The Vision of the Anointed is Our Nightmare; Ivy League Progressives and Creeping Racism

August 23, 2014 Leave a comment

Ferguson, Missouri; Michael Brown; the race industry’s huckster’s ‘Reverends’ Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson; “No Justice, No Peace”.

 Should we listen to and embrace the inflammatory NeveReverending racial rhetoric that bellows out from under a sheep skin, rhetoric that leads to societal schism? OR, should we listen to and follow the wise words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s niece Dr. Alveda King as she says: “Know peace and you’ll know justice”? You tell me.

 And, should Obama be just as arrogant as President Lyndon Johnson?

 Since the earliest days of my youth I have been seeking wisdom, knowledge and a good understanding. This pervasive endeavor was birthed in me as my mother read from the book of Proverbs at the dinner table each night after dinner.

 Please, please, please sit down with your coffee and listen to the wisdom, clarity and common sense that Thomas Sowell brings to the issues of race, affirmative action, minimum wage, the negative effects of today’s intellectualism, multiculteralism, social justice, environmentalism, political correctness, diversity and a host of other hot-button cultural and economic topics. You will be doing yourself a favor – wisdom is like that. 

 

Wisdom’s, Rebuke (Proverbs Chapter One)

 

Out in the open wisdom calls aloud
she raises her voice in the public square;
on top of the wall she cries out,
at the city gate she makes her speech:

 

“How long will you who are simple love your simple ways?
How long will mockers delight in mockery
and fools hate knowledge?
Repent at my rebuke!
Then I will pour out my thoughts to you,
will make known to you my teachings.
But since you refuse to listen when I call
and no one pays attention when I stretch out my hand,
since you disregard all my advice
and do not accept my rebuke,
I in turn will laugh when disaster strikes you;
I will mock when calamity overtakes you—
when calamity overtakes you like a storm,
when disaster sweeps over you like a whirlwind,
when distress and trouble overwhelm you.

 

“Then they will call to me but I will not answer;
they will look for me but will not find me,
since they hated knowledge
and did not choose to fear the Lord.
Since they would not accept my advice
and spurned my rebuke,
they will eat the fruit of their ways
and be filled with the fruit of their schemes.
For the waywardness of the simple will kill them,
and the complacency of fools will destroy them;
but whoever listens to me will live in safety
and be at ease, without fear of harm.”

Filed under Culture, Economics, Education, Politcal cartoon, Politics, Race Relations Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

A Brave New World or Evil Will Make One Lose Their Head

July 26, 2014 Leave a comment

  Macbeth

“Fair is foul and foul is fair

Hover through the fog and filthy air.”

 

 

If like me you are a follower of The Way then I don’t have to tell you that we live in an age of ever encroaching evil. The effects:  man’s inhumanity to man is shown daily on the nightly news along with the moral relativism which justifies it all. We now “Hover through the fog and filthy air.”

 In the U.S. we now are governed and adjudicated by those who want to “fundamentally transform” the world around them. For these morally adrift flotsam and jetsam of embattled truth, the ends justify the means. For them, right or wrong considerations are the millstones which keep them from reaching the distant shores of their island utopias called ‘Freedom’ and ‘Rights’.

 Our world in almost every aspect has been turned upside down by moral relativism. One prime example: criminals (and illegal aliens this very day, too) are now considered the victims by many judges.

 Unconstrained judges will often base their final decisions on the fatuous reasoning of rationalism’s data merchants, the social scientists ~ ‘scientists’ who paint family background and poverty scenarios with a blind eye to the true victim. The resultant formulation: a sliding scale of ad hoc “social justice” created with a calculus of personal ambition by a judge who is being watched by the attention-seeking liberal media, the ‘acclaimed’ ‘social’ ‘scientists’ and his/her cocktail party sycophants.

 Personal responsibility for one’s behavior has been thrown out the window. Such a ‘weight’ would incur too much shame and guilt on the part of the perpetrators of evil. Psychologists, social workers and their ilk want to avoid shame and guilt. And if Rousseau were here today he would say that institutions and authorities are the problem, that man is inherently good. You know better.

 Willfully the social do-gooders replace personal responsibility and consequences with an “I’m OK Your Ok” “fog and filthy air” therapy. Mind altering anxiety killing pills are prescribed to deal with guilt. Heaven forbid that a person encounter and understand the consequences of their actions.

 Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Macbeth is an excellent example of the very human tragedy that is the result of good people crossing a line to make evil choices. And, after having read several of Shakespeare’s plays, it would seem that Shakespeare knew more about humanity than any ‘social scientist’ who has ever published. The Bible being unquestionably the authority, The Book, about mankind.

 Another writer who understood man’s capacity for evil was Alexander Solzhenitsyn. A Russian novelist, historian, dissident and documentarian Solzhenitsyn had first-hand knowledge of evil as he and others experienced it under the murderous tyrant Stalin. From under the clouds of evil, as well as introspectively, Solzhenitsyn observed:

 “The battle line of good and evil runs through the heart of every man.”

 Moral relativism, a synthesis of good and evil, makes the line dividing good and evil murky. And, in these days of Progressivism’s Pontius Pilate-like questioning, “What is truth?” it has become increasingly difficult to see the delineation between good and evil. The “fog and filthy air” of moral relativism must be seen for what it is ~ the admixture of good and evil.

 

The opening quote, spoken in unison by three witches, is from the opening of Shakespeare’s play The Tragedy of Macbeth, Act One, Scene 1.

 The foreboding first scene takes place on the heather moors of Scotland under a stage setting of “Thunder and lightening.” The imagery throughout the play is of night, of darkness, of man’s dark nature, of blood, of distortion. In other words, the play brings to ‘light’ the evil overcast in men’s souls.

 Macbeth, a Scottish General and the thane (a noble) of the village of Glamis in Scotland, is the main character.

 In the play’s opening scene Macbeth is the subject of a plot by three witches. He is to be encountered by them in an open field after he has completed a battle. Their reason: the witches want to give Macbeth their ‘prophecies’ right after his victory while the won battle is fresh in his mind and his pride is stoked.

 At the end of the brief opening scene that the witch’s animal ‘spirit lords’ call to them and they fly away. Act One, Scene 1 ends portentously. Evil is in the air. The witches are the harbingers.

 The play is a tragedy about its eponymous main character facing the battle line within his heart. He begins as a noble and valiant warrior for Scotland. He starts out as good. He knows right from wrong; He fights for the good of all Scotland with all his might. But things begin to change after he returns victorious from a recent battle for Scotland. Macbeth walks into the aforementioned open field with his battlefield companion Banquo. The open field context could appear to them as a broad daylight moment and therefore any ‘truth’ would be clear to see. Yet it is not.

