BaylyBlog: Out of our minds, too...

Your tax dollars at work...

(Tim: A week or so ago, thirty plus members of Church of the Good Shepherd went to Bloomington's City Council meeting to oppose our tax dollars being appropriated by the Council members to fund an organization that makes Hitler's Third Reich and it's Holocaust factories look like child's play. I'm speaking of course of Planned Parenthood which makes its living off of the slaughter of unborn children tenderly nestled in their mother's womb. By itself, Planned Parenthood is responsible for a quarter of a million of those murders each year, and they're moving their abattoirs into more affluent areas in order to grow their bloody profit.

Each year here in Bloomington, Planned Parenthood goes through the charade of requesting tax dollars to help provide its clients with some service close to, but not exactly coterminous with it's slaughter machine. And each year, our city fathers cuddle up to this progressive nonprofit and ante up our dough over our vociferous protest. One of those speaking against this Holocaust funding this year was Mary Lee's and my dear friend and fellow CGS member, Joshua Congrove. Although we were out of town at the time, we heard Josh's testimony was good, so I asked him if he could send me a copy. Here are a few prefaratory comments he wrote to set the scene, followed by what he said that night.)

This year, as usual, Planned Parenthood received a donation from the Bloomington City Council (and from public funds) to support a particular medical procedure. While the procedure itself is unobjectionable, the giving of public money to an organization that performs hundreds of abortions per year is an egregious act that demands objection...

Women warriors aren't doing so well...

(Tim) In an op-ed piece today, the New York Times is concerned about the results of the recent Rand Corporation study, Invisible Wounds of War, which found that "women suffer from higher rates of post-traumatic stress disorder and depression than men" after military deployment. Really.

We are a nation of idiots--callous, degraded, wicked idiots. We send our wives and daughters off to war and, when they come home emotional wrecks, we act surprised and blame it on the fact that one third of them were sexually assaulted or raped while they were deployed. Really.

I have compassion for these daughters, wives, and mothers, but my compassion makes me remember and ask that you all remember, also...

Evangelizing mystical relativists...

(Tim, w/thanks to Kevin) Here's a helpful op-ed piece from the New York Times detailing the challenges we'll face in our preaching in the coming decades. It's written by David Brooks who's frequently good.

Encroachments on liberty: It won't stop with the Mormons...

(Tim w/thanks to Dan) Speaking of the loss of liberty, here's one of an almost-limitless number of articles that demonstrate where we're headed in these United States. Western European nations, Australia, and Canada are already far down the trail, but it's still a bit of a shocker here at home. "As to be hated needs but to be seen." In time, though, I'm afraid we'll all settle in and decide no Christian witness is at stake here, there, or anywhere.

I wonder whether Christians right now believe spanking their children is a basic act of biblical obedience? How many evangelicals would, as an act of conscience, oppose national or state laws banning it?

You think you know something about the churches David and I serve, right? Well, we just lost a woman who'd been at Church of the Good Shepherd for twelve years because...

Chelsea Clinton drawing water at the well...

(Tim) Within the church today, why are we so reticent to recognize sexual distinctions that go beyond God's command or certain "roles" the result of His command? Pastors and elders can bring ourselves to swallow the very specific biblical prohibitions against women serving as elders, and the equally specific commands for wives to submit to their husbands--even going so far as to defend those prohibitions with some small talk of the nature of sexuality (although we always call it "gender" rather than "sex" because gender is a social construct while sex is a hard biological reality); but still, despite this supposed submission to the biblical command, we show a complete absence of any biblical theology of sexuality.

Why? Why are we so chip-on-the-shoulderish when it comes to a discussion of the nature of man and woman beyond the obvious body parts (which are undeniable and very useful for advertising), and certain small aspects of authority in the church and home? Why do we read sexuality in such a mind-bogglingly narrow way? We claim to love diversity, right? So why such a penurious, such a tight-waddish reading of this one so basic to our lives?

A central part of understanding our culture is seeing the hatred for distinctions at its core, and few distinctions are more despised than this one present in the womb from our earliest days--male and female.

Typical believers in Jesus Christ will think we've seen the goodness of sex when we've decided to marry a woman rather than a man...

Franky's Haming it up again...

(Tim, w/thanks to Mark) Speaking of Senator Obama, Franky Schaeffer's using the current ruckus to kill his father. For the second or third time.

Remember the account of Noah's sons, how the youngest, Ham, saw his father in a drunken stupor and left the tent to broadcast his father's nakedness? How did Noah's two eldest respond?

The demographics of the PCA: Follow the money...

Then the people of Nineveh believed in God; and they called a fast and put on sackcloth from the greatest to the least of them. (Jonah 3:5)

(Tim) Surrounding his book's arrival on the New York Times bestseller list, Tim Keller's buzz has expanded beyond the PCA. Lots of people trying to put their finger on what makes Pastor Keller brilliant observe that the center of his brilliance is his ability to ask and answer "the questions New Yorkers are asking."

So what questions do New Yorkers ask?

It depends. Which New Yorkers are we talking about? Woody Allen, or the firemen?

Pastors such as Tim Keller and Richard John Neuhaus are speaking to a very narrow segment of New Yorkers--what Peter Berger refers to as "the Information Class" and others call "the Chattering Classes." These are people who make their living writing and editing and publishing and reviewing books. Or, transfer the principle to other segments of the word business--magazines, newspapers, TV, blogs, universities, and courts; together, we are the Chattering Class.

Tim Keller is PCA and we are a class-specific denomination...

A voice crying in Los Angeles...

(Tim, thanks to KL) Mr. Spielberg has agreed to work on the opening and closing worship services of the Beijing Olympics, but it's all up in the air now due to Mr. Spielberg's judgment that Beijing isn't doing enough to end the human rights violations in....Red China? The persecution of Christians there? The murder of unborn children against their parent's wishes (if such a statement makes any sense at all) across China's provinces?

No. Mr. Spielberg says Beijing isn't doing enough in Darfur. DARFUR!

"I find that my conscience will not allow me to continue business as usual. At this point, my time and energy must be spent not on Olympic ceremonies, but on doing all I can to help bring an end to the unspeakable crimes against humanity that continue to be committed in Darfur."

Really, if we're going to speak about "crimes against humanity," why not start with Red China? Or better yet, these United States? Is it really necessary to go halfway around the world to find something worthy of exercising one's conscience when Mr. Spielberg lives in a nation that murders a quarter of her unborn children each year? And if that isn't sufficient to awaken Mr. Spielberg, had he never heard of the crimes against humanity that have characterized Mao's regime from the beginning, continuing to this present day?

I suppose when we worship movie stars we shouldn't really be surprised if they start thinking they're prophets sent from god.

On the eve of Iowa and New Hampshire, "there is such silence."

(Tim) From John Knox's The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women, this excerpt explaining why reformed pastors have nothing at all to say about the election of a woman to the presidency of these United States...

Truth, beauty, and goodness...

(Tim) This week saw the release of David Michaelis’ biography of Charles Schultz, the creator of the cartoon strip, Peanuts. Titled Schultz and Peanuts, reviewers are commenting on Michaelis’ heavy emphasis on Schultz as Suffering Artist. What did he suffer?

The Times (10/14/07) sums it up: “Drawings rejected by high school yearbook. Odd haircuts by Dad.”

Not exactly the Gulag, right? Well, this only as context for what follows.

