New Zealand’s "Interesting" Election

Crypto-Anarchists and Easy Dupes

This election season in New Zealand has been historic, unlike any previous election.  It had been distorted by a multi-millionaire German seeking to take control of the national political process to benefit his own voluminous pockets and to keep himself from incarceration in the United States.  We have not seen the like in New Zealand since Baron d’Thierry came to Hokianga in late 1837 on the Nimrod attempting to start a French colonial outpost in the face of British interests.  Herr Kim Dotcom is a latter day Baron d’Thierry, equally megalomaniacal.

And then we have had the hard left joining Dotcom in a madcap party which has combined capitalists in their most greedy, exploitative, and egregious manifestation with weird Maori and hard-left radicals deeply into Marxist ideology.  The chutzpah of the constituent  elements of this new Potemkin party has been breathtaking.  Their followers consist of the duped, the desperate, and the gullible. 

And, not to be outdone, we have had the hacking of a privately owned website and the theft of thousands of e-mails and private communications, followed by a breathless book authored by New Zealand’s leading conspiracist once again publishing stolen information.  The book, Dirty Politics has the author’s normal new-maths fingerprints all over it.  In Nicky Hager’s world two plus two makes seventy-five.

Most of the media have been agog and aghast, unable to calm their febrile pens and stuttering tongues for a moment so as to make sense of it all.  Except for one or two scribblers.  Fran O’Sullivan, writing just before the election, had this to say:

John Key goes into the home straight of the election campaign with his integrity publicly intact after the Kim Dotcom fiasco and voters well placed to make a judgment when it comes to the Key Government’s management of the NZ economy.  Key has been roundly attacked for declassifying documents to prove his point that the GCSB has not been involved in widespread surveillance of New Zealanders.

Bizarrely, it is somehow seen as perfectly all right for Dotcom and his associates to use stolen National Security Agency files to try to prove the Prime Minister a liar on how his Government has administered national security, but not for Key to declassify New Zealand’s own files to prove he isn’t a liar.

This is utter madness.

There is a common thread that links all these parties together–the corrupt capitalist, Dotcom, the Maori Marxists, and the sanctimonious conspiracist, Hager.  All hold in common the principle that theft is morally justifiable if it is for the “greater good”.  Moreover, they believe they personify the “greater good”.  Funny that.  Clearly, Dotcom has relished the theft of private emails, and, therefore, is complicit in the deed.  His “greater good” was to bring down the government and supplant it with one malleable to his attempts to avoid extradition to the US to face criminal charges.  Nicky Hager has not just relished the theft but has been even more complicit in the crime. He baldly asserts that his complicity in theft is entirely justifiable because he believes he is exposing the evils of government.  The “greater good”, as defined and interpreted by Hager, makes his theft righteous, but the government’s theft of private information (aka, spying) is utterly wicked–in Hager’s strange world.  Hager righteous; government wicked. Hager is, therefore, justified in doing evil that his particular and peculiar version of “the good” may come.

The Maori radical Marxists would do anything to bring down every government until they can, themselves govern.  Like Dotcom and Hager, their “greater good” is themselves.

All this brings us to the common thread.  They are all crypto-anarchists.  They have a common interest and desire to dismember the present state apparatus in New Zealand.  They all desire to set up their own version of a puppet state that would serve their own interests–which they believe, without question, to be everyone else’s greater good.  Their “greater good” is the same “greater good” that justified the deaths and dismemberment of millions upon millions in the previous century.  They alike relish thievery to achieve their narcissistic goals.  They do evil, that their version of good may come. 

And the media, the editors, the reporters that rubbed their hands with glee and participated in the evils, thereby, aiding and abetting them–they are just one small step removed from the crypto-anarchists.  They are the “useful idiots”, as Lenin used to call them.  Dumb and dumber.  Easy tools.  Self-righteous, sanctimonious fools who are unable to separate the “greater good” from their own commercial self-interest.  Easy dupes in the hands of crypto-anarchists, who are long experienced in the dark arts.

Ironically, it has been the ordinary joes, the voters, who have been entirely unimpressed.  It seems that from the start they have been able to discern amongst the participants who were the good, the bad, and the ugly. Their voice was heard loudly and emphatically on election day.  Lincoln’s axiom was once again evident and at work: you can fool all of the people some of the time; some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all the people all of the time. 

Douglas Wilson’s Letter From Moscow

Sure. Let’s Call It a Contribution.

Friday, September 12, 2014

Douglas Wilson

Blog and Mablog

So I have distinguished the payment of taxes that are owed, and the payment of taxes that is rendered out of a principled prudence. In the former instance, paying taxes is a matter of conscience and in the latter it is a matter of intelligence. When I give my wallet to the mugger, I am not granting him authority over my wallet, and still less am I giving him authority over any future wallets that I might come to possess. I am simply doing a cost benefit analysis, and his gun trumps my five dollars.

Now some want to argue that all taxes whatever are illegitimate. While this makes life simple on the conscience front, making every decision of whether to pay taxes or not a prudential one, the simplicity is, ironically, too easy. A good example of such an approach to the argument can be found here. While Joel and I would agree on a great deal on this general subject, we do differ at this particular point. It is an important point, so let me deal with it briefly.

In my argument for this position, I cited Romans 13, which tells us to pay taxes to those to whom taxes are due, and Joel reads this as simply as entirely circumstantial and prudential, telling us to pay taxes to whom taxes are — and please note the scare quotes — “due.” Since the one levying taxes always has the power to coerce, this reading is always possible and sometimes likely. He has the gun, so not only do I give him the five dollars, I also go along with calling it “my contribution.”

So the real test would be those instances when a godly ruler requires taxes (or the equivalent) be paid. Remember that I have no problem granting that the power to tax is routinely abused. All we are looking for are cases where it is not abused, establishing that as a possibility.

Take Joseph in Egypt (Gen. 47:13-26). He was a godly ruler who saved the lives of the people, but at the same time he was not exactly an instrument who introduced a libertarian paradise. To head off commenters, I am aware that Joseph presents a problem to my ten percent rule outlined earlier, which I hope to get to. The issue here is whether there were any level of legitimate taxation occurring. I am not here talking about Joseph selling the grain to the Egyptians in exchange for their land, but rather to the collection of a fifth of the harvest in the plentiful years (Gen. 41:34).

Here is another example.

“And when they were come to Capernaum, they that received tribute money came to Peter, and said, Doth not your master pay tribute? He saith, Yes. And when he was come into the house, Jesus prevented him, saying, What thinkest thou, Simon? of whom do the kings of the earth take custom or tribute? of their own children, or of strangers? Peter saith unto him, Of strangers. Jesus saith unto him, Then are the children free. Notwithstanding, lest we should offend them, go thou to the sea, and cast an hook, and take up the fish that first cometh up; and when thou hast opened his mouth, thou shalt find a piece of money: that take, and give unto them for me and thee” (Matt. 17:24–27).

Now Jesus is making an implicit distinction here between tribute money illegitimately collected (where most of our discussion centers), but He is also assuming that the collection of tribute from strangers is legitimate. He has Peter pay the tribute for prudential reasons (so as to not give offense, distracting them from their main mission), even though the tribute is not owed by them because they are “children.” But what happens to the Lord’s argument if tribute were illegitimate when collected from strangers also? His argument would simply collapse. This means there is a type of taxation that would be legitimate to levy, and therefore which would create a moral obligation to pay.

If there is such a thing as lawful taxation (as I believe) and if there is something which goes by the name of taxation which is rank theft (as I also believe), we have to do the hard work of determining where the line between the two categories might be. We also have to determine who makes the call, and what standard they must appeal to.

Daily Devotional

Pleasant Inns Along the Way

The Christian doctrine of suffering explains, I believe, a very curious fact about the world we live in. The settled happiness and security which we all desire, God withholds from us by the very nature of the world: but joy, pleasure, and merriment, He has scattered broadcast. We are never safe, but we have plenty of fun, and some ecstasy. It is not hard to see why.

The security we crave would teach us to rest our hearts in this world and oppose an obstacle to our return to God: a few moments of happy love, a landscape, a symphony, a merry meeting with our friends, a bathe or a football match, have no such tendency. Our Father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant inns, but will not encourage us to mistake them for home.

