War Correspondent writes about Christian war

Harpers - Christian War, originally uploaded by Stan_Wastren.

Chris Hedges was a war correspondent for the New York Times for 11 years or so. Now he has written an article about "Feeling the Hate" at the Christian Broadcasters Association convention. It's part of a ultra-vitriolic issue that dehumanizes Christian conservatives so contemptuously that Stanley Kurtz wrote in National Review that the issue "could mark the beginning of a systematic campaign of hatred directed at traditional Christians."

But it's very interesting to learn about Hedges. There are two fascinating interviews with him here and here, in which he talks about his time covering wars. Hedges is extremely intelligent and articulate, and his comments are laden with good quotes.

This first quote is interesting because it informs us about how Hedges approaches his reporting on the Christian right:

I also grew up in a home with parents who were social activists, so my entire childhood was colored by the civil rights movement, the antiwar movement. When my father died in 1995, he was very involved in the gay rights movement. And I learned, because we lived in a small town in upstate New York, the cost of taking a moral stand -- that it was unpopular. I mean, Martin Luther King, in the early days of the civil rights movement, was one of the hated men in America. I felt the sting of what it meant to stand up for what you believe in or to support a cause that was just and, certainly at its inception, how difficult that was.

That developed, I think, a lot of anger in me -- anger at seeing my father, whom I admired, belittled by people in our town. I also read a lot as a teenager about the Holocaust and the Spanish Civil War, and I very much wanted that epic battle to define my own life. I used to regret as a teenager that I had not been of age in the thirties, that I couldn't go fight fascism like my hero George Orwell. By the time I was a divinity student, the military dictatorships in Latin America were carrying out horrendous crimes -- the "dirty war" in Argentina, Pinochet in Chile, the civil war in El Salvador. When I got to El Salvador, the death squads were killing 800 to 1,000 people a month, and I felt that, as a young man, this was as close as my generation was going to come to fighting fascism. And that is what propelled me toward war -- not because I was any kind of a gun nut, not because I came as a voyeur -- which some people do -- but out of a sense of justice, out of a sense of idealism.

But Hedges also has much to say about "the dark intoxication that war brings." He calls war "the most powerful narcotic invented by mankind." He also says, "Wars are always tragic, but probably inevitable."

I also understand what war can do, especially when you fall into the dark intoxication that war brings. That process of dehumanizing the other, that ecstatic euphoria in wartime, that use of patriotism as a form of self-glorification, that worshiping of the capacity to inflict violence -- especially in a society that possesses a military as advanced as ours -- all of those things I wanted to expose in the book, so that people would at least understand war for the poison that it is...
...War is like a poison. And just as a cancer patient must at times ingest a poison to fight off a disease, so there are times in a society when we must ingest the poison of war to survive. But what we must understand is that just as the disease can kill us, so can the poison. If we don't understand what war is, how it perverts us, how it corrupts us, how it dehumanizes us, how it ultimately invites us to our own self-annihilation, then we can become the victim of war itself.

Lastly, Hedges is profound about the power of love to triumph over evil.

Love is the only force that finally can counter the force of death -- the death instinct. When shells would come into Sarajevo and at the most horrific moment of death, when people were literally lying in pools of their own blood dying, family members, friends, brothers, sisters, spouses would claw through the crowds looking for their loved ones. Just as death seemed to radiate out from that point, at the same time love radiated out. You can't go through an experience like that and not understand the palpable power of love...
...To survive as a human being is possible only through love. And when Thanatos is ascendent, the instinct must be to reach out to those we love, to see in them all the divinity, pity and pathos of the human. And to recognize love in the lives of others -- even those with whom we are in conflict -- love that is like our own. It does not mean we will avoid war or death. It does not mean that we as distinct individuals will survive. But love, in its mystery, has its own power. It alone gives us meaning that endures. It alone allows us to embrace and cherish life. Love has the power both to resist in our nature what we know we must resist, and to affirm what we know we must affirm. And love, as the poets remind us, is eternal.

Dole weighs in again on filibuster

Bob Dole was used by Democrats to argue against "the nuclear option" when he said on April 12 that the Republicans should not change Senate rules to override Democrats obstruction of federal judicial nominees.

Republicans should be very careful before they start "tinkering with the rules" of the Senate, Dole said during a radio interview, because the Senate is not always going to be controlled by the GOP.
"You want to think down the road," Dole told National Public Radio. "The Senate's going to change. It's not always going to be Republican. It changes back and forth. History shows that."

That comes from a Cox News report. They went on:

Dole should know. During his 28 years in the Senate, the Kansas Republican served as the majority leader twice, from 1984 to 1986 and from 1994 to 1996, assuming the role of minority leader during the eight years in between, when Democrats were the majority.

Dole is the latest senior Republican to advise his party's Senate leadership to forego a proposed change in the rules that would make it easier for the GOP to end the filibuster.

But then, two weeks later, Dole had done some research, and he wrote an op-ed for the New York Times on April 26.

I have publicly urged caution in this matter. Amending the Senate rules over the objection of a substantial minority should be the option of last resort. I still hold out hope that the two Senate leaders will find a way to ensure that senators have the opportunity to fulfill their constitutional duty to offer "advice and consent" on the president's judicial nominees while protecting minority rights. Time has not yet run out.

But let's be honest: By creating a new threshold for the confirmation of judicial nominees, the Democratic minority has abandoned the tradition of mutual self-restraint that has long allowed the Senate to function as an institution.

Dole then made it be known where he stood.

When I was a leader in the Senate, a judicial filibuster was not part of my procedural playbook. Asking a senator to filibuster a judicial nomination was considered an abrogation of some 200 years of Senate tradition...

