interpreting scripture in general. It happens almost without our realizing it. I think that was, at least for me, the significant insight to be gotten out of your posting.

Just a few thoughts from beyond the rim…

Scripture->framework->problem->help, so framework->scripture. David responded with:

Thanks for the comments William - I think you are right. Often the major point someone wants to make is spot on, but its when they start building stuff around it that they run into problems.

That partially hit on what I was saying but didn’t warrant a larger discussion until Terry rejoined:

In response to William Meisheid I ask, a paradigm of no paradigm? How about asking the Holy Spirit to lead us into all truth?

It appeared to me that Terry was saying that my paradigm to Biblical exegesis was to have no paradigm, to which David attempted a clarification from his perspective:

Note to Terry - what I heard William saying was that we sometimes use Scripture to answer a particular question or deal with a specific issue. Then we take something which was specific to that particular question or issue and apply it across the board to any other issue. I didn’t hear him saying that we can’t use any paradigm at all for anything. I am not sure what he had in mind, but I could see this cropping up in interpreting different genre’s of the Bible. Let’s say you found an answer to a specific question from your study of the Psalms. The way you studied the Psalms wouldn’t be normative for the way you studied a more prosaic or didactic passage of Scripture. That’s just a thought and attempt to understand what he is getting at. I could be missing his point totally.

At this point, I decided that I need to amplify and explain what I meant, because in a sense, both Terry and David were partially correct about aspects of what I was thinking but had not adequately expressed in my comments.

Terry: In the Bible studies I have lead, I have asked those participating to use Bibles that did not have comments, notes, cross-references, in short just the text. I was not as concerned about the translation they were using, but the commentary that accompanied it. I wanted them to face the text raw and deal with it themselves through prayer and the guidance of the Holy Spirit before looking at how others interpreted it. Within that framework all of the valid structures of language and logic should be used since the Bible was a book of written words that followed such basic rules. In that sense, I argued for a paradigm of no paradigms, at least none, other than the internal filters already in use by each of those involved. Part of what I tried to do as we discussed the text was to expose those filters and how they impacted the interpretation of the text, using the argument that if you don’t understand your biases, then you can’t begin to see when you are losing your way.

The first time I tried that approach to Bible teaching was in response to R.C. Sproul’s fine book, Knowing Scripture. I apologize that I don’t have the book handy to quote (it’s lent out) but in one section Sproul used how people interpreted the head covering passage in 1 Corinthians 11 to explain their fundamental hermeneutic. With than in mind what I discovered from our study of the same passage was that the notes, comments, and other interpolations in their various “study” Bibles (the paradigms of the author/publishers) prevented those I was teaching from honestly wrestling with the text itself. Instead, they seemed to invest these interpolations with significant authority because, well after all, they were in their Bible. So yes Terry, I believe we should all approach the text at the beginning of any study using the paradigm of no paradigms, as much as that is possible, before we allow all of those paradigms that constantly attempt to assert themselves entry into the process.

Dave: Over the years I have seen so many paradigms outside of the aforementioned problem of interpolated text assert themselves into peoples’ Biblical study. Whether denominational, or philosophical, or any of the various -isms, such as feminism, socialism, liberalism, conservativism, or many others, they all can create paradigms of thinking and interpretation that filter and distort the text, creating eisegesis rather than exegesis. Part of what I view is the responsibility of Biblical teachers is to expose those paradigms and try to help people see past them. Yes, the Holy Spirit is significant in the success of that effort, but at the same time people more often than not have to be engaged for them to open their eyes to what is happening. Even then, it is always a struggle. I know, I have the same problems.

It’s late and I hope this helps clarify my meager thoughts. If not, we can continue the discussion, but only after I can get some sleep, which now that I have been able to express myself will mean my mental activity is no longer beyond the necessary threshold for zzzs.

It is Sunday evening and the weekend is almost over. That has gotten me to thinking about the importance that we all seem to attach to this weekly time off from work. Our culture appears to see weekends as the modern reward for making it to Friday, at least if you view the workweek as the modern gulag and something you have to be rescued from. That is not how weekends started, however. One of the innovations of Mosaic Law for the new nation of Israel was the creation of the Sabbath, which was the first weekly day of rest proscribed by any law in the ancient world. Up till then, everyone worked continuously, except for special festivals or individual manumission. A regular proscribed day of rest was a radical innovation, a 1/7 removal of productive labor from the demand of the taskmaster.