From The Problem of Pain
Compiled in A Year with C.S. Lewis
The Problem of Pain. Copyright © 1940, C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. Copyright restored © 1996 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers. A Year With C.S. Lewis: Daily Readings from His Classic Works. Copyright © 2003 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers.
Sourced from BibleGateway.https://www.biblegateway.com/quicksearch/?quicksearch=cattle+thousand&qs_version=ESV

Industrialised Crime Meets Multi-Cultural Self-Loathing

Let God Arise

A retired senior policewoman involved in the Rotherham crime scandal in the UK has gone public, exposing more of the terrible state of affairs which permissively tolerated the rape and slavery of thousands of young girls.  Yes, this is the UK we are speaking about.  (A couple of pieces addressing this evil can be found here, and here.)

There are two main points which come out of this new piece.  The first is the potential of police targeting to be perverted by venal, time-serving, careerist police bureaucrats.  The second point she makes reinforces one already made in the media–that is, the terrible fruits of political correctness and the political and social ideology multi-culturalism.  In this light, the worst thing we could do is shrug our shoulders at the outrage and conclude that Rotherham is an extreme outlier, not an avatar of a perverse trend. 

Firstly, the background:

Speaking to the Mail on Sunday, retired Detective Inspector Merial Buglass said she had had “many sleepless nights” knowing that the abuse was ongoing but lacking permission from her superiors to investigate further. . . .

In April 2010, whilst in her role as head of Rochdale Police’s public protection unit, Ms Buglass compiled a report detailing how predominantly white children, some as young as 12, were being groomed by gangs of Asian men as sex-slaves, and were violently abused. It has since emerged that some of the girls who were attacked in Rochdale between 1997 and 2013 were murdered at the hands of the men. The report included the details of 35 children, ten perpetrators and a further 40 suspects, and contained a plea for more resources to be granted to further investigate the heinous crimes.

It transpired that these crimes were not top of the priority list for Rochdale Police at the time.  Other, less severe, crimes were.  Police had become fixated with burnishing their crime fighting statistics.  Property crimes were believed to provide the biggest bang for their bucks.  It was relatively low-hanging fruit. Rape and murder took up too many resources, the cases were too complex, results were hard to come by.  

We believe that police targeting is an unavoidable necessity and can be extremely effective when administered by senior police officers with a dedicated and proven passion to fight, detect, and prosecute crime, rather than burnish their cv’s with falling crime statistics.  An organisation which is unable to focus its resources becomes wretchedly inefficient.  But, targeting can be a double edged sword in the wrong hands.  Far too often the “wrong hands” are senior police officers who have long ago left the front line for lard accumulating desk jobs which amount to little more than an endless cycle of “management meetings”.   Undue political pressure to “get results” for reason of making the politicians look good is also usually a major factor.

The force claims that it came under pressure from the Home Office five years ago to cut acquisitive crimes such as car theft and burglary, although the targets were removed in 2012.

 The second problem is the evil consequences of the ideology of multi-culturalism and its “attendant lord”, political correctness.

“Management appeared not to be interested, they were only interested in targets, it was a completely target-driven culture,” she said. “The main priorities were acquisitive crime – robbery, burglary and car theft. Money was being piled into [the investigation of] these crimes.  They didn’t want to class the abuse as Asian [Pakistani] on white girls. They didn’t want to cause a fuss. I took the view that this wasn’t about racism, it was about child abuse – but political correctness and cultural sensitivities were important to management.”

The ideology of multi-culturalism  elevates racism into the list cardinal sins, more important than murder and rape.  If police arrest a black person or focus on offending by a group which just happens to be Pakistani or Indian, the multi-culturalists and political correctors cry, “racism”.  Sadly, the police do not appear to have the corporate moral fibre to confront this slur head on and shame everyone who voices it.  Possibly it may be due to the police being guilty of actual racism in the past.  The upshot, however, is that organised crime in non-white communities gets an easy pass.

The day after the report was filed, Buglass met with Superintendent Martin Greenhalgh. During the meeting, she alleges he essentially told her “If I choose to investigate it, we will,” and that she replied “This is huge, there are massive threats and it will come back to bite us if you don’t do something!”

The response of the multi-culturalist infected police has been to say, yes, mistakes were made, but they are in the past.  We are no longer what we once were. But others reject that:

Commenting on the scandal, Rochdale MP Simon Danczuk said “The scandal of how police and other agencies failed children being raped on an industrial scale is getting worse every week. Police leadership have completely lost touch with ordinary people’s values.”  In 2012, nine men from Oldham and Rochdale were convicted of running a child sexual exploitation ring and were sentenced to between four and 19 years for their parts in the crimes. However, it is now clear that many responsible have still not be brought to justice. 

The police now say that they are planning to arrest hundreds of suspects in a “day of reckoning.”

Ms Buglass told reporters “I had many sleepless nights over this. We tried our best but the fact is the police failed those girls. I could not have been more vocal about the threats and risks… but I was appalled at the response.”

The idea that all cultures are equally valid and good, and that political correctors and multi-cultuaralists decry anyone who makes well reasoned distinctions between the good and bad in cultures, bears rotting fruit.  As always, it is the most vulnerable and easily preyed upon that suffer.

There are two tap-roots of these evils.  The first is a pervasive doubt and uncertainty about one’s own culture that verges on self-loathing.  Stripped from a Christian foundation, modern secularism predominantly sees the cultural values of the West as a factory of evil.   It is so consumed with the huge log of doubt and uncertainty in its own eye that it knows itself to be myopic and blinded–and hating itself all the while.

The second tap-root is like it: the self-loathing leads to a militant demand that no criticism should be made of other cultures and their values and traditions. Thou shalt affirm all cultures and their values and deny none.  Behold the wondrous works of postmodernism.

When these two tap roots become institutionalised to the extent that they shape the classrooms, the community authorities, the universities, the police, the law courts, the media, the churches, and the Parliament  then evil itself becomes institutionalised and “industrialised” whilst the community becomes riven with double standards and a wretched “hear no evil, speak no evil” cowardice.

May the Lord Jesus arise to break the arms of predatory Pakistani gangs and extend mercy and compassion to the young girls preyed upon by such evil men.  May the blood of those murdered children and young women cry out to Him from the ground.  May the respective UK authorities humble themselves in the dust before Him.

God shall arise, his enemies shall be scattered;
and those who hate him shall flee before him! . . .
Father of the fatherless and protector of widows
is God in his holy habitation.
(Psalm 68: 1, 5)

Novels Every Christian Should Consider Reading, Part VI

The White Whale

Justin Taylor

I am doing a blog series on Novels Every Christian Should Consider Reading.

R.C. Sproul (Drs, Free University of Amsterdam) is chancellor of Reformation Bible College, co-pastor of Saint Andrew’s Chapel in Sanford, Florida, founder and chairman of Ligonier Ministries, and author of numerous books, including Everyone’s a Theologian.

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If your goal is to write the Great American Novel, I have bad news for you. Herman Melville accomplished that feat more than one hundred and fifty years ago when he wrote Moby Dick.

The greatness of Moby Dick is in its unparalleled theological symbolism that is sprinkled abundantly throughout the novel. For example, consider its use of biblical names for characters such as Ahab, Ishmael, and Elijah, and ships such as Jeroboam and Rachel.

Melville scholars disagree on the meaning of the central symbolic character of the novel—the great white whale, Moby Dick.

Many argue that he symbolizes the incarnation of evil. Ahab certainly holds this view, as he is driven by a monomaniacal hatred for this creature that took his leg and left him permanently damaged in body and soul.

Other scholars are convinced that the whale symbolizes God Himself. Thus, Ahab’s pursuit of the whale is not a righteous pursuit of God but natural man’s futile attempt in his hatred of God to destroy the omnipotent deity.
I favor this second view.

I believe that Moby Dick contains the greatest chapter ever written in the English language: “The Whiteness of the Whale.” Here we find insight into Melville’s profound symbolism as he explores how whiteness is used in history, religion, and nature. The terms he uses to describe the appearance of whiteness in these areas include elusive, ghastly, and transcendent horror, as well as sweet, honorable, and pure. Melville writes:

But not yet have we solved the incantation of this whiteness, and learned why it appeals with such power to the soul; and more strange and far more portentous—why, as we have seen, it is at once the most meaning symbol of spiritual things, nay, the very veil of the Christian’s Deity; and yet should be as it is, the intensifying agent in things the most appalling to mankind. Is it that by its indefiniteness it shadows forth the heartless voids and immensities of the universe, and thus stabs us from behind with the thought of annihilation, when beholding the white depths of the milky way? Or is it, that as in essence whiteness is not so much a colour as the visible absence of colour; and at the same time the concrete of all colours; is it for these reasons that there is such a dumb blankness, full of meaning, in a wide landscape of snows—a colourless, all-colour of atheism from which we shrink? . . . And of all these things, the albino whale was the symbol. Wonder ye then at the fiery hunt?