...Although the Democrats don't like to admit it, in the past they have voted to end delaying tactics previously allowed under Senate rules or precedents. In fact, one of today's leading opponents of changing the Senate's rules, Senator Robert Byrd, was once a proponent of doing so, and on several occasions altered Senate rules through majoritarian means. I have great respect for Senator Byrd, but Senate Republicans are simply exploring the procedural road map that he himself helped create.

In the coming days, I hope changing the Senate's rules won't be necessary, but Senator Frist will be fully justified in doing so if he believes he has exhausted every effort at compromise. Of course, there is an easier solution to the impasse: Democrats can stop playing their obstruction game and let President Bush's judicial nominees receive what they are entitled to: an up-or-down vote on the floor of the world's greatest deliberative body.

Today, Dole wrote another piece for the Washington Times in which he sticks the knife in a little deeper. Again, what is ironic about all this is that the Democrats tried to use Dole's words as ammo against Frist by saying, "See, one of the Senate's veterans, who is very wise and knowledgeable, says don't do it."

By creating a new 60-vote threshold for confirming judicial nominees, today's Senate Democrats have abandoned more than 200 years of Senate tradition.
For the first time, judicial nominees with clear majority support are denied an up-or-down vote on the Senate floor through an unprecedented use of the filibuster. This is not a misrepresentation of history; it's a fact.

8th-graders taught how to use strap-ons

This is too extremely strange and wrong to be real. But it is.

It is also amazing how things can appear in the media and not even register as a blip on the radar unless someone points it out.

This is from an NPR piece in September (8 months ago!!) on teaching about homosexuality in public schools. Read it and weep.

TOVIA SMITH: But many teachers say they're less afraid now since the high court decision legalizing gay marriage. Deb Allen teaches eighth-grade sex ed in Brookline. She keeps a picture of her lesbian partner and their kids on her desk and gay equality signs on the wall. Allen says she's already been teaching a gay-friendly curriculum for nearly a decade, but she says she does begin this year feeling a bit more emboldened.

DEB ALLEN (Eighth-Grade Teacher): In my mind, I know that, `OK, this is legal now.' If somebody wants to challenge me, I'll say, `Give me a break. It's legal now.'

TOVIA SMITH: And, Allen says, teaching about homosexuality is also more important now. She says the debate around gay marriage is prompting kids to ask a lot more questions, like what is gay sex, which Allen answers thoroughly and explicitly with a chart.

DEB ALLEN: And on the side, I'm going to draw some different activities, like kissing and hugging, and different kinds of intercourse. All right?

TOVIA SMITH: Allen asks her students to fill in the chart with yeses and nos.

DEB ALLEN: All right. So can a woman and a woman kiss and hug? Yes. Can a woman and a woman have vaginal intercourse, and they will all say no. And I'll say, `Hold it. Of course, they can. They can use a sex toy. They could use'--and we talk--and we discuss that. So the answer there is yes.

THIS IS FROM THE SAME SCHOOL THAT BROUGHT IN THE GAY, LESBIAN STRAIGHT EDUCATION NETWORK (GLSEN) TO PASS OUT GAY SEX INSTRUCTION PAMPHLETS TO YOUNG BOYS.

GLSEN gives gay sex how-to handout to children

Meanwhile, in Massachussets, the one-year anniversary of gay marriage was marked by a truly remarkable incident involving the GAY, LESBIAN, STRAIGHT EDUCATION NETWORK (GLSEN).

Remember that name: GLSEN. They boast that they have founded 2,500 Gay-Straight alliances in high schools around the country in the last ten years. The founding member of GLSEN's DC chapter is one of the women who helped design the Montgomery County sex ed curriculum that was struck down by a federal judge on May 5.

Well, in Brookline, Mass., on April 30, GLSEN hosted a day-long conference for jr. high and high school students and educators. The conference was, I believe, GLSEN's 15th Annual national conference. It was called, "Challenging Intolerance--Sustaining Hope."

At the conference, a table hosted by the "Fenway Community Health Center" passed out pamphlet produced by the AIDS Action Committee, called the "Little Black Book."

Click here to read an account and see pictures of what was in the pamphlet. You should be warned that the material on this page is highly inappropriate for children, and describes perverted sexual acts in explicit detail. The pamphlet is clearly aimed at young boys, and it gives them detailed instructions on the safest way to perform various sexual acts with other men. It also gives an extensive list of the best gay bars and hangout spots. It tells them, "You have the right to enjoy sex without shame or stigma."

All of this is done in the pamphlet in the name of providing them accurate information to help them avoid disease and infection.

GLSEN, when contacted by the Boston Herald on May 17, denied that the pamphlet was passed out, saying the "recent allegations from the far right...are categorically untrue" and "simply lies."

After the Boston Herald went to press, GLSEN issued a correction on May 18, saying, "While we have worked tirelessly to reduce anti-LGBT [Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender] name-calling, bullying and harassment, we learned this morning from the Fenway Community Health Center that a small number of copies of the HIV prevention pamphlet were available on their vendor table."

GLSEN called this "a breach of protocol," and that the health center "has instituted additional training to ensure it never happens again."

They closed their statement with the following: "We are deeply sorry. We regret the fear it has resurrected."

Now, I got this statement off the Article 8 website, who is opposed to GLSEN, and could not find this statement anywhere on the GLSEN Boston site. But the Herald did write about the health center admitting that it had distributed the pamphlets.

This Boston chapter of GLSEN is the same chapter responsible in 2000 for "Fistgate," in which GLSEN hosted a seminor for teens called, "What They Didn’t Tell You About Queer Sex & Sexuality In Health Class: A Workshop For Youth Only, Ages 14-21." During that seminar, "the three homosexual presenters acting in their professional capacities coaxed about 20 children into talking openly and graphically about homosexual sex."

The students were taught that "Fisting [forcing one’s entire hand into another person’s rectum or vagina] often gets a bad rap....[It’s] an experience of letting somebody into your body that you want to be that close and intimate with...[and] to put you into an exploratory mode."

