Letter From America (About the End of the World)

Our Climate-Change Cathedral

The science of global warming is weak, but the idea is strong.

By  Andrew Stuttaford 

National Review Online

July 27, 2013 1:00 AM

A 19th-century Scottish journalist, songwriter, and poet is not an obvious guide to a 21st-century intellectual and political phenomenon, but when it comes to making sense of climate-change zealotry, there are worse choices than Charles Mackay (1812–89), the author of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (1841), an acerbic, often drily amusing study of the frenzies — from witch mania to the tulip bubble — that regularly possess our supposedly sophisticated species.

“In reading the history of nations,” wrote Mackay, “we find that whole communities suddenly fix their minds upon one object, and go mad in its pursuit; that millions of people become simultaneously impressed with one delusion and run after it.” One recurrent fantasy, he jeered, was that the last trumpet is ready to sound: “An epidemic terror of the end of the world has several times spread.”

Calvin's Daily Devotional

Daily Devotional

July 31

Thine Is My Heart: Devotional Readings from the Writings of John Calvin

by John Calvin (compiled by John H. Kromminga)
Republished from the OPC Website

Bible Text:
Is not thy wickedness great? and thine iniquities infinite? —Job 22:5

Devotional:
We are shown here that men must not confess their sins before God lightly, and as it were out of mere form, as they do when they say, "Oh, I do not deny that there are some faults in me." No, we must not do this; but we must make the burden so heavy that we can no longer bear it. For this is how God will be glorified; not when men say that they have some small infirmities and imperfections in them; but when with David they speak of the greatness of their sins and the multitude of their iniquities.

And as Daniel—who was as an angel compared with other men—speaks in his confession; "I have confessed my sins and the sins of my people." He does not speak of some small fault, but he says, "Our sins are great and enormous, O Lord." And so let us confess what we are, and that in such a way that God may be truly glorified.

And what hope may we have that God will receive us, and be merciful and favorably inclined toward us, if we are not overwhelmed with the sins which we have committed? Our Lord Jesus Christ does not say to us, "Come unto me, all ye that say, I am a sinner, there are infirmities in me."

No, he says, "All ye that are laden and weary, whose shoulders stoop under the weight of your sins." These are they that are called by Jesus Christ, to the end that they may find mercy in him; and not such as mock at God and make a light confession, without ever being touched in their hearts. —Sermons

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John Calvin was the premier theologian of the Reformation, but also a pious and godly Christian pastor who endeavored throughout his life to point men and women to Christ. We are grateful to Reformation Heritage Books for permission to use John Calvin's Thine Is My Heart as our daily devotional for 2013 on the OPC Web site. You can currently obtain a printed copy of that book from Reformation Heritage Books.

Higher Duties

The Christian, Patriotism, and Idolatry

Can a Christian indulge in patriotism?  We have argued in the past that any word with "ism" attached to the end is likely to be an idol in disguise.  The "ism" makes the noun being thus qualified ultimate.  And ultimacy belongs to God alone.  Patriotism, then, would then risk making the love of country an ultimate loyalty. 

The dictionary defines patriotism as "devoted love, support, and defense of one's country". All of which is fair enough.  Provided that "devoted" is within severe limits.  One can love one's country as one loves a piece of favourite music or art.  One can love the "gentle rolling hills" or other natural beauties.  One can love one's particular national cuisine.  None of this need involve idolatry.  But if we used a neology--say, "cuisinism" to such a love, the implied meaning would be of an ultimate loyalty to a particular local cuisine.  

Such a person--one afflicted with cuisinism--would risk being dismissed as prejudiced, opinionated, parochial, even a culinary bigot.  In the same way, the word "patriotism" risks making an idol of one's country.  For a Christian, this is never, ever acceptable.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From America

In the Sunlight of Our Deliverance

Posted on Friday, July 26, 2013 

By Douglas Wilson 

One of things we should notice about the drive for “social justice” is that the theory of the thing contains a soteriological contradiction right at the heart of it.

This is what I mean.  In true evangelism, the unbeliever is being called from a state of condemnation into a state of no condemnation. This is why the message that accomplishes this is unambiguously good news — Jesus was crucified and is risen, and the sinner who believes in Him is set free. This is a true evangel.

But in the world of social justice, what is the task? What is the mission? It is precisely the reverse of this. It is to get the weak and oppressed from a condition where God identifies with them into a state where they (allegedly) come under His judgment. Advocates of missional social justice identify with the poor and they sneer at middle class values. But this is like a lifeguard identifying with the drowning and sneering at the beach.

Calvin's Daily Devotional

Daily Devotional

July 30

Thine Is My Heart: Devotional Readings from the Writings of John Calvin

by John Calvin (compiled by John H. Kromminga)
Republished from the OPC Website

Bible Text:
Then came the word of the Lord to Isaiah, saying, —Isaiah 38:4, 5


Devotional:
"Then came the word of Jehovah." What interval of time elapsed between the Prophet's departure and return we know not, but it is certain that the glad tidings of life were not brought until, after long and severe struggles, he perceived that he was utterly ruined; for it was a severe trial of faith that he should be kept plunged in darkness by the hiding of God's face.