If the whale embodies everything symbolized by whiteness—that which is terrifying; that which is pure; that which is excellent; that which is horrible and ghastly; that which is mysterious and incomprehensible—does he not embody those traits that are found in the perfections of God Himself?

Who can survive the hostile pursuit of such a being? Only those who have experienced the sweetness of reconciling grace can look at the overwhelming power, sovereignty, and immutability of the transcendent God and find peace rather than a drive for vengeance.

Read Moby Dick—and then read it again.

Daily Devotional

September 20

A First Book of Daily Readings

by D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (selected by Frank Cumbers)
Sourced from the OPC website

Trust Him for everything

I once heard a man use a phrase which affected me very deeply at the time, and still does. I am not sure that it is not one of the most searching statements I have ever heard. He said that the trouble with many of us Christians is that we believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, but that we do not believe Him.

He meant that we believe on Him for the salvation of our souls, but we do not believe Him when He says a thing like this to us, that God is going to look after our food and drink, and even our clothing. He makes such statements as ‘Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest’, and yet we keep our problems and worries to ourselves, and we are borne down by them and defeated by them, and get anxious about things. He has told us to come to Him when we are like that; He has told us that if we are thirsting in any respect we can go to Him, and He has assured us that whosoever comes to Him will never thirst, and that he that eats of the bread that He shall give shall never hunger.

He has promised to give us ‘a well of water springing up into everlasting life’ so that we shall never thirst. But we do not believe Him. Take all these statements He made when He was here on earth, the words He addressed to the people around Him; they are all meant for us. They are meant for us today as definitely as when He first uttered them, and so also are all the astounding statements in the Epistles. The trouble is that we do not believe Him. That is the ultimate trouble.

‘Little faith’ does not really take the Scripture as it is and believe it and live by it and apply it.

Studies in the Sermon on the Mount, ii, pp. 128–9

A Disease of the Soul

Universal Acid of Resentment

The leftist mindset is fixated over money.  The origins of this addiction can be traced back to Marx’s materialistic belief that capital (i.e. money/wealth) ruled the world.  The oft-leaned upon excuse for leftist electoral failure is that “lesser-leftist” politicians have lots of money and they effectively steal elections by paying for the manipulation of the electorate, and, to compound the problem, the genuinely-leftist parties do not have sufficient money to spend and manipulate the electorate to keep pace.  So the competition is unfair from the get-go.

The lack of money is the leftist’s stock-in-trade excuse for electoral failure.  Given the vaguest chance that someone might provide some money, the leftist politician will be like a rat up a drainpipe.  When multi-millionaire German, Kim Dotcom arrived on the shores of New Zealand it became immediately obvious that he intended to use his millions “earned” through the Mega file sharing website to buy himself some influence.

Kim Dotcom during the press conference that followed his “Moment of Truth”. Photo / NZ Herald

He played the part of an unscrupulous, venal, self-seeking capitalist with more realism and panache than a Hollywoood A-lister.  He initially contributed to the campaign of right-winger, John Banks for the Auckland mayoralty.  When Banks failed to support him in his skirmishes with the law, Dotcom turned on Banks like a vengeful Fury.

The Left screamed “dirty politics”.  But, true to form and type, they then began to form their own line-up outside the door of Dotcom’s mansion.  Every one of them had their caps out.
  They were looking for the ace-in-the hole which would provide electoral success.  Money.  Tons of it.  After the leftists had walked the catwalk in front of Dotcom’s leering visage, he settled his money on a new party of his own creation.  It was a strange composite creature.  Dotcom thought, and the Left thought, that by bestowing millions of dollars upon his creation, electoratal success would inevitably follow.  Once again, it has failed miserably.  The crass materialism of leftism has been unable to deliver the goods.

For the Left, Dotcom has been a kind of Cargo Cult figure.  When it is all over, Dotcom will most likely be extradited to the United States to face charges of theft.  He will likely disappear into the US federal prison system.  But we expect that the bankrupt materialism of the Left will remain firmly in place.  Leftists will not have learned any lessons whatsoever.  They will maintain the herd-belief of the Borg that all of life is determined by money and property and who has more of it.  They will continue to put the Left’s  electoral failure down to not having enough of the folding stuff.  They will continue to despise their political opponents for being “rich”, and ipso facto, evil.  The Left will continue to gnaw upon its own resentful bones, in the dark.

Christians will never be fooled by such idolatry.  Christians will never be fooled by materialism and its present political manifestations of Marxism and socialism.  Christians worship King Jesus– King of all kings (Matthew 28:18).  Christians are merry warriors, exuberantly doing good to all men, but especially those of the household of faith (Galatians 6:10).  Christians are content if they can have food and clothing and shelter (I Timothy 6:8).  Christians, the Church, and Christian organisations always have just the right amount of cash to do what the Lord intends them to do, for He owns the cattle on a thousand hills, and all the earth is His (Psalm 50:10).  Christians are bondslaves of the Lord–and are therefore free men and free women and free children.  Truly free.

Who would be a secular Leftist?  It’s a universal acid of resentment which eats everything away, including the soul. 

Letter From Europe (About Complicit Silence)

European “Humanists”: Embarrassment or Silent Sympathy

Dawkins’ attack on disabled persons

Posted on September 5, 2014 

By J.C. von Krempach, J.D.

Turtle Bay and Beyond

Following the world-wide astonishment and outrage over British “humanist” Richard Dawkins’ rant that mothers giving birth to children who have been diagnosed with Down Syndrome are acting “immorally”, we are surprised to find that neither the British Humanist Association (BHA), nor the European Humanist Federation (EHF), nor the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU) have found it necessary to clarify whether they agree or disagree with this statement.

Mr. Dawkins is not only a well-known evolution biologist, but also pontificates as a promoter of “humanism”, “reason”, and a “scientific world view”. It is for this reason that BHA gave him their ‘Services to Humanism’ award in 2012. In fact, it seems that Mr. Dawkins is getting the same award every other year, given that already 2009 one could read that BHA and IHEU had jointly awarded him a prize for his merits in promoting reason and science across the world.

Further distinctions Mr. Dawkins has received for his “humanist” achievements include (without claim to completeness) the honorary doctorate from the (masonic) Université Libre de Bruxelles, the American Humanist Association’s Humanist of the Year Award (1996), the 2001 and 2012 Emperor Has No Clothes Award from the Freedom From Religion Foundation, the Bicentennial Kelvin Medal of The Royal Philosophical Society of Glasgow (2002), or the Deschner Award, after German anti-clerical author Karlheinz  Deschner.

Pushing their adulation for Mr. Dawkins still one step further, the the Atheist Alliance International has since 2003 awarded a “Richard Dawkins Award” during its annual conference to honour outstanding atheists.

. . . maybe the silence is not one of embarrassment, but of complacency? Maybe those self-appointed “humanists” all agree that people with a handicap should be extinguished?

Mr. Dawkins callous attack against the right of life of disabled persons has caused embarrassed silence among the promoters of “humanism”, who in fact for so many years seem to have honoured a veritable anti-humanist. How will (BHA-style) “humanism” be able to claim that it stands for respect and non-discrimination, when its most prominent figurehead publicly asserts that people with handicaps should not be allowed to exist?

Or maybe the silence is not one of embarrassment, but of complacency? Maybe those self-appointed “humanists” all agree that people with a handicap should be extinguished? This would then raise further questions: for example, whether that judgment applies only to people with Down Syndrome, or also to other disabilities? Would there be any disability that the “humanists” would be prepared to accept or at least to tolerate? If so, which?

On a more practical note, there is also a question the European Commission might want to answer: is it really appropriate to continue receiving the EHF and similar organisations within the framework of the Commission’s regular meetings with “philosophical and non-confessional organisations” under Article 17 of the TFEU? What are people with Down Syndrome (or their parents) supposed think of the Commission’s rolling out the red carpet for EHF?