I’ve noted before that in decadent societies artists become the high priests and art, itself, the sacrament. Now I don’t want to push this too far, but I’m determined to push it far enough to get us into a self-reflective and self-critical mode.

Commenting on readers’ desires for artists to be portrayed as anguished souls, University of Minnesota’s Patricia Hampl spoke of our need “in the age of entertainment’s dominance…for art to be something separate from our quotidian lives, something almost spiritual."

We already knew it, but still...

(Tim) So exactly why did Al Gore get the Nobel Peace Prize?

It’s the Norwegian Nobel Committee that makes the selection and this committee has five members chosen by the Norwegian Parliament. Through the nineties, Francis Sejersted was the committee’s chairman and here’s his comment about the committee's work:

Awarding a peace prize is, to put it bluntly, a political act. (NYT; 10/14/07)

Now, I wouldn't want that for my own daughters...

(Tim) Robert Egan, owner of Hackensack, New Jersey's, barbecue restaurant, Chubby's, has appointed himself peacemaker-in-chief between North Korea and these United States. The latest (10/8/07) New Yorker has a profile of Egan and his particular brand of chef-and-shuttle diplomacy. The piece ends with Egan comparing North Korea and these United States:

This is what I like--the North Koreans ...are very family-oriented. And they have a better take on a man's role and a woman's role than we do. I think a lot of women in this country are trying to be men, and I think that could be the downfall of the family structure of this society. But, in North Korea, the man goes to work and the woman raises the family. Now, I wouldn't want that for my own daughters--I want them to be career girls, not dependent on any man but me--but in my own life I like the fact that a guy's a guy and a girl's a girl. You feel like a man when you are in North Korea. (p. 69)

Egan sounds pretty much like today's run-of-the-mill conservative Christian father who likes his own male perquisites alright, but at the same time wants his daughter to be impervious to the failures of any husband she may marry. So off she goes to college, graduate school, and her career. For himself, he wants a real wife and a real mother for his children. But for his daughters, he wants success, security, and independence.

Is this the life of faith?

Look at whatever alumni magazines you get--we're on the lists of Covenant College, Taylor University, Westmont College, and Wheaton College--and note...

Speaking of pornography...

(Tim) A dear friend who works as an attorney out east sent an E-mail in which he commented, "I thought you might be interested in (this) New York Times article regarding prosecution of pornography. Here are a couple of interesting quotes:

While pornography by itself is not illegal, it can be prosecuted as obscenity if it fits the definition laid out by the Supreme Court more than 30 years ago. Under that ruling, Miller v. California, a work may be deemed obscene if, taken as a whole, it lacks artistic, literary or scientific merit, depicts certain conduct in a patently offensive manner, and violates contemporary community standards.…

Professor Lochner said he doubted Ms. Buchanan's efforts would have much of a deterrent effect because they were so few that pornography producers had come to regard being prosecuted by her or anyone else as 'being struck by lightning.

My friend adds this question: "What if the rule laid out by Supreme Court precedent were actually followed and enforced? I wonder if progress could actually be made at stemming the tide of lewdness in our culture.  That is unless we have devolved so much that 'what is vile is honored among men' (Psalm 12:8) and there is nothing 'patently offensive' about pornography."

Northwestern University: a morality play for the church...

(by Tim) Sadly, reformed pastors identify less with those who live in rural communities and make their living as sheep farmers (what used to be called "shepherds") than with those who live in books and make their living as academics. So this story from today's New York Times is particularly instructive.

There's a big stink over a psychology prof at Northwestern University named J. Michael Bailey who's gored the ox of transexuals around the country. But before we get to Prof. Bailey and the transexuals, a few comments about the lesson Christians should learn from this battle.

For decades, freedom of religion and freedom of speech have been under a sustained attack and the content of the books we read, the sermons we listen to, and the Bibles we carry to church Sunday morning all bear witness to the attrition of these freedoms.

Speaking only of our Bibles, did you know that millions of Bibles used by evangelicals have had words deleted in order to avoid expressing incorrect opinions deemed to have the potential of being hurtful to women and Jews? Evangelical Bible scholars, linguists, translators, graphic designers, publishers, bookstore owners, and pastors all joined together to produce and sell Bibles that would not be vulnerable to charges of sexism or antisemitism. Many hundreds of times, the original Hebrew and Greek words were changed or deleted so the Bible would be less offensive to moderns...

The sad, sad life of Arthur Miller...

(by Tim) Vanity Fair is a sickening gossip rag for those spoken of in the first part of Psalm 73 whom Asaph was tempted to envy. I take no delight in sending friends to its pages, but here's a morality tale for us all.

It turns out playwright Arthur Miller, who wrote Death of a Salesman and The Crucible, had a son named Daniel. When Miller died in 2005, the only major paper mentioning this son was the LA Times. Here's what they ran:

(Arthur) Miller had another son, Daniel, who was diagnosed with Down syndrome shortly after his birth in 1962. It is not known whether he survives his father.

The article went on to say that Daniel had been institutionalized, and that Miller "apparently never visited him." Yet The New York Times ran an obituary puffing Miller for his "fierce belief in man's responsibility to his fellow man—and [in] the self-destruction that followed on his betrayal of that responsibility."

Shades of Paul Johnson's Intellectuals. If you haven't read it, you should.

(Thanks, David and Kamilla.)

Oxford coeds put children first...

One swallow doth not a summer make, but we’ve got two and I’m hopeful.

First, the day before yesterday I heard NPR hawking a story they’d be broadcasting the next day. Maybe some of you heard it? The lead-in was the statement that young people have been less religious than their parents for decades, now, with the trend increasing. But now, the trend is reversing and parents aren’t pleased. This is the story of our own congregation...

A recommendation...

My friend, Bob Patterson, is a Contributing Editor to a monthly series of monographs published by Allan Carlson's The Howard Center for Family, Religion, and Society titled The Family in America. Currently at Volume 21, Number 3 (they're a little bit behind), I've read this publication for many years after having it recommended by Herb and Terry Schlossberg.

In its pages, I've learned much about the interface of the Academy, the civil authority, historians, the law, demographers, sociologists, etc. and the family order God ordained in the Garden of Eden as recorded by the Word of God. But don't misunderstand me: Scripture is very rarely mentioned in TFIA. The monographs are not biblical scholarship...

Meet Peter Hitchens...

Did you know the man making a living attacking Mother Theresa, religion, and God has a brother? Meet Peter Hitchens, a confessing Christian...

Gideon checked out...

When the NAE's Richard Cizik went on NPR announcing his "conversion" to the Deep Ecology of Global Warming, it seemed likely some new religion was sweeping our land. Now, with the posting of this article at Bloomberg.com, it's clear:

Visitors to the Gaia Napa Valley Hotel and Spa won't find the Gideon Bible in the nightstand drawer. Instead, on the bureau will be a copy of ``An Inconvenient Truth,'' former Vice President Al Gore's book about global warming.

Speaking of Vice President Al Gore's evangelistic mission, this clip reminiscent of Swift is a hoot...

(Thanks, Dan.)

Should man kill and eat animals...