 For the three witches this is perfect timing to speak their prophecy. Its appeal goes directly Macbeth’s pride and to his grandiosity after having gained victory on another field.

 By telling Macbeth and his companion that they will rule Scotland each in their own way their imaginations begin to run wild. Reason also begins to plot as to how to ‘cross the line’ into royalty. The two men, warriors and servants of the King of Scotland, having just come from battle for their current regent Duncan now hear that they, too, will be regents. They begin to imagine that they are ‘meant’ to have what others have. So, they are told.

 After the witches relay their prophecies, Banquo counsels Macbeth (from the No fear translation, Act One, scene 3):

 If you trust what they say, you might be on your way to becoming king, as well as thane of Cawdor. But this whole thing is strange. The agents of evil often tell us part of the truth in order to lead us to our destruction. They earn our trust by telling us the truth about little things, but then they betray us when it will damage us the most

 What a perfect description of the enticement of moral relativism that leads us to ruin!

 To speed up the process of becoming a regent (no time line was given by the witches) Macbeth crosses a line and chooses a path of evil. The evil compounds quickly into greater evil when Macbeth sends a letter to Lady Macbeth.

 Lady Macbeth quickly embraces evil after reading the letter from her husband reciting the witch’s prophecies. (She, obviously, like Macbeth, doesn’t consider the source. Moral relativism has a penchant for this.). Lady Macbeth is stricken by the idea of being royalty and invites evil in, desiring to enable her husband to become king of Scotland. In doing so, Lady Macbeth becomes the very image of subjecting one’s self to evil in hopes of achieving ‘gain.’ She embraced the lie that evil brings right to your door step.

 Shortly afterward, when she hears that King Duncan will be coming to the Macbeth house, she plots his murder. Her words, again from No Fear Shakespeare, Act One scene 5:

 “So the messenger is short of breath, like a hoarse raven, as he announces Duncan’s entrance into my fortress, where he will die. Come, you spirits that assist murderous thoughts, make less like a woman and more like a man, and fill me from head to toe with deadly cruelty! Thicken my blood and clog my veins so I won’t feel remorse, so that no human compassion can stop my evil plan or prevent me from accomplishing it! Come to my female breasts and turn my mother’s milk into poisonous acid, you murdering demons, wherever you hide, invisible and waiting to do evil! Come, thick night and cover the world in the darkest smoke of hell, so that my sharp knife can’t see the wound it cuts open, and so heaven can’t peep through the darkness and cry, No! Stop!”

 Lady Macbeth, consumed by evil, question’s Macbeth’s manhood when he waffles considering what must take place for his ‘prophetic’ rule to occur.

 The play stages many of the elements and images of evil. Macbeth’s machismo, his masculinity is questioned by an evil embracing wife. There is guilt and paranoia, blood shed, ghosts, complicity in doing evil, delusional thinking leading to madness, remorse leading to suicide, darkness – all the time. Let it be known: evil hates the light of day.

 

At this juncture in the post I do not want to reveal and dissect the whole storyline or make this post longer than the play itself. I suggest reading the whole play in one sitting. It is a short, fast paced tragedy.

And, I suggest, if you haven’t read Shakespeare’s plays then do what I have done: read the plays from the very accessible, inexpensive series of books called No Fear Shakespeare. As the cover relates: “The Play Plus A Translation Anyone Can Understand”.

 

Can man remake himself with pills, through better institutions, by labeling himself a “deserving” person or by removing a psychopathic bent from the DSM?

 Can man rule in life by crossing the line in his heart from good over to evil? Progressivism, materialism and evil itself would suggest it is possible. Yet, in doing so one is radically and “Fundamentally Transformed” as are the lives of those around them.

 Was not Christ tempted by Satan in the same way as we are?

Satan took Jesus to a high pinnacle and showed him the world. Satan said to Christ, “You can have all of this if you give your allegiance to me.” In other words, “Cross the Line. Believe the lie.”

 There is no namby-pamby Jesus or cheap Unitarian grace where good is mixed with evil.

 When describing the Kingdom of Heaven to his disciples Jesus spoke in parables or similes of real life experiences they would have had. The passage below is from just such a discourse. It is from the Gospel according to Matthew 13: 44-53:

 “…Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea, and collected every type of fish. When it was full, the fishermen brought it to shore. They sat down and selected the good ones, which they put into a bucket; but they threw out the bad ones. That’s what it will be like at the close of an age. The angels will go off and separate the wicked from the righteous, and they will throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

“Have you understood this?” asked Jesus

“Yes, “they answered….”

You have a choice. Don’t let anyone conjure up excuses for you. You have a choice.

 

 ***

A short description of Shakespeare’s tragedy Macbeth from Wikipedia:

Macbeth is a play written by William Shakespeare. It is considered one of his darkest and most powerful tragedies. Set in Scotland, the play dramatizes the corroding psychological and political effects produced when its protagonist, the Scottish lord Macbeth, chooses evil as the way to fulfill his ambition for power.

 

****

Macbeth picture courtesy of :

http://www.thelowry.com/event/Macbeth-February2010

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Identity Politics or American Like Me

July 19, 2014 2 Comments

Do black Americans want to be called African-Americans?

Why do black Americans hyphenate their identity?

What do conservative black Americans think? And, why do we talk about minorities? There are no minorities in America. There are only legal Americans.

After watching the video ask yourself why Barack Obama and Jesse Jackson and Eric Holder and Al Sharpton and the SPLC (the “Hate Watchers”) et al want to divide the country into black and white, rich and poor, big “G” Government versus John Doe and Christians? Why create class and race division and also animus towards Christians (remember “bitter clingers” comment?) among the people of the United States of America?

Take a look:

 

Al Sharpton’s Chicago Town Hall Erupts into Anti-Machine Revolt

Black Americans are rejecting Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and the whole Obama-Liberal-Progresive-hate America agenda

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“Doubly Dead and Uprooted”

April 27, 2014 Leave a comment

tree limb

The title of this post comes from the following scripture passage, written by Judah.

 Judah identifies himself first as a slave of the Lord Jesus and then as the brother of James, the leader of the church in Jerusalem. Judah is the half-brother of the Lord Jesus.