So there is an urgent need for clarification. Given that the representatives of EHF here in Brussels, whom I know to be assiduous followers of this blog, will not fail to read this post, I am sure they will soon explain us their point of view.

Should they prefer to remain silent, there is only one possible conclusion: QUI TACET CONSENTIRE VIDETUR.

Daily Devotional

6 Things It Means to Be in Jesus

[God] saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works but because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began. (2 Timothy 1:9)

John Piper

Being “in Christ Jesus” is a stupendous reality. It is breathtaking what it means to be in Christ. United to Christ. Bound to Christ.

If you are “in Christ” listen to what it means for you:

1. In Christ Jesus you were given grace before the world was created. 2 Timothy 1:9, “He gave us grace in Christ Jesus before the ages began.”
2. In Christ Jesus you were chosen by God before creation. Ephesians 1:4, “God chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world.”
3. In Christ Jesus you are loved by God with an inseparable love. Romans 8:38–39, “I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
4. In Christ Jesus you were redeemed and forgiven for all your sins. Ephesians 1:7, “In Christ we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses.”
5. In Christ Jesus you are justified before God and the righteousness of God in Christ is imputed to you. 2 Corinthians 5:21, “For our sake God made Christ to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”
6. In Christ Jesus you have become a new creation and a son of God. 2 Corinthians 5:17, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” Galatians 3:26, “In Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith.”

For more about John Piper’s ministry and writing, see DesiringGod.org.

Prisoners and the Vote

Sensible Sentencing

A career criminal and (now) jail-house lawyer is taking a case to the High Court attempting to overturn legislation which denies prisoners the vote.  The case has been inspired by the European Court of Human Rights which has infamously ruled that denial of suffrage to prisoners violates their human rights.  New Zealand’s own Bill of Rights–a piece of statutory law–declares voting to be a, you guessed it, human right.

The argument being made amounts to question-begging of the highest order.  Point One: denial of suffrage to prisoners is a prima facie violation of the NZ Human Rights Act.  Point Two: denial of suffrage is cruel and unusual punishment, since it does not contribute in any meaningful way to the rehabilitation of prisoners. Point Three: the European Court of Human Rights ruling is a fantastic precedent, which has all sorts of implications for antediluvians in the Antipodes.

The question begged is this: does incarceration represent any removal or diminution or denial of any human rights–declared and ostensibly protected in the NZ Human Rights Act–at all?  One would imagine so.  Being told when to rise, when to comply with “lights out”, when to eat, what to wear, where to go, where not to go, and how to conduct oneself at all times, with retributive punishment for non-compliance, violates just about every freedom right imaginable.  So, if the argument that denial of suffrage for prisoners amounts to a breach of the NZ Human Rights Act is deemed correct, all incarceration of convicted criminals must also breach that Act. But if incarceration of prisoners in this country does not breach the NZ Human Rights Act, then neither can withdrawing suffrage from them. 

We are aware that some folk philosophically oppose retributive punishment of any kind for criminals.
  They believe it dehumanises them, making them worse.  We are aware that our present system of dealing with criminals is based upon balancing three principles (punishment, protection of the public, and rehabilitation) which in many instances are in conflict with each other, and none of which are ever fully satisfied.  Removal of suffrage rights is a punishment, a retributive consequence of criminal acts, of the same order as incarceration. As such it is not a violation of the NZ Human Rights Act at all.

An opinion writer in the Waikato Times put the matter in focus for everyone endowed with even the smallest modicum of common sense:

News had also just broken that the criminal Arthur Taylor was fighting for prisoners’ rights to vote in the High Court. . . .(H)ere is a man who has broken the law 150 times appealing to the law for the opportunity to choose the lawmakers. It’s like a comedy. Why on earth does he care who makes laws? If his past is anything to go by he won’t be a huge fan of keeping the laws his chosen politicians make anyway.

That, really, is the core problem he has, poor bloke. An argument about rights always sounds so soulless when one refuses to uphold the responsibilities that go with them. Arthur wants cake when he has already eaten it.

The very simple way for him to have the right to vote would be to stay out of jail. Then he could vote to his heart’s content. No-one would get in the way of his “fundamental freedoms”, by virtue of the fact he wasn’t getting in the way of theirs. After all, that is what committing a crime boils down to; stealing rights from our fellow citizens. We steal their right to life when we murder; we steal their right to own property when we take things not lawfully ours; we steal their right to the truth when we commit fraud. Having stolen the rights of his fellow citizens, Arthur wants more. That’s just greedy. If he was appealing his multitude of convictions, I would understand. A man or woman should always have the right to fight to clear their name. But once they are convicted, and all the dust has settled, there has to be some way to make things right for the victim. Quite understandably, that means removing or restricting the “fundamental freedoms” they once abused to commit their crimes.

Yes, that even includes the fellow inmates Arthur refers to who have children on the outside, and whose hearts now yearn to have a say on educational policy. They should have been thinking about the welfare of their children when they were deciding whether or not to commit crimes, because I’m sure having a mum and dad there for you is more important than how your teachers get paid.

We are not great fans of incarceration. We do believe, however, that all criminal acts have consequences that have to be faced up to and dealt with.  We believe in restorative justice and restitution.  We do not believe it should be regarded as a soft-option if properly done.  We also believe that it contributes most effectively to rehabilitation.  But then there are the career criminals–folk who have been through all the restorative options, but have returned once again to preying upon others.  For them, rehabilitation and restitution is ebbing away, if not already long gone.  We also believe that certain crimes are capital in nature–so evil and egregiously extreme–that restitution and rehabilitation have nothing to contribute and ought to play no part.  We believe this is the Christian position on the matter.

In the meantime, we believe that incarceration should protect the community, whilst providing every opportunity for restorative justice and restitution.  We believe strongly in educational and skill-development programmes for willing prisoners.  We believe strongly in treating prisoners with respect and dignity.  But none of this removes the retributive aspect of incarceration.  Losing the right to vote is just one aspect of retribution to enable prisoners to face up to the consequences of their evil-doing. 

Novels Every Christian Should Consider Reading, Part V

Gene Veith: A Novel Every Christian Should Consider Reading

Sep 09, 2014 

Justin Taylor

I am doing a blog series on Novels Every Christian Should Consider Reading.

Gene Edward Veith Jr. (PhD, University of Kansas) is the provost and professor of Literature at Patrick Henry College, the Director of the Cranach Institute at Concordia Theological Seminary, a columnist for World Magazine and TableTalk. He is the author of 18 books on different facets of Christianity and culture, including Reading Between the Lines: A Christian Guide to Literature and Imagination Redeemed: Glorifying God with a Neglected Part of Your Mind (releasing in November). He blogs at Cranach (hosted by Patheos) and can be followed on Twitter at @geneveith.

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“All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn,” said Ernest Hemingway. “All American writing comes from that. There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since.”

The book, published in 1884, was the first novel written in a distinctly American dialect, featuring an epic journey through the American physical and social landscape, written from a particularly American sensibility, and exploring uniquely American problems.

Unlike some classics, which a contemporary reader approaches out of a sense of duty and reads with great difficulty, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn brings back all the pleasures of reading. Mark Twain combines a tale of suspense, adventure, and melodrama with unforgettable characters, profound themes, and devastating social satire. Twain is not only a great novelist, he is a great humorist. He is one of the few authors who can be serious and funny at the same time. Readers of Huckleberry Finn will find themselves laughing out loud, even as they are moved to tears.

The story is told from the point of view and in the voice of Huck Finn, Tom Sawyer’s street urchin friend. It begins as the sequel to Tom Sawyer with more amusing pranks in small town Missouri until the plot gets serious with the arrival of Huck’s murderous father. In escaping from him, Huck finds himself also helping Jim, a slave, escape to freedom. They float down the Mississippi on a raft, encountering adventures and colorful characters along the way, from families engaged in a Hatfield-and-McCoys-type feud to a pair of conmen who claim to be an English Duke and the rightful King of France. The goal is to reach Cairo, Illinois, where they can head north on the Ohio River to freedom for Jim. But they miss their turn and drift deeper and deeper into slave country.

On the Mississippi, Huck learns to see Jim not as a piece of property—which is how he is seen when they go ashore—but as a human being, a friend who is willing to sacrifice himself for Huck. The novel is a profound treatise on the evils of treating other human beings as mere objects to exploit, and it is one of the most moving indictments of slavery and of racism in all of literature.

