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Category Archives: politics

We Lost The Message Somewhere

A Brief Introduction to this Post:
As I begin to write this, citizens of the United States of America go to the voting booths for an election whose results will be historic regardless of which party wins.  By the time this actually posts, we might have a new president-elect.  I’ve been trying to avoid politics on my blog recently, mostly because I don’t feel politics, as they stand now, are actually helpful for the people, and honestly, my heart is warmed by the Gospel, not by the machinations of the political parties.  So, while this post touches on politics, somewhat, that isn’t what it is about.

I was not going to write of politics in my blog, but after reading of Paul’s optimism in Philippians, I feel the need to.

Much of Obama’s appeal, besides the usual political can’t-nail-them-to-the-wall or hold-them-to-their-promises (regardless of political party), is that he has packaged the concept of hope well. Obama’s success should be a wake up to the church, not because of his politics, but because he’s repackage the quintessential Christian message―hope.

The church should not look at Obama’s campaign as a success of marketing (which it is), but the very reason why the church is not very healthy.  We lost the message.  Actually, that’s wrong.  The message is still there in scripture.  We just left it there.

As the church became party to the culture war (which it should have) and politics (which it should, in some regards, as its members are voters), it also became part of the negativity that go along with both, which it shouldn’t have.  The church became obsessed with various pet agendas (pornography and so on on the right, justice issues and so on on the left) that they lost their focus―the hope that we have because of Jesus.

Forget church growth, forget being part of the culture, remember Jesus

A Quip On A Manufactured Collapse

Michael Novak’s theory regarding Western democratic capitalism can be summerized as a three-legged stool with the legs being, political freedom, economic freedom, and moral restraint.

We are witnessing the after effects of the complete removal of moral restraint.  Political and economic freedoms have been curtailed for the last 20 years or so, but they are still, in basic form, there.  The politicians (on both sides) are calling for new regulations, however, as crass as this sounds, there is a similarity between the current panic seeking to create new regulations…and abortion—morality cannot be legislated.

Here are a couple of good articles.

This Too Will Pass (i.e., DON’T PANIC)

AIG: A Study in the Difference Between Campaigning and Governing (i.e., ignore both political campaigns in regards to their rhetoric on the issue)

Camille Paglia and Sarah Palin: Need I Say More?

Camille Paglia, on Salon.com, wrote an interesting opinion column regarding Sarah Palin. I’ve been doing my best to avoid the silly season of an election year, but this column had too much good stuff to ignore just because it included Sarah Palin (which was actually a detraction, because I really don’t want to talk politics).

Feminism, which should be about equal rights and equal opportunity, should not be a closed club requiring an ideological litmus test for membership.

This goes for environmentalism, “poverty”, and health care programs as well. There seems to be a significant agreement that there is something seriously wrong in this country in regards to these issues, just no agreement of methodology to fix them. In other words, just because I don’t agree with a person’s proposed solution to an issue, does not mean that I don’t think that there is one.

Frontier women were far bolder and hardier than today’s pampered, petulant bourgeois feminists, always looking to blame their complaints about life on someone else.

Yeah, well, a lot of men (including myself, probably) would fit into that description as well. Ouch.

Like Los Angeles and San Francisco, Manhattan and Washington occupy their own mental zones — nice to visit but not a place to stay if you value independent thought these days.

Ouch!

A feminism that cannot admire the bravura under high pressure of the first woman governor of a frontier state isn’t worth a warm bucket of spit.

I give Ms. Paglia kudos. At least in regards to feminism, she is consistent.

But the pro-life position, whether or not it is based on religious orthodoxy, is more ethically highly evolved than my own tenet of unconstrained access to abortion on demand. My argument (as in my first book, “Sexual Personae,”) has always been that nature has a master plan pushing every species toward procreation and that it is our right and even obligation as rational human beings to defy nature’s fascism. Nature herself is a mass murderer, making casual, cruel experiments and condemning 10,000 to die so that one more fit will live and thrive.

Hence I have always frankly admitted that abortion is murder, the extermination of the powerless by the powerful. Liberals for the most part have shrunk from facing the ethical consequences of their embrace of abortion, which results in the annihilation of concrete individuals and not just clumps of insensate tissue. The state in my view has no authority whatever to intervene in the biological processes of any woman’s body, which nature has implanted there before birth and hence before that woman’s entrance into society and citizenship.