We have said that, while the doctrine of consolation was taken away, still the faith of the good king was not extinguished so as not to emit some sparks, because, by the secret influence of the Spirit, "groans that could not be uttered" (Rom. 8:26) arose to God out of the gulf of sorrow.

Hence also we conclude that, while "in the day of trouble" (Psalm 50:15) God heareth believers, yet the favor of God does not all at once shine on them, but is purposely delayed till they are sincerely humbled.
And if a king so eminent in piety needed almost to suffer anguish, that he might be more powerfully excited to seek the favor of God, and, being almost wasted by grief, might groan from hell to God; let us not wonder if he sometimes permits us for a time to be agitated by fears and perplexities, and delays longer to bestow consolation in answer to our prayers. —Commentaries

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John Calvin was the premier theologian of the Reformation, but also a pious and godly Christian pastor who endeavored throughout his life to point men and women to Christ. We are grateful to Reformation Heritage Books for permission to use John Calvin's Thine Is My Heart as our daily devotional for 2013 on the OPC Web site. You can currently obtain a printed copy of that book from Reformation Heritage Books.

Militant Idolatry

Putting to the Question

There is ordinary idolatry, and then there is militant idolatry.  Ordinary, garden variety idolatry is everywhere.  People conceive of a deity and give it their loyalty and devotion and obeisance.  But militant idolatry is a step up the scale.  Militant idolatry is where a devotee says, "My god must meet certain requirements that are important to me, or I will not worship him."  Either the idol first bows down to me, or I will not bow down to it.

Militant idolatry exposes the essence of all idolatry--which is self-worship.

Former archbishop Desmond Tutu has just come out of the closet, exposing himself to be a militant idolater.  Sad really, but there it is.  Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.  And Desmond has spoken.

Voice From the Grave

Tolkien In His Own Words

Justin Taylor has kindly put together a collection of interviews and interactions with J R R Tolkien--all open source.

The collection entails:

First broadcast on BBC 2 on March 30, 1968: “John Izzard meets with JRR Tolkien at his home, walking with him through the Oxford locations that he loves while hearing the author’s own views about his wildly successful high-fantasy novels. Tolkien shares his love of nature and beer and his admiration for ‘trenchermen’ in this genial and affectionate programme. The brief interviews with Oxford students that are dotted throughout reveal the full range of opinions elicited by ‘The Lord of the Rings’, from wild enthusiasm to mild contempt”:

The protestations and pseudo-critiques from self-styled Marxist students are hilariously hide-bound.  Tolkien's quotation of Simone de Beauvoir on death at the end is strikingly memorable. 

Then follows:

Calvin's Daily Devotional

Daily Devotional

July 29

Thine Is My Heart: Devotional Readings from the Writings of John Calvin

by John Calvin (compiled by John H. Kromminga)
Republished from the OPC website.

Bible Text:
Owe no man any thing, but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law. —Romans 13:8

Devotional:
The third use of the law, which is the principal one, and which is more nearly connected with the proper end of it, relates to the faithful, in whose hearts the Spirit of God already lives and reigns. For although the law is inscribed and engraven on their hearts by the finger of God—that is, although they are so excited and animated in the direction of the Spirit that they desire to obey God—yet they derive a twofold advantage from the law.

For they find it an excellent instrument to give them, from day to day, a better and more certain understanding of the Divine will to which they aspire, and to confirm them in the knowledge of it. As, though a servant be already influenced by the strongest desire of gaining the approbation of his master, yet it is necessary for him carefully to inquire and observe the orders of his master, in order to conform to them.

A Novelist Speaks of Cultural Prejudice

Mere Anarchy

Larry Waiwode used to be a celebrated novelist and literary figure in the US.  Now, not so much.  By the time he was writing and published his third novel (Poppa John) his Christian faith became more apparent.  Suddenly, he was not so attractive to critics and the literati.  In a later piece, Acts, he explains how he came to embrace the Lord Jesus Christ:

For me, a writer aware of how much more complex each book becomes with each sentence added, it was the clarity of the patterns and structure in Scripture and their ability to intermesh with one another through as many levels as I could imagine that convinced me that the Bible couldn't be the creation of a man or any number of men, and was certainly not the product of separate men divided by centuries, but was of another world: supernatural.  I was forced to admit under no pressure but the pressure of the text itself that it could be only what it claimed it was, the Word of God. [Cited by the author in the essay entitled, "Using Words, a Continual Spiritual Exercise," Words for Readers and Writers: Spirit Pooled Dialogues, (Wheaton, Ill: Crossway, 2013),  p.51].