The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, vegans, and many others today believe eating meat is morally wrong. And although Christians who don't eat meat are rarely willing to condemn it outright, they do sometimes seem to believe that their diet is not simply superior, nutritionally, but also morally. Wrong. Here Scott Tibbs does a good job summarizing what's wrong with this, biblically. Christians are to oppose cruelty to animals. Scriptures such as Proverbs 12:10 make this clear. Scripture also clearly says that God gave animals to us to eat. There are cruel ways of raising and butchering animals, and Christians should oppose such things. But the simple act of butchering and eating an animal is not cruel. And before any of our readers initiate a campaign to end cruel butchering, keep in mind that PETA has no place on their agenda for the ethical treatment of unborn children, or for opposing those who butcher them.

-posted by Tim Bayly

A son of the church glorifying God...

Some of the greatest blessings God give us are daughters and sons of the covenant who live by faith, honoring God and His Word. What joy they bring to our lives as they pick up the baton and run!

Here's a front-page story from the Indianapolis Star about one of Church of the Good Shepherd's sons who has decided not to compete in the regional Scripps spelling bee this year because the bee, sponsored by Bloomington's local paper, the Herald Times, has been changed from Saturday to Sunday. The paper's publisher, E. Mayer Maloney Jr., has been intransigent in the matter, despite the willingness of his subordinates to do the work necessary to keep the bee on Saturday.

The significance of all this is that the son of our church, Elliot Huck, has won the last two competitions and gone to the Scripps National Spelling Bee in Washington D.C. each year, placing 45th this past year. Since then, Elliot's spent many hundreds of hours preparing for this year's competition, which would have been his last. Then, a couple weeks ago, the paper announced they were changing the day of the week the competition would be held, and E. Mayer Maloney Jr. has planted his feet...

The whole thing's sad and wonderful, at the same time. What faith!

Read Elliot's testimony. And if you want to write to commend Elliot for his witness and faith, just post comments here and he'll see them.

Incidentally, it's no accident that this story ran at the paper where well-known Christian journalist and World Journalism Institute instructor, Russ Pulliam, works.

Lotz of picking and choosing in the Garden of Eden...

In her article cited in an earlier post, Anne Graham Lotz is pandering to some of the more ungodly prejudices of our culture by attacking the church for not being biblical on the meaning and purpose of sexuality. What she really means, though, is not that the Church isn't biblical, but that it's not enlightened or progressive--it's not, as they say, "evolved."

Before the watching world, Ms. Lotz argues that those who maintain distinctions between the sexes (other than those irrepressible biological and physiological ones) are bound for extinction as her new age of feminist gender equity finally dawns among the slowpoke people of God.

One looks in vain for any recognition on Ms. Lotz's part that she's thrown the entire history of the Christian Church's doctrine of sexuality in the dumpster. Likely she'd deny this, pointing to her strong stand against sodomy or divorce as proof that, where the rubber meets the road, she's rock solid on sexuality.

Yet the order of God's creation prior to the Fall is as clear concerning the sinfulness of women exercising authority over men as it is concerning the sinfulness of men having sex with men, or as it is concerning divorce. The authoritative primacy of man over woman, the heterosexual limits of physical intimacy, and the evil of divorce are each equally and undeniably established by our Creator in the Garden of Eden, and the rest of Scripture only reinforces God's Edenic order.

Asked whether divorce is right or wrong, Jesus responded by going back to Eden, prior to the Fall, making it clear that God's order from the beginning was heterosexual, monogamous, and lifelong:

(Jesus) answered and said, "Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, 'for this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh'? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate." (Matthew 19:4-6)

Asked whether it was proper for women to exercise authority over men, the Apostle Paul responded by going back to Eden, prior to the Fall, making it clear that God's order from the beginning was neither matriarchal nor egalitarian, but patriarchal:

But I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet. For it was Adam who was first created, and then Eve. (1 Timothy 2:12, 13)

Do Ms. Lotz and other evangelical feminists really think they can pick and choose between the details of the sexual order God established in Eden which is reinforced repeatedly in the sacred words of Scripture?

"Let's see, I'll have some heterosexuality and monogamy, please. But no patriarchy today, thank you."

Well, any simpleton can see what's happened, and therefore what's coming.

What's happened? Well, for many years, now, evangelicals have lived in an increasingly egalitarian and feminist culture, and that culture has won us over--all that's left is the mop-up operation. Few of us would be willing to preach or listen to the sermons of past centuries our fathers in the faith preached concerning male authority or female deference and submission. And structurally, our practice bears no resemblance to the church's historical practice.

Denominationally, some of us are still forced to toe the line: we don't yet ordain women to the pastorate or eldership, but we've taken every other step we can. We have women leading our corporate worship, administering the Lord's Supper, preaching in our pulpits, teaching mixed-sex adult Sunday school classes, leading mixed-sex small groups, serving as commissioned deacons, serving on our national theological study committees, preaching at our conferences, serving as regional directors in our parachurch and mission organizations... Need I go on?

Yes, we have our Pharisaical righteousness in each place we're fiddling around the edge. Women preaching in our pulpits are the exception--not the rule--and they do so under the authority and review of the elders board. Our women deacons are not ordained--they're only commissioned. We've limited the Sunday school classes led by women to one quarter of our offerings each term. Women lead our call to worship and prayer of confession, but never our pastoral prayer. Women administer the Lord's Supper, but our senior pastor is a man and he's the one who hands the trays to the women before they go out into the congregation. The woman on the study committee has special expertise in the subject under review, and she's not a full voting member. Our conference isn't a church meeting, our speakers aren't really preaching, and we don't have any authority over those who attend. Our organization is parachurch--not church--so we have no need to submit to Scripture's prohibition of women exercising authority over men.

At this point, some readers are likely hung up on one or more of the particulars I've cited and are asking themselves, "Is it really wrong to have women deacons?" "Why shouldn't women lead in prayer during corporate worship?" "If women shouldn't be regional directors of mission agencies, should they be running for president?" Or, "If it's wrong for women to preach in morning worship, is it also wrong for them to serve as professors in Christian colleges and seminaries?"

Although these are important questions, such examples are only meant to be representative of the sea-change the evangelical church has embraced. We will differ over which of the above practices are within the proper boundaries of Scripture, but we must not differ in acknowledging that, taken as a whole, these practices are not a reformation returning us to the doctrine of Scripture, but rather a revolution leading us away from Scripture...

Jared Jeffries' role in New York Knicks, Denver Nuggets brawl...

Here's a picture of our youngest son, Taylor, standing with New York Knicks center, Jared Jeffries, six months ago at our daughter, Hannah's, high school graduation ceremony. The Jeffries family (including Jared) are kind and mild-mannered, so we're not prepared to judge Jared harshly for his role in the brawl between the Knicks and Nuggets last night at Madison Square Garden.

The pursuit of gold....

I went to the library with my daughter Tessa this evening. She headed to the children's section where she's on intimate terms with the librarians. I headed to the periodicals section where I picked up a copy of this month's Harpers Magazine.

Harpers' lead article, Through a Glass, Darkly: How the Christian right is reimagining U.S. history, by Jeff Sharlet was a strong, yet not-altogether-unfair criticism of conservative Christianity's reading of America's political history. (Sorry, not available online at Harpers--though a fair chunk of the article is available on this blog.)

Sharlet mixes reporting of hokey political/cultural rallies (where he appears to have played the coward's trick of acting sympathetic to gain the confidence of leaders) with surprisingly astute assessment of the influence of thinkers such as Rousas Rushdoony and Cornelius Van Til on modern Christian conservativism.

Faithful Christians and the state of the union...