On the other hand, I support the death penalty for atrocious crimes (such as rape-murder or the murder of children). I have never understood the standard Democratic combo of support for abortion and yet opposition to the death penalty. Surely it is the guilty rather than the innocent who deserve execution?

I’m torn by her reaction. Her opinion is, “it’s all about me,” whether it’s choosing not to be “inconvenienced” by a baby, or “inconvenienced” by a murderer. On the other hand, it has a form of consistency, forthrightness, and forethought, which makes it easier to discuss.

If Sarah Palin tries to intrude her conservative Christian values into secular government, then she must be opposed and stopped. But she has every right to express her views and to argue for society’s acceptance of the high principle of the sanctity of human life.

Here, of course, I do have a problem. At what point does it cross the line? especially when she says:

…Democratic ideology itself seems to have become a secular substitute religion.

If that is the case (which I believe it is for many on the left, but also “Republican” ideology on the right), than they, according to her logic, should be stopped as well. Then, you are left with politicians sticking their wet fingers in the wind. Leadership of any sort cannot exist in such an environment.

Thinking/Posing/Contemplating, Not Just Reacting

In this election cycle, talk about an emerging evangelical political center abounds. Much of the discussion is about how conservative and liberal Christians can work together to realize Christ-commanded essentials and their corollaries: care for the poor, for example, and its extensions regarding access, justice, and health care.

THEOOZE – Articles: Viewing Article

My, How They Love One Another

Are we Kicking Grandma to the Curb?

For a number of reasons, I have a real problem with what this post (and the quoted article/news story) say.  Not because it isn’t true, but because it is.  I don’t think that nursing homes are an ideal situation, that’s for sure, but am I capable of taking care of my parents (all four of them) as they get older?  I doubt it.

There is something to be said about the “good ol’ days,” where aged relatives would live in the same home as at least one of their children.  I certainly think it would be healthier for society if we weren’t so segregated in our lives according to age bracket (one of the things many churches are also dealing with).  However, in cases such as in my family, where one person has Alzheimer’s, it can be a full time job.

I also think that the changing perception of life changes in regards to age have a significant impact on the situation.  Take, for example, the fact that 100 years ago, most education ended with the 8th grade, and, frankly, there are questions on those final exams that I couldn’t answer.  That person was to become a productive member of society.  Now, the expectation is that they will become productive 4 years later, assuming they don’t go to college.

Much of the same can be attached to “retirement”.  In that same era, there was no retirement.  The modern “golden age of retirement” really means, you’ve saved the money you wasted your life earning, now go spend it, or least that is what far too many retirement salespeople and financial “guides” are trying to sell.  Well, if a person is burning their life away to go play at the end of the working era, why would they want to take care of ageing parents.  In many ways, it sounds like some kids, “my parents just cramp my style.”

Back to the really hard part, the church not doing what it is called to do.  The church has fallen prey to the same mentality as the populace, the government will take care of it!  Then there is the whole lawyer thing, and the lawsuits that seem to come with them.  What church is willing to take on that kind of litigative burden?  What church can afford it?  It reminds me of a post I read today, “A law degree only allows you to add friction to the economy…”

Litigation, cramping the style, whatever the reason…this is just not good.

What Is Speaking The Truth In Love?

Keith Giles, over at subversive1, seems to have had an interesting experience regarding a person shutting down the conversation (or the comments) that challenged this individual’s theology/teaching. Keith states that he rarely, if ever, does this kind of public revealing (and I believe him. I just wanted to put that out there), however, he felt compelled to in his post Speaking The Truth In Love.

I can’t say as I disagree with either Keith’s motivation, his acted upon reticence (versus just saying it) to call people out, or his post.  However, it brings out something that is an ongoing issue, not just in the church, but in general human discourse.  It is no longer about disagreeing, but it is much more.  It is more emotional.

For whatever reason, I just thought of the story in U.S. history, when some offended member of the U.S. Legislature decided to go beat some other legislator with a cane in the time leading up to the War Between The States (or the Civil War).