 Judah tells us that he earnestly wanted to write about God’s salvation realized but he turns quickly to the false teaching among his “beloved ones.” These false teachings sprung up in the early days of the church and even while the apostles, the eye witnesses, were still alive.

 Beware: false teaching is happening everywhere around us, even more so since the first century AD.

 In those days Gnostic teaching of the antinomian type was creeping into the church teaching. The Gnostic “false teachers” viewed the material as evil and the spiritual as good. Thus they cultivated their ‘spiritual’ lives and let the flesh to do whatever it desired to do. In effect, they gave license for all kinds of fleshy lawlessness including acceptance of the sexual perversion of homosexuality as normative within the church of the Lord Jesus.

 Gnosticism exists today in all its lawless or antinomian forms within many our churches: Catholic, Episcopal, Presbyterian, Lutheran and Evangelical.

 Here is Judah’s letter:

The Letter of Judah

 Contend for the faith

 Judah, slave of Jesus the Messiah, brother of James, to those who are called, the people whom God loves and whom Jesus, the Messiah, keeps safe! May mercy, peace, and love be multiplied to you.

 Beloved, I was doing my best to write to you about the rescue in which we share, but I found it necessary to write to you to urge you to struggle hard for the faith which was once and for all given to God’s people. Some people have sneaked in among you, it seems, who long ago were marked out for this condemnation ~ ungodly people, who are transforming God’s grace into licentiousness, and denying the one and only master, our Lord Jesus the Messiah.

 False Teachers

I do want to remind you, even though you know it all well, that when the Lord once and for all delivered his people out of Egypt, he subsequently destroyed those who did not believe. In the same way, when some of the angels did not keep to their rightful place of authority, but abandoned their own home, he kept them under conditions of darkness and in eternal chains to await the judgment of the great day. In similar fashion, Sodom, Gomorrah, and the cities round about, which had lived in gross immorality and lusted after unnatural flesh, are set before us as a pattern, undergoing the punishment of endless fire.

 However, these people are behaving in the same way! They are dreaming their way into defiling their flesh, rejecting authority, and cursing the glorious ones. Even Michael the archangel, when disputing with the devil about the body of Moses, did not presume to lay a charge against him of blasphemy, but simply said, “The Lord rebuke you.” These people, however curse anything they don’t know. They are like dumb animals; there are some things they understand instinctively ~ but it is these very things that destroy them. A curse on them! They go off in the way of Cain; they give themselves over for money into Balaam’s deceitful ways; they are destroyed in Korah’s rebellion. These are the ones who pollute your love-feasts; they share your table without fear while simply looking after their own needs. They are waterless clouds blown along by the winds. They are the fruitless autumn trees, doubly dead and uprooted. They are stormy waves out at sea, splashing up their own shameful ways. They are wandering stars, and the deepest everlasting darkness has been kept for them in particular.

 Enoch, the seventh in line from Adam, prophesied about these people. “Look!” he said. “The Lord comes with ten thousand of his holy ones, to perform judgment against all, and to charge every human being with all the ungodly ways in which they have done ungodly things, and with every harsh word which ungodly sinners have spoken against him.” These people are always grumbling and complaining, chasing off after their own desires. From their mouths come arrogant words, buttering people up for the sake of gain.

Rescued by God’s Power

But you, my beloved ones, remember the words that were spoken before by the apostles of our Lord Jesus the Messiah. “In the last time,” they said to you, “there will be scornful people who follow their own ungodly desires.” These are the people who cause divisions. They are living on the merely human level; they do not have the spirit. But you, beloved ones, build yourselves up in your most holy fait. Pray in the holy spirit. Keep yourselves in the love of god, as you wait for our Lord Jesus the Messiah to show you mercy which leads to the life of the age to come.

 With some people who are wavering, you must show mercy. Some you must rescue, snatching them from the fire. To others you must show mercy, but with fear, hating even the clothes that have been defiled by the flesh.

 Now to the one who is able to keep you standing upright, and to present you before his glory, undefiled and joyful ~to the one and only God, our savior through Jesus the Messiah our Lord, be glory, majesty, power, and authority before all ages, and now, and to all the ages to come. Amen. (emphasis mine)

 

 “Doubly Dead and Uprooted” aptly describes the moral relativism, the lawlessness, of our day. People are uprooted from absolute truth and are just dead tree limbs, blown about by the winds and whims of our “values” culture.

 I have written about our culture’s ‘uprooting’ in previous posts.

America’s ‘Devalued’ Moral Currency

 

Tear Down That Anthropocentricity

 

 Many churches now teach a ‘feel-good gospel’ that is ‘inclusive’ …but also damning.

 With the church failing in its mission to make disciples, America is now rebuilding itself on a foundation of sand, of lawlessness, much like Europe has already done. We will soon be washed away. The torrents will come.

 My “beloved ones’: Reading Judah’s letter you can’t help notice that as someone who grew up with Jesus Judah understood his half-brother Jesus from his orthodox Jewish perspective to be the anticipated Messiah.

 Finally and most important of all, Judah mentions Jesus the “Messiah” over and over again within this short missive. The Kingdom of God on earth began in those days and continues to the present! Judah urged his brothers and sisters in the faith, including us, “to contend for the faith that was once entrusted to the saints.”

 

 

(Tree limb picture from Aerophant.com)

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America’s ‘DeValued’ Moral Currency

February 12, 2014 Leave a comment

Pervasive throughout our land is the avoidance of asking the hard questions.  We shun the real questions about life and death and about God.  We do not want to talk “good and evil.”  We glibly talk about body and soul, about reason and revelation, about eternity and time. 

 The other day I happened to watch The Lord of the Rings (LTR):  The Return of the King.  Putting the above statement into LTR terms, we want to live peaceably in the shire without ever having to venture out and deal with the Ring, a Ring which has consequential power over us. We may say to ourselves, “Why destroy the ring when we don’t know for sure it exists? We may have thoughts that all that the shire presents to us is all there is to life. We will go on with our quietude in order to avoid conflict and to live peaceably. We choose society’s ‘safe’ surroundings and its costly ‘insurance’ policies to avoid the dangerous quest that truth demands of us. We fear what it might take to make the journey.  We fear we will lose ourselves on the way and never return to the shire. We fear, we fear and we fear again.

   We fear conflict.  And this is because inherent in conflict are the morals or ethics that each of the disparate parties brings with them. Conflict is the evil we most want to avoid.  Our “dialectics” begin with opposites and often end in synthesis or in the exclusion (or boycott) of the ‘other’.  We will seek out the ‘no-fault divorce’ of our language from its historical meaning. We give a pass to “Political-Correctness” (PC) because PC talk bypasses truth and goes straight to a word originally devoid of any value in and of itself but now given full political power: “diversity.”  