ABC News on MoCo Sex Ed

ABC published this column by Weekly Standard columnist Hadley Arkes on Tuesday. Arkes is the Ney Professor of American Institutions at Amherst College and a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.

It's a stunning piece. Arkes speaks with the dense and nuanced language of a seasoned intellectual, and delivers some heavy blows to the extreme agenda that has passed itself off as mainstream to try and indoctrinate children into sexual boundlessness.

The program, when it was finally written, reflected the liberal orthodoxy of the education establishment. With the claim to teach in an authoritative way about health and sex, the program put forth a series of "myths" to be corrected with "facts." But the myths were not all mythical, nor the facts all factual. And the authors could not restrain themselves from pronouncing on the moral dimness of people holding opposing views, including the theological backwardness of those religions that continue to honor the tradition of Jewish and Christian teaching on these matters.

U.S. District Court Judge Alexander Williams, Jr., halted the course on May 5, and Arkes writes that "the jolt has had a deeper resonance, not least because Williams happens to be a Clinton appointee."

But the lasting tremors come from the fact that the decisive strands in his May 5 judgment are lines of argument that have been used most often by the left: The judge invoked the concern for an establishment of religion, and beyond that, he raised the charge, under the First Amendment, that people with discordant views were being blocked from the public square.

Lastly, Arkes makes a bold suggestion that the parents in MoCo have been making for some time, but which is considered too politically incorrect for many. Arkes is the first voice I have heard to make this comment, which appears to me to be backed up by facts:

Do liberals want to break through conventions with "sex education"? Then education it should be: The life-shortening hazards of homosexual behavior should be conveyed, along with information about the other hazards of incautious sex; the record of conversions from the homosexual life should be put in texts along with the inconclusive arguments over the "gay gene."

Wow. An ABC column saying students should be taught about the health risks of homosexuality--higher rates of STD's and HIV, etc.--and that ex-gays should be included as well. That's truly radical, and truly needed.

HOLY CRAP!!!

I am so excited after watching the trailer for "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe."

It opens December 9!!!!!!

And here is another trailer about the costumes and such. Very cool.

Ron Sider

I will post things on Mr. Sider as I find them. One thing I am looking for is character references and who he associates with, to see if he is a credible source.

Here is one thing.

Sider helped draft the call to action that was announced in March by the National Association of Evangelicals, which is headed by Ted Haggerd. I know a little bit about Haggerd. He seems to be pretty biblical, but also seems to be pretty deep into self-centered Christianity.

One quote in the New York Times piece about this was from Sen. Sam Brownback, who is a solid Christian, about the socially responsible evangelical movement. He supported the call to action, and said, ""This is a young movement...and it's just starting to get its sea legs. I think you'll now see it spread out into a whole lot of areas."

But others were skeptical.

Tom Minnery, vice president of Focus on the Family, an influential ministry based in Colorado Springs, stood up at the luncheon and warned the other leaders, "Do not make this about global warming."

"The issues of marriage, the issues of pro-life are the issues that define us to this day," he added.

A. James Reichley, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, warned the National Association of Evangelicals not to travel the same route as mainline Protestant denominations that adopt resolutions at their national meetings on a wide range of questions, from foreign policy to budget cuts.

"We can responsibly disagree" on specific issues, "and that's fine," Mr. Reichley said.

Scandal

Ronald Sider has written a new book called "The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience," based on the premise that evangelicals don't practice what they preach.

I am intrigued by this idea, since it is written by an evangelical speaking to evangelicals, and want to embrace it, but I have questions about Sider's motivations and how his politics shaped his premise.

So I'm not opposed but I am not convinced that evangelicals don't practice what they preach. I know that happens, but Sider is using stats, which are tricky when you are evaluating who is an evangelical and who is not.

Anyway, here is an excerpt from the book, and I'll possibly post more on this later.

I succumb to the hype

Well, not really. I'm only posting Stephen Hunter's review of the final "Star Wars" movie here because Hunter is not only my favorite reviewer, he's also one of my favorite writers.

You can't overestimate the value of someone like Hunter, who does two things with his review. He contextualizes the movie by showing us how it shares a theme and follows the same narrative pattern of other great works of art, like Moby Dick, MacBeth, Crime and Punishment, and Dr. Faustus.

Each of these stories, like "Revenge of the Sith," has a central character "of power and strength and charisma and intellect, all of it invested in madness and destruction," and forces us to question how they got that way.

Hunter is also able to articulate the cultural significance and impact of the original Star Wars movie, and the series of movies as a whole.

In 1977, "Star Wars" blew my generation away, re-creating for us lost pleasures of our youths in crummy B-grade bijoux in small towns and burbs, filling us with the hope that the kind of soaring, enabling narrative hadn't been lost from movies that were just then coming out of a deep and morbid period of political unrest and self-questioning that led to great but disturbing films. As a generation, we needed a drink or a vacation or a wallow. "Star Wars" provided the latter, returning us to a childhood we didn't realize we missed.

So for my generation, "Revenge of the Sith" is a brilliant consummation to a promise made a long time ago, far, far away, in a galaxy called 1977.

Old Grey Lady Shoots Self in Foot

The New York Times will charge a fee to access their online material in September, and Andrew Sullivan says this is only going to hurt the Times, lessen the influence of newspaper opinion-makers in general, and increase the influence of the blogosphere (that's us).

By sectioning off their op-ed columnists and best writers, they are cutting them off from the life-blood of today's political debate: the free blogosphere. Inevitably, fewer people will link to them; fewer will read them; their influence will wane faster than it has already. The blog is already becoming a rival to the dated op-ed column format as a means of communicating opinion journalism. My bet is that the NYT's retrogressive move will only fasten the decline of op-ed columnists' influence.