So, our modern weekend owes it genesis from the Judaic Sabbath and the idea that mankind in general, not just special or wealthy individuals, are required to rest from their labor, to give back time to God. Nowadays, God holds very little sway on the weekend, which instead is seen as an individual reward for working, a time of personal pleasure and leisure. It is true that we usually forget the reason for the season (take Christmas as an example) and the forgotten genesis of our period of rest seems no different from the other things we should remember.

I am not sure how weekends are viewed in the rest of the world, but here in the U.S. they are very important. Many people gear their whole lives around the weekend, considering most of the workweek to be what you sacrifice to get to the weekend. Some people who work a four day, 40 hour week (10 hour days), really see their three day weekends as weekly mini-vacations.

Our culture has all sorts of little sayings that remind us of the weekend’s significance, and one of the most important is TGIF, which used to mean “thank God it’s Friday” but has been secularized to “thank goodness it’s Friday” though I am I not sure who goodness is. I chuckle at the way secularists are forced into personifications that are essentially pagan or animistic in an effort to avoid God, primarily the Judeo-Christian God, but that is a discussion for another time.

Weekends are seen as our primary recovery time, chances for most of us to recapture some of what we feel we have lost in the strain and drain of the workaday world. I will admit to falling into this pattern from time to time, but I am fundamentally against it. One of the essentials of being self-employed, at least for me, is that work is as you do it and it can be done any time you have the time or inclination. While it is true that client deadlines can make demands, you are fully capable of taking off when needed and working late or early to get the job done. What this means in a practical sense is that I don’t really have weekends in the traditional sense. There are many a Saturday and Sunday I will have to work for 4-8 hours each day, though due my church commitments I seldom work a full day on Sunday. I am not unique, since in our service oriented society, many people have to work on Saturday and Sunday. While the rest of us are shopping or going to the ballpark or movies or library or museum, someone has to be at those places working so we can do our “weekend” stuff.

Since the weekend is such a given in our society, it is interesting to note how many weekend “have-nots” we seem to have. I wonder what percentage of the population they make up? Do they feel left out or second class because they don’t get traditional weekends? Who knows? One thing I do know, weekends or at least Sundays off, are a gift to all of us in the West from our Judeo-Christian heritage, which enforced the concept of a Sabbath rest. While it doesn’t mean the same that it used to, the idea of free time in which society doesn’t make any demands on me has stuck around and grown with every passing year. Did we gain anything of significance when we jettisoned the Sabbath for the secular idol of free time or have we lost something important? It is a difficult question to answer, since even most Christians have bought into the idea of free time and abandoned the idea of the Sabbath. However, it is an important question, which needs addressing.

You have kept the first spiritual law of Rim Citizenship when you are where you are supposed to be, doing what you are supposed to do, when God goes looking for you.

One of my favorite things about the Internet, in which the blogosphere lives and moves and has its being, is serendipitously finding a really good insight or a person who seems to get to the heart of the matter. I had one of those fortunate accidents today when I discovered the blog Random Observations (a thank you to La Shawn Barber). I couldn’t find an about page to get any personal info, but I really enjoyed reading what the author had to say. I also related to their personal journey from being left of center to becoming conservative, since it reminds me of my own voyage of discovery.

I am adding Random Observations to my blogroll. If you have some time, I suggest you give it a read.

This basic story has been around in various forms for some time. However, since taxes, tax cuts, and the future of the IRS are a hot topic right now, I thought I would share my version of it so you could get a real-world example of how the U.S. tax system and our tax policy currently works.

Suppose every week, a group of old friends get together and the ten of them go out for dinner. The bill for all ten comes to $100. Most of them are pretty progressive, so like our taxes, it was thought fair by the group’s majority that the richer you were, the more you should contribute towards the meal? After all, that’s the progressive way, isn’t it? As a result, after some quick calculations, the share each paid for the meal turned out something like this:

1. The first four (who were the poorest) - paid nothing.
2. The fifth - $1.00
3. The sixth - $3.00
4. The seventh - $7.00
5. The eighth - $12.00
6. The ninth - $18.00
7. The tenth person (who was also the richest) - $59.00

The group ate together once a week for several months. The restaurant owner, being a good businessman and wanting to keep the group coming to his restaurant, one week said to them, “Since you are all such good customers, I’m going to reduce the cost of your meal by $20 every time you come in. Dinner for the ten of you will now only cost $80.”