With the acceptance of “diversity,” also a code-word for “whatever” or “it-depends,” moral relativity’s child, lawlessness, increasingly becomes a de facto way to govern and self-govern. Yet, “Wisdom shouts in the street, She lifts her voice in the square; At the head of the noisy streets she cries out; At the entrance of the gates in the city She utters her sayings…”

As we go on and find more and more moral conflicts and in order to avoid angst we find it easier to believe nothing of import so that we do not have to fear disagreement, ostracism or even death for what one believes. And because we do not believe in anything then we cannot be responsible for outcomes. Nihilism’s union with materialism begets the DNA of nihilism – lives drained of any meaning other than the moment. In fact, we are told duplicitously “to live in the moment.”

 To choose to believe nothing means that absolute truth is discharged from our lives.  Its voice is no longer heeded.  In fact its voice is now being drowned out.  The commotion that you hear daily is man’s raucous resistance to leaving the shire ~ his tweeting and texting of empty words, the ever streaming pop/rock music filling the void, the Surround sound of ubiquitous blaring entertainment.  It is as if men and women were walking around in the dark calling out to each other and never finding the light switch. They have chosen to stay in the purgatory of their fears.

 The avoidance of pain and conflict has become our primary goal in life.  This is seen in the young voter’s desire for Obamacare.  The health care reform is seen by them as in line with their “values”.  The reform is also seen as providing a sense of self-esteem in that it affirms the young voters wish to avoid pain and insecurity at all costs. On the surface Obamacare appears to provide security for themselves and for others while in truth it is a compromise of what is good and what is evil – the good being the desire for your well-being and the well-being of others and the evil which is the lie that Obama and the government will somehow provide self-esteem and security for you and others and do it with altruism. Remember, God has now been replaced by social science, social science based on rationalism and egalitarianism (think John Rawls, Laurence Tribe, etc.) all under the banner of “Social Justice.”  Rationalism’s,’ “Social Justice” trumps God every time.  Social science is now becoming the creator of society’s values, e.g., God is not to be talked about in public but homosexuality must be.  All of this in spite of the fact that rationalism without revelation could never create value. As Benedict XVI said in 1969:

“What is essential is that reason shut in on itself does not remain reasonable or rational, just as the state that aims at being perfect becomes tyrannical. Reason needs revelation in order to be able to be effective as reason.”

 The avoidance of truth with its inherent conflicts with other than the truth affects our relationships, our sexuality, our creativity, our culture. In place of absolute truth Americans, as mentioned, have latched on to “values.” And our new “value” system has a new way of talking:  “lifestyle”, “Be Yourself;” “Be original;” “Let go and be;”  diversity;” “I have my rights.” But now “rights” are no longer the natural inalienable God-given rights “of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”  Now “rights” have morphed into feelings worn on our sleeve.  We demand that others accept what we feel and that others be open and tolerant. This is what we value above all else. Right and wrong (and love (read not sex)) no longer have a place in our psyche. “Values” – a synthesis of good and evil dominates our diseased culture. And when we ignore serious questions we create words with synthetic meanings to describe our lives.

 “Charisma” is one of those words often heard today. Charisma was once considered a God-given grace but has been used as cover for the “banality of evil” as Hannah Arendt, political philosopher, notes when talking about Hitler’s appeal.

  Allan Bloom, another political philosopher, notes in his 1987 book The Closing of the American Mind:  How Higher Education Has failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today’s Students, “Charisma both justifies leaders and excuses followers.  The very word gives a positive twist to rabble-rousing qualities and activities treated as negative in our constitutional tradition.  And it s vagueness makes it a tool for frauds and advertising men adept at manipulating images.” Consider that both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama have both been called charismatic leaders.

 In the introduction to his book, Bloom writes about what he sees in the classrooms of higher education: 

“There is one thing a professor can be absolutely certain of:  almost every student entering the university believes, or says he believes that truth is relative….They are unified only in their relativism and their allegiance to equality….They have been equipped with this framework early on, and it is the modern replacement for the inalienable rights that used to be the traditional American grounds for a free society…The danger they have been taught to fear from absolutism is not error but intolerance.  Relativism is necessary to openness; and this is virtue, the only virtue, which all primary education for more than fifty years has dedicated itself to inculcating.  Openness ~ and the relativism that makes it only plausible stance in the face of various claims to truth and various ways of life and kinds of human beings ~ is the great insight of our times. The true believer is the real danger.  The study of history and culture teaches that all the world was mad in the past; men always thought they were right, and that led to wars, persecutions, slavery, xenophobia, racism, and chauvinism.  The point (now) is not to correct the mistakes and really be right; rather it is not to think you are right at all.”  (emphasis mine)

  In a later chapter titled The German Connection, Bloom relates how Nietzsche, Heidegger, Hegel, Weber, Freud have influenced American thinking.  Americans, within a “pro-choice” democracy, have assimilated this German thinking sometimes turning it on its head.   Bloom writes, 

“…there is now an entirely new language of good and evil, originating in an attempt to get “beyond good and evil” and preventing us from talking with any conviction about good and evil anymore.  Even those who deplore our current moral condition do so in the very language that exemplifies that condition.”

“The new language is that of value relativism and it constitutes a change in our view of things moral and political as great as the one that took place when Christianity replaced Greek and Roman paganism.” (empahsis mine) …

“Value relativism can be taken to be a great release from the perpetual tyranny of good and evil, with its cargo and shame and guilt, and the endless efforts that the pursuit of the one and the avoidance of the other enjoin. Intractable good and evil cause infinite distress – like war and sexual repression – which is almost instantly relieved when more flexible values are introduced.  One need not feel bad about or uncomfortable with oneself when just a little value adjustment is necessary.  And this longing to shuck off constraints and have one peaceful, happy world is the first of the affinities between our real American world and that of German philosophy in its most advanced form, given expression by the critics of the President’s speech.”

 Here Bloom is referring to the clamor arising when President Reagan referred to the Soviet Union as the “evil empire.”  When yet at another time Reagan said that the Soviets had “different values,” this statement was met “at worst with silence and frequently with approval,” thus revealing our loathing of absolutism in the former statement.