Father of Intelligent Design

The Post ran a wonderful, must-read profile of Philip Johnson in Sunday's paper. Johnson is the founder of the intelligent design movement, which is currently challenging the Religion of Science and Darwinism's chokehold on the American education system.

Read the piece. Johnson is great--he debates evolutionists, then goes out for beers with them. It's nice to see that kind of collegiality among intellectual opponents.

In 1987, Johnson, "a devout Presbyterian and accomplished legal theorist," began reading Darwin and other evolutionary texts.

"I was struck by the breadth of Darwin's claims as opposed to how scanty were the observable changes." He peers at you with that unwavering gaze. "I said to my wife that I shouldn't take this up. I will be ridiculed and it will consume my life.

"Of course, it was irresistible."

Ahh yes. The rewards of living an honest life. You get the really tough jobs.

Johnson has written "Darwin on Trial" and "The Wedge of Truth."

Darwinists and Christians alike, he says, "start from faith, just as every house has a foundation." His friend Provine, Johnson says, has found faith in materialistic atheism. Johnson has found Christ.

Johnson, who is already back on the lecture trail, is not content with a Creator so deferential to natural processes as to fade into the cosmic woodwork. Johnson is convinced, intellectually and emotionally, that His hands have shaped human life -- and the evidence likely is there if only science will look for it.

We're Christians too!!

Democrats and liberals want to equalize the threat that religious voters pose to them, and they are taking several different tacks to do this.

One of their reactions--I don't know if I would call it a strategy--is to say, "We're religious too!"

Jeff Jarvis at Buzz Machine, a liberal blogger, has a looooooong post to this effect.

Jarvis includes a definition of liberal theology from Mark Lilla of the University of Chicago. Liberal theology "includes a critical approach to Scripture as a historical document, an openness to modern science, a turn from public ritual to private belief and a search for common ground in the Bible's moral message."

Translation:
1. The Bible means whatever we want it to mean.
2. Science is the only way of truly knowing something, e.g., science is divine.
3. There is no room for religious beliefs in public life. Values are relative. Facts are only found through science.
4. Jesus was a good moral teacher, and the golden rule is the only value we can all really share.

But hey, if the left wants to engage Christians and actually talk about theology and seek truth together, that's great. For the most part, liberals today just hiss and throw mean names at Christians, which will never get anyone anywhere.

Nancy Pearcey has some very, very thoughtful things to say about what she calls the fact/value dichotomy. She did an interview with the publisher of her latest book, "Total Truth," which came out in the last year. I have pasted almost the entire interview below, but you can read the whole thing here.

Pearcey says thinking Christianly means "we are no longer content to live divided lives, with faith tucked into a separate realm of church and prayer and Bible study, while work and leisure activities are treated as neutral or faith-free zones. That kind of bifurcated life cannot open us up to the full power and joy that God intends for us."

Crossway: Is there a Christian perspective on everything?

Nancy Pearcey: Certainly. Every part of creation is caught up in the drama of Creation, Fall, and Redemption, which means it cannot be truly understood apart from those great turning points in cosmic history. Everything came from the hand of God, everything has been affected by the Fall, and everything will participate in the final redemption. (That’s why Scripture calls it a new heavens and a new earth.) The way to craft a worldview perspective is to ask: What was God’s original purpose for it? How has it been twisted and distorted by the Fall? And how can we work with God in bringing about redemption and restoration?

Crossway: What does it mean to “think Christianly”?

Nancy Pearcey: It means we are no longer content to live divided lives, with faith tucked into a separate realm of church and prayer and Bible study, while work and leisure activities are treated as neutral or faith-free zones. That kind of bifurcated life cannot open us up to the full power and joy that God intends for us. Thinking Christianly means developing a biblically based outlook that applies across the board. Once we grasp the meaning of the Cultural Mandate, we will realize that every aspect of life can be offered up as service to God and to His great purpose in the world.

Crossway: How does worldview thinking benefit a person?

Nancy Pearcey: It allows the power of the gospel to permeate every aspect of your life, instead of being locked into the merely personal realm. Modern societies tend to be sharply split between public and private spheres. The public realm consists of the state, large corporations, academia, and so on—which claim to operate by principles that are “scientific” and “value-free.” As a result, “values” have been relegated to the private sphere of family, church, and personal relationships. What this means, though, is that the gospel is restricted to our private life, and is robbed of its power to transform entire cultures and societies.

Crossway: You discuss something called the “fact/value split” and say that is among the most powerful weapons used to delegitimize the Christian perspective. Explain what this is and why it works.

Nancy Pearcey: The public/ private split tends to be reflected in the world of ideas as the fact/value split. “Facts” are public truth—scientific, rational, and binding on everyone. “Values” are private preferences—based on personal experience. The reason it is so important to recognize this division is that it’s the most common way Christians are disempowered in the public square. Most secularists are too politically savvy to attack religion directly or debunk it as false. So what do they do? They relegate it to the “value” realm—which takes it out of the categories of true and false altogether. That way, they can assure us that they “respect” our religion, while at the same time denying that it has anything to do with real knowledge.

Crossway: In your mind, what has caused such a sharp distinction between private faith and public action?

Nancy Pearcey: The linchpin is Darwinian naturalism. If natural forces are perfectly capable of doing all the creating, then there’s nothing left for God to do. He’s out of a job. And if the existence of God serves no explanatory or cognitive function, then all that’s left is an emotional function. We believe in God because it makes us feel good. So long as Darwinian naturalism is considered “fact,” then religion will be relegated to a subjective “value.” I recently read an article by Daniel Dennett, a prolific defender of Darwinism, who wrote that atheists “don’t believe in ghosts or elves or the Easter Bunny or God.” That about sums it up: If God is not the Creator, then He is on the same level as the Easter Bunny.

Crossway: Why is it so important to develop a Christian worldview today?