Frankly, a lot of discourse today isn’t discourse, but proverbial caning.  The real issue is that there are a lot of people that, when challenged, say that the person challenging them is prejudiced in someway, and by calling them prejudiced, seek to (and, sadly, far too often succeed) shut the other person up by what is effectively name-calling.

I could say that Keith was lucky that the posts were only deleted, rather than an ensuing name-calling in an attempt to shut him up.  However, it is way too easy (and I am prey to this as well) to succumb to the pressure to just “let it go,” and accept them, despite their teaching being contrary to yours.

The Form of the Future

When I’m operating under restrictions, I definitely feel constrained by them, but without those restraints, it doesn’t seem as if I my actions are actually accomplishing anything.

…the Net truly is vast and infinite. Who knows, maybe a new society we’ve never even dreamed of is already being born

I greatly enjoy Japanese anime. There is a lot about it, like many of their movies, that shows that the Japanese culture is trying to work through the entirety of its history through art (which kind of reminds me of Timothy Zahn’s Grand Admiral Thrawn). I just watched Ghost in the Shell: Solid State Society on NetFlix.

In this movie, a group of solitary elderly people are recruited to run a network to save this future world of Japan. The funny thing is that I watched it as an idea had been coalescing in my head about the future of Earth governments and societies and cultures, and the elderly were the key. I’m thinking about writing a few short stories about it, but who knows if they will ever see paper or web.

The first quote brought a question to mind: if we break down all the barriers (whether they be social, political, religious, scientific, genetic, etc.), what will we (the human race) do? What will be our purpose?

The second quote is something that people try to define as Web 2.0 or Web 3.0 (or whatever name you want to give it. I could care less what its name is.)―the future. I think the church―humanity as a whole―is still trying to absorb what has been wrought in the realm of mass communication (even communications as unimportant and ineffectual as my blog).

Just like everyone else, I have a fear of the unknown. What will the future hold?

A Take on Generosity

A politician, like you and me, can be generous only with his own money. A politician spending other people’s money is, at best, implementing sound policies – and, more realistically, much closer to a burglar who “generously” uses part of his booty to buy rounds of drinks for his buddies.

Cafe Hayek: Who’s Generous?

Don Boudreaux wrote the above on the Cafe Hayek blog on the 7th of February. Obviously, there was some sort of back-and-forth at the Baltimore-Sun, especially with all the posts that follow that, frankly, seem to have nothing to do with the letter itself.

I’ve pretty much decided that while I care about politics, I don’t care enough to blog about it. However, while this is somewhat political (especially with all the comments), in truth, this really should be a pretty good observation.

Whether the public trough or the church’s through, one cannot be generous with what isn’t one’s own. In the church, this causes a lot of tension. We in the church say that all Creation is God’s. That being the case, can we truly generous if it is God’s? Or is this saying that something is God’s is someone’s idea of getting people to tithe?

Just something to ponder.

Joel Osteen And Politics

Okay, I have to admit that Joel Osteen kind of gives me the creeps. However, I also have to admit that his interview in Christian Today is worthy of kudos. I wish a lot of churches would have his same perspective. While he still rubs me the wrong way, I will no longer be so quick to dismiss him, as I have seen wisdom in him today.

The Chickens Are Coming Home to Roost

A bunch of drunk teenagers vandalized a site once inhabited by the American poet Robert Frost. In A Violation of Both Law and the Spirit, Dan Barry seems offended that these, for lack of a better word, punks didn’t show respect to history or elders.

These punks are a direct result of a bunch of people who didn’t respect history or authority teaching them. Why are they surprised? The generation that is entering and leaving colleges now is filled with higher percentage of “entitlement” mentality people than probably has ever existed before at one time. They have the mentality of the old aristocracy, and all too often lack of responsibility.

I wish I could say that I’m surprised that those like Dan Barry are surprised, but I’m not. Nor am I, obviously, surprised at the behavior of these punks. People such as myself, Bible-believing Christians, are often ridiculed, even by our friends, for our concerns about trying (although we often—even usually—fail) to align with a Biblically based life. If people were honest, how could a Biblically (read: New Testament, and not forced conversion) be worse than this?