 At the beginning of the chapter Values, Bloom, relates, “We have come back to the point where we began (in the book), where values take the place of good and evil.” (emphasis mine)

And so like Gollum we place the utmost value on the ring of power, becoming blind to its tyranny over us. Along with the ring we call our values “My Precious.”  Under the yolk of temporal “values” and without facing the serious questions of life we lose ourselves, we lose the real.  We lose love, romance, culture, art ~ everything that gives meaning to life.

 Love or charity, a virtue which must be constantly worked at, is replaced with ‘sexual rights.’ Consider that in our culture sexual activity is not to be repressed or self-controlled but rather it is to be given preeminent unrestrained “value.” Think Sandra Fluke and contraception. Think in-your-face homosexuality. Does America “confirm her soul in self-control” or not?

 Romance, apart from truth is portrayed in movie after movie as just a response to nihilism. Nowhere to be found is the expectation, the unrequited desire and the hoped-for revelation of real romance. Without absolutes there can be no true romance.

 We are a culture that seeks therapeutic counseling.  Yet modern psychology, the sworn enemy of shame and guilt, refuses to talk about good and evil and therefore offers nothing for the soul. Freudian psychology only brings the patient back to repressed sex.

 Modern art has nothing of consequence to offer. Consider the pop art of Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein.

 Deafening music, pop or rock, pummels our ear drums daily evoking barbaric passions and depriving the soul of its senses.

 Tattoos deface our bodies so as to reveal our disdain for the discipline that purity of mind and body requires. Inking is given the (non-)value of counter-culture and rabble-rousing.

 Religion, wherein serious questions are faced, is being replaced by positive thinking as preached from the temples of TV.

 In view of the fact that our nation is becoming increasingly devoid of absolutes and truth while at the same time becoming increasingly laced with relativism and sliding scale “values” consider this:

 Jesus, the Son of the Living God and The Way, the Truth and the Life says, “You shall know the truth and the truth will set you free.” Free from what? Free from fear.  All fear:  the fear of the unknown, the fear of facing ultimate accountability, the fear of death, the fear of loss and personal suffering, the fear of evil.  Jesus’ perfect love casts out all fear. Because of this we can face the serious questions of life head-on knowing that God ~ Father, Son and Holy Spirit love us, that They stand with us and that Jesus has gone before us through the same difficult places. Seek Him and He will be found.

 Going back to the LTR analogy do you remember how Frodo and Sam and the rest rejoiced that the ring had been destroyed, that their arduous life and death journey had been accomplished? Their courage and resoluteness saved the shire, themselves and Middle Earth even while the others in the shire had no clue as to what was going on.  You and I must do the same.

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Saving Leonardo and Modern Man From Himself

January 25, 2014 Leave a comment

dual mindHave you read Saving Leonardo: A Call to Resist the Secular Assault on Mind, Morals & Meaning by Nancy Pearcey, B & H Publishing Group, Copyright 2010?  

It has been a while, 2010 actually, since I read this Christian-perspective-of-culture concordance. A certain blog post triggered a memory redux of Saving Leonardo.

The Christian author Nancy Pearcey writes about the dualism behind modern man’s worldview.  Her book informs us as to how secularism emerged to be a prominent worldview. She also tells us how she sees that worldview affecting us, destroying our culture.  Her desire in writing this book is to make every Christian knowledgeable and aware, prepared to take on the current secular worldview:

“A worldview approach enables Christians to move beyond merely denouncing social ills such as abortion, which can sound harsh, angry and judgmental.  And, it equips them to demonstrate positively that biblical wisdom leads to a just and humane society.  Protests and placards are not enough.  To be strategically effective in protecting human dignity, we need to get behind the slogans and uncover the secular worldviews that shape people’s thinking.”

For starters there is this curious quote at the front of the book and the only reference to book’s title reference, Leonard da Vinci, that I could find aside from a section titled “Da Vinici versus Degas” (regrettably, there is no index at the back of the book):

Leonardo da Vinci

Hence the anguish and the innermost tragedy of this universal man, divided between his irreconcilable worlds.

(Giovanni Gentile, Leonardo’s Thought)

I’m not sure why Pearcey chose Giovanni Gentile’s quote to provide the “Forward” for her book about modern man’s dualistic thinking.  Giovanni Gentile was known at one time as the official philosopher of Fascism in Italy.  His theories contained rejection of individualism, acceptance of collectivism, with the state as the ultimate location of authority and loyalty to which the individual found in the conception of individuality no meaning outside the state (which in turn justified totalitarianism). Wow! In essence Giovanni Gentile didn’t believe a person could have a thought of his own apart from the state. 

In any case, as a student of art, music, literature and science as well as some philosophy and a good bit of theology and being something of a Leonardo da Vinci/Sherlock Holmes type that I am, this book, found on a table in a local book store, caught my eye.

Nancy Pearcey studied under Francis Schaeffer at L’Abri Fellowship in Switzerland. She begins her book by referring to a simile Schaeffer used to describe modern man.  She writes:

“Using the metaphor of a building, he (Schaeffer) warned that truth had been split into two stories.  The lower story consists of scientific facts, which are held to be empirically testable and universally valid. The upper story includes things like morality, theology, and aesthetics, which are now regarded as subjective and culturally relative. Essentially the upper story became a convenient dumping ground for anything that the empiricist world view did not recognize as real.  Schaeffer used a simple graphic, which we can adapt like this:

The two-story concept of truth

Values

Private, subjective, relative

Facts

Public, objective, universal

This dichotomy has grown so pervasive that most people do not even recognize they hold it.  It has become part of the cultural air we breathe. Consider two prominent examples:

Martin Luther King Jr. ~ “Science deal mainly with facts; religion deals with mainly values.”

Albert Einstein ~ “Science yields facts but not “value judgments”; religion expresses values but cannot “speak of facts.””

As you are well aware by the verbal sparks flying everywhere around us, the dichotomy within our own honed thinking as it engages with others with their hardened dichotomy is like steel striking a flint rock. Truly, the fact/value split has inflicted great damage to our culture.  It clearly affects the worlds of politics, education, religion and societal norms such as marriage.  Saving Leonardo is a good place to begin your research into how we as a culture came to be this way.

Saving Leonardo gives the reader an overview of the history behind modern man’s fact/value split (shown above as the “lower story” and the “upper story.”).  The book presents the two basic worldviews that are prevalent today: Continental and Analytic. These two streams are manifested throughout today’s culture via art, music, literature, movies, politics, education, law, sexual mores, societal institutions and pop culture.