Nancy Pearcey: Our parents’ generation grew up when American culture largely accepted Christian morality, which meant believers did not stand out very much from the crowd. It was easy for them to think it was enough just to be “respectable.” But today’s young people are growing up in an environment that is drastically more hostile to Christian truth, and if they do not develop a fully Christian worldview, they will be swept away. It is necessary to be much more intentional about our faith today.

Crossway: What risks do Christians take when they segregate their faith as something sacred and personal?

Nancy Pearcey: Christians have largely accepted a trade-off: As long as we are allowed to have our Bible studies and prayer meetings, we have conceded the content of the world of ideas to the secularists. And then we wonder why there is no room for a Christian perspective in the work place or politics or the public schools. We wonder why entertainment has become so godless and immoral. We wonder why our children go off to college and lose their Christian faith. We thought it was enough to have a “heart” religion without a “head” religion, and now we are reaping the bitter consequences.

Crossway: What are some principles for integrating faith into every aspect of life?

Nancy Pearcey: To craft a Christian worldview in any field, we can use the basic structural elements of Creation, Fall, and Redemption. Starting with Creation means we ask: How was this originally created? What was God’s original purpose for it? Taking account of the Fall means asking: How was it been perverted by sin and false worldviews? How have humans marred and misused this portion of God’s good creation? And Redemption gives direction for a plan of action: How can we help set things right and restore them to God’s original purpose? How can we be instruments of divine grace to overcome evil with good? Believers sometimes treat redemption as a one-time conversion event, and it certainly begins that way. But what we’re talking about here is an on-going process of restoration and renewal, bringing all of creation back under the Lordship of Christ.

The Power of Parenthood

Someone remarked to me recently that the word "conservative" simply means "parent." This man was not religious--he is in fact a nihilist as far as I can tell--but he has three children.

An exchange between Craig Ferguson, a late-night talk show host, and fellow talk show host Bill Maher, illustrates what this man was talking about.

CBS
Late Late Show

May 3, 2005

34:00

Bill Maher: "I think that there is no perspective. People have no perspective, especially about crime. You know, zero tolerance. You know, of course, nobody ever wants to see a child, you know, diddled. That’s just plain wrong. But even the people who are testifying against him, they’re saying that he serviced them. They didn’t service him."

Craig Ferguson: "You don’t have kids, do you, Bill?"

Maher: "No."

Ferguson: "No. I have a son. It makes me crazy, this thing, this Michael Jackson thing. It drives me, the idea of someone touching my kid, I would go, I nearly swore there. I’d go crazy."

Maher: "Very wrong. But, you know, I remember when I was a kid. I was savagely beaten once by bullies in the schoolyard. Savagely beaten. If I had a choice between being savagely beaten and being gently masturbated by a pop star. It’s just me."

Ferguson: "The always controversial Bill Maher, everybody."

Maher: "What? That’s it?"

Ferguson: "Bill Maher. We’ll be right back with Rain Pryor."

Ferguson cut Maher off because he was so disgusted with how out of touch with reality Maher was. Maher is a smart guy, but as becomes clearer every day, smarter doesn't mean better.

Prayer doesn't do anything but it will make you feel better

John Shelby Spong is a former Episcopal Bishop who has written such books as "Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism" and he was on the Bill O'Reilly show on Fox News on April 13.

Spong is basically a pantheist. He says he believes in a God who is the "power of the life...the power of love...the ground of being."

I encourage you to read the whole interview here. Spong is one of the authors and thinkers that people like Gene Robinson, the homosexual Episcopal Bishop in New Hampshire, are going to turn to in their effort to "take back those Scriptures."

And Robinson is in bed with groups like Planned Parenthood and sex education groups that have their ideological roots in the philosophy of Alfred Kinsey, who researched the orgasmic capabilities of infants, among other things.

But the most interesting part of the Spong's interview was when O'Reilly asked him why he would pray if he doesn't believe that God is imminent and active in the world.

SPONG: Bill, I pray probably two hours every day of my life. But to me it's to get in tune with the God presence in this world so that I can be a part of that God presence.

O'REILLY: Do you pray for anything specifically?

SPONG: Well, it depends. I've had a daughter in Iraq for the last seven months, and I pray daily for her safety.

O'REILLY: For her safety.

SPONG: Do I think that God will put down a shield and stop bullets that happen to be headed in her direction? No.

O'REILLY: Well, then why pray for her safety if you don't believe that the deity would keep her safe?

SPONG: Well, I do that because I have to do that. That's what love does for somebody, and I don't know that it doesn't work. I just don't want to count on it.

O'REILLY: OK. Because you don't want to count on it.

SPONG: I don't have to...

O'REILLY: Because most people watching me right now pray to a higher power in whatever religion they operate and even if you don't have a religion, you know, for certain things, world peace...

SPONG: I think that expresses your feelings.

O'REILLY: Is that a healthy thing to do?

SPONG: Well, yes, it's not unhealthy. I think one of the things we've got to look out for is human beings claiming that they know how God operates.

O'REILLY: I understand.

SPONG: To me that's like a horse claiming that they would know what a human being is doing...

Reading Spong's reasoning, the word vacuous comes to mind.

Hatred for Christians

Stanley Kurtz writes in National Review about a rising tide of outright hate for Christians among the far reaches of the left. He says the May 2005 issue of Harper's magazine contains signs that "could mark the beginning of a systematic campaign of hatred directed at traditional Christians."

Some on the left are constructing a straw man to justify this venom. The straw man is Christian theocracy. Liberals say "the United States is just a few short steps away from having apostasy, blasphemy, sodomy, and witchcraft declared capital crimes."

There was a conference on this idea of theocracy in New York last weekend, which the Washington Times reported on Sunday and Tuesday. It is hard to tell how influential this conference was, but there were serious thinkers from the left there, as well as over 600 New Yorkers. Craig Unger, who wrote "House of Bush, House of Saud," and whose book was one of the cornerstones of Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 911" was there, doing research on a new book about the Christian right.