The group of friends did a quick calculation and realised that $20 divided by 10 is $2.00. However, it was quickly seen that if they subtracted that amount from everybody’s share, then the first four would be paid $2.00 and the fifth would be paid $1.00, just to eat their meal. That wouldn’t do, so to be fair, the 10 friends decided to share the good customer windfall using the same formulae that was used to calculate their taxes. After a little basic math, this is how the new apportionment went:

1.The first four still eat for free. (Hey, how much more can you save when its already free?)
2. The fifth, also ate for free. (100% savings and one more added to the growing list of special friends who felt entitled. That happens after a few months of free meals.)
3. The sixth now paid $2.20 instead of $3. (He got a 33% savings which made him very happy.)
4. The seventh now paid $5.20 instead of $7 (28% savings).
5. The eighth now paid $9.20 instead of $12 (25% savings).
6. The ninth now paid $14.20 instead of $18 (22% savings).
7. The tenth now paid $49.20 instead of $59 (16% savings).

Now, five of the group of friends were eating for free and the remaining diners were all better off than when they started the weekly dining. Towards the end of their meal, their waiter, who was hoping to get on their good side and get a better tip the next time they came to eat, suggested that maybe some of the group wasn’t getting what they deserved from the unexpected discount.

As a result, once the group of friends got outside of the restaurant, they began talking and comparing their savings. “Wait a minute,” declared the sixth diner, “I only got 80 cents out of that $20.” Then he pointed to the tenth diner “Didn’t you get $9.80?” “Hey,” exclaimed the fifth diner, “now that I think of it, I only saved a dollar!” . “That’s true!!” shouted the seventh diner, “Why should the richest person get $9.20 back when I only got $1.80? This proves that the wealthy get all the breaks!” Then, a very loud “Wait a minute!” came from the first four diners. “Don’t you realize that we didn’t get anything at all. That’s can’t be fair. The richest person in our group got almost all of the savings that the restaurant owner offered us. This just goes to show that given a chance the poorest members always get the raw end of the deal!”

Suddenly, eight of the nine diners surrounded the tenth diner and beat him up, taking back his $9.80 in savings. The ninth diner didn’t know what to think.
Well, the next week the tenth diner didn’t show up for dinner. So, the nine remaining diners sat down and ate their meal without him. However, when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important that had slipped their notice. After looking at the cost of the meal, which hadn’t changed from the previous week, they realized that by using their accustomed method of dividing up the bill they couldn’t collect enough money between the remaining nine to pay for even half of the meal! So, the eight ganged up on the ninth diner, since he was now the richest and said, “You’re the richest, so you have to make up the difference.”

Because it was too late to do anything about it, and because he didn’t want to start another argument that might get him beat up, the ninth diner paid the remainder of the bill. As he was walking to his car he shouted back to the rest, “I’m out of here. Next week you can take care of the bill yourself.”

The remaining eight were dumbfounded and didn’t know what to do, since the two former friends who had previously paid 78% of the bill were now gone and the remaining eight could no longer afford to eat at the restaurant. Reluctantly they returned and told the owner they wouldn’t be back. As they turned to leave they began to discuss what they should do, and as a group they realized that they weren’t sure where they could afford to eat next week. On the way out of the restaurant for the last time, one of them muttered, “Where did we go wrong? We only wanted our rich friends to pay their fair share.”

Sometimes God just puts you in the right place at the right time so He can have His say. God did just that for a mother in Arizona earlier this week. As Maura was walking down the hallway of the motel she and husband were in, carrying her five month old baby girl, Philomena, she noticed a lot of commotion. Maura found out that John Kerry was staying there and by God’s grace she had the following conversation with him as he passed by on the way to breakfast.

Kerry came down the stairs and walked pass Maura. As Kerry was getting ready to go out the door, Maura called to him and said, “Senator may I ask you a question?” Kerry came back to her, touched the baby, smiled and asked what Maura wanted.
Very politely she asked, “Senator, do you think that if she (the baby) was inconvenient for me that I should be able to kill her?”

“No, this is a beautiful baby.” Then he realized she was talking about abortion.