Here are two pieces that wonderfully illustrate the blessings God pours out on this evil world through Christians who, from love for God and man, work for justice in civil society. The first is a short op-ed piece by Kathleen Parker that ran in today's Baltimore Sun. The second is this letter to the editor written by Chuck Colson that appeared in today's New York Times:

To the Editor:

David Kuo cites the idea that evangelical Christians take a two-year fast from politics ("Putting Faith Before Politics," Op-Ed, Nov. 16).

Hmmm. What would have happened if Christians over the last two years had taken a leave of absence from politics? Here's what would not have happened:

The Bush administration would not have taken on the issue of slavery in Sudan, AIDS in Africa or global sexual trafficking. We wouldn't have seen Congress pass a ban on "partial birth" abortions or take on prison rape and prisoner rehabilitation, or highlight the horrors of persecution in North Korea.

And what about Christians in public office? Leaders like Sam Brownback and Frank Wolf, who have risked their lives to go to troubled spots of the world to protect human rights and human dignity, would have just stayed home.

Christians should be engaged in public life as instruments of justice and righteousness.

A two-year fast? No thanks.

Charles W. Colson
Lansdowne, Va., Nov. 22, 2006
The writer is the founder of Prison Fellowship.

(Thanks, Jim and Mark.)

Seymour Hersh's contempt for our soldiers...

Speaking of the disdain for the military that permeates our chattering classes, journalistic icon Seymour Hersh (whom David and I have quoted approvingly in the past) recently spoke to a Canadian audience on the campus of Montreal's McGill University.

Hersh oozed contempt for President Bush and God:

In Washington, you can't expect any rationality. I don't know if he's in Iraq because God told him to, because his father didn't do it, or because it's the next step in his 12-step Alcoholics Anonymous program.

The McGill Daily further reports:

If Americans knew the full extent of U.S. criminal conduct, they would receive returning Iraqi veterans as they did Vietnam veterans, Hersh said. "In Vietnam, our soldiers came back and they were reviled as baby killers, in shame and humiliation," he said. "It isn't happening now, but I will tell you there has never been an army as violent and murderous as our army has been in Iraq."

Despicable. One wonders if Hersh has ever read even a single volume of military history?

Anyhow, Hersh probably wasn't counting on his lecture getting much press in the US. Let's surprise him. Put alongside this, Kerry's remarks are child's-play.

(Thanks, David Gray.)

Trick or treat...

Halloween approaches and once again the debate will rage: "To trick or treat or not to trick or treat; that is the question."

Being one of very many areas where Christians of good conscience differ, I trust I will not be a stumbling block to others by linking here and here to a couple posts I've made on this in the past.

Is Eric Gordon Jr. good news for Hoosier hoops?

Dear Doug,

Indianapolis high school student, Eric Gordon Jr., breaks his commitment to Illinois and commits to IU. Indiana Pacer Stephen Jackson is involved in a fracas outside a strip club, is charged with a felony and several misdemeanors and may go to jail over this probation violation. Team owner, Donnie Walsh and team president, Larry Bird are sad. Kelvin Sampson is penalized by the NCAA for recruiting violations committed at Oklahoma, comes to IU and vows to run a clean program, yet he continues to recruit a player who has orally committed to another school. What's the connection? That's easy.

A woman has sex with a man who is married to another woman. So he divorces his first wife and marries the new babe. What's the new babe thinking? He cheated on his first wife; what makes her think he won't cheat on her and marry woman number three? Eric Gordon breaks a commitment to Illinois and goes to Indiana. That tells us something about Eric Gordon and it's not that he is an immature high school student. He has "character" deficiencies. He doesn't stick with his commitments. His word is not his bond. Doesn't IU know that this will show up later, in his life and in his play on the court?

Donnie Walsh longs for the days when he was proud of his team, when he "felt good" about them. Larry Bird says he is disappointed in this latest incident. But they have chosen players who have "character" deficiencies. And they have stuck with players who should have been fired=traded a long while ago. Character doesn't matter; this is pro basketball. Oh, really?

Sobran on "The Da Vinci Code"...

Here's Joe Sobran's apt explanation of the reason The Da Vinci Code sold sixty million copies and gave birth to a blockbuster movie:

After reading The Da Vinci Code, I wondered whether its author was ...psychotic or just cynical and shameless. Today the answer seems obvious. He wrote the book for a certain market. Just as Gibson's film found a huge market of believers in the Gospel message that Christ is risen, Brown's book found a huge market of unbelievers for whom the "good news" is that Christ is not risen, is not divine, and therefore is no impediment to earthly happiness, especially sexual pleasure; indeed, he enjoyed it himself!

Again, though Brown claims to respect Jesus as a great (though merely human) teacher, it isn't clear why he should, since he shows no interest in, or acquaintance with, Jesus' actual teaching, especially his call for sinners to repent. In Brown's world, there is no reason for repentance; only the Church has done anything it should be sorry for, such as burdening us with the ideas that we are sinners and that women are evil.

It's all pseudo-scholarly New Age tripe, and the essence of New Age thinking is wishful, as opposed to critical, thinking. If reincarnation grabs you, well, it's true for you. You need no proof beyond your own preferences. It's a loopy twist on American pluralism ("Attend the church of your choice"). The most perfect expression of it I've ever heard was that of a young neo-Nazi in a television interview: "Nazism is the answer for me. It may not be the answer for everyone." Dan Brown may not be the answer for everyone.

Islam and the NBA...

Joe Sobran asks, "If Islam is 'a religion of peace,' how come there are so many brawls in the NBA?"

Honkie pomp and circumstance...

Here's apost well worth reading by Jacob Mentzel. We read it out loud during Hannah's seventeenth birthday party this evening, and family and friends laughed and laughed, then said "He's right."

Sowell strikes again...

Check out this short article on the Sixties by Thomas Sowell.

(Thanks, Jeff.)

The DaVinci Code: don't bother...

After my wife, Mary Lee, and I had a date eating strawberry shortcake at the courthouse square this afternoon, I visited our best local used bookstore, Caveat Emptor, to browse through its new arrivals. When I walked in, Caveat's proprietor, Janos Starks, asked, "So, are you having any repercussions in your congregation from the release of The DaVinci Code?"

"No," I said. "There are two types of churches: those that believe discernment is good and those that think it's bad. We think it's good so we have no trouble understanding a novel that presents sex as a sacrament and tells us Jesus was married."

A couple years ago, my cousin, John DeWalt, sent me his discarded copy of The DaVinci Code telling me I ought to read it since it was important for me to know what everyone else was reading. Dutifully, I read it and can say that this book and the movie that closely follows it are not worth anyone's time. Simply put, The DaVinci Code is blasphemy and sacrilege dressed up as a murder mystery.

Picture the goddess worship of ancient paganism, the virulent anti-Catholicism of contemporary American culture, and the mystical babble of New Agers all clomped together in a religion that has a public ritual of sexual intercourse as its highest sacrament, and you've got the picture. Why would any Christian want to watch or read this demonic story?

Yet, I can hear the answer, "Because we can't engage our neighbors on the issues unless we have read the book or seen the movie ourselves. This is a great opportunity to dialog with unbelievers. Why waste it by not gaining the credibility that would come from knowing the story ourselves?"

Learn French the easy way...