And yet, nevertheless, in an irony of Mark Twain proportions, Huckleberry Finn is not allowed to be read today in many circles—and particularly in public schools—because it is charged with racism. The book, like the 19th-century Southern vernacular it is written in, uses the “N-word.” Jim, though the moral center of the novel, sometimes comes across as a racial stereotype, with some of Twain’s humor seeming reminiscent of the old racially offensive “minstrel shows.”

Thus, as it so often does, style trumps substance, with seemingly superficial details preventing people from even being able to see the underlying meaning.  But if readers cannot get beyond the “N-word,” I’d recommend holding off on Huckleberry Finn. Irony is reportedly the most difficult figure of speech to master, so if readers see only racism in the novel and not the way Twain is attacking that racism, they aren’t ready for this novel.

We often assume that books about children are for children. That isn’t always the case. There is actually much more than racism in the novel that would make modern parents squirm. Children smoking. Children drinking. Children running away. Children roaming all over town at will, doing dangerous things like swimming in the river and going into caves, and carrying on without constant adult supervision. (My own childhood was much more Huck-Finn like than that of my much-more protected children, who are now even more protective with my grandchildren.) The culture being what it is, let Huckleberry Finn be a book for adults.

But isn’t Mark Twain hostile to Christianity? Well, in his last years, Twain was a bitter man who inveighed against religion, even as he cultivated an almost Catholic veneration of St. Joan of Arc. But in Huckleberry Finn, he satirizes the conflict between what Christianity teaches and the cultural Christianity of the time. Thus, the Grangerford family is warm and kind, full of sincere Christian piety and good works—except that they are engaged in a blood feud with the equally devout Shepherdsons, and they have been killing each other’s children for generations, even though no one can remember how it all started or why they hate each other so much.

The turning point of the novel is when Huck decides to violate his conscience and everything he had been taught in Sunday School by helping Jim attain his freedom. Huck describes how he decided to turn his life around and follow the path of righteousness by turning in Jim to his rightful owners. But then, getting a glimpse of Jim’s humanity, Huck decides to help Jim escape, even though this would be stealing, and even though this crime would surely condemn him eternally. “All right, then,” Huck decides. “I’ll go to Hell.” That line has to make any Christian cringe. But one reason why we cannot be saved by our good works is that when we do them thinking that they will cause us to merit Heaven, that takes away their moral significance. Our sinful nature is such that we can even do good works for a selfish motive.

With Huck, the moral universe is so topsy-turvy that a bad work (betraying a friend) is thought to be a good work, and a good work (helping a friend) is construed as a bad work. Instead of doing what is right in return for an eternal reward, Huck does what is right—loving and serving his neighbor—even though he expects it will earn him an eternal punishment. Again, more irony that can put many readers off. But in general, it is good for Christians to endure satires against hypocrisy and their own un-Christian attitudes and behavior. They help keep us in a state of repentance.

In the last section of the novel, the poor but virtuous and realistic Huck meets up again with his friend Tom Sawyer with his middle-class status and wildly romantic ideals. Hemingway says that we should skip this last part, which just gets silly and turns the noble Jim into more of a clown. At the very end, Huck decides to do what Americans always used to do (when they could) after running into intractable problems: “light out for the Territory.” Go West, head for the frontier, start a new life. That’s basically what Mark Twain did in leaving the war-torn South for the silver mines of Nevada. The novel reminds the Christian reader that sin goes deep into the human heart and into human society and that it makes us all slaves; and it awakens a desire for freedom that can only come from Christ, who died to set us free. Others may not get that from the story. But Christians will.

Daily Devotional

Daily Devotional

“Have mercy upon me, O God.”
Psalm 51:1

Charles Spurgeon

 When Dr. Carey was suffering from a dangerous illness, the enquiry was made, “If this sickness should prove fatal, what passage would you select as the text for your funeral sermon?” He replied, “Oh, I feel that such a poor sinful creature is unworthy to have anything said about him; but if a funeral sermon must be preached, let it be from the words, Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness; according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions.'”

In the same spirit of humility he directed in his will that the following inscription and nothing more should be cut on his gravestone:–
William Carey, Born August 17th, 1761: Died – –
“A wretched, poor, and helpless worm
On thy kind arms I fall.”

Only on the footing of free grace can the most experienced and most honoured of the saints approach their God.
The best of men are conscious above all others that they are men at the best. Empty boats float high, but heavily laden vessels are low in the water; mere professors can boast, but true children of God cry for mercy upon their unprofitableness. We have need that the Lord should have mercy upon our good works, our prayers, our preachings, our alms-givings, and our holiest things.

The blood was not only sprinkled upon the doorposts of Israel’s dwelling houses, but upon the sanctuary, the mercy-seat, and the altar, because as sin intrudes into our holiest things, the blood of Jesus is needed to purify them from defilement. If mercy be needed to be exercised towards our duties, what shall be said of our sins? How sweet the remembrance that inexhaustible mercy is waiting to be gracious to us, to restore our backslidings, and make our broken bones rejoice!

Inglorious States

Too Busy

One of the rotten fruits of statism is the failure to get the fundamentals right.  The modern idolatrous state is too busy running around hectoring citizens over what they are to eat and drink that it fails in its proper responsibilities such as preventing and detecting murderers.

Michelle Malkin provides us with a case study of rotten fruit–the US Federal Air Marshals Service.  These folk are supposed to ride incognito on aircraft to prevent or intercept airplane hijackers in action.  Not any longer.  Statism has deflected the attention of Sauron away to other, bigger things–such as golf, and fundraising.

. . . 13 years after the 9/11 attacks, the freedom to warn is in danger and vigilant whistleblowers are under fire.  Listen to Robert MacLean. He’s a former Air Force nuclear weapons specialist and Border Patrol agent recruited by the government to serve as one of the first federal air marshals after 9/11.

In 2003, MacLean underwent emergency training to prepare for a new round of al-Qaida hijacking threats. Jihadists exploiting visa and screening loopholes had planned to target East Coast airliners, according to intelligence analysts. For unknown reasons, however, the Transportation Security Administration abruptly called off air marshals from duty on nonstop, long-distance flights — just two days before the anticipated hijacking.

How did they notify the air marshals? Cue the Keystone Cops. “TSA chose to send the unlabelled text message to our unsecured Nokia 3310 cellular phones instead of our $22 million encrypted smart phone system. There were no markings or secrecy restrictions on the message,” MacLean recounted to Congress this week. “We all thought it was a joke given the special training we had just received and the post-9/11 law that nonstop long-distance flights were a priority.”

A supervisor told MacLean the agency was broke and there was nothing he could do. Appalled at both the dangerous pullback and the reckless way in which the feds notified the air marshals, MacLean then contacted his department’s inspector general hotline and was warned he would be “cutting (his) career short if (he) pursued the issue further.” Instead, he went to the press and made his homeland security concerns public. In 2006, MacLean was fired.

More than a decade later, the dedicated security expert has battled the feds who retaliated against him. He was forced into bankruptcy and shut out of law enforcement jobs. His legal case heads to the Supreme Court this fall. God bless him. Despite the consequences, MacLean would do it all again in a heartbeat.

“I blew the whistle because I had to,” he testified this week. “I could not live with the tragedy risked if I had been the cynical silent observer.”

Whistleblowing and the cursed idolatry of statism do not mix.
  Meanwhile, the federal government of the United States has far more important things with which to occupy itself, such as defending the Revenue authorities from charges over their tyrannical abuse of power and the undermining of democratic government.  US commercial aircraft remain undefended.  Not a priority.

The competing demands of overreaching statist governments are relentless and ignominious failure always follows hard on the heels.

Today, the Federal Air Marshal program remains riddled with mismanagement, corruption and neglect. In April, FAM Director Robert Bray resigned amid an embarrassing gun scheme probe. And earlier this year, six of 24 air marshal offices closed, and hiring was frozen in Las Vegas, Seattle and Denver. Yet, according to one of my sources, “the last class of air marshals graduated from the academy in 2012. The service has not hired any mission-flying FAMs since. In that same time frame, they have promoted or hired over 300 people, and continue to do so, for supervisory and administrative duties. Almost every supervisory position includes a paid move and a yearly salary of $100,000.”

Every 9/11, pundits talk about how “everything changed” after the attacks. But the homeland security bureaucracy is as petty, vindictive, wasteful and stupid as ever.