In the same essay, "Using Words . . ." he explains that he never had to make a convoluted leap of faith.  Such an idea belongs to the irrational school of philosophy (Kant, Kierkegaard).  Rather, "[t]he Word chooses and calls its listeners--'Those with ears to hear, let them hear!' . . . ."  Clearly, the Word called Waiwode, and its call could not be gainsaid.

Waiwode goes on to charge the West with a burgeoning anti-Christianism:

Douglas Wilson's Letter From America

Same Sex Mirage

Posted on Wednesday, July 24, 2013  

By Douglas Wilson 

A number of writers, me included, have been warning that the slopes really are slippery, and that the admission of something as radical as same sex mirage into any part of our political life is to introduce it everywhere. And yet, it has been surprising to see how fast the whole thing is moving. It appears that the incline of the slippery slopes has steepened, and we are now picking up a goodish bit of speed. Within weeks of the Supreme Court debacle on SSM, a federal judge has now ordered Ohio to recognize a homosexual mirage contracted in Maryland.

This shows that the federalist “live and let live” approach is a tactical sham. It is clearly all or nothing — all states recognizing same sex mirage as a basic civil rights issue, or none of them doing so. All right then, none it is.

What homosexual activists have been doing is insist that we redefine marriage, while pretending that all they are doing is expanding the opportunities for marriage to additional others.

Tragi-comedic

Dyspepsia Rather Than Belly-Laughs

If one were seeking to characterise Kevin Rudd, Australia's boomerang prime minister, one could go no further than the Texan jibe "Big hat, no cattle".  One Rudd's failings which reportedly drove his staff and his former colleagues to drink during his first manifestation as Australian Prime Minister was his penchant for making spur of the moment decisions.  Not just minor decisions, mind you, but big, chunky policy pronouncements, with little or no consultation or agreement. 

It took Rudd all of a week in his role reprisal as Aussie PM to deliver another classic example of hubristic Ruddian chaos.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From America

Mammon Is Like Gravity

Posted on Tuesday, July 23, 2013  

By Douglas Wilson 

 

Many years ago, somewhere in the seventies, I was working for a Christian bookstore called Crossroads. One day we were visited by a young and zealous member of a group called the Children of God, and I vividly remember our conversation on the sidewalk outside the store. He asked if I had a job, a car, etc. I said that I did. He told me that I was not a real Christian because Jesus said that whoever did not give up absolutely everything could not be His disciple (Luke 14:33).

Instead of arguing the exegesis with him, I reached over and tugged on his sweater (for he was clothed, contrary to what he had just said Jesus required), and asked, “Who’s is this?” He was startled, not expecting any questions of that nature. I asked again. “Who does this belong to?” He said nothing because he didn’t know what to say, and so I helped him out. I said, “This belongs to Jesus, right? And He is letting your borrow it? Is that how it works?” He was greatly relieved, and said yes, he was borrowing it. I said that was how it was with my job and my car. I was borrowing them from Jesus.

I also remember that at one point in the conversation, he asked if we could give him a Bible. Crossroads was a Christian bookstore literature ministry, so I said sure thing. I went inside, got one for him, and brought it back out. But the Bible I brought him wasn’t good enough. He asked if he could have a nice one, you know, leather-bound? And I don’t think I have trusted people who glibly cite Luke 14:33 ever since.

* * *

For you see, they are never (in my experience) citing that passage in order to explain why they have just given everything away to the poor. They are always citing it because they need for you to do something. Leather would be nice.

Calvin's Daily Devotional

Daily Devotional

July 26

Thine Is My Heart: Devotional Readings from the Writings of John Calvin

by John Calvin (compiled by John H. Kromminga)
Republished from the OPC Website

Bible Text:
For they are impudent children and stiffhearted. I do send thee unto them; and thou shalt say unto them, Thus saith the Lord God. And they, whether they will hear, or whether they will forbear, (for they are a rebellious house,) yet shall know that there hath been a prophet among them. —Ezekiel 2:4, 5


Devotional:
We may learn from this place, that although the impious furiously endeavor to reject the doctrine of God, yet they obtain no other end than the more complete manifestation of their own wickedness. Hence also we may learn that God's doctrine is precious to himself, and that he cannot bear us to despise it.

The wicked then can never escape punishment when they treat with contempt the divine teaching, for it is as if they trampled upon inestimable treasure.

Seeing Things Clearly

No Pleasure But Meanness

In Flannery O'Connor's short story, A Good Man Is Hard to Find a murderous thug recites some sound theology.  Misfit (the thug's name) has ordered the shooting of a family of parents and two children; he is about to murder the grandmother.  The acts are senseless and nihilistic.

Before Misfit shoots the grandmother, he reflects on the Christ.

"Jesus was the only One that ever raised the dead, and He shouldn't have done it.  He thrown everything off balance.  If he did what He said, then it's nothing for you to do but thow away everything and follow Him, and if He didn't, then it's nothing for you to do but enjoy the few minutes you got left the best way you can--by killing somebody or burning down his house or doing some other meanness to him.  No pleasure but meanness," he said and his voice had become almost a snarl. [Flannery O'Connor, Collected Works (New York: The Library of America, 1988), p.152.]