Pearcey uses the following descriptive dichotomies to describe our evolved mindsets:

Facts/Values
Box of Things/ box of the mind
Machine/ghost (Descartes)
Nature/Freedom (Kant)
Formalism/expressionism
Mind (autonomous self)/body (biochemical machine) or in toto, the Liberal view of the human being
Imaginative truth (art)/rational truth (deterministic world of science)

In discussing the Continental worldview Pearcey notes that there are the schools of idealism, Marxism, phenomenology, existentialism, postmodernism and deconstructionism.

The Analytic worldview stream, she says, holds empiricism, rationalism, materialism, naturalism, logical positivism and linguistic analysis.

In comparing the two worldviews John Stuart Mill is quoted: “the antagonism already separating the two traditions: The lower story, with its materialism, “is accused of making men beasts” while the upper story, with its irrationalism, is accused of making men lunatics.”

Pearcey notes that culture has reflected the dueling mindsets since their inception during the age of Enlightenment. Artists, composers, writers, dramatists and producers have portrayed the philosophies of their day through their art. Saving Leonardo gives prominent examples of those creative forces that have either mirrored the prevailing thought or who have worked to oppose it.

In brief, you will encounter Hemingway, London, Huxley, Hegel, Duchamp, Picasso, Kandinsky, Darwin, Nihilism, Abstract expressionism, Christian realism, John Cage and a host of others – philosophers, painters, composers and writers who influenced culture from where they stood in the house: the upper story or the lower story.

As an example of the constant interplay between dueling mindsets, the split in thinking, as shown below, shows how those of the Romantic period tried to view their ‘art’ as separate and above the newly arrived scientific fact proposed by Darwinism:

The Romantics’ two-story of truth

Imaginative truth

Creative World (Art)

Rational truth

Deterministic world (Science)

Within a Christian worldview there is no need whatsoever to divide man’s thinking into separate spheres such as spiritual fact versus science or materialism.  A Christian man or woman who is whole is a romantic-rationalist.  One very good example of such a person would be the Christian apologist and fantasy writer C.S. Lewis. Lewis, as revealed by his writing and talks, had integrated the upper and lower stories.

 Pearcey, in the section C.S. Lewis: We Can’t All Be Right, quotes Lewis:

“The Christian and the Materialist hold different views about the universe.  They can’t be both right.  The one who is wrong will act in a way which simply doesn’t fit the real universe.”

(Little wonder that homosexuality is given credence in our culture.)

Saving Leonardo is good starting point for further research.  It will certainly pique your interest when the dots start to connect to form our deformed culture right before your eyes.

End thoughts:  Unlike Pearcey I do not have an issue with modern music or with modern art.  I find them both to be revealing and stimulating each in their own way. 

Jazz is not mentioned in this book, as best I can recall.  This is a shame. I hear jazz as a very human and creative outlet within our world. I find it rather strange that the author never mentions the spontaneity, sonority and musical improvisation of jazz. I love Bach and Shostakovich and Henryk Górecki. But I also listen to Dizzy Gillespie and Thelonious Monk and Wynton Marsalis.

I also listen to the Blues:  Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, B.B. King, et al. My tastes in music, art and literature run eclectic.

I certainly don’t agree with the author that art has to have unifying narrative to be of value.  One of the earliest painters I connected with was Jackson Pollack.  I remember seeing a painting of his in a Life magazine article and then later at the Art Institute in Chicago. This was a time back in my junior high school days. 

Jackson’s drip paintings reminded me of a brain’s neural network being charged with emotion. Perhaps, his paintings are a one-nanosecond glimpse of a much larger narrative. In any case, art is something you can take or leave as you see fit based on your own life narrative.

There will be places in the book where you will take issue with her opinions, just I did (see below).  This is good.  Find out why you agree or disagree with her. I urge you to become knowledgeable about the current world view encircling you by reading this book. Form your own Christian-romantic-rationalist worldview to withstand secularism’s pressures.

Nancy Peacey pushes for there to be narrative and a teleological basis to paintings, music and literature.  Again, I disagree about the need for narratives.

There will be times of narrative and Newtonian Classical Physics and Bach and Norman Rockwell and Shakespeare and Charlotte Brontë where cause and effect and resolution are clearly known.  There will also be times of seeming disarray and unknowns and lack of resolution as in Quantum Physics and the music of György Ligeti, John Cage and Schoenberg and the paintings of Picasso and Jackson Pollock and the poems of Jack Kerouac.  We need both. As creators, though, we are all teleologically dependent whether we like it or not.  Intelligent design is baked into the pottery.

Jackson Pollock No 28

Jackson Pollock – No.28, 1950. Enamel on canvas

 In the final words of the book Pearcey encourages parents to not push their kids into being conservative (keeping things as they are).  Rather, she encourages parents to push for “revolutionary” children.

Like the “Forward” quote source I find this curious. From my reading of Saving Leonardo, there seems to be no direct context given for defining her word “revolutionary”.  Perhaps she means being an ‘out-side-the-box’ artist, composer or writer.  Apparently she hasn’t read Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood.

 *******

Point of contention with the book:

The book is divided into two main parts: The Threat of Global Secularism and Two Paths to Secularism. As a side note I became particularly interested in Chapter Three of the book’s Part One. The title of Chapter Three: Sex, Lies and Secularism.

In this section of Chapter Three “Hooking up, Feeling Down” Pearcey begins “Let’s move to the most contentious sexual issues of our day such as homosexuality, transgenderism and the hook-up culture.” She then goes on to say that having an understanding of the two-story dualism of modern thinking will help the Christian in providing a holistic biblical alternative.

Because of her shotgun approach of scoping transgenderism in the same sights as homosexuality, Pearcey does, I believe, relegate transgenderism to be on par morally with acting out homosexually and one-night stand sexuality. I would state emphatically here that transgenderism by definition is not about acting out sexually. Transgenderism is not equal to homosexuality whether as a sexual issue or a gender issue. It IS about gender identity/gender dysphoria and seeking to become a whole person ~ a romantic rationalist.  Or, to describe it using her term, it’s being “revolutionary.”

Further information about transgenderism:

 The Transgender Moment

A ‘Naturalized’ Woman

The Church and Gender

Other ‘related’ dichotomies: Robert Pirsig’s “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.” Pirsig’s distinction between the “classical” and the “romantic” view is conceptually analogous to Thomas Sowell’s distinction between the constrained and unconstrained visions in “A Conflict of Visions”

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A Return to Failure is Not a Step Forward

May 31, 2012 Leave a comment

 Three and a half years into Obama’s presidency it would be naïveté and simplemindedness to blame George Bush for the economy’s problems.  During his term as president Obama, the Amateur, has taken all the wrong actions or no actions at all when action was called for.  His reign of malignant incompetency has passed the onerous Dodd-Frank act and Obamacare legislation further crippling our nation. And, Obama has surrounded himself with incompetent and partisan people who promote racial strife, class warfare and division – a second civil war has been forced onto our nation.