He quickly added: “I am not for abortion. I believe life begins at conception. I am pro-choice.” As he was talking he pointed a finger in her face for emphasis.

“Do you think I should have had the right to choose to kill her?” Maura asked.

Kerry said he was against abortion after the second trimester. [But he voted against the partial-birth abortion ban.]

Raising Philomena over her head and away from the finger, Maura said: “Look at her face, Senator and the next time you vote on abortion, think of her face.” With that the aides whisked Kerry away.

When his car was pulling away, he looked at Maura and waved. She pointed to the baby’s face.

Her husband, who tells the story said that at first his wife was not going to say anything, but then she prayed and asked the Holy Spirit to help her. Afterwards she prayed for humility and only told her husband what had happened. We never know when God will use us, but a prepared heart is always ready to be at His service.

My prayer is for every Christian to be as bold as Maura and as willing to answer the prompting of the Holy Spirit. Well done Maura, well done.
Hat tip to Domenico Bettinelli

In the process of teaching Paul’s Letter to the Philippians, which I have done five or six times, I have always challenged the group to write a prayer of their own to someone they love. I asked them to base their efforts on Paul’s prayer for the church at Philippi recorded in Philippians 1:9-11 as well as any insights they gained from the rest of the epistle. Paul’s prayer is my favorite prayer by a believer in the Bible.

And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ–to the glory and praise of God.

Over the years, this assignment has proven to be a fruitful exercise, both for them and for me. This year, when our men’s group studied Philippians, not one member of the study had ever written a prayer before. In order to help them get started, I wrote an sample prayer using my daughter as the example. I later printed and laminated it and then gave it to her. Sarah now carries that prayer with her in her wallet. I hope that it will always remind her that her father loves and supports her wherever her life’s journey takes her. It is included here for your edification, hoping that it will inspire and encourage you to write your own prayer for a loved one.

Dear Lord, thank you for my daughter Sarah, for trusting me to be her father. May she never doubt my love for her, but may that love always be righteous and nurturing, never permissive and destructive. Give me joy whenever I speak to her, patience whenever I respond to her, and wisdom whenever I make decisions concerning her.

May I never fail her Lord, but if I do, let her forgive me, as you have forgiven me in Christ Jesus my Lord. Guard and protect her heart and mind, O Lord, and may the love of Jesus Christ always surround her, guide her, and sustain her through all the trials and tests of life.

I do not pray that she never suffers pain, O Lord, only that any pain that comes into her life will give her deeper roots in you, teaching her to rely on you and you alone.

May Sarah stand before you on the last day and hear the words we all long to hear, “Well done good and faithful servant” and again “Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world.” Amen.

Now, primed by my effort and in the power and grace of the Holy Spirit, go and write your own prayer and give it to a loved one.

I had originally hoped to get this out by 6 A.M. EDT, but I underestimated the amount of work involved. Kudos to all who have done this ahead of me and I offer my prayers for those coming behind. Most of the people who have hosted the Christian Carnival since I have been reading it have had themes for their Carnival, extremely creative themes. Since I had several weeks to think about how I might approach the carnival, I expected to come up with a cool theme also. Sadly, nothing specific sparked my creative juices. Last week, I stumbled across a poem I had written several years ago and decided to use it as my Carnival introduction. Then it occurred to me that the poem itself could be my theme.

At the time I wrote the poem I was trying to determine what God wanted me to do with the rest of my life. I had just closed my office and training center, laid off the last employee, and moved back into my home office, going from 1600 to 120 square feet of work space (don’t ask what I did with all the stuff…). In addition, I was alone during the workday for the first time in several years. As you can imagine, I had arrived at a turning point and the poem reflects my feelings as I worked through what amounted to a death of my vision for a successful software company. In some ways the poem is almost a prayer.

So, please take the theme of my poem, which can be defined as “OK God, now what?"as my theme for this week’s Carnival. Using the poem as a starting point, I want to suggest that as we read each of this week’s offerings, that we prayerfully ask God how He wants us to respond to what we have just read. These heartfelt insights, which were prayerfully submitted for our perusal by a diverse cross-section of the Body of Christ, shouldn’t just become flotsam and jetsam drifting across our memory space. No, we should allow God to use them to engage and challenge our thinking. With that in mind, I include the following poem as both my submission for the week and the theme of this week’s Carnival.