There are only two alternatives: either Jesus did rise from the dead and all must follow him, or He did not in which case living hellishly all one's few days is the only "meaningful" option.

Letter From America (About Detroit)

The Downfall of Detroit

It took only six decades of “progressive” policies to bring a great city to its knees.

By Mark Steyn

July 19, 2013 6:15 PM

National Review Online

 

 By the time Detroit declared bankruptcy, Americans were so inured to the throbbing dirge of Motown’s Greatest Hits — 40 percent of its streetlamps don’t work; 210 of its 317 public parks have been permanently closed; it takes an hour for police to respond to a 9-1-1 call; only a third of its ambulances are driveable; one-third of the city has been abandoned; the local realtor offers houses on sale for a buck and still finds no takers; etc., etc. — Americans were so inured that the formal confirmation of a great city’s downfall was greeted with little more than a fatalistic shrug.

But it shouldn’t be. To achieve this level of devastation, you usually have to be invaded by a foreign power.

Calvin's Daily Devotional

Daily Devotional

July 25

Thine Is My Heart: Devotional Readings from the Writings of John Calvin

by John Calvin (compiled by John H. Kromminga)
Reproduced from the OPC Website

Bible Text:
These words spake Jesus, and lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee: —John 17:1

Devotional:
"And lifted up his eyes to heaven." Yet if we desire actually to imitate Christ, we must take care that outward gestures do not express more than is in our mind, but that the inward feelings shall direct the eyes, the hands, the tongue, and everything about us. We are told, indeed, that the publican, with downcast eyes, prayed aright to God (Luke 18:13) but that is not inconsistent with what has now been stated; for, though he was confused and humbled on account of his sins, still this self-abasement did not prevent him from seeking pardon with full confidence.

But it was proper that Christ should pray in a different manner, for he had nothing about him of which he ought to be ashamed; and it is certain that David himself prayed sometimes in one attitude and sometimes in another, according to the circumstances in which he was placed. —Commentaries

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John Calvin was the premier theologian of the Reformation, but also a pious and godly Christian pastor who endeavored throughout his life to point men and women to Christ. We are grateful to Reformation Heritage Books for permission to use John Calvin's Thine Is My Heart as our daily devotional for 2013 on the OPC Web site. You can currently obtain a printed copy of that book from Reformation Heritage Books.

The Ugly Scientist

Fraud and Deception

Science trades under the mantle of objective, tested, authenticated conclusions.  It turns out, however, that in all  scientific endeavour there is a strong dose of interpretation and subjectivity.  This is not just the case for science; it is true of all human actions.

Larry Woiwode illustrates the principle:

No fact exists without an interpretation of it, as a philosopher by the name of Cornelius Van Til once said.  What he meant is if I say, "The Civil War", anybody who hears those words is stormed by sets of facts, some merely by naming it as I have.  If you view it as a war of northern aggression, you have facts to support that.  If another sees it as a conflict that installed commercial manufacture over agrarian interests, facts might well support that view.  If I say its genesis was slavery, I might well be closer to the truth, but I would have to summon my series of facts to support that. . . .

Take a step farther back.  If you believe trees are a result of random happenstance or believe they were ordained to look as they do, part of a design fulfilled, then your view of the tree and facts about it will differ, according to your ideology.  [Larry Woiwode, Words for  Readers and Writers (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 2013), p. 33f.]

Modern science is presently dominated by a perverse ideology: scientism--which holds that the only reality, the only thing which exists, is matter.   It denies the subjective, ideological construction of all scientific endeavour.  It claims pure, brute objectivity. 

As a result, it perversely drives science into being a more ideologically bound and subjectively dominated enterprise.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From America

A Drunk Trying to Make the Next Lamp Post

Posted on Friday, July 19, 2013  

by Douglas Wilson 

The old Bobby Bare song, Detroit City, has a refrain that centered on the desire to “go home.” Unfortunately, everywhere else is turning into Detroit City. Pretty soon there will be no home to go to.
Detroit’s bankruptcy, announced yesterday, gives us an opportunity to go over a few fiscal realities, always a good idea if you are careening toward a whole series of fiscal reality checks.

The first thing we must grasp is that we are dealing with levels of municipal debt, state-level debt, and federal debt, that mean a necessary default is coming. If our problems are left untended, we will default. If we wake up in time, and address the pending problem, we will default. This is another way of saying that every genuine solution to the problems created by our fiscal irresponsibility will be a form of default. The only solutions now are defaulting solutions.

The only thing we don’t know is what kind of default it will be. The only thing we don’t know is who the unlucky victim of our defaulting will be.

Government does not make wealth.