Kurtz says the left's hatred for Christians is being exposed now because Christians are fighting back.

For a very long time now, secular liberals have treated conservative Christians as the modern embodiment of evil, the one group you’re allowed to openly hate. Although barely noticed by the rest of us, this poison has been floating through our political system for decades. Traditional Christians are tired of it, and I don’t blame them. That doesn’t justify rhetorical excess from either side. But the fact of the matter is that the Left’s rhetorical attacks on conservative Christians have long been more extreme, more widely disseminated, and more politically effective than whatever the Christians have been hurling back. And now that their long ostracism by the media has finally forced conservative Christians to demand redress, the Left has abandoned all rhetorical restraint.

For example, Sen. Ken Salazar, Colorado Democrat, has gotten into a public war of words with James Dobson and Focus on the Family over the judicial nominees filibuster issue. On April 26, he called Dobson's group "the anti-Christ."

Imagine a Christian politician using that term to describe a Democrat, and the reaction to that.

Salazar issued the following apology: "I regret having used that term," he said. "I meant to say this approach was un-Christian, meaning self-serving and selfish."

And in the Harper's May 05 issue, editor Lewis Lapham ends his issue-opening piece with this gem of a quote near the end.

"We err on the side of folly if we continue to grant the boon of tolerance to people who mean to do us harm in the conviction that they receive from Genesis the command 'to take dominion over the earth,' to build the Kingdom of God, to create the Christian nation."

What does that mean, that Lapham thinks Christians should no longer be granted "the boon of tolerance"? He doesn't say, but the possibilities are ominous.

Meeting #3 - 4/16/05

Agenda
-Listen to Gene Robinson’s talk at Planned Parenthood, go over both/and vs. either/or sheet.
-Listen to Ravi’s talk, “Who is Jesus? Defending Jesus Christ as the Way, the Truth and the Life,” given at the Mormon Tabernacle on Nov. 14, 2004. Discuss.

Present: Rob, Karl, Mark, Jon, Mike

Thoughts on Both/And vs. Either/Or:
Karl said that even at the sex-ed meeting, people were using the either/or to prove the both/and. I pointed out that it’s difficult to point that out to people.
Mike asked how we could even ever do that.
“That’s why we’re here,” I said.
Mark: We know that we have the truth, but we also know we don’t have everything figured out. What I’m trying to do is always learn people from. Addressed Robinson’s view of God—“If you have a God as he defines it, what is that God like? Everything is okay, and as soon as you get there you can let everything play out. He’s okay with everything. So what is holiness? You’re talking about right and wrong, good and evil. Hagel – came up with the idea of dialectic, an idea and its opposite meet in the middle - the basis of postmodernism, that is there are no absolutes.
Mike: Trying to apply this to real life, when you hear someone talk about sex ed, what are you hearing that makes you think about this kind of a conversation.
Jon: They have gone after the authenticity and veracity of Scripture, but I can’t think of any ways that they’re using the both/and system of logic. I’ll think about that.
Mike: I’m a girl but I have the body of a man. That’s a clear way of doing that…The Bible has clear answers, but there is scary stuff in the world that Christians don’t want to think about. Some people are born with a penis and a vagina. It sucks.
Rob: Made a point that the reformed view of predestination is a both/and view. When the both/and is involved, I’ll allow for the supernatural, but I don’t know how we can allow for that without the supernatural.
Mark: We can agree that there is a both/and…If you can look for common ground in any conversation, that’s good, then try to build a bridge to absolute truth…If a guy doesn’t believe in absolute truth, then you can’t do anything with him.
Mike: I do believe there is gray, and I do believe there is black and white. There are places where black and white breaks down, and I do think that’s what bothers a lot of these people, who are the secular leaders and minds of the world, is Christianity’s unwillingness to look at this gray thing and say, “No, I don’t know.” Just like sex ed, why these people are going after the Bible so much is there are places where children are born with both organs. What does the Bible say about that? There are things the Bible doesn’t have an answer for. There is gray. If there is going to be any kind of fruitful dialogue between the black and white, Christian conservatives and the both/and, liberal seculars is that you have to convince them of the possibility of black and white, and you have to tell them that there is gray.
Mark: Humility is what Mike is talking about. A lot of people view Christians as Bible-pounding and arrogant. We’re going out into a world where a lot of Christians have paved that ground.
Mike: I also think a lot of Christians are scared of not knowing everything, of not having an answer. That’s where Christians feel in a corner. You feel a lot of one-dimensional talk that you’ve heard before, because they’re scared—they don’t know how to deal with it. Christians need to learn to not worry about losing an argument—you can look at it as listening and taking other people’s points of view into your thinking.
Jon: What do you need as a Christian to not fear not having all the answers.
Mark and Rob: Faith.
Rob: It’s the root of humility…You claim that there is an all-powerful being that is in control and that you’re under but you contradict that with your actions.
Jon: Robinson immediately started talking about stories when he spoke of the Bible. Narratives are what postmodern minds connect to—Jesus and C.S. Lewis showed that stories have a way of disarming people’s defenses. We need to think of ways to talk comfortably and conversationally about stories, in the Bible or completely from outside the Bible, that represent truths of the Bible and truths of the gospel—the represent reality. What stories do not deliver, however, is immediate results, so we will need to be content with planting seeds.
Mike: It’s good to win arguments. You got to shake people up. It’s both/and…When someone says something to you—it’s almost depending on who you’re talking to. If you can see the things to say to someone that can really help them to understand God better, then do that, but there are times when some of the things you say aren’t’ useful to people. You have to be willing to let them say what they’re going to say and then incorporate that into your argument.
Jon: What do we need to know what to say to people and when.
Karl: You have to know your audience. Most people don’t want to speak about logic, but you need to able to argue logically to talk to people like Gene Robinson.
Mike: There are nuances—there is truth in what he said. But it gets to a point where he stops speaking truthfully.
Rob: He combined intellect and skillful logic with love. For the everyday man how do we gain an audience? I think it’s through love and service, and really doing it, not just because we want another notch on our belt b/c someone is saved, but unconditional love, down and dirty love for others and care for them.
Mark: If we can outlove the liberals, then you defeat the basis of so much of their effectiveness. You can love someone who is opposed to you, because you were opposed to God and he loved you…
Rob: 95 percent of our lives is lived in the one on one. That’s something we can all do…I don’t have the gift of writing, but I can love. Most humans can love.
Mark: We’re dealing with a lot of preconceptions that people have because Christians have not been loving…I can have 1,000 conversations in my life, but if I have a framework for what I want to do each time…that’s what I’m after. I just practice it.