It can be humiliating to learn French from Frenchmen. They're such snobs and mispronunciations can bring on such humiliation. And yet, there's Paris... So if you want to learn the language without subjecting yourself to the humiliation, take this shortcut. Here's a commercial where you can listen to the French while reading the English subtitles. Yeah, it's not much French, but it's enough to learn about fresh baguettes--THE most important cultural contribution France has ever made.

PS: Make sure your sound is on when you listen to video.

Sydney Anglicans, Peter and Phil Jensen, host the Queen...

Her Majesty the Queen of England was in Sydney, Australia for the celebration of Commonwealth Day, where she was hosted by the estimable Jensen brothers--Peter who is the Archbishop of Sydney and his brother, Phil, Dean of the Cathedral.

Phil Jensen is the purest iconoclast I've ever known. With his brother, Peter, as well as the able graduates of their own Moore Theological College, the Sydney Diocese is set to take over the Anglican communion across Australia. Labelled by their opponents as "the new Puritans," they've made quite a ruckus. But on this day the Jensens were left demonstrating what Jacque Ellul in his False Presence of the Kingdom warned will inevitably happen when church and state are wed. The Commonwealth Day cathedral service included Hindu Rajasthani dancers, although an assurance was given that the dances were "ethnic" and "not dedicated to a Hindu God." The following prayer was sung:

We dream of a world with no more violence/A world of justice and hope/Grasp your neighbor's hand/As a symbol of peace and brotherhood...

Later in the service the Very Reverend Phil Jensen issued this invitation:

At this central point of our Commonwealth Day celebrations, we invite the representatives of some of the different religions within the Commonwealth to lead our gathering in six affirmations that express our shared values of the Commonwealth member countries.

This day, at least, the dear brother was defanged, wasn't he? What wonders a Queen can perform! The Religion Report of National Radio provided this description:

The observance was somewhat striking, as Muslim sheikhs, Buddhist monks, Roman Catholic bishops and Jewish community leaders represented the 53 member states of the Commonwealth. The Queen's own message as well as that of Archbishop Peter Jensen, gave particular prominence to the plight of people living with HIV and AIDS, 60% of the total living within the Commonwealth itself.

Open-minded journalists...

One of the periodicals I read occasionally is the Columbia Journalism Review. Why? You got me. I'm interested in the professional ethics of the chattering class? Anyhow, here's an interesting tidbit I came across:

This February, I attended my first Association of Alternative Newsweeklies conference, in the great media incubator of San Francisco...

All the newspapers looked the same--same format, same fonts, same columns complaining about the local daily, same sex advice, same five-thousand-word hold for the cover story...

At the bar, I started a discussion about what specific attributes qualified these papers, and the forty-seven-year-old publishing genre that spawned them, to continue meriting the adjective "alternative." Alternative to what?...

No, it must have something to do with political slant--or, to be technically accurate, political correctness. Richard Karpel, the AAN executive director, joined the conversation, so I put him on the spot: Of all the weeklies his organization had rejected for membership on political grounds, which one was the best editorially? The Independent Florida Sun, he replied. Good-looking paper, some sharp writing but, well, it was just too friendly toward the church. "And if there's anything we all agree on," Karpel said with a smile, "it's that we're antichurch."

I assumed he was joking--that couldn't be all we have left from the legacy of Norman Mailer, Art Kumkin, Paul Krassner, and my other childhood heroes, could it? Then later I looked up the AAN's Web site to read the admission committee's rejection notes for the Independent Florida Sun (which was excluded by a vote of 9-2). "The right-wing church columnist has no place in AAN," explained one judge. "All the God-and-flag sh_t disturbs me," wrote another. "Weirdly right-wing," chimed a third.

-Matt Welch, "The New Age of Alternative Media: Blogworld and its Gravity, The New Amateur Journalists Weigh In," Columbia Journalism Review 42, no. 3 (September/October 2003): p. 21.

A rollicking good read...

One swallow doth not a summer make so I'm under no illusion concerning the overwhelmingly negative posture the New York Times takes to all things religious, but for a surprising departure from their normal stock-in-trade, check out this review that appeared in yesterday's New York Times Book Review of Daniel C. Dennett's Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon. The review, written by the The New Republic's literary editor, Leon Wieseltier, begins:

The question of the place of science in human life is not a scientific question. It is a philosophical question. Scientism, the view that science can explain all human conditions and expressions, mental as well as physical, is a superstition, one of the dominant superstitions of our day; and it is not an insult to science to say so. For a sorry instance of present-day scientism, it would be hard to improve on Daniel C. Dennett's book. Breaking the Spell is a work of considerable historical interest, because it is a merry anthology of contemporary superstitions.

The orthodoxies of evolutionary psychology are all here, its tiresome way of roaming widely but never leaving its house, its legendary curiosity that somehow always discovers the same thing.

Wieseltier's review is a rollicking good read so check it out.

(HT to James Altena by way of David Canfield.)

Clerical status or social status...

A few years ago our session received a formal request from a member of our congregation that the elders wear coats and ties when serving the Lord's Supper. We discussed the request at length and declined to honor it, not because we wanted to lower the authority of the elders or the solemnity of the meal, but because we believed this request, if implemented, would function as a statement of social status and class rather than serving to build the unity of the Body of Christ around the Table of our Lord. In other words, we were convinced suits and ties would encourage, not discourage, divisions among us (1Corinthians 11).

This is not true everywhere, I'm sure, but it is true here, and in my judgment, the dismissal of such decisions as pandering to the sins of our culture says more about the one making the accusation than those being accused.

Warning our congregation of the danger of pastors and elders wielding our authority far beyond the boundaries of Scripture, I've said that, were I to try, I believe I could make a good biblical case for painting the walls of our sanctuary black. And some would be convinced.

We all need to guard against the abuse of authority that grows out of what, in his form for the ordination and installation of ruling elders, A. A. Hodge labels "clerical tyranny."

There may be some contexts in which robes communicate more of the dignity of the office than the officer, more of humility than pride, more of reverence than class, but in my experience those places are rare. And similarly with suits and ties. For every church I've been in where suits are worn out of reverence for the Lord's Day and worship, I've been in scores where suits were only part of a much larger claim of social class and status--and went with many other similar signatures visible everywhere.

No one escapes such temptations, least of all myself. But only a fool would cultivate ignorance of them. This is the reason I often remind others (and thereby myself) that "All an Englishman's preferences are a matter of principle."

Keeping up appearances...

If I've gotta be hectored, please never let it be by a Brit--with them it's an art form. (Read the final few paragraphs.)

And yeah, I just committed a people-group generalization. Speaking of which, check out the Apostle Paul's, "Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons...this testimony is true." I wonder whether the latest revisionist Bibles keep this humdinger?

Marketing Deviancy

Over the week between Christmas and New Year's Day the various Bayly children gathered at Mud's in Chicago. Mud is moving in with us next summer, so this was our last Christmas at the home Nate and I grew up in, and Tim and Deborah spent their teen years in. Forty-two years of family gatherings in Bartlett end this year, and while it's sad, there was a strong sense of God's goodness in our gathering.

Midweek, Tim and I took a carload of Bayly cousins to Chicago. We packed eleven children between ages 6 and 16 into Tim's Honda Odyssey minivan. Three of the boys sat in the rear well. The rest sat packed, mostly two-to-a-seat, in the main part of the van.