Calvin's Daily Devotional

Daily Devotional

July 24

Thine Is My Heart: Devotional Readings from the Writings of John Calvin

by John Calvin (compiled by John H. Kromminga)
Republished from the OPC Website

Bible Text:
Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness. —Isaiah 41:10

Devotional:
"For I am with thee." This is a solid foundation of confidence, and if it be fixed in our minds, we shall be able to stand firm and unshaken against temptations of every kind. In like manner, when we think that God is absent, or doubt whether or not he will be willing to assist us, we are agitated by fear, and tossed about amidst many storms of distrust. But if we stand firm on this foundation, we shall not be overwhelmed by any assaults or tempests.

And yet the Prophet does not mean that believers stand so boldly as to be altogether free and void of fear; but though they are distressed in mind, and in various ways are tempted to distrust, they resist with such steadfastness as to secure the victory. By nature we are timid and full of distrust, but we must correct that vice by this reflection, "God is present with us, and takes care of our salvation." —Commentaries

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John Calvin was the premier theologian of the Reformation, but also a pious and godly Christian pastor who endeavored throughout his life to point men and women to Christ. We are grateful to Reformation Heritage Books for permission to use John Calvin's Thine Is My Heart as our daily devotional for 2013 on the OPC Web site. You can currently obtain a printed copy of that book from Reformation Heritage Books.

Government Spying Bill

Much Better

The NZ Government has put out a press release documenting amendments to its new spying bill.  These were agreed to as a result of consultation with the government's minority party (ACT) and with Peter Dunne (Independent).  The Bill now has enough votes to pass the House.  The Prime Minister has said that he still prefers a wider political consensus, and is continuing talks with the NZ First party. 

Have the amendments made a difference?  We believe so.  In fact, we are heaving a sigh of relief.  Here they are:

A Review Worth Waiting For

The heroic absurdity of Dan Brown

The less his talent, the more amazing his achievement 

by Clive James 
July 11, 2013
Reproduced in part, from Prospect 

As a believer in the enjoyably awful, I would recommend this book wholeheartedly if I could. But it is mainly just awful. Nevertheless it is still almost worth reading. In the publishing world they have a term, “pull line,” which means the few words of apparent praise that you can sometimes pull out of a review however hostile. Let me supply that pull line straight away, ready furnished with quotation marks: “The author of The Da Vinci Code has done it again.”

Once again, that is, he makes you want to turn the pages even though every page you turn demonstrates abundantly his complete lack of talent as a writer.

Calvin's Daily Devotional

Daily Devotional

July 23

Thine Is My Heart: Devotional Readings from the Writings of John Calvin

by John Calvin (compiled by John H. Kromminga)
Republished from the OPC Website

Bible Text:
Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life, whereunto thou art also called, and hast professed a good profession before many witnesses. —I Timothy 6:12

Devotional:
We say that faith is never without fighting. And why so? For if a man dispose himself to do well, and to submit himself to God, the devil will cast many blocks in his way to turn him aside; the world is full of deceits, we are not able to set one foot forwards, but we shall meet with a shrew; we walk here among thorns, they that should help us forward draw us back; for the devil uses their malice that live with us, to fight against us.

And when any man does us harm, he gives us occasion to answer him in kind; or else we become disheartened, we are angry, we are so spoiled that the wool is eaten from our backs, when we walk simply and seek nothing but to do our duty.

Reality Checks

Taking the Hit

Detroit has filed for bankruptcy.  To those who have followed such things it will come as no surprise.  It is not the first and it will not be the last--but it is notable, just the same.  It is the biggest US city ever so to file.  According to The Guardian,

The filing sets a new record for municipal bankruptcies and dwarfs the previous record filings by Jefferson County, Alabama, and Stockton, California. No other city of Detroit's size has ever gone bust.

The causes of this final act are strikingly obvious.  But because the end has come after a lingering terminal decline folks assumed that because it did not happen quickly, it would never happen.  The bigger fools of the next generation would always be there to take the accumulated burdens of their predecessors.  What was the problem?  Municipal overspending led to growing debt which the city can no longer service, nor repay.  It was passed on to bigger fools.  It is like every bankruptcy.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From America

On Spiraling into Chaos

Posted on Tuesday, July 16, 2013  

by Douglas Wilson

The trial of George Zimmerman is now over, and there are perhaps a few things we can learn from the whole sorry mess. Perhaps.

In the aftermath of this trial, we clearly have a highly polarized society. On the one hand, we have those who believe that a young and unarmed black man was targeted and killed simply because of his race, and who believe the “not guilty” verdict is therefore a travesty. On the other hand, we have those who believe that he was a young black man up to no good, and that he was the aggressor in his fatal encounter with Zimmerman. They were relieved at the verdict.

The reason we even have trials is so that we have a ordered substitute for what such polarized societies would do in the absence of trials. What they would do is fight, riot and kill. In advanced cases of this pathology, they go to war over such things. The function of trials is to dampen the ardor of factions, crowds, and lynch mobs, not to inflame them.

