E'08: Jimmy Carter redux

A great column today in Townhall about Senator Obama's ability to speak the Christian language much as Jimmy Carter did in 1976 ("Carter, Obama, and the Evangelicals").

A few excerpts:

• Jimmy Carter, complete with born again professions, received 48% of the evangelical vote in November 1976 doing exactly what Barack Obama is doing today – talking the talk. The problem is that he never actually walked the walk.
• (Obama's) strategy is clear – talk selectively about elements of the Biblical message that resonate with everyone (help those hurting and in need – DUH), while ignoring other vital aspects of scripture – things like righteousness and that “minor” matter of individual salvation.
• Why is this kind of thing effective with people who should know better – those who profess to believe the Bible and follow Jesus? Well, the sad fact is that we are dealing with an often underestimated and ignorant illiteracy in many evangelical circles today. As more and more people find theology and doctrine dry and irrelevant, and matters of the soul, eternal life, and moral imperatives not nearly as important as SOCIAL ACTION, the situation is ripe to be exploited by someone with a message that sounds right.
• Social actions – good works, if you will – are taught in scripture to be by-products of personal renewal, redemption, and commitment to “the faith once for all delivered to the saints.” They are the fruit, not the root, of faith.

Let's keep our eyes and ears open, filtering what we see and hear through the full and entire counsel of God's perfect Word.

Who speaks for God?

I received this question here recently, but it's not the first time I've heard it. Most often, the question comes from non-Christians trying to back down Christians from their moral certainty. The Christian ends up associated with Falwell or Robertson* because these two men used the pulpits God gave them to expose moral bankruptcy where it touched the church and the community. The weapon? God's word.

To counter another man who has unsheathed God's word to an increasingly godless culture, some pastors have started a website titled "Dobson doesn't speak for us." Charming. If you'd like to go there, Google it.

Here's the rub: if Dr. Dobson does speak for God regarding particular issues, then these pastors defiantly stand opposed to God. Let's buy Enron. Let's vote for McGovern or Dole. Let's play for the Kansas City Royals. But don't get on the team opposed to God.

So who does speak for God?

I do.

The audacity! The arrogance! Typical pig-headed, closed-minded, soda-straw-visioned Christian. Yep, that's me.

But understand, this is my identity and for any who are reading this and know Jesus Christ as Savior, this is your identity, too.

• We are called ambassadors (2 Corinthians 5:20). The purpose of an abmassador? To represent his Leader in word and deed.
• When on trial, God will speak through the believer (Mark 13:11).
• We are to proclaim the praises of what He did in and through us (1 Peter 2:9).
• The Gospel will bring conviction (Matthew 24:14).
• We are to witness what we see and what we know (John 15:27, Acts 1:8).
• Our presence (the presence of the Holy Spirit within us) becomes the stench of death to the unsaved (2 Corinthians 2:15-16).

Do I always speak for God? Well, no. When I act upon my own and contrary to His word, I become an unfaithful servant and an ambassador worthy of recall (thankfully He doesn't do that; He certainly does reassign, though).

When do I speak for God? When I proclaim His word truly. As Christians, we must know God's word for the time has come when many do not endure sound doctrine, and they heap up for themselves teachers to tickle their ears; they turn from truth and turn toward fables (2 Timothy 4:3-4). The Christian must know the truth so he is not deceived.

Peter declared, "But there were also false prophets among the people, even as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Lord who bought them, and bring on themselves swift destruction" (2 Peter 2:1). They are here. They are among us.

How do we know when the Christian is speaking for God? Like the Bereans in Acts 17 we compare the speaker's words with God's words. If we find consistency, winner! If not, as is the case with Senator Obama's voting record, we must expose the biblical inconsistency.

This will make you no friends. Good luck finding any with a liberal slant willing to discuss the issues from a biblical perspective. The platforms are untenable. This ought not dissuade us from applying God's word to the issues of the world and to pray that blindness will cease.

So now and with boldness the Christian must speak the truth of God's word in and to a people that is perishing.

Christians, speak on! And expect the spears to fly.

*I have found little to disagree with regarding the doctrine and teaching of Jerry Falwell. While I appreciate his outspokenness on moral issues, Pat Robertson tends to be far less careful with his biblical scholarship.

End of June

Thought you might like a "Twinkie" update.

The Minnesota Twins have won ten straight! Considering May was not a productive month (note the baseball silence during that time), the surge has returned them to the top of their division. Okay, not quite. They're a half game behind the where-were-they-last-season Chicago White Sox.

Just thought you'd like to know.

You really want change?

My boss had us all watch this at work today. Forgive the double double entendre at the beginning and in the title. The video is all words, words about how the world is changing and has changed regarding technology and information. That aside, it'll give you the shivers.

Much has changed since the days of Bobby Brady...

"Did You Know?" is the title (If Irish-sounding music comes up, you'll know you're in the right place. 6 minutes).

Toss me my frisbee...

Bunnies

A friend shared this with me today. He said his son Robert passed it on to him. He told me I would appreciate it.

Q: What do you call a row of rabbits marching backward?

A: A receding hare line!

Considering his follicular front line is in retreat moreso than mine, I asked him if he gave his son a stern look and said, "That's not funny."

E'08: Fruitcakes & Liars

James Dobson used "fruitcake" as an adjective to describe Barack Obama's interpretation of the Constitution and suggested the presidential front-runner distorted the Bible. Obama returned serve essentially calling Dobson a liar, that he was just "making stuff up."

What teed up the good doctor was a speech given by Obama to the religious group, "Call to Renewal." Here were the paragraphs that drew the primary focus (I'll include a link to the full speech at the end of the blog):

And even if we did have only Christians in our midst, if we expelled every non-Christian from the United States of America, whose Christianity would we teach in the schools? Would we go with James Dobson's, or Al Sharpton's? Which passages of Scripture should guide our public policy? Should we go with Leviticus, which suggests slavery is ok and that eating shellfish is abomination? How about Deuteronomy, which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith? Or should we just stick to the Sermon on the Mount - a passage that is so radical that it's doubtful that our own Defense Department would survive its application? So before we get carried away, let's read our bibles. Folks haven't been reading their bibles.

This brings me to my second point. Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific, values. It requires that their proposals be subject to argument, and amenable to reason. I may be opposed to abortion for religious reasons, but if I seek to pass a law banning the practice, I cannot simply point to the teachings of my church or evoke God's will. I have to explain why abortion violates some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths, including those with no faith at all.

Dr. Dobson's point: context is key. Obama missed the contextual boat by a mile. His admonition to "read our (B)ibles" is advice he would do well to follow to understand the purpose and place of the Levitical law or the Sermon on the Mount. His response to such statements:

"Am I required in a democracy to conform my efforts in the political arena to his bloody notion of what is right with regard to the lives of tiny babies?" Dobson said. "What he's trying to say here is unless everybody agrees, we have no right to fight for what we believe."

Did Dobson make things up? Or did he highlight the chasm between Obama's biblical rhetoric and his biblical application. Cal Thomas, in the week prior to this free-for-all, exposed Obama's walking, talking contradiction in this article.

Obama knows how to bandy religious words (Schaeffer anyone?). Such smooth speech, finally crafted and just slightly off target, puts him in with some unsavory biblical company. Here's the transcript for your study.

Dobson's vitriol has left him without a candidate. He's hammered both McCain and Obama for not upholding godly principles in their governance. For that, he has taken criticism from his friends and cursings from his foes. And still he speaks out.

Sounds a lot like a prophet (Jeremiah 1:17-19 and Jeremiah 8 through 10 for starters, and that guy ended up in the outhouse basement). No telling what treatment Dobson will receive as this saga unfolds. It doesn't matter. His reward is elsewhere.

But will anyone down here hear him?

Profit!

The gnashing of teeth has become deafening regarding the profits earned by any and everybody associated with petroleum (that would be the supply side, not the demand side).

Try this on for size. Assume for every dollar invested by a company, they received an $800 return on that investment. What can and should they do with that money? Largely, they would turn that $800 right around and reinvest it in the company. They would pay the workers, fix equipment, buy new equipment, try and figure out how to better produce that investment, etc., etc.

How would you feel if the "company" pocketed $100 of that for themselves? What if you knew that it was possible that the risk was very real that whatever money the company invested could be completely lost?

Folks have come to loathe petrol companies, but what folks don't understand is that the economic world that God created is NOT a zero-sum game. What I mean by that is just because Hank gets a dollar does not mean that you won't get a dollar, too, and possibly more!

Here's the deal. One ear of corn yields on average 800 kernels. Considering that only one ear of corn grows upon each stalk, that's a staggering 800 kernels that grow from only one, an 800% return on your investment!! I'm happy to be getting 10% on my IRA's!

Now be real, does the farmer pocket all that? No way. He eats some. He has to save a mess of it to plant for next year. And some of the return has to go to keeping the plow and combine running, purchasing fertilizer and maybe irrigation, and, and, and. You get the idea.

Who else benefits from the farmers 800 to 1 kernel investment? You and I who do not plant corn. We can boogie to the local supermarket and pick up some of the Green Giant's finest. If you are richly blessed in July and August by living in the heartland, you can go to the local farmer's market and buy some of the sweetest sweet corn on the planet.

So why aren't CNN, Barack Obama, Fox News, or John McCain railing upon the farmer for receiving an 800 to 1 return for each kernel planted? Because they have come to understand how God's economy works regarding corn (though they don't acknowledge the source of economics).

While the petrol problem does not directly correspond to corn, the economics still applies in many ways. Because the oil companies have so many dollars does not mean that any of us are being deprived of dollars. The fact is, we remain a people richly blessed.

Too much of a good thing

I love coffee. Not like some love coffee, but I do love coffee.

I can't say that I'm a coffee snob. I drink the swill made at work, and I'm an equal-opportunity swill-consuming aficionado.

At the same time, I love the experience brought on by a great cup of coffee. The rich, carmel candy smell, the deep umber color, and the taste of a good cup might make me swear off the swill if not for the absurd prices charged (really, if you compared it to gasoline, fossil fuel becomes a steal...but then I used to say that about milk, too, and gas has passed that drink in price). And best of all, a great cup of coffee is most often accompanied by great company.

Then I went to work on Thursday.

Something in my stomach, for the first time in over a decade, made coffee seem unpalatable that morning. I didn't even pour myself a cup. Friday either. It some seemed...yuk.

After I got home Friday evening from my motorcycle safety course, I felt gunky. I hoped I wasn't coming down with something considering I had two more days of that course. As the night wore on, I took some Motrin in hopes it was just a headache. Then, as I passed our coffee pot with a few ignored cups still in the bottom, the lightbulb went on in my throbbing melon. My body was coming to terms with the fact that I had robbed it of its caffeine fix two days in a row!!

Because of the course, I had coffee neither Saturday nor Sunday. Saturday I still suffered from my "hangover." Sunday I finally felt normal.

This morning, I had to go into work early. I had a particular task where on a normal day I would take a two-mug thermos. Today I took a styrofoam cup. It was the usual swill, but I enjoyed it.

God has given us all things to enjoy and to savor. They are part of His glorious creation. I have always taught my boys, "Everything in moderation," but their dad had become a coffee glutton. The Bible warns us from cover to cover about excess in any area. I wag my finger and look down my nose at the folks at CiCi's, but I was picking specks.

It amuses me that in some fashion by body rebelled against the beam in my eye. Will I change my ways? I hope so. A bit anyway. I sure didn't like how I felt Friday night. I sure hope that I will continue to enjoy the experience of a great cup of coffee especially since my sons bought me a "French press" for Father's Day.

Now, about those donuts...

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Completely off topic, but I have to share this. Two days, two whole days, after publishing my blog "Send," I hit send. Same ugly mess. Same ugly lessons. Sad.

Just another day: The thermonuclear variety

Let's see. When Iraq started toying with "nuclear power plants," Israel sent in an air strike bringing a punctuated halt to Sadam's desire for atomic energy.

This calendar year, Syria had a similar venture interrupted by the Israeli Air Force.

Seems the tiny nation, a nation bordered by rabid jackals, has little patience for its neighbors developing the ability to drop "canned sunshine" into downtown Capernaum.

So when Iran began its bluster these past couple of years thanks to the always jolly Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Israel began suggesting on the diplomatic front that that might not be such a good idea.

Ahmadinejad, like an undersized, sixth grade loudmouth backed down by the saner, more civil side of the sixth grade class, called in his bully big brother of the Russian variety, Alexander Putin. The bully big brother began shipping nuclear material to the elementary school. Uh-oh.

Earlier this week, our country, also one of the saner members of the sixth grade class, leaked that Israel executed an exercise of such magnitude that it was in fact strategizing about the termination of the Iranian wack-job's quest for the Big Heat, leaving Israel trying to figure out whose team we are on.

Analysis? This Breitbart headline sums it up nicely:

'Ball of fire' if Iran attacked

It does leave you wondering, though. Would Israel turn Iran into a ball of fire? Unlikely the pipsqueak could land a punch on its neighbor to the distant west. That would leave the bully big brother entering the fray and that's not out of the question either.

Keep your pages opened to Ezekiel 38 & 39 and stay tuned...

The heart of loneliness

Since Peter Jackson brought Tolkien's masterpiece to the big screen, we've been watching the movies once each year since they came out on DVD. For purists, yes, we've read the books, too.

The other night we concluded The Two Towers, since the old man can't sit for three and a half hours after the girls go to bed. Jackson's liberties in making the film are no place better invested than in the lines given to Bernard Hill, Theoden, King of Rohan.

Before the attack on Helm's Deep, Theoden receives his armor from his #2, Gamling, in one of the most superbly restrained scenes in Hollywood history. Rohan has retreated to this mountain keep, but the king knows full well that his 300 men cannot face the 10,000 demons that bear down upon his fortress. The following dialogue ensues, Theoden stalk still as Gamling dons his masters armor:

Theoden : "Who am I, Gamling ?"

Gamling : "You are our king, sire."

Theoden : "And do you trust your king ?"

Gamling : "Your men, my lord, will follow you to whatever end."

"Who am I, Gamling?" the king utters just above a whisper. They were words never meant to escape his lips, but the weight of the mountain pressed upon his soul and exuded the words through his teeth. The utter depth of loneliness experienced by those in leadership exploded from the king who stared without expression and without hope through the walls of Helm's Deep.

"Do you trust your king?" What leader wouldn't love to have a looking-glass into the hearts of his people? He gets no such comfort. His friends are few for he cannot play favorites, and as such, those few are outside and not intimate with his leadership struggles.

So the leader battles on, wrestling his own doubts, battling his own unseen army orcs, while his troops muster to go wherever he might lead them.

What leaders do you know? Your boss. Your president. Your pastor. What of the husbands and fathers? How about the single mom? You will be part of a rare encounter if, like Gamling, you get a glimpse into the heart and soul of Theoden King. Rare, indeed.

These folks carry responsibility most of us will never know. Whether or not we get that glimpse, God tells us plainly in numerous places to pray for those in authority over us. Make note in your Bible of your political leaders. Make note of your civic leaders. Make note of your spiritual leaders. Make note of your family's leaders. And pray for them.

Therefore I exhort first of all that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men, for kings and all who are in authority, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and reverence.

1 Timothy 2:1-2