Obama is a president who is proud of the fact that more people of this nation are on welfare and receiving food stamps than at any time in our nation’s history.  He encourages dependence on government  Yet, one would think that an American president would work to produce the opposite effect – more people able to care for themselves.  Instead, Obama’s incompetence and his top down government policies are forcing our nation into indentured servitude fit for his plantation.  Obama and the government will become your taskmasters.  As once free people of a great nation you become slaves beholden to the whims of the masters. A political civil war must be fought to oust the slave market creators – Obama and the Dems.

If you voted for Obama in 2008 here are only some of the overall economic effects of his Hope and Change administration.  These are economic facts and they do not convey the pain, the suffering and the lost hope that millions of the unemployed feel:

From the post “The Great Obama Welfare State:”

 Much has changed in America since Barack Obama was sworn into office as the 44th president of the United States on January 20, 2009.  In less than 1,000 days as chief executive of the U.S., President Obama’s failed policies and initiatives have resulted in a dizzying array of dismal economic statistics.  As it stands now, Obama appears headed toward an economic legacy that may very well surpass Jimmy Carter in its level of failure.

Government dependence, which is defined as the percentage of persons receiving one or more federal benefit payments, is at a staggering 47%, its highest level in American history, while 21 million households are reliant on food stamps. 

…

According to the August employment report from the Department of Labor, the nation’s unemployment rate remained at 9.1% with a total of zero jobs added to the economy during the month.  Among demographic groups, Latinos had an unemployment rate of 11.3%, while African-Americans posted a rate of 16.7%.  For blacks, that represents the highest unemployment rate for this group since 1984 and a rate more than double that of whites (8%).

When Obama took office in January 2009, the nation’s unemployment rate stood at 7.8%, a rate higher than the historic norm, yet far below the current rate, and above any rate during the Bush administration.  Since June 2009, six months into Obama’s term, the nation’s unemployment rate has been at or above 9% during 25 of 27 consecutive months.

…

The economic numbers are especially poor for the demographic groups that most supported Barack Obama at the polling booth in November 2008.

Take Wayne County, Michigan, for example, where President Obama made a Labor Day economic speech.  This county, which includes the city of Detroit, voted for Obama at a rate of 74% in 2008.  It has been estimated that Detroit’s “Real Unemployment Rate” might be upwards of 45%, and Michigan remains the state with the dubious honor of having the highest unemployment rate.

 …

These woeful economic figures have come during a time in which we have experienced the most government involvement in the economy since the days of FDR and government spending without parallel in our nation’s history.

The list of taxpayer-paid government bailouts and government spending under the Obama administration is seemingly endless and has resulted in our national debt now above $14.7 trillion.

…

President Obama has thrown billions upon billions of dollars at the U.S. economy with nothing to show for it.  His so-called stimulus policies have been, in fact, contractionary and his presidency stands to be remembered as nothing short of an economic failure. (emphasis mine)

 Can anyone in their right mind believe that any of the above is good?  Can anyone in their right mind vote for Obama and Democrats again?

In November vote for anyone but Obama and you will go Forward. End the growth of failure now.

Filed under 2012 election, commentary, Culture, Human Interest, non-fiction, Political Commentary, Politics, Writing Tagged with , , , , , ,

The “American, You Can’t Handle Your Liberty” Rap

May 20, 2012 Leave a comment

 

American, You Can’t Handle Your Liberty

 

American, you can’t handle your liberty,

Drunk with democracy you flirt with tyranny;

You whine and you cry about your life’s lot –

Not what the providential Constitution sought.

 

Our people are now lacking in self-government,

Living relativism that’s not heaven-sent,

Lacking all self-restraint, thinking they’re “free”,

They will tolerate anything but liberty.

 

Though free and equal, born with rights inalienable,

You whine and pine for freedom more palatable;

Unjust laws disguised as “social justice”,

Such religion of humanity does thwart us.

 

Myopic history sees the lie you so need,

“A People’s History…” makes bleeding hearts bleed;

Our nation’s true exceptional-ism,

In college taught as just cause for derision.

 

How are we the most generous nation on earth?

It is because of what our Founding Fathers birthed!

Take a look at the world around and see,

We as a nation donate most charitably.

 

Yet you squander democracy onto yourself,

While pure opportunity is put on the shelf,

Cradle to grave you whimper and pine,

“Hoping” and “Changing”, charging the taxpayer’s dime.

 

All men are created equal yet there are some,

With hubris bang the affirmative action drum,

And so betray our common good,

To play favoritism as any injustice would.

 

American, you can’t handle your liberty,

You want politicians to give you to what you please,

You clamor for “rights” thinking you’ll be free

While working the calculus of felicity.

 

Why is it that we fear our country’s liberty?

Because the rigors of responsibility,

We “Hope” and “Change” to be rid of the strife,

So we vote for someone who will pay for our life.

 

Wake up America and smell the flag burning,

Your “Hope” and “Change” are both lacking in discerning,

You whine and you pine and act all distraught,

While ever mocking what our Constitution taught.

 

© Sally Paradise, 2012, All Rights Reserved

Filed under 2012 election, Culture, Life As I See It, Poetry, poetry, Political Commentary, Politics, social commentary, Writing Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

God Saw That It Was Good and So Do I

May 19, 2012 Leave a comment

This past week I read an engaging book by scientist Francis S. Collins:  The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief.  As someone who works in the engineering field and as a believer in God the book’s discussion of science and faith being compatible piqued my interest.

 Before reading this book I did have the innate understanding that science and faith were compatible and that each discipline reinforced the other with their respective insights and revelations but prior to reading this book I hadn’t seen much credible literature discussing this premise.  Currently there appears to be plenty of antipathy between the church and science. So as one might imagine I was excited to purchase the book and evaluate a scientist’s take on the connection. I was not disappointed.

Francis S. Collins, as the back cover bio reads, headed the Human Genome Project and is one of the world’s leading scientists. “He works at the cutting edge of the study of DNA, the code of life.  Yet he is also a man of unshakable faith in God and Scripture.

Dr. Collins believes that faith in God and faith in science can coexist within a person and be harmonious. In The Language of God he makes his case for God and Science.”