The Question

There are many things that I could have been
Many things that I could yet be
Yet one thing lies beyond my keen
God, what would you have of me?

Copyright 2001 William Meisheid Use as you see fit, but only with attribution.

OK God, Now What?
Twenty entries, sorted by author’s first name, when I could find it. What the heck, it’s my taxonomy! Note: Some posts on Blogger or Blogspot.com may not be available when you try to access them. It is the site’s fault, not the poster or yours, so just try again later.

1. Sanctioned by God, Not Government by Andrew P. Connors of Snipehunters.com. Why is the State involved in marriage at all asks Andrew as he takes a thoughtful look at the gay marriage debate, after which he advocates a novel idea to maintain the traditional definition of marriage. I know Andrew’s post is a few days older than the normal begin date, but since he only posts something about every two weeks, I am using host’s discretion on this one.

2. Will Cummins – British anti-Islamic columnist by Adrian Warnock of Adrian Warnock’s UK Blog. Dealing with a series of articles by pseudonymic columnist Will Cummins, Adrian examines the rights and wrongs of the columnist’s assertions and more broadly, the overall reaction to Muslims in general at this time in world history. As the old maxim goes, let’s be careful not to throw out the baby with the bathwater.

3. Reformation by Bill Leug at Minas Tirith. While reading about how God used past reformers, despite their obvious failures, Bill takes from that the assurance to issue a call for a new Reformation in the modern evangelical church, despite our own obvious faults. He argues not only that the church should be salt and light, but it should be a light that is different from the world around it. We have to be different from the surround culture to give people a choice that is different from the post-modern society they live in. On a personal note, I want to recommend John Stott’s book, The Message of the Sermon on the Mount, The Bible Speaks Today (originally titled Christian Counter Culture when it was released in 1978), as a good read on this subject.

4. A Thought on the Holy Trinity, Part I by Brandon Watson at Siris. Brandon challenges us to do a little theology in his post on the doctrine of the Trinity. Arguing against the negative theology that has been thrown against this doctrine, Brandon defends this fundamental Christian belief from the charge of inconsistency that has been brought against it. Deep stuff, but handled in a way anyone should be able to follow. You go, guy.

5. God and Science by Donald Crankshaw at Back of the Envelope. There is a lot of debate going on these days about science and theism. In this post Donald considers the tendency of the scientific establishment to embrace atheism as a respectable position while marginalizing theism. Personal plug alert: After reading Donald’s thoughtful post, consider looking at my take on this subject.

6. Evagrius Ponticus, John, and Barsanuphius by Dunstan Boyko at Dunmoose the Ageless. Modern Christianity, especially Evangelical Christianity, has had little contact with earlier Christian writings, especially those from the catholic tradition. Dunstan gives us an overview of three early Christian writers, two of whom were hermits, with some thoughts on their importance. He also explains for those who did not know, like myself, where the list of “The Seven Deadly Sins” came from.

7. Pro Choice by Elena LaVictoire at My Domestic Church. Why does “pro choice” only mean being for abortion and why do those who call themselves pro choice work so hard at attacking all other possible choice’s except their sacrosanct “correct choice"? With that inconsistency in mind, Elena takes aim at Gretchin Ritter’s article in the Austin American Statesman, in which she attacks women who choose to stay home and be mothers instead of pursuing careers. Right on Elena!

8. How to save the USA! by Greg Morneau at Greg’s Truth. Greg does a brief Bible study on praying for our nation and its leaders, in which he argues for the only effective way to change the direction of this nation. His approach is non-partisan and though I have strong political views, I wholeheartedly agree with his approach, since before God we are all sinners and equally lost without Jesus Christ. As Christians, we do not want God to endorse our views, but instead to move all of us into views that are in line with God’s revelation of himself. This is a lifelong, ongoing process.

9. Is this Kind of Realism Useful in a Video Game? Shellshock: Nam ‘67 by Hal Paxton at The Great Separation. Like other forms of entertainment, video games continue to test the limits of acceptability, even for the marginal sociopaths among us. In a post, as important for parental responsibility as for personal accountability, Hal expresses his thoughts on the announcement of a new video game glorifying atrocities of war. I guess the game designers were going for the Saddam wannabees with this one, something no Christian should aspire to.