Calvin's Daily Devotional

Daily Devotional

July 22

Thine Is My Heart: Devotional Readings from the Writings of John Calvin

by John Calvin (compiled by John H. Kromminga)
Republished from the OPC Website

Bible Text:
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen. —Matthew 6:13

Devotional:
Because our obedience to God is not without continual warfare, and severe and arduous conflicts, we here pray for arms and assistance to enable us to gain the victory. Now the forms of temptations are many and various. For the corrupt conceptions of the mind, provoking us to transgressions of the law, whether suggested by our own lust or excited by the devil, are temptations; and things not evil in themselves, nevertheless become temptations through the subtlety of the devil, when they are obtruded on our eyes in such a manner that their intervention occasions our seduction or declension from God.

And these temptations are either from prosperous or from adverse events.

Urbane or Prophetic

Paul at Athens

When Christians engage in the public square--that is, in any public debate, whether in the local community or the parliament--some counsel we must become as secular as everyone else.  We must win over the opposition using their frames of  reference.  We must appeal to natural law, reason, and common sense.  We must check in our Christian guns before riding into town to the OK Corral. 

Some claim biblical and apostolic warrant for such an approach.  They argue from Acts 17 where Paul was in Athens, debating with Greeks in the agora, that this is precisely what the Apostle himself did.  Consider the following:

What can we glean from this encounter?  St. Paul, without compromising his message, tailored it to his audience.  He spoke in Hellenistic rather than Judaic terms, as a philosopher more than as a Christian theologian, in a manner that engaged them rather than repelled them.  He relied on common grace rather than on the knowledge and acceptance of Christian doctrine.  "I have become all things to all men," he says in the book of Corinthians, "So that by all possible means I might save some."   [Michael Gerson, Peter Wehner, City of Man: Religion and Politics in a New Era (Chicago: Moody Press, 2010) p. 117.]

This is a simplistic, unsatisfactory reading of the text.  It is not an uncommon one, however.   A careful reading will quickly show the error of Gerson's and Wehner's view.

Basics of Islam

Islam 101: 6 Beliefs, 5 Practices, 2 Types, 4 Resources

Justin Taylor
July 15, 2013

Drawn from this post and this podcast from Zane Pratt.

Six Beliefs of Islam
“Islamic theology could be summarized as belief in [1] one God, [2] his prophets, [3] his books, [4] his angels, [5] his decrees, and [6] the final judgment. Islam teaches that humans are born spiritually neutral, perfectly capable of obeying God’s requirements completely, and that they remain this way even after they’ve personally sinned. The need of humanity, therefore, is not salvation but instruction; hence Islam has prophets, but no savior.”

Five Pillars of Islam
“These are composed of

Calvin's Daily Devotional

Daily Devotional

July 20

Thine Is My Heart: Devotional Readings from the Writings of John Calvin

by John Calvin (compiled by John H. Kromminga)
Republished from the OPC Website


Bible Text:
Rivers of waters run down mine eyes, because they keep not thy law. —Psalm 119:136

Devotional:
Wherever the Spirit of God reigns, he excites this ardent zeal, which burns the hearts of the godly when they see the commandment of the Most High accounted as a thing of nought. It is not enough that each of us endeavor to please God. We must also desire that his law may be held in estimation by all men. In this way holy Lot, as the Apostle Peter testifies, vexed his soul when he beheld Sodom a sink of all kinds of wickedness.

Pragmatism Under Christian Veneer

Insult to Injury

In the Wild West the legend has it that tough sheriffs demanded folk check in their guns before going into town.  There are some who argue that Christians should do the same when they come into that great metropolis called the "Public Square".  This would seem to be a view shared by two Christians, Michael Gerson and Peter Wehner who have argued a case for Christian involvement in politics.

Here is the heart of their argument:

Books

Book of the Month/July

Posted on Monday, July 1, 2013  

by Douglas Wilson


I have read and enjoyed and profited from a number of Iain Murray’s other books, and in the realm of enjoyment and edification, this book was no different. But it was very different from his other books in several other respects.

The book-of-the-month this time around is The Undercover Revolution, and it is about how infidel novelists wrecked Great Britain. He gives a detailed treatment of two writers, Robert Louis Stevenson and Thomas Hardy, then moves on to show how a swarm of writers transformed British culture, and concludes with a fine statement of the basic Christian gospel.

Calvin's Daily Devotional

Daily Devotional

July 19

Thine Is My Heart: Devotional Readings from the Writings of John Calvin

by John Calvin (compiled by John H. Kromminga)
Republished from the OPC Website

Bible Text:
I speak not of you all: I know whom I have chosen: but that the scripture may be fulfilled, He that eateth bread with me hath lifted up his heel against me. —John 13:18

Devotional:
"I know whom I have chosen." This very circumstance, that they will persevere, he ascribes to their election; for the virtue of men, being frail, would tremble at every' breeze, and would be laid down by the feeblest stroke, if the Lord did not uphold it by his hand. But as he governs those whom he has elected, all the engines which Satan can employ will not prevent them from persevering to the end with unshaken firmness.