The government that asserts its competence in everything ends up being a “jack of all trades and master of none”, blundering from one failure to another.  The only thing it is good at is the profligate waste of citizens’ unlawfully expropriated property. 

Idiocies and Inanities

Sorry Mr. President, ISIS Is 100 Percent Islamic

 

By Daniel Pipes

September 10, 2014

National Review Online

In a televised address on how to address the Islamic State this evening, President Barack Obama declared the organization variously known as ISIS or ISIL to be “not Islamic.” 

In making this preposterous claim, Obama joins his two immediate predecessors in pronouncing on what is not Islamic. Bill Clinton called the Taliban treatment of women and children “a terrible perversion of Islam.” George W. Bush deemed that 9/11 and other acts of violence against innocents “violate the fundamental tenets of the Islamic faith.”

None of the three has any basis for such assertions. To state the obvious: As non-Muslims and politicians, rather than Muslims and scholars, they are in no position to declare what is Islamic and what is not. As Bernard Lewis, a leading American authority of Islam, notes: “It is surely presumptuous for those who are not Muslims to say what is orthodox and what is heretical in Islam.”

Indeed, Obama compounds his predecessors’ errors and goes further: Clinton and Bush merely described certain actions (treatment of women and children, acts of violence against innocents) as un-Islamic, but Obama has dared to declare an entire organization (and quasi-state) to be “not Islamic.”

The only good thing about this idiocy? At least it’s better than the formulation by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (known as CAIR) which has the nerve to call the Islamic State “anti-Islamic.”

In the end, though, neither U.S. presidents nor Islamist apologists fool people. Anyone with eyes and ears realizes that the Islamic State, like the Taliban and al-Qaeda before it, is 100 percent Islamic. And most Westerners, as indicated by detailed polling in Europe, do have eyes and ears. Over time, they are increasingly relying on common sense to conclude that the group is indeed profoundly Islamic.

Daily Devotional

Forgiven for Jesus’ Sake

For your name’s sake, O Lord, pardon my guilt, for it is great. (Psalm 25:11)

John Piper

The righteousness of God is the infinite zeal and joy and pleasure that he has in what is supremely valuable, namely, his own perfection and worth. And if he were ever to act contrary to this eternal passion for his own perfections he would be unrighteous, he would be an idolater.

How shall such a righteous God ever set his affection on sinners like us who have scorned his perfections? But the wonder of the gospel is that in this divine righteousness lies also the very foundation of our salvation.
The infinite regard that the Father has for the Son makes it possible for me, a wicked sinner, to be loved and accepted in the Son, because in his death he vindicated the worth and glory of his Father.

Now I may pray with new understanding the prayer of the psalmist, “For your name’s sake, O Lord, pardon my guilt, for it is great” (Psalm 25:11). The new understanding is that Jesus has now atoned for sin and vindicated the Father’s honor so that our sins are forgiven “on account of his name” (1 John 2:12).

The Father’s infinite pleasure in his own perfections is the fountain of our everlasting joy. The fact that the pleasure of God in his Son is pleasure in himself is not vanity. It is the gospel.

For more about John Piper’s ministry and writing, see DesiringGod.org.

Not What We Meant

Secular Marriage is an Empty Vanity

One of the arguments used to confront homosexual “marriage” is that it makes true marriage meaningless.  Just as the concept of the family has been so degraded over many years of secularism–to where two women living together with a budgie is regarded as a family–so the secular form of marriage is now null and void.  True marriage, actual marriage as defined and delimited and ruled by Holy Scripture continues.  But the secular state has lost its moral warrant and integrity to rule over it and administer it.  Marriage, in the secular realm, has been eviscerated and rendered meaningless.

Homosexual marriage advocates, who declared they wanted to enjoy the special and enduring bond of marriage, based their argument on human rights and anti-discrimination laws. The upshot is they have inadvertently destroyed the secularist notion of marriage itself.  Or, to put it another way, they have inadvertently clarified the inanity and insignificance of secularist “marriage”.  This, we believe, is good news for Christians and the Christian Church in a tactical sense, because it widens the dichotomy between belief and unbelief.  The true face of Baal is revealed even more clearly.  The Kingdom of Christ is made more glorious.  The profane has become more profane; the Church is forced to make a clear stand upon Scripture.  Epistemological and spiritual self-consciousness of both secularists and Christians consequently is growing.

What is the latest fruit of secularist “marriage”?  The NZ Herald tells the story:

Travis McIntosh and Matt McCormick wrote their wedding vows yesterday, brimming with”nervous excitement” about their big day.  The Dunedin men will marry tomorrow, but their move has horrified gay groups.  The pair are heterosexual best mates.

Engineering student Mr McIntosh, 23, and teacher Mr McCormick, 24, will tie the knot to win a The Edge radio station competition and a trip to the 2015 Rugby World Cup in England.  Mr McCormick said from Auckland yesterday opposition to the wedding was understandable but the pair never intended to offend anyone.  “We are not here to insult anyone. We are here to do our own thing and travel our own path.” Mr McIntosh said the wedding was not mocking the institution of marriage.

Right.  Glad we have cleared that up.  Actually, McIntosh is telling the truth.  What these two are doing is certainly not mocking the institution of secularist “marriage”.  They are perfect exemplars of the perversion.  Secularist “marriage”, after all, seeks to recognise human beings who “love” each other and want to live together.  And that’s all.  Nothing more.  Nothing less.  Consequently, under New Zealand’s secularist marriage law, McIntosh and McCormick will be legally married, though they will not engage in sexual relations.  They will remain “just friends”.

The pair said their wedding vows would touch on their friendship and recall their time playing rugby together at King’s High School in Dunedin.  They were undecided if they would take hyphenated surnames and who would walk down the aisle. . . . Mr McIntosh said he thought the marriage would last at least two years.

Mr McCormick, a teacher at Musselburgh School, said the friendship began after the two met at Pirates Rugby Club in Dunedin when he was aged 6.  His family, like Mr McIntosh’s, was excited about the wedding.  “They’re backing us 100 per cent,” Mr McCormick said.

Homosexual groups are outraged.  Those who had fought to be married, pressuring all their fellow secularists in Parliament to recognise homosexual “marriage”, had no idea (apparently) what would be let loose from  Pandora’s Box.

Despite the apparently innocent enjoyment afforded by the competition, local gay rights groups are “horrified” by the move, according to the New Zealand Herald. A “queer support” coordinator from Otago University criticised the union, saying it was an “insult”, and that it “trivialises what we fought for”. 

Nah, mate.  It’s a perfectly consistent expression of what you fought for.  Secularist “marriage” makes human wilfulness the bedrock of their perverted institution, and we know, if we are not blindly obtuse, that the wilfulness of the human heart is legion, and takes many, many forms.  Secularist “marriage” is a meaningless oxymoron.  Secularism cannot produce nor sustain “marriage” as an exclusive life-long bond.  It inevitably breaks upon the shoals of human lusts and idiocies.

Like Prufrock, the homosexual marriage advocates are learning that winning the prize of homosexual “marriage” comes at the cost of making the institution meaningless.  And so the empty vanity of secularist “marriage” is becoming plain.  They are left gnashing resentful teeth:

“That is not what I meant at all;
That is not it, at all.”

Welcome to the depraved world of secularist “marriage”.  Welcome to the world where the glory and honour of Christ consequently shines more brightly than before. As the darkness deepens, the light becomes more radiant.

 

Novels Every Christian Should Consider Reading–Part IV

Philip Ryken: A Novel Every Christian Should Consider Reading

Sep 06, 2014

Justin Taylor

I am doing a blog series on Novels Every Christian Should Consider Reading.

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Philip Graham Ryken (DPhil, University of Oxford) is the eighth president of Wheaton College and has served in that capacity since 2010. Prior to his appointment at Wheaton, he served as senior minister at historic Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia.
His newest book is Loving Jesus More (which releases on Monday), and he is the co-author (with Leland Ryken and Todd Wilson) of Pastors in the Classics: Timeless Lessons on Life and Ministry from World Literature.

Cry, the Beloved Country is widely regarded as the definitive novel of the South African experience. Although the book was written more than half a century ago and published before apartheid was established as a system of racial segregation, its hopeful yet honest treatment of social issues has ongoing relevance for South Africa and the world. Alan Paton invited his readers to embrace this global perspective when he described his novel as “a song of love for one’s far distant country . . . the land where you were born.”