On the way in we passed this car entering the Eisenhower. Pallets hung off it like boxes off a Chinese bicycle deliveryman. None of the pallets were tied. All were loosely stacked (including those on the car's roof), held in place by nothing more than gravity. On the Eisenhower! In modern-day Chicago! Traveling full expressway speed!

We started our day at the Museum of Science of Industry, a wretchedly packed scene of mass chaos. Tim parked across the street from the museum to avoid the underground garage prices. Walking across the lawn to the entrance we saw little tubular pieces of dirt strewn all across the lawn. We immediately assumed we had blundered into a minefield of goose droppings and began dancing and prancing like disco fools to avoid dirtying our shoes. Only when we reached the sidewalk did young Taylor tell us we had contorted ourselves to avoid not goose droppings, but aeration plugs.

Not having paid to park, we felt free to leave the museum when we saw the mass chaos and head downtown. We started at a great art supply store on Chicago Avenue before parking near Michigan Avenue and walking from the river to Water Tower Place. The Apple store was fun, as were Orvis, Brooks Brothers, and a tea store in the mall. Then it was off for pizza. Finally, the boys went to see King Kong while the girls headed home to watch Pride and Prejudice.

King Kong was fun, though a tad lengthy. It's the first special-effects extravaganza I've seen where the blue-screen effects rival the human actors in realism.

On our last night together, Tim, Maryl, Mud, Cheryl and I went to Ikea in Schaumburg and, as usual, ended up buying a few things we never knew we needed until we saw them selling for a pittance (four battery-powered wall clocks for the church office, for instance, at $2 each). There we noticed this wall by the bedroom displays with a picture of a young man and a young woman smiling at each other and a text box next to the picture headlined by the question "Moving in Together?"

It's now apparently cutting edge to market to young cohabitors. The frisson of the forbidden joined to soft fluffy flannel sheets.

And, in the case of this strange multimedia piece from the New York Times, we have an attempt to make prosaic the search for an apartment by a young homosexual couple--who begin by searching separately online for a roommate to share an apartment with, but end by becoming, it would appear, something more. Domesticity coupled with perversion is the new radical chic: "See honey, they buy sheets and choose between apartments JUST LIKE US!"

We ended our evening looking for a place to eat. Our first attempt was an Italian restaurant (Maggiano's--thanks for the name Sarah) near Ikea where we were informed there was a two-hour wait for a table. So, we turned toward home and ate an uninspired Mexican meal at a restaurant in Bloomingdale.

But overall, the evidence of God's everlasting grace was unmistakable--providing the first Bayly gathering in recent memory, I think, without a rip-roaring argument in its midst.

Understanding Darwinists: misery loves company...

In a column written in late December titled, "Is Darwin Holy?," Joe Sobran comments on the "curious evangelical zeal" of Darwinists opposing intelligent design. Three themes of this wise column: first, art is the religion of the godless, their best shot at the numinous or mystical--anything that transcends themselves; second, children are the greatest blessing God gives a husband and wife, often leading them back to His chains of love; and third, Darwinists hate God and attack those who love Him because, as Sobran puts it, "Spoiled souls always want to spoil other souls (saying) 'If I can't be innocent, neither can you!'"...

Judge rules against intelligent design...

It's interesting that in his opinion Judge Jones rebukes intelligent design proponents for being sneaky as to their true motives and convictions. I have a certain sympathy for this point.

But his protest against those who would explain his decision as another case of "judicial activism" is lame. As I recall from reading about the case, elite media sources said Judge Jones was quite pleased to take the case on. When I first read that, I immediately came to the counclusion that he had an axe to grind in this case--whether pro or anti-intelligent design. Methinks the lady doth protest too much.

Excerpts from Judge Jones' decision:

To be sure, Darwin's theory of evolution is imperfect. However, the fact that a scientific theory cannot yet render an explanation on every point should not be used as a pretext to thrust an untestable alternative hypothesis grounded in religion into the science classroom or to misrepresent well-established scientific propositions.

Beauty is the battlefield...

Beauty is the battlefield where God and the devil war for the soul of man. -Fyodor Dostoyevski, The Brothers Karamazov

Although I'm hesitant to recommend anything aligned with the neocons, for several years now I've been reading The New Criterion and I do recommend it to our readers. It's not for everyone; you have to be interested in the arts and open to dyspepsia as the critics main style. But of course, who could avoid being dyspeptic if he had to view and listen to the fruit of degeneracy as his life's work?

The latest issue has an essay by Roger Kimball reviewing Art in Crisis: The Lost Center by Hans Sedlmayr. You haven't heard of it because it sells only a couple hundred copies in English each year which may partly be explained by Sedlmayr having been somewhat of a Nazi sympathizer, although nothing to the degree of Martin Heidegger. Originally published in Germany in 1948, it had sold over 100,000 copies of the German original before it came out in English translation in 1957. Kimball writes:

He's mine, as soon as he's silly and steps on a line...

So down in Austin, Texas, where it's ever so portant how you walk, Lowes sells "Holiday Trees" in English, but "Christmas Trees" in Spanish:

Said the University of Texas MBA who manages marketing for Lowes, "Well, those Hispanics are a little bit primitive, you know. They go to Mass and have tons of kids and aren't ashamed of manual labor. They probably wouldn't know what a holiday tree was. Gotta meet them where they're at."

By the way, how long will the holy in holyday last?

PS: One of our good readers objects so I add: alright, literally "trees of the Nativity," if I must--but it's the Spanish equivalent to our "Christmas trees." And yes, I've had Spanish and knew.

Sodomy, abortion, Rwanda, and general revelation...

While we've not failed to argue the reformed distinction between general and special revelation--that general revelation is sufficient to condemn while special revelation alone leads to saving faith in Jesus Christ--there is a current within reformed churches today that uses this distinction to provide comfort for what appears to us to be heartlessness toward our neighbors. The illogic goes something like this:

If pagans choose to kill their unborn (or newly born) children, they do so because God has given them over. Who are we to intervene?

If pagans choose to copulate like alley cats, they do so because God has given them over. Why should we oppose what God has decreed?

If pagans choose to sterilize their marital love, more power to God's covenant people who will have lots of children, teach them how to think and lead, and take over our nation.

If pagans choose to sodomize one another, what business is that of ours? We can't expect them to acknowledge, let alone follow, God's Law. Let the civil authority handle such matters in the way best calculated to preserve peace among us; if sodomites come to Christ, they will see the error of their ways and repent.

It is such reasoning that allows reformed and evangelical leaders to argue in favor of the repeal of all laws opposing sodomy across our nation. What are we to say to them...

Learning to be Satisfied

Here's a great blog article for those in the habit of buying new cars every few years. Many of our homes would have greater internal peace and more treasure to invest securely in God's Kingdom if they would only practice what this secular blogger preaches.

One of the most generous couples I know has done remarkable feats of charity because, in part, they continue to drive and repair old cars. Cars are bad investments. New cars are even worse--often the single worst investment of a lifetime.

Proud Parents

Gary Knapp has a superb post reflecting on the news of Katie Holmes' pregnancy.

So, what about Halloween...

As one of the pastors of a church family that strives to be gracefully biblical, it's no surprise that I'm watched each year to see if I approve or disapprove of Halloween. So, each year I try hard not to offend anyone on this issue, but the Bayly children do go out trick or treating--and we have our doors open to the neighborhood with a pile of candy waiting, also.