And not only does he ascribe to election their perseverance, but likewise the commencement of their piety. Whence does it arise that one man, rather than another, devotes himself to the word of God? It is because he was elected. Again, whence does it arise that this man makes progress, and continues to lead a good and holy life, but because the purpose of God is unchangeable, to complete the work which was begun by his hand?

The Blessings of Messy Government

Zealots and Revolutionaries

The separation of powers is central to limited government, and limited government is axiomatic for freedom.  The separation of powers divides the key functions of government, effectively balancing one off against the other.  A free press is often regarded as an informal, separate branch of  government (the "fourth estate") in that it freely investigates and scrutinises all branches and powers of government, and informs the people of what those institutions of power, authority, and control are conspiring to do.

The separation of powers makes for messy government at times--well, actually, most of the time.  It means that things can't get done--which is to say that the wills of the separated powers of government are often thwarted.  Either one branch of government is set against another, bringing stalemate, or the end outcome can be quite different from what some governmental powers intended.  Messiness is the price of freedom. 

But to the modern mind, government ineffectualness is an indicator of weakness.

Books

How the West Really Lost God 

An Interview with Mary Eberstadt 

Justin Taylor 
July 10 2013

 Mary Eberstadt, Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, DC, is widely hailed as “one of the most acute and creative social observers of our time” (Francis Fukuyama). George Will has called her “intimidatingly intelligent,” and George Weigel says she is “our premier analyst of American cultural foibles and follies, with a keen eye for oddities that illuminate just how strange the country’s moral culture has become.”

In her latest book, How the West Really Lost God: A New Theory of Secularization,  she seeks to answer the question “How and why has Christianity really come to decline in important parts of the West?”  Her answer cuts against the conventional wisdom, but Jonathan V. Last argues “you cannot understand the real philosophical problems of the West without reading this book."

Mrs. Eberstadt was kind enough to answer a few questions about her argument and its implications.

What led you to write How the West Really Lost God: A New Theory of Secularization? Did it begin more as a hypothesis to be tested or a thesis to be proved?

Like many Americans who have visited Europe, I was struck repeatedly by how secular some of the Continent’s societies are and how empty their churches. So the first reason I started researching into theories of secularization was simple curiosity: What makes formerly Christian precincts lose God?

Calvin's Daily Devotional

Daily Devotional

July 18

Thine Is My Heart: Devotional Readings from the Writings of John Calvin

by John Calvin (compiled by John H. Kromminga)
Republished from the OPC Website

Bible Text:
Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight: that thou mightest be justified when thou speakest, and be clear when thou judgest —Psalm 51:4

Devotional:
"Against thee, thee only have I sinned." Though all the world should pardon him, he felt that God was the Judge with whom he had to do, that conscience hailed him to his bar, and that the voice of man could administer no relief to him, however much he might be disposed to forgive, or to excuse, or to flatter. His eyes and his whole soul were directed to God, regardless of what man might think or say concerning him.

To one who is thus overwhelmed with a sense of the dreadfulness of being obnoxious to God, there need be no other accuser. God is to him instead of a thousand.

Acting With Intent

Rolling Back the Curse of  Unemployment

In New Zealand we have begun a welfare "shakedown".  The approach is not Big Bang; rather the strategy has been to change a number of "at the margins" structures.  Taken together, however, they amount to a significant move in the right direction.

The core problem with state welfare is that it rapidly creates a psychological and material dependency.  Crudely put, getting paid for doing nothing makes more sense--it has greater marginal utility--than getting paid for blood, sweat, and tears (that is, work).  Why work when you can get paid for doing nothing?  People who enter that matrix are not dumb.  They are making a smart, rational choice from the perspective of economic utility. 

Of course most folk have a sense that the morality of the deal is not quite on the square.

Hot Potatoes

NYU Drops Chinese Human Rights Defender for Pro-life Stance

Posted on | July 10, 2013 

By Susan Yoshihara, Ph.D.
Turtle Bay and Beyond

The Daily Beast reports that supporters of the blind human rights lawyer Chen Guangcheng are accusing New York University (NYU) of booting the activist unfairly due to his pro-life and pro-family views. Those views along with criticism of the Chinese regime’s one-child per family policy and the US State Department, which only begrudgingly allowed him to escape China and work at NYU, may complicate the opening NYU’s new Shanghai campus.

The school thwarted his receiving a Congressional Gold Medal and even blocked his testimony before a Congressional hearing, they charge, through ever-present minders which the school has assigned to Chen since he escaped China.