 Of special interest to me is the fact that Collins (as I do) accepts theistic evolution.  In Chapter Ten he writes: 

 “This view is entirely compatible with everything that science teaches us about the natural world.  It is also entirely compatible with the great monotheistic religions of the world.  The theistic evolution perspective cannot, of course, prove that God is real, as no logical argument can fully achieve that. Belief in God will always require a leap in faith.”

 The book lays out for the reader in very accessible terms how Collins who was not raised in a Christian home came to his belief in God as a budding scientist in his twenties.  The book goes on to discuss why Collins fully accepts theistic evolution as opposed to literal Creationism and Intelligent Design.  Based on his own research Collins says the evidence is overwhelming in favor of natural evolution as God’s creative methodology.  I would agree. 

 He then further encourages the church to endorse scientific research as a resource for understanding God’s creation, therefore offering a better understanding of God.  In concert with his plea I believe every church leader should purchase this book and read its message.  There is, sadly, too much bad information being preached and taught by the Christian Evangelical church regarding creation.  This bad information makes the church look rather foolish.  Remember Galileo’s row with the church? Being raised an Evangelical I was taught that the earth was created about 6-8000 years ago and that the seven days described in Genesis Chapter One were literal days:  Poof, we just showed up on the scene.

 As an adult, though, I became skeptical of the Creationist theology but I clung to it because I had heard of no other plausible evidence to the contrary.  Evolution was routinely discounted in the Evangelical church.  In fact everything I had heard in church told me that evolution was the atheist’s version of the Christian creation. Evolution was also described as a slippery slope which would carry people away from God toward unbelief.  And worse, the church seemed opposed to science and science was something I truly enjoyed being involved with.  I would later look into Intelligent Design (ID) and had wondered if ID might be the catch-all for my belief in God’s creative act. But I was to learn that ID was flawed theory that did not take into account the nature of God.

 My change in thinking occurred a few years ago when I came across the writings of Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga from the University of Notre Dame.  Spending two and a half hours on a train five days a week over the course of several years I had been able to read and research many different science and philosophy topics. And I did this precisely because I wanted to know more about God, the nature of His being and the world around me.  This excited me no end.  I don’t read romance novels.  I find my excitement by romancing the truth.

  Through reading Plantinga’s papers, though sometimes written in difficult philosophical terms, the door of my understanding was opened wide and I accepted theistic evolution as a valid creation methodology.  I would encourage anyone to read Plantinga’s papers.

 The basics of theistic evolution are clearly delineated in Francis Collins’ book and on the Biologos website.  Biologos is the name given to theistic evolution by scientist Collins.  Here are the Biologos premises/beliefs from that website:

 We believe that God created the universe, the earth, and all life over billions of years. God continues to providentially sustain the natural world, and the cosmos continues to declare the glory of God.

  • We believe that all people have sinned against God and are in need of salvation.
  • We believe in the historical incarnation of Jesus Christ as fully God and fully man. We believe in the historical death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, by which we are saved and reconciled to God.
  • We believe that God continues to be directly involved in human history in acts of salvation, personal transformation, and answers to prayer.
  • We believe the Bible is the inspired and authoritative word of God. By the Holy Spirit it is the “living and active” means though which God speaks to the church today, bearing witness to God’s Son, Jesus, as the divine Logos, or Word of God.
  • We believe that God also reveals himself in and through the natural world he created, which displays his glory, eternal power, and divine nature. Properly interpreted, scripture and nature are complementary and faithful witnesses to their common Author.
  • We believe that the methods of science are an important and reliable means to investigate and describe the world God has made. In this, we stand with a long tradition of Christians for whom Christian faith and science are mutually hospitable.
  • We believe that the diversity and interrelation of all life on earth are best explained by the God-ordained process of evolution and common descent. Thus, evolution is not in opposition to God, but a means by which God providentially achieves his purposes.
  • We believe that God created humans in biological continuity with all life on earth, but also as spiritual beings. God established a unique relationship with humanity by endowing us with his image and calling us to an elevated position within the created order.
  • We believe that conversations among Christians about controversial issues of science and faith can and must be conducted with humility, grace, honesty, and compassion as a visible sign of the Spirit’s presence in Christ’s body, the Church.
  • We reject ideologies such as Deism that claim the universe is self-sustaining, that God is no longer active in the natural world, or that God is not active in human history.
  • We reject ideologies such as Darwinism and Evolutionism that claim that evolution is a purposeless process or that evolution replaces God.
  • We reject ideologies such as Materialism and Scientism that claim science is the sole source of knowledge and truth, that science has debunked God and religion, or that the physical world constitutes the whole of reality.

 As a follower of Christ and as someone who seeks to bring people to faith in Him I see it as imperative that Evangelical church leaders (John Paul II accepted theistic evolution) come to grips with science (natural science, quantum physics, genetics, etc.) and to avail themselves of all empirical data and evidences coming out of science research.  As I see it the church and science are completely compatible.  Therefore, the church must not seek to restrain the hand of God, an evolved-incarnated hand that was once nailed to a tree, a resurrected hand that now reaches out to all of us.

 For more information about theism and theistic evolution:

 http://biologos.org/

Philosopher Sticks up for God

Alvin Plantinga

*****

Recommended Books about science and faith:

The Language of Faith:  Straight Answers to Genuine Questions by Karl Giberson and Francis Collins, Intervarsity Press, 2011

The Wonder of the Universe:  Hints of God in Our Fine-Tuned World by Karl W. Giberson, Intervarsity Press, 2012

Filed under Christianity, Creationism, Culture, Life As I See It, non-fiction, Philosophy, theistic evolution, Writing Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Imagine 2012

May 10, 2012 Leave a comment

Imagine no Obama

It’s easy if you vote

No hell to live in

No debt to dash your hope

Imagine all the voters

Living with certainty…

 

Imagine no nanny state

It isn’t hard to do

Nothing but free markets

With fairness though and through

Imagine all the people

Working for their means…

 

You may say that I’m a dreamer

But I’m not the only one

I hope today you’ll join us

And help us vote out the One.

 

Imagine no recession

I wonder if you can

No slump, no desperation

A real “Yes, we can.”

Imagine all the people

Giving charitably…

 

You may say that I’m a dreamer

But I’m not the only one

I hope today you’ll join us

And help us vote out the One.

***

It’s important to know Obama’s vision of the world:

Filed under 2012 election, commentary, Culture, Political Commentary, Politics, Writing Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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