10. Birthday Reflections by Jeremiah at Fringe. Birthdays have a way of firing up the deeper thoughts about our existence. Jeremiah, upon turning 24, finds himself contemplating his life, his closeness to God, and the purpose of his blogging, when asking, “…what is Fringe’s purpose?” Underneath that blog question lies a much deeper and important quest.

11. Lying by Jeremy Pierce at Parableman. Does the Bible teach that lying is always wrong? In a thoughtful post Jeremy argues that it’s not that simple. He postulates that there are some cases, some special circumstances in which the Bible doesn’t condemn those who lied. Using a political milestone as inspiration, he considers some contemporary cases, including those of presidents, where his arguments might apply. Whether you agree or disagree with him, you have to deal with his arguments.

12. August Ninth: the martyrs, confessors, and innocents of World War II by Karen Marie Knapp at From the Anchor Hold The ninth of August holds special significance for our sister, Karen, as she reflects on two Christians and untold innocents who died on that day during WWII. August ninth is the date of the martyrdoms of Edith Stein in 1942 and Franz Jagerstatter in 1943. It is also the day when the second of the two great centers of Japanese Christianity was destroyed in 1945 by the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki. Provocative reading for us all.

13. Jesus Was A Liberal by La Shawn at La Shawn Barber’s Corner. Confronting what she sees as Jesse Jackson’s twisting of scripture and the ministry of Jesus into something she doesn’t recognize, La Shawn questions how a “Reverend", whom one would expect to know how to interpret the Bible properly, instead seems willing to pervert anything, even the Word of God, for political gain. (My that was a long sentence!) La Shawn has a new website in case you haven’t visited her in a while.

14. Thoughts on Weddings by Matt Hall at matt-hall.net. Matt is thinking about weddings and asking fundamental questions. What makes a wedding a wedding? Is there a central component that defines its purpose? He wants weddings to speak to the grace of God as well as the commitment of those being married. After all, what is it that you and those who are there will remember years later? Shouldn’t the central focus be on what remains? Fine thoughts for those considering matrimony or who have friends or relatives who are.

15. Why God Hates Sin by Miss O’Hara at Miss O’Hara. Sin, a volatile subject, which bounces between the Scylla of Pharaseeism and the Charybdis of antinomianism. Miss O’Hara argues that God doesn’t hate sin just because he doesn’t want us to have fun. There’s a fundamental reason he tells us not to do certain things. This may seem like yet another explanation of the same old story, but it is a story that needs to be told, and retold! Miss O’Hara hopes appreciated it, since she admits that she is a sucker for appreciation.

16. PCUSA and the Selected Divestment from Israel, Part I by Neil Uchitel at Digitus, Finger & Co. Neil takes on a difficult subject: money, especially the Church’s money. This offering is the first in a series that examinations the PCUSA resolution to selectively divest its financial holdings of anything supportive of Israel, due to how PCUSA sees Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians. This is a post we all need to consider.

17. God’s Omnipresence by Rebecca Stark at Rebecca Writes. If you haven’t read Rebecca, then you should know that she relishes approaching the most difficult of subjects, while also being willing to discuss it with you; I should know. In this post, Rebecca looks at God’s omnipresence and examines what it tells us about the God we worship, as well as what it means for us personally. Consider this another part of your theology 101 lesson for this week.

18. Kingdom Communication by Robert Spenser at Mr. Standfast. Don’t you get tired when you laboriously try to explain something and those you are addressing just don’t get it? Well Bob, thinking out loud about the nature of communication in Heaven, has decided that those problems will probably be a thing of the past. I sure hope so. I get tired of constantly trying to smooth feathers I have ruffled unintentionally. Maybe we should work at bringing a little of that heavenly perspective to our earthly efforts.

19. Purposes in Suffering by Sozo at Reasons Why Finding themselves in a teaching situation, in which impressionable young minds were at stake, Sozo and his wife confronted the idea that suffering and sickness is never God’s will for the Christian. They show that God has a purpose in all things, and has not left us without reasonable council in these matters. I would also suggest the Book of Job as a good therapeutic in this matter.

20. This Week in Church History by Warren Kelly at View from the Pew. Being a historian at heart (my degree is in Ancient History), I appreciate Warren covering this important ground. He examines the French Revolution and its wanton destruction and desecration not only of Christian churches, but of Christian belief. Paraphrasing the angel in the Book of Revelation, “Let whoever is willing to listen hear what history is saying to the churches.”