We are not opposed to trick or treating even though we know many other believers are. This does not mean that Mary Lee and I allow our children to dress up like demons or witches--we have never allowed that. The spirit world is not something to treat lightly and dressing up as ghosts, witches, or demons does, in fact, trivialize spiritual realities. In this connection, I always think of Jude's statement:

Yet in the same way these men, also by dreaming, defile the flesh, and reject authority, and revile angelic majesties. But Michael the archangel, when he disputed with the devil and argued about the body of Moses, did not dare pronounce against him a railing judgment, but said, "The Lord rebuke you!" But these men revile the things which they do not understand; and the things which they know by instinct, like unreasoning animals, by these things they are destroyed. (Jude 1:8-10).

Fools play with things they don't understand. When I hear of people watching vampire flicks, Rosemary's Baby, and The Exorcism, for instance, it scares me. Do they know what they're doing? Do they really think so casually of the spirit world that they dare to make it a toy? It reminds me of a three year old finding an old unexploded grenade and picking it up to play with it.

So no, we do not approve of those who use Halloween to play with demons. But we also do not believe in giving over practices because some use them for wickedness. Every good thing can be perverted, can't it...

All things to all men or not of the world?

There is a church in my town which has gone through a succession of metamorphoses, all in the name of relevance and witnessing to "real" people.

The church's initial location was a video arcade in an enclosed shopping center. It later began a skate park. Earlier this year it started a tattoo parlor, and now most of its fundraising focuses on its "ink" ministry.

Occasionally I must stop and remind myself when I find myself overly disdainful of this church that it is not, in fact, all that different from many of the more stately "high liturgy" churches of the area or, for that matter, the modern Evangelical churches which have adopted seeker-sensitive styles of worship.

The link between these seemingly disparate churches is not a shared culture: they range from low street to high classic, meandering through every waystation inbetween. No, the link between these churches is shared reliance on human culture to win the lost.

All culture is not created equal: the culture of a church which programs recitals on its magnificent pipe organ on Sunday afternoons is higher than that of the church with a tattoo parlor. (Further, there may be sin inherent in tattooing that isn't present in the recital--but then, there may be sin at the recital which isn't present at the skate park.)

But is there a fundamental difference between a church which relies on mindless drama, positive practical sermons and a thumping band to bring the Gospel to the lost and a church which relies on tattoos and skate parks, or a church which puts on Ibsen and Mozart in the park?

In the end, they're all relying on culture to advance the Gospel. And though one culture is certainly higher and more beautiful than another, though Mozart beats tattoos and Ibsen beats Debbie-the-skit-woman, reliance on Mozart and Ibsen to advance the Gospel is ultimately no more glorifying to God than reliance on a skate park or tattoo parlor.

My fear is that in reacting against churches which focus on variants of lowbrow culture, Reformed Evangelicals are in danger of sanctifying and enshrining middle-class culture rather than Christ.

There is nothing more inherently God-pleasing about Ibsen than skateboarding, nothing inherently superior about a classical recital or Shakespeare play as instruments of the Gospel than a Stryper concert.

We aren't likely to win the battle for high culture in American churches, but even if we did, we wouldn't thereby advance the Kingdom of Christ. The call of the Gospel is a call not into but away from human culture, highbrow and lowbrow alike:

"I have given them Your word; and the world has hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. I do not ask You to take them out of the world, but to keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. Sanctify them in the truth; Your word is truth. As You sent Me into the world, I also have sent them into the world."

May God grant our churches less culture and more of the Spiritual power that propels us as countercultural agents against all worldly pretension by sanctifying us in truth.

The path of true evangelism is a path of Spiritual power, not a cultural path. It is the path of faith, not of sight. Less culture all told, fewer concerts, fewer videos and dramas combined with more time with our unsaved neighbors, more good deeds from our homes, more prayer meetings in our churches: this is the route to evangelical power.

What on earth is Tim talking about?

For those, like me, who have been scratching their heads wondering what on earth Tim is talking about in the preceding post, a word of explanation....

I just did a search on Google for the words "Washington Nationals double triple Herzfeld" trying to find news about this move to outlaw double and triple plays. Nothing there.

So I searched a bit more. I followed the links in the article. The first two were legit, but I could find nothing in either about outlawing double and triple plays.

Finally, I came to Tim's final link and it began to become clear. And Chris Atkin's link in his comment on Tim's post to this article in the Washington Post made it even more clear.

I think Tim's post is brilliant. But it's satire and if you don't read about the flap involving the Washington National's Major League Baseball chaplain (who outraged Washington and baseball together by intimating that Jews who do not worship Jesus will not be saved--and who subsequently backtracked under pressure from Rabbi Herzfeld and others) you'll never get the post.

No hell below us, above us only sky...

The kings of the earth take their stand And the rulers take counsel together Against the LORD and against His Anointed, saying, "Let us tear their fetters apart And cast away their cords from us!"

He who sits in the heavens laughs, The Lord scoffs at them. (Psalms 2:2-4)

In a move that shocked Major League Baseball, a spokesman for the Washington Nationals announced yesterday that double and triple plays will no longer be allowed in RFK Stadium.

Across the country team owners, ballplayers, umpires, and sports writers and broadcasters were stunned. Responding to fierce criticism from some quarters, Team President Tony Tavares defended the decision:

"With major league ball back in DC, we feel the need not to squander our rather limited capitol, but to build on her in a way that will contribute to her well-being. If bipartisanship is the Holy Grail of the political process here in DC, why should it be so rare? We believe this is a small step for major league ball, but a large step toward healing our nation."

Acknowledging his franchise's less than stellar record at the end of the first season of major league ball in the city in thirty-three years (the Washington Senators left for Dallas in 1971), Tavares said: "As a franchise that's seen a good start evaporate, we know how embarrassing it is to lose. Adding the rather public humiliation of double and triple plays can be demoralizing. It's time to think of our players' feelings--not just the score. Our goal is to allow all teams playing at RFK to lose a little more gracefully. Why shove their noses in it?"

The move received some support within the Beltway. One committed fan, Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld, leader of the city's oldest Orthodox synagogue, Ohev Sholom Talmud Torah, responded to the announcement:...

The mutation of tolerance...

For many years I subscribed to a monthly monograph publication called The Family in America. Published by the Howard Center for Family, Religion, and Society, the latest issue is an essay by Bryce Christensen titled, "Intolerable Tolerance: When Tolerance Turns Against the Family." Here's an excerpt:

(The new vision of) Tolerance is fast filling American life with corrosive ideological friction, as it undermines the virtues that sustain family life and compels Americans to tolerate the intolerable consequences of family failure...

As the British novelist Edward M. Forster perceptively explained, "[Tolerance] is negative. It merely means putting up with people, being able to stand things." Given this understanding of tolerance, neither White nor Forster nor any of their contemporaries ever supposed that it could replace primary virtues such as honesty, fidelity, and courage. But exposed to the cultural poisons of recent decades, tolerance has now mutated into something troublingly different. It is now not only one of the primary virtues; it is the primary virtue, the possession of which excuses man, woman, and child from the cultivation of any other virtue.

