By Farther Steps

Reformed and Reforming, semper reformanda to Christ's glory.

The Political Blame-Game-Feeding-Frenzy

First off, I’m really, really bothered about the politicization of the shooting in Arizona. The fact that people are trying to pin the actions of a clearly disturbed individual on a political position is wrong. I’m glad to have heard that Hillary Clinton condemned the effort and announced that the shooter had his own political position.  Back in the 80s when heavy metal bands were being sued for causing misguided youth to commit suicide, it was the political left who pooh-pawed the notion that depressing, death-oriented lyrics could in any way contribute to the actions of the people who listened to them over and over again. They talked of the Conservatives as if they were paranoid. Fast forward 30 years and now the Left is trying to say that the talk radio rhetoric of the Right is what lead this and the Right is claiming that that kind of thing doesn’t happen.

But that is the end of the political wrangling about this story and so I have more to say. Sarah Palin released a video that condemned the effort of trying to vilify an entire political position based on the actions of one crazed individual. Obviously I agree with her on this point. More about Ms. Palin in a moment. Slate Magazine did what appears to be the automatic reflexive response of the Left to anything Palin says, they criticized her. The story’s subtitle is “Sarah Palin opposes collective blame for monstrous crimes, unless they’re committed by Muslims.” This struck me as really interesting. The piece is written by William Saletan whom I’ve bagged on before. He said:

That’s what Palin believes. Each person is solely accountable for his actions. Acts of monstrous criminality “begin and end with the criminals who commit them.” It’s wrong to hold others of the same nationality, ethnicity, or religion “collectively” responsible for mass murders.

Unless, of course, you’re talking about Muslims. In that case, Palin is fine with collective blame.

At first, and if you don’t really think about this much, you may think he’s on to something, it does seem hypocritical. Except. Ms. Palin is careful to say it was “Islamic extremists” who carried out the 9/11 attack, not just Muslims in general. On top of that, there is a long list of Islamic extremists killing thousands of people. There is no question that they are Muslim, even if they have pressed their religion to an extreme. But with the Arizona shooter, he can’t really be described as a “Conservative Political extremist” and we don’t have a history of people murdering in the name of Conservative politics.

So if you look at it a bit more carefully than Saletan did, you can see that Palin isn’t guilty of a double-standard on this. But that would ruin a perfectly good slam piece.

Still, don’t place a halo on Palin just yet. Further on in her statement she said that trying to assign the blame to Conservatives amounted to “blood liable”. I had no idea what that curious phrase meant. Last night I listened to a report on NPR and it took them a few minutes to explain the phrase and why I should be offended by Palin’s use of it. Had I not listened to this I would have totally forgotten it. I am assuming that Palin or a staffer did know what that phrase meant and used it anyway. If they didn’t know and didn’t research it was pretty reckless. If they did know, it is even worse. But Saletan isn’t content to let the blame rest on her head for this, no, he actually decided to share in it:

Palin’s campaign against any Muslim house of worship near Ground Zero, based on group blame for terrorism, fits that definition [of blood liable] more closely than does any current accusation against the Tea Party.

Okay, the political blame-game-feeding-frenzy has got to end. I know, it doesn’t make for exciting political punditry but it is a more responsible use of our democratic freedoms. I wish we could more civilly disagree in politics, but that doesn’t make for good blog posts or TV news reporting.

It Was Good Enough

Mrs. Bagby was not a Cumberland Presbyterian but a member of the U.S. or Southern Church. I say nothing against the Cumberlands. They broke with the Presbyterian Church because they did not believe a preacher needed a lot of formal education. That is all right but they are not sound on Election. They do not fully accept it. I confess it is a hard doctrine, running contrary to our earthly ideas of fair play, but I can see no way around it. Read I Corinthians 6:13 and II Timothy 1:9, 10. Also I Peter 1:2, 19, 29 and Romans 11:7. There you have it. It was good for Paul and Silas and it is good enough for me. It is good enough for you too. – Charles Portis, True Grit, 109 – 110

Truth and Beauty

If he had lived long enough to witness the relegation of Pluto to the status of a dwarf planet in 2006, Lewis would have been quietly pleased. He would have taken it as confirmation of his view that ‘a scientific fact’ is not necessarily the immutable, universal truth that it is popularly believed to be. The glory of science is to progress as new facts are discovered to be true, and such progress means that ‘factual truth’ is a provisional human construct. Which is why the wise man does not think only in the category of truth; the category of beauty is also worth thinking in. – Michael Ward, Planet Narnia, 27

The War Is Over if You Want It

ox·y·mo·ron
[ok-si-mawr-on, -mohr-]
Rhetoric
–n. a figure of speech by which a locution produces an incongruous, seemingly self-contradictory effect, as in “cruel kindness” or “to make haste slowly.”It is official. I’m a global warming/climate change skeptic. Something is happening but I’m not convinced that it is our fault, that we can really do anything about it and that anyone really understands it. So when I read this in the NY Times I just kind of rolled my eyes. “The reality is, we’re freezing not in spite of climate change but because of it.” It seems to me that once they (rightly) stopped calling it “global warming” they lost the fight. The earth’s climate has never been stable, it has always changed. Calling it “climate change” is like saying “random chance” or “convicted felon.” It is redundant. Climate changes. When you start saying, with a straight face, “It is getting colder because it is getting warmer” you just punctuate my assertion that you’ve lost.