Mike: We live in a time that’s trying to mesh it all together and figure it all out. You look at mankind—we’re depraved, we’re sinners, but Christians and non-Christians are trying to make things better through law and technology…

Mark: Possible assignment: find examples of what did Jesus do to break down arguments but still address the person.

Adding people:
Karl: The bigger this group is, the harder it is to do this.
Mark: If there was a good dynamic I wouldn’t want to rock the boat.
Mike: Let’s pick one. Whoever’s gonna add the most.
Rob: He initiated it.

Mark left. We listened to Ravi’s talk.

Notes on Ravi's talk about Jesus

We listened to this at our meeting on Saturday, April 16

Ravi Zacharias
“Who is Jesus? Defending Jesus as the Way, the Truth and the Life”
Mormon Tabernacle
November 14, 2004

There are differences between what we believe and they are pretty deep, but we look for common ground, because conviction without love makes the conviction repulsive.

We are dealing with the embodiment of truth in the birth, life, death, resurrection of Jesus Christ.

The exclusivity and the sufficiency of Jesus Christ.

Truth by definition is exclusive. Whenever you make an affirmation or assertion, you are excluding the opposite. Jesus said I am the way the truth and the life, he didn’t say, except in, and include a few other ideas.

Mark 14 – High priest asked him, Are you the Christ? Jesus said, I am, and you will see…
Then Jesus’ conversation with Pilate, where Pilate says, “What is truth?”

Our lord invariably questioned his questioner so that the questioner would have to open up into his own assumptions. Jesus reminds us that intent is prior to content, because to give truth to him who loves it not, is to give him even more reason for misinterpretation, according to George MacDonald.

“Those that are on the side of truth listen to me,” Jesus said.

Woman at the well – Jesus unmasks her one bit of a time, and she says to him, “You know, when the messiah comes he will explain all this,” and in his most gentle persuasion he says, “I who speak to you am he.”

The high priest, politician did not recognize him. A broken woman did.

W.H. Leckey – Jesus “exerted so deep an influence” in morality and example. F.F. Bruce called his judgment non-Christian.

James Stewart – He was the meekest and lowliest of sons of men, yet he spoke of coming on the clouds of heaven….There is nothing in history like the union of contrasts in Jesus…The mystery of divine personality.

We come into contact with this personage in history. What made him so unique?

1. His description of the human condition, which conforms to reality as we know it.
-He tells us again and again that the heart of man is desperately wicked (John 2). Matthew 15 – out of the heart comes evil thoughts, murder…These are what make a person unclean.
-Nowhere is the doctrine of sin so clearly enunciated as in the Christian faith. (Romans 1 – is there any more graphic portrayal of your heart and mine?)
-Its accuracy is seen in our time. Told the story of visiting Auschwitz. Saw 14,000 pounds of women’s hair, pictures of little boys castrated for experimentation; the words of Hitler “devoid of a conscience…and cruel,” 12,000 killed a day. This has happened in our day, and at that time by the most educated nation in the world.
-Flight in Asia, Dutch woman sitting next to him. She worked in rescuing children from sexual abuse. She told him the night before she had taken a 18-month old baby girl from the arms of a man who was sexually molesting her. “You tell me there’s no such thing as evil? You want to call it deviance? Jesus looked at it and called it for what it was—the heinousness of sin”
-In taking away that word, evil, we are taking away that which is systemically needed to identify what is real.
-American Psychological Association past president wrote, “Whatever became of sin?” He said to be free from sin is to be sick rather than sinful…We have cut the very roots of our being…We now find ourselves asking, Who am I…what does living really mean?” We have lost our sense of identity by removing evil—we don’t know what living really mean.
-Jesus came to “save his people from their sins.” Have you seen your own heart?
-The Bible says we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Have you seen your heart before Jesus?
-Jacob wrestling with the angel. Why did God ask Jacob what his name was? Because he pretended to be Esau years before when he stole his father’s blessing. Jacob owned up to who he was before God and thus God made something great out of him. God cannot do that with us until we own up to who we are.