To read Cry, the Beloved Country is to become immersed in the tragic complexities of racial conflict that gripped South Africa in the 1940’s and afterwards. Paton vividly evokes the events of that time and place: the political speeches, the rise of the black shanty towns, the mining and transportation strikes, the personal sacrifices that blacks and whites both made in order to serve one another across racial lines.

He also addresses some of the hardest challenges that remain for South Africa, such as the corruption of power, the ever-present danger of criminal violence, and the need for new social structures to rebuild broken families in divided communities.

All of this forms the setting for the dramatic story of loss and forgiveness that Paton tells about one man—a priest named Kumalo—who endures painful suffering in a fallen world and struggles to understand the purposes of God for his life, his family, his church, and his community.

I read Cry, the Beloved Country to renew my hope in what one person can do in response to the world’s heartbreaking need for justice and mercy. Kumalo knows what he is up against: “the house that is broken, and the man that falls apart when the house is broken, these are the tragic things. That is why children break the law, and old white people are robbed and beaten.” At the same time, Kumalo knows that God has called him to bind the wounds of the broken with truth and mercy.

I also read Paton’s novel to renew my sense of calling as a minister of the gospel. Despite his own weakness and sin—including his failings as the father of a prodigal son—Kumalo perseveres in his God-given ministry. In one of the novel’s transformative scenes, the priest goes up the mountain above his village to remember his sins “as well as he could” and to repent of them “as fully as he could,” praying for God’s forgiveness.
His soul renewed by repentance, Kumalo returns to face the challenges of serving his humble, beautiful congregation. Even when he is tempted to believe that there is “nothing in the world but fear and pain,” Kumalo continues to pray, to preach, and to serve his community with the love of Jesus.

Cry, the Beloved Country has similar effects on my own ministry. Paton’s novel captures the tragic beauty of human brokenness in ways that inspire humble repentance, genuine faith, and faithful ministry.

Daily Devotional

Jesus Will Trample All Our Enemies

John Piper

Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. (1 Corinthians 15:24)

How far does the reign of Christ extend?

Verse 25 says, “He must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet.” The word ALL tells us the extent.

So does the word EVERY in verse 24: “Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power.”

There is no disease, no addiction, no demon, no bad habit, no fault, no vice, no weakness, no temper, no moodiness, no pride, no self-pity, no strife, no jealousy, no perversion, no greed, no laziness that Christ does not aim to overcome as the enemy of his honor.

And the encouragement in that promise is that when you set yourself to do battle with the enemies of your faith and your holiness, you will not fight alone.  Jesus Christ is now, in this age, putting all his enemies under his feet. Every rule and every authority and every power will be conquered.

So, remember that the extent of Christ’s reign reaches to the smallest and biggest enemy of his glory. It will be defeated.

For more about John Piper’s ministry and writing, see DesiringGod.org. 
Sourced from BibleGateway

Seven Easy Steps

The Islamic Caliphate

In 2005, Jordanian journalist and researcher, Fouad Hussen published a piece entitled al-Zarqawi – al-Qaida’s Second Generation. A synopsis of his book was published in Der Spiegel in August 2005.  The introduction to the synopsis read:

There must be something particularly trustworthy about the Jordanian journalist Fouad Hussein. After all, he has managed to get some of the the most sought after terrorists to open up to him. Maybe it helped that they spent time together in prison many years ago — when Hussein was a political prisoner he successfully negotiated for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi to be released from solitary confinement. Or is it because of the honest and direct way in which he puts his ideas onto paper?

Fouad Hussein had spent time with key terrorist figures, including al-Zarqawi, who has now been killed by a US drone strike.  Prison conversations amongst prison comrades are often truthful.  What is there to lose?  In any event, Hussein has outlined the “Seven Steps” set out by the idealogues of an Islamic Caliphate to take over the world.  Back in 2005, it may have sounded wacky stuff to Western ears.  Now, maybe, not so much.  (Remember, as you read below, this was published in Der Spiegel in 2005; the resemblances to what is now unfolding in Iraq and Syria are striking.  Back in 2005, it must have seemed pretentious and boastful–which the Der Spiegel article reflects.)

An Islamic Caliphate in Seven Easy Steps

In the introduction, the Jordanian journalist writes, “I interviewed a whole range of al-Qaida members with different ideologies to get an idea of how the war between the terrorists and Washington would develop in the future.” What he then describes between pages 202 and 213 is a scenario, proof both of the terrorists’ blindness as well as their brutal single-mindedness. In seven phases the terror network hopes to establish an Islamic caliphate which the West will then be too weak to fight.

• The First Phase Known as “the awakening” — this has already been carried out and was supposed to have lasted from 2000 to 2003, or more precisely from the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 in New York and Washington to the fall of Baghdad in 2003. The aim of the attacks of 9/11 was to provoke the US into declaring war on the Islamic world and thereby “awakening” Muslims. “The first phase was judged by the strategists and masterminds behind al-Qaida as very successful,” writes Hussein. “The battle field was opened up and the Americans and their allies became a closer and easier target.” The terrorist network is also reported as being satisfied that its message can now be heard “everywhere.”
• The Second Phase “Opening Eyes” is, according to Hussein’s definition, the period we are now in and should last until 2006. Hussein says the terrorists hope to make the western conspiracy aware of the “Islamic community.” Hussein believes this is a phase in which al-Qaida wants an organization to develop into a movement. The network is banking on recruiting young men during this period. Iraq should become the center for all global operations, with an “army” set up there and bases established in other Arabic states.
• The Third Phase This is described as “Arising and Standing Up” and should last from 2007 to 2010. “There will be a focus on Syria,” prophesies Hussein, based on what his sources told him. The fighting cadres are supposedly already prepared and some are in Iraq. Attacks on Turkey and — even more explosive — in Israel are predicted. Al-Qaida’s masterminds hope that attacks on Israel will help the terrorist group become a recognized organization. The author also believes that countries neighboring Iraq, such as Jordan, are also in danger.
• The Fourth Phase Between 2010 and 2013, Hussein writes that al-Qaida will aim to bring about the collapse of the hated Arabic governments. The estimate is that “the creeping loss of the regimes’ power will lead to a steady growth in strength within al-Qaida.” At the same time attacks will be carried out against oil suppliers and the US economy will be targeted using cyber terrorism.
• The Fifth Phase This will be the point at which an Islamic state, or caliphate, can be declared. The plan is that by this time, between 2013 and 2016, Western influence in the Islamic world will be so reduced and Israel weakened so much, that resistance will not be feared. Al-Qaida hopes that by then the Islamic state will be able to bring about a new world order.
• The Sixth Phase Hussein believes that from 2016 onwards there will a period of “total confrontation.” As soon as the caliphate has been declared the “Islamic army” it will instigate the “fight between the believers and the non-believers” which has so often been predicted by Osama bin Laden.
• The Seventh Phase This final stage is described as “definitive victory.” Hussein writes that in the terrorists’ eyes, because the rest of the world will be so beaten down by the “one-and-a-half billion Muslims,” the caliphate will undoubtedly succeed. This phase should be completed by 2020, although the war shouldn’t last longer than two years.

The Der Spiegel article went on to weigh up how seriously this ought to have been taken.  The author of the piece, Yassin Musharbash was generally sceptical.  After all, Al Qaeda was fragmented and had largely appeared to have disintegrated.

Nevertheless, there is no way the scenario he depicts can be seen as a plan which al-Qaida can follow step by step. The terrorist network just doesn’t work like that anymore. The significance of the central leadership has diminished and its direct commands have lost a great deal of importance. The supposed master plan for the years 2000 to 2020 reads in parts more like a group of ideas cobbled together in retrospect, than something planned and presented in advance. And not to mention the terrorist agenda is simply unworkable: the idea that al-Qaida could set up a caliphate in the entire Islamic world is absurd. The 20-year plan is based mainly on religious ideas. It hardly has anything to do with reality — especially phases four to seven. [Emphasis, ours.]

Note in passing the epistemological dichotomy presented in the above quotation: the 20-year plan was largely based upon religious ideas. Therefore, it can have hardly anything to do with reality.  Thus, the blindness of the Western mind when it comes to evaluating what it unfolding in the Middle East.  Religious ideas–to the blinded Western mind–can have no correspondence with reality, which, as all Westerners know, consists of matter, and matter alone.  Religions are figments of imagination and have no metaphysical reality whatsoever.