No longer a necessity but negative accommodation to inevitable human error, the new Tolerance advertises itself as a very positive virtue. But this new Tolerance is positively deceptive. It is deceptive in that it elides the difference between tolerance and acceptance, deceptive in that it entangles its adherents in philosophical contradictions, deceptive in that it provides rhetorical cover for the ideological ambitions of those who advance it, deceptive in that it justifies complete intolerance toward any who would frustrate these ambitions, and deceptive in that it hides the intolerably high costs it imposes on society. (emphasis original)

For those of our good readers who are not put off by footnotes, I strongly encourage them to subscribe to this excellent publication. Here's contact information:

The Howard Center 934 Main Street Rockford, IL 61103 (800) 461-3113

What about reparations for injustices...

Note from Tim Bayly: There are times when it would be a shame for a comment made beneath one of our posts to be lost to our larger readership. This comment by my nephew, Chris Taylor, strikes me as such a contribution and I place it here on the main page for our good readers' prayer and comment.

Although the subject here discussed is the granting of reparations to African Americans for their enslavement, the larger question is the nature of God's judgments for sin, and our responsibility to make amends for that sin.

No one can deny that Sub-Saharan Africans and African Americans are troubled peoples. On both continents the debate rages over what is to be done by the civil authority? We must also ask what is to be done by the Church of Jesus Christ? These are issues that must be thought through carefully, and above all biblically.

But in the discussion, we must keep in mind that injustices have not come to an end with the Emancipation Proclamation's liberating of Confederate slaves. Since then blacks have continued to suffer oppression in our nation, both north and south, and that oppression has not yet come to an end. Racism is alive and well today in both the south and the north. We are segregated; we don't like each other; we don't live in one another's neighborhoods; and in my book the fact that African Americans are principally admired as sports and music and entertainment idols only strengthens the case.

Further, we have many other classes of oppressed brought to us by that most enlightened of centuries, the twentieth. Think, for instance, of the unborn children who, at the pace of 1,300,000 per year in these United States alone, are being slaughtered in their mother's wombs. If reparations are called for with regard to the black race, what on earth might sufficient reparation be for the wholesale slaughter of 40,000,000 unborn children? One trembles to ask, yet the enormity of the question is no excuse for leaving it unanswered.

Here then are Chris Taylor's comments. I'd love to see them engaged carefully and biblically, while keeping in mind other even greater oppressions in our midst today. The comments were originally made under my brother, David's, post, "No, God would NEVER include the righteous in judgment." Chris is responding to an earlier comment by Steve pointing readers to the link, "Ten Reasons Why Reparations for Blacks is a Bad Idea for Blacks - and Racist Too.

* * *

Let me acknowledge where I am coming from. First, I am a Christian who trusts in God alone, not government, to break the bonds of oppression. When God commands us not to put our trust in man, but to fear the king, I try to do just that. I honor our pagan Senators, but I do not trust in them to accomplish the big things in life. After all, wasn't that God's point in the failed Davidic kingdom? How quickly the mighty have fallen. David, then Solomon, then division.

Second, I believe the Body of Christ is the physical manifestation of the Kingdom of God who ought to be restoring this ruined land. Not through political influence, but through taking up our cross and accomplishing unimaginable glory. The church will be the salt that both preserves the world and makes it bearable.

So permit me to answer Horowitz from that perspective.

Objection 1) There were 3,000 black slave owners before the war, therefore, no single group should be held responsible. This may be true on the surface. In the passage David Bayly quoted, Saul was the one responsible, so Saul's children paid the price. But surely this does not apply in a situation where a whole society (mostly white, but also black) did much evil. Since we have "no single group" to hold responsible, then we must all join together to make amends. The prophets confess the sins of Israel in an inclusive manner. "We have sinned." Really, have the prophets acted in like manner? So we see that it is possible to take responsibility for the sins of society. Should not the Body of Christ act as the prophets in this situation, confess the sins of our fathers, and make amends? Since I don't trust our government to do this, and God does hold societies accountable, let us make reparations...

These United States: A golden cup, intoxicating the earth...

Coming to the end of Jeremiah this morning, I found myself reading God's judgments against Babylon and thinking of these United States. For example:

Flee from the midst of Babylon, And each of you save his life! Do not be destroyed in her punishment, For this is the LORD'S time of vengeance; He is going to render recompense to her. Babylon has been a golden cup in the hand of the LORD, Intoxicating all the earth. The nations have drunk of her wine; Therefore the nations are going mad. (Jeremiah 51:6,7).

After travelling in Africa and the UK this summer, our twelve-year-old son, Taylor, observed: "Everyone wants to be American." To which his parents responded, "Even while they despise America."

The US has intoxicated the whole earth.

What proportion of our nation's exports does our wicked culture make up--music, books, movies, and television, for instance? And when we do what we call "foreign aid," how often does it encourage poor people to have fewer children by practicing birth control? What of our military, our corporations, and our stock market--have they not intoxicated the earth? What of our sucking up the treasures of poverty-stricken nations--their best and their brightest who come here to study and, becoming intoxicated by our wealth, remain here the rest of their lives?

How Babylon has become an object of horror among the nations! The sea has come up over Babylon; She has been engulfed with its tumultuous waves. Her cities have become an object of horror, A parched land and a desert, A land in which no man lives And through which no son of man passes. I will punish Bel in Babylon, And I will make what he has swallowed come out of his mouth; And the nations will no longer stream to him. Even the wall of Babylon has fallen down! Come forth from her midst, My people, And each of you save yourselves From the fierce anger of the LORD. (Jeremiah 51:41b-45).

The Reformers used to refer to Rome, the Roman Catholic church, as Babylon and the Whore of Babylon. There's little doubt in my mind that, were they alive today, they would identity the Whore of Babylon as these United States. Those of you who are pious lovers of God and His Word, go to the book of Revelation and see if the parallels are not breathtaking.

And anticipating the objections of some of our good readers, let me ask that you please refrain from accusing me of not loving my country. I'm very tired of those who equate criticism of one's nation with being unpatriotic. I love our nation--entirely too much.

Let God's Covenant People plead with God for mercy on this land and, out of our love for our neighbors, work for her salvation and reform, remembering the declarations of the Holy Spirit:

Righteousness exalts a nation, But sin is a disgrace to any people. (Proverbs 14:34).

And:

Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD, The people whom He has chosen for His own inheritance. (Psalm 33:12).

Blogs worth reading....

For nearly a year now I've used Bloglines to keep track of my favorite blogs. Almost any mainstream blog can be included in a Bloglines personal page--any blog with an RSS (or XML) feed can be included.

So I check the Guardian's latest stories on Blogline and I read Doug Wilson's latest posts there and I even have this blog listed so I can see when Tim posts something.

When I originally signed up for a Blogline page, I checked out their listing of the 200 most popular blogs for pages to include on my Bloglines listing. Most of those blogs proved tedious over the long haul, but several I still keep checking.

Originally, I placed Instapundit on my Bloglines list because I kept hearing that it was a good conservative blog. I still have it on my list, but I find myself increasingly disgusted with it. It's astounding to me that this blog is so popular among conservatives. Author Glenn Reynolds, a law professor at the University of Tennessee, has no fixed moral center. Reynolds does not care about abortion, is in favor of homosexual rights and opposed efforts to save Terri Schiavo. Is this a blog worth claiming, conservatives? Is the fact that a man is libertarian socially and conservative economically enough for us to claim him as our own? I read Reynolds as I read the New York Times--an enemy of righteousness.

Considerably better than Instapundit is Little Green Footballs (LGF), also a blog popular among conservatives. Yet, LGF too often reads like