Calvin's Daily Devotional

Daily Devotional

July 17

Thine Is My Heart: Devotional Readings from the Writings of John Calvin

by John Calvin (compiled by John H. Kromminga)
Republished from the OPC Website

Bible Text:
If I have lifted up my hand against the fatherless, when I saw my help in the gate: Then let mine arm fall from my shoulder blade, and mine arm be broken from the bone. —Job 31:21, 22

Devotional:
Let us bear well in mind that if the poor pass before us, and we see their need, and keep our purses shut, so as not to help them, it is a sure sign that we are like wild beasts, and that there is not one spark of pity in us.

We ourselves shall some day feel the same lack of mercy when God sends us afflictions; and although we shall be miserable, no man will be moved by it, but men shall look on us with disdain, and we shall be pushed aside and left utterly destitute. For it is the measure and wages which God is accustomed to give to all who are hardhearted toward their neighbors; according as it is said, that he who is merciless shall have judgment without mercy.

The Ugly Leftist

How Happy is That Man . . . 

Chris Trotter, arguably New Zealand's most prominent left wing columnist/theoretician, has recently written the following:

I once concluded an editorial in the NZ Political Review with the following observation:

“There is a paradox here. Conservative political culture, whose raison d’etre is the preservation of social inequality and economic exploitation (not to mention the institutional violence these things create and upon which ruling class power rests) tends to produce individuals of considerable personal charm and genuine liberality. While radical culture, which sets its face against the violence and injustice of entrenched privilege, all too often produces individuals who are aggressive, intolerant and utterly indifferent to the suffering which their relentless quest for justice causes.
“In short, the Right treats humanity like cattle and individual human-beings like princes, while the Left loves humanity with a passion but treats individuals like shit.”

Somewhere there must be an algorithm that delivers the best of both worlds.

I’m still looking.  (H/T Kiwiblog)

Apart from Chris's continuing quest for  the Holy Grail--for which we wish him bon chance--what are we to make of his observations?

More on That Spying Legislation

Immolating Trust

The NZ Prime Minister, John Key has got the matter of amendments to espionage legislation dead wrong.  Key's initial approach these legislative changes he was proposing is that they were relatively minor tweaks to remove vagueness and uncertainty of the current law.  That might have worked, and one could extend to him the benefit of the doubt on the matter. 

Then came Edward Snowden and the revelations about the US espionage establishment routinely spying on its own citizens via electronic media interception--contrary to law.  It has also transpired that it has been routinely spying on supposed allies.  New Zealand is linked into the US espionage establishment and works with it, in an operational arrangement called "Five Eyes".  Is New Zealand similarly involved?

Suddenly the issue has ratcheted up substantially.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From America

Eating the Bag Itself

Posted on Tuesday, July 9, 2013  

By Douglas Wilson 

This morning I sent out a link to what I called an edifying food rant, which you can read here. Having done so, I thought it might be good for me to summarize a few basic observations about food and the modern Christian. This is by no means exhaustive, but it should give the lay of the land. This is why this subject is of such major concern to me.

The basic food law for Christians is love. The basic food law for Christians is that of reducing friction to table fellowship. Adding diet barriers increases potential points of friction. Whenever diet barriers are necessary for medical reasons (as they often are), we should work with them, of course. But we should all recognize what our shared goal should be — free table fellowship, for all Christians, in every direction. Two Christians, with completely different brown bag lunches, should be able to laugh and talk together over those lunches, even though one bag is filled with food that is full of pure thoughts and the healthiest thing to do with the other lunch would be to eat the bag itself.

Whenever I write about food, which I am constrained pastorally to do, one of the standard dismissive responses that I see in comments and web chatter is that I am not educated on the subject, that I have not read the right studies, etc.

Calvin's Daily Devotional

Daily Devotional

July 16

Thine Is My Heart: Devotional Readings from the Writings of John Calvin

by John Calvin (compiled by John H. Kromminga)
Reprinted from the OPC Website

Bible Text:
And he saith unto them, Why are ye fearful, 0 ye of little faith? Then he arose, and rebuked the winds and the sea; and there was a great calm. —Matthew 8:26

Devotional:
To sustain these attacks, faith arms and defends itself with the word of the Lord. And when such a temptation as this assails us—that God is our enemy, because he is angry with us—faith, on the contrary, objects, that he is merciful even when he afflicts, because chastisement proceeds rather from love than from wrath.

When it is pressed with this thought, that God is an avenger of iniquities, it opposes the pardon provided for all offenses, whenever the sinner makes application to the Divine clemency. Thus the pious mind, however strangely it may be agitated and harassed, rises at length superior to all difficulties, nor ever suffers its confidence in the Divine mercy to be shaken. The various disputes which exercise and fatigue it terminate rather in the confirmation of that confidence.

Christian Political Engagement

Platitudes and Nullities

We have been reading a book on Christian involvement in politics, entitled City of Man.  [Michael Gerson, Peter Wehner, City of Man: Religion and Politics in a New Era (Chicago: Moody Press, 2010).