2. He provides uniquely for our malady.
-Calcutta: goddess of destruction. They still sacrifice animals there. He saw a family bringing their son to see an animal sacrificed—they were making a vow to ask for something. The goat had its throat cut by a priest uttering incantations and wearing a spotless white robe. “I noticed something happening…The man bringing the sacrifice puts his head in the same place and marks his shirt with the blood…Human kind has tried desperately to find a mediator, a sacrifice.
-We have the most precious truth in the world.
-Half of John’s gospel is given to the passion of Christ, and the other books give significant space. Read John Stott’s “The Cross of Christ.” Cicero said to crucify a Roman citizen defied language in its cruelty.
-Matthew 16: Peter told Jesus he was the Christ, the son of the blessed lord. From then on Jesus told them what manner of death he would die, and Peter said, “Never!” Jesus said, “Simon, get thee behind me Satan.”
-Excruciating comes from Latin excruciates, which means out of the cross.
-UN day of prayer in September, he talked about navigating with absolutes in a world or relativism. Talked about justice, love, forgiveness and evil. “You’re a body that wants justice, to deal with evil, and you long for forgiveness when wronged, and hunger for love.” All those things converge on the cross of Jesus Christ.
-The Christian faith is the unique faith that offers forgiveness. (Poem by teacher) What a glorious thing it is.
-Hospital in India. He was there when at 17 he tried to take his own life. Thought of Jesus calling him in his forgiving voice, saying, “Neither do I condemn you, go and sin no more.”
-Meeting with Hamas leader in Jerusalem. Asked him about suicide bombing, and he gave an answer that was disingenuous. Ravi said, We have different faiths, but the story of Abraham offering Isaac his son as a sacrifice is common to both of us. God stopped his hand because he was going to provide a sacrifice. Ravi said, “Until we receive the son that god has provided we will be offering our own sons on the battlefields of this land and others. Because when they wrong you you want to wrong them…It goes on and on…When insolence was hurled on Christ, sin didn’t bounce back. Sin stopped.”
-If you’ve seen your own heart, have you seen what the cross has provided for you? For there is no other sacrifice under heaven for sin.

3. His engagement in history
-Whichever way you look at the world, we wonder which direction it is going in. We do not understand what history is all about. Traditionalist – past. Existentialist – current. Utopian – future. Jesus took a piece of bread and a cup and made the most profound statement on time: as often as you eat this bread and drink of this cup, now …..??? He said all of history is suffused with meaning.
-He reminds us time and again of his engagement in history.

4. His disclosure of reality
-How do you find unity in diversity? Academics, language, etc.
-Quintessence: the old Greek belief in diversity of earth, air, fire, ___. A student asked what the fifth essence is, the quintessence.
-America: E pluribus Unum – out of diversity, one.
-The greatest search is for unity in diversity. The heart hungers for this. We long for it even within, because we are diverse even within. Flesh vs. the spirit or the conscience.
-There is no other concept in the world as diverse and unified as the Trinity. God from the beginning is a being in relationship. Our hearts hunger for relationship, and all other relationships are secondary until you find relationship with Christ himself. You can know him by inviting him into your life as your Lord and redeemer. This God of history who defines the condition of the human heart and shows us what we need in forgiveness—he is not giving us a more ethical way by which to live but is giving us a life we could never live on our own by changing our hearts and hungers.

5. His embodiment of the ideal
-The Davinci Code – human skepticism trying to do away with the deity of Christ.
-He looked at his accusers and said which of you can find me guilty of sin? They walked away. You see the spotless lamb of God.
-Revelation – no one is pure enough to open that scroll, but all of a sudden an angel says wipe away your tears there is one. And a lion comes, becomes a lamb, and opens it.
-Paul knew what it was to be a hypocrite. He communicated to different cultures. He knew Hebrews idealized light. The Greeks idealized knowledge. The Romans idealized glory. He understood their metaphors. He’s writing to the most sensual of their cultures in Corinth, and says, “God who caused light to shine out off darkness has caused his light to shine in our hearts to give us knowledge…” What convergence of the abstract into embodiment. The word became flesh and dwelt among us.

6. His triumph over the grave
-John 20: Mary is despondent b/c Jesus has been crucified. She goes to the grave. The angels ask her why she is crying. She turns away from the angelic messengers and asks the gardener where the body is. Only Jesus would have responded with, “Mary.” He who came from eternity knows you by name and affirms for you your individuality. He tells her to go and tell the others what this is all about.
-Billy Graham. His most moving day was when the chancellor of Germany and he were looking at a city, and the chancellor said, “Do you really believe Jesus rose from the dead?” Graham said, “If he didn’t, I would have no gospel left to preach.” The chancellor said, “Outside the resurrection of Christ I know of no other hope for mankind.”
-3 weeks ago speaking in Qatar to U.S. troops. They wanted prayer because they were facing death.
-When he buried his mother, his father had never hugged him before but did then and asked him to preach at the funeral. Ravi could only think of one word, “Gone.” His father said, “Get on your knees and ask him to complete the thought: Gone where?” As he prayed, he sensed God saying, “She’s gone home.” For 32 years I have spent most of my time away from home. It’s good to be home, how much more the place that Jesus has prepared for us. What hope.

Paul in Colossians 1 gives a glowing description of Christ. The image of the invisible God. In chapter 2 he says, you are complete in him. You are complete in him. We lack nothing when we know him—he interprets all of reality for us.

Two years ago he first spoke to the U.N. ambassadors. He spoke about the heart’s hunger for meaning, and its four components. In two minutes of a 25-minute talk, he could bring the gospel in. He told them the story, a parable, of the rich man with a huge art gallery with a terrific son. The son befriended a beggar, and told him of his father’s art gallery. But the young man died suddenly, and the beggar went and drew a portrait of the young man, and gave it to the rich man, the boy’s father. Years later the beggar heard the rich man had died and was going to auction his art gallery, and he went to buy the portrait he had drawn years before. The auctioneer said the portrait was to be sold first. The beggar was the only person to bid and bought it. The auctioneer said, “Whoever bids on the portrait of the son gets the whole art gallery.” When you get the son, you get all of the components of meaning in life.

When you get the son, you get all that you need to understand reality within and without, and that is why in a world skidding out of control, where the sounds of weapons are in many parts, deafening to the ears, in a world where sexuality is becoming desacredilized, where homes are being attacked, and we long for someone or something to provide answers, Jesus stands tall and says, come unto me, all who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest, for I when lifted up will draw all men unto me.

Malcolm Muggeridge – lived sensually for much of his own life. On his death bed, he said, We look back on history and what do we see—the rise and fall of great men and empires…Behind the debris of these solemn supermen…there stands the gigantic figure of one person, who through alone and in whom alone and because of whom alone, mankind may have peace.