Ha. Man, how I was that were true. If it were, we might be able to get past the politics, religion and money that drives so much of the climate change (okay, I said it, so what?) debate and get some real answers to what’s happening and why and if we’re in a good place to cope.

Update: Just came across a video of a British meteorologist who predicted the cold winter in Europe. He says that the “warming causes cooling” argument is not based on any kind of science.

Leavers

Fuller Seminary recently conducted a study on teens who become leavers in college. The researchers uncovered the single most significant factor in whether young people stand firm in their Christian convictions or leave them behind. And it’s not what most of us might expect.

Join a campus ministry group? A Bible study? Important though those things are, the most decisive factor is whether students had a safe place to work through their doubts and questions before leaving home…

Instead of addressing teens’ questions, most church youth groups focus on fun and food. The goal seems to be to create emotional attachment using loud music, silly skits, slapstick games — and pizza. But the force of sheer emotional experience will not equip teens to address the ideas they will encounter when they leave home and face the world on their own. – Nancy Pearcey (via Tim Challis)

Animal Intent

I hated these ponies for the part they played in my father’s death but now I realized the notion was fanciful, that it was wrong to charge these pretty beasts who knew neither good nor evil but only innocence. I say that of these ponies. I have know some horses and a good many more pigs who I believe harbored evil intent in their hearts. I will go further and say all cats are wicked, though often useful. Who has not seen Satan in their sly faces? Some preachers will say, well, that is superstitious “claptrap.” My answer is this: Preacher, go to your Bible and read Luke 8:26-33 – Charles Portis, True Grit, page 29

What’s the Frequency, Kenneth?

I know full well that finding secret codes is a favorite pastime for obsessives, conspiracy-theorists, charlatans with a eye to the main chance, et hoc genus omne [and everything of this kind]; it has been unwittingly satirized in Dan Brown’s blockbusting thriller, The Da Vinci Code. Occasionally, however, a sober critic, paying close attention to a text, will make an interpretive discovery and produce a bona fide ‘code breaking’ work. – Michael Ward, Planet Narnia

When Restraint Seems Like A Virtue

I haven’t said much about Julian Assange yet because, unlike the media, I think we have to wait and see. The question to me is whether Assange is Bruce Wayne or Joker from The Dark Knight. Is he a hero fighting a corrupt system on behalf of the common man, or is he simply an anarchist who wants to watch it all burn?

What we know so far is that he is the founder and final editor at Wikileaks. He has published a bunch of secret American documents. Now he’s wanted in Sweden for unrelated charges. Paypal, Mastercard and Visa have blocked the ability for people to donate money for his support and that resulted in a cyberattack against them by Assange’s supporters.

So how do we decide if he’s a good guy or a bad guy? For one thing he’s trying to free information. The government can make things secret for convenience reasons as well as for national security reasons. It is possible that Assange is simply airing the dirty laundry that world governments would rather keep in the laundry basket. But none of what he’s released so far is of any benefit to the common man. There are embarrassing missives between diplomats. So what? So our representative in country X thinks the leader is a ninny. That doesn’t really help the man on the street.

However, Assange claims to have a doomsday weapon that will reveal all kinds of secrets about the financial industry should he be sent to prison. Okay, maybe that could help the common man but it could also ruin him by crashing the institutes to which his life savings are entrusted. And there’s the rub. If he just wanted to collapse the entire Western system, that doomsday weapon (if it is real) could have done it. He has shown restraint. He’s vetted the information he’s posted in order to protect people. At least the ones he’s decided deserve protection. I think he’s capable of doing much more than he has done. He started his “career” as a hacker and has, as they say, madd skillz. Restraint sounds like a virtue, but Joker restrained his powers in order to do the maximum amount of damage at the right time too.

Bottom line is that Assange hasn’t done anything remarkable yet. The media is ready to either vilify him or make him a saint. That’s largely because the outlets have a political philosophy and are under pressure to produce reports so they land on one side or the other. It is too early to call on this one. So let’s all show some restraint, shall we?

Stuttering, Lisping, Mumbling God’s Word

I preached a few Sundays ago on the Annunciation. After I preached, I didn’t feel I did a very good job. The subject matter of the Second Person of the Trinity taking on a human nature just was overwhelming to me. I had too many ideas running round my head and felt like I was trying to herd field mice getting them in order. Then, don’t you know, one of the best preachers I know (no, not John Piper) came walking in before the service with his family. I was nervous and then settled but the next day I was depressed. I just didn’t feel I’d captured the majesty of what Gabriel was talking about.

But even though I may stutter and lisp and mumble when I preach God’s word, the Holy Spirit never does when he applies it. Since then I’ve heard a number of people refer to what I said in the sermon. That, my friends, is the greatest compliment a preacher can get. At least for me, there is so much self-doubt that when I am told what a great sermon it was, I always have a nagging suspicion that the compliment is not sincere. But when I hear people refer to things I talked about in the sermon, even if they don’t mention me, especially if they don’t mention me, then I know that the Spirit blessed His word and sunk it into the hearts of his people. That cannot be faked and I’m happiest when they forget where they learned it. That protects me from vanity and them from fixating on the teacher over the message.