Consistent, fervent Islam is a religion and its beliefs shape reality.  Consistent, fervent Western materialism is equally religious; its beliefs also shape reality for its devotees.  Both alike are false beliefs, and will fall in the long run.  But in the meantime, they can exert enormous influence and shape human history.  Western materialism clearly has done so.  Islamic jihadism is currently doing so in the Middle East.  The Caliphate is the latest manifestation of the Islamic narrative.

According to the seven steps, we are now in the fifth: a caliphate has been declared, right on schedule, moreover.  The true believers think that the Western powers are weak, divided, already defeated, and the pathway is open to a new world order.  We are now, according to the plan, entering the period of “total confrontation” between belief and unbelief, between Islam and the infidels (that is, the West).

Are the jihadis being realistic, or have they lost touch with things as they really are?  Clearly the latter.  But that is not evident to them–yet.  They are speaking and acting as if they were calling the shots on a world stage.  They boast, they brag, and they think that beheading non-combatant Americans will eviscerate the West’s will to fight.  They also believe that millions upon millions of Islamic jihadis from around the world will rise up and come to join them, for the last great battle.  These ideas are fervently believed as absolute truth to them.  They will live and act accordingly. Anyone in the West who expects anything different has also lost touch with reality.

And when they are inevitably defeated in battle, will that end it?  Not at all–no more than secularism would be ended when it failed spectacularly.  The ideologues of both camps will simply go back, lick their wounds, and plan to fight for the longer term.  Christians know that neither will succeed.  Both armies alike hate the one and only Lord of humanity, the King who has been established on Mount Zion, and to whom all authority in heaven and upon earth has already been given.  (Matthew 28: 18)

The West is clearly the much stronger militarily.  However, its key weakness is its persistent failure to recognise its own religious bias and pre-commitments.  Because it is blind to itself, it cannot see its enemy clearly.  It cannot comprehend how the Islamic mind functions.  It deliberately and persistently distorts the truth about Islam–for its own comfort.  Take the most obvious example: when the planes flew into the towers, Western leaders immediately developed a narrative about Islam which was deliberately deceptive and misleading, yet one which they fervently hoped was true.  “Islam”, they told everyone, including themselves, meant peace.  Islam was a religion of peace: therefore, Al Qaeda and its collaboraters, were un-Islamic.  The jihadis were a foreign element; they were not true to the faith.

The Western Commentariat deliberately and wilfully misinterpreted what “peace” meant in Islam.  The word “Islam”, of course, means submission.  The peace of Islam means subjugation or the death of those who will not be subjugated.  Consequently, the jihadis simply laughed at the stupid, weak Western world for such an addiction to untruth, distortion, and its own false comfort.   Herein lies the Achilles heel of the pagan West: it believes its own false press.  Secularism is a paper tiger.  The jihadis believe this to be the case and in many ways they are not far from the truth.

Secularism is boldly courageous when it comes to killing an unborn infant in the womb, but pathetically compliant when its own life is at stake.  Secularism has no doctrine of an afterlife, and Final Judgment.  All it has is material existence–and since that is all it has, it will desperately cling to its own life.  At root, secularism is cowardice in motion.  That is why suicide bombers, jihadi martyrs, and relentless Islamic brutalities alarm and terrify.  Secularism has no-one to serve, no-one for whom to lay down its life.  Consequently, it will eventually end up losing everything.  Jihadis know this. 

Douglas Wilson’s Letter From Moscow

What Became of the Witty Pirate Then

Douglas Wilson

Blog and Mablog

September 6, 2014

Because taxes can be a form of theft, and because taxes need not be theft at all, a reasonable question to ask is how we can tell the difference.

The baseline, the starting point, is that property belongs to the individual. He is the one that Thou shalt not steal applies to. He is the one with the house, the vineyard, the lawn mower, the wallet, the smart phone, and so on. Whenever the Bible talks about property, it always talks about it two categories. The first is God’s absolute ownership of all things (Dt. 10:14), and the second is the relative ownership that you and your neighbor enjoy (Dt. 8:18). When we talk about the state possessing things, this possession is derivative. The state extracts value from the taxpayer, the appointed steward of God’s wealth, and this extraction can also be divided into two categories. This value can be extracted lawfully, or the state can play the role of the thief. So how are we to tell the difference?

We know that taxation can be done right because the Bible talks about paying taxes to the one to whom it is due (Rom. 13:7). These are taxes that we owe, and are not to be considered theft at all. We should no more chafe at paying our legitimate taxes than we do paying our bill for satellite television. There are taxes we do not owe, but ought to pay anyway, having more important things to do. This is the meaning of what Jesus teaches Peter — we don’t owe it, but go ahead and pay it (Matt. 17:24-27). And then there are other circumstances where the illegitimate taxes have become so onerous, and the justification for them so outlandish, and tax courts have beclowned themselves to such an extent, that the Lord raises up a left-handed means for the children of Israel to pay their tribute (Judges 3:15-19).

Now I am not issuing any kind of call to action, other than the action of understanding what the heck occurreth. It is long past time for us to be sons of Issachar, understanding the times and knowing what Israel should do (1 Chron. 12:32). In our circumstance, deliverance would be ours if most of us came to the simple recognition that our ruling elites are governing unlawfully. They are illegitimate.

So this brings us back to the question raised at the top. How do we tell what kind of taxation is challenging the law of God as opposed to the taxation that is in line with the law of God? There are three basic criteria.

First, the level of taxation must not rival God (1 Sam. 8:15). God claims a tithe, and if that is all God needs, and if God is a jealous God, then we ought to see any attempt on the part of civil government to go past ten percent as an aspiration to Deity. This is the perennial temptation for fallen man (Gen. 3:5), particularly for rulers of all kinds (Is. 14:13), and so that temptation must not be funded. Cutting off the government at 9% is like refusing a third Scotch to a wobbly tavern-goer at 1 am. Shouldn’t be controversial.

Second, the taxes need to be levied, in the main, so that the rulers can perform the functions that God requires them to perform. Coercion is a big deal, and so the government must only be allowed to exercise it when they have express warrant for what they are doing. If they have express warrant to hunt down murderers, and they do, then they have express warrant to collect money to pay for the men to do this. They are God’s deacon of justice, and the deacon of justice needs to be paid just like the rest of us (Rom. 13:4). They are not allowed to collect fees to pay for activities that are prohibited to them. If they are not allowed to do it in the first place, they are not allowed to tax us to pay for it. To do so would be theft.

Third, the taxes must be lawful and in accordance with the established constitution of the people. Arbitary and capricious government, when the constitution outlaws arbitrary and capricous government is hypocritical. It sits in judgment upon us in points of law, and contrary to the law commands us to be struck. Since I have no particular person in mind, I may feel free to echo Paul’s sentiment about this without overstepping any personal boundaries — the men who do this are a whited wall (Acts 23:3).

If a tax bill originates in the Senate, nobody needs to pay it. If a resident of North Dakota receives a tax bill from the state of Maryland, he may feel free to round file it, and to do so with a serene conscience. If a man is taxed by a body in which he has no representation, then it is an illegal tax, and it doesn’t really matter how many judges or congressmen were complicit in the illegality.

So then, in summary, taxes are theft when the government is aspiring to be god in the lives of its subjects, when the government is refusing to do what the real God requires of them and is doing something else instead, usually something very expensive, and when the government is not obeying its own legitimate processes for levying taxes.

Last point. Note that I am not arguing for any action other than the simple action of recognition. Our government is a thief, but the government is a thief that cares deeply and profoundly about respectability. They not only want to pillage with immunity, they want to do it with legitimacy. Sorry. It is not as though there is a certain number of pirate ships that magically reach the quorum of a nation state.

When you get lots of pirate ships, what do you have? This is not a trick question. You have a pirate fleet. You have lots of pirates.

Augustine records a time when a pirate was captured and brought before Alexander the Great. The pirate asked why he was styled a pirate for doing to ships what Alexander was doing to countries, and, despite this, Alexander was styled a great emperor.

History is silent as to what became of the witty pirate then, but his question did have a certain resonance. Secular man, with covetous loins, hands and brains, has not yet been able to answer it. There is,  however, a stiff fine for raising it in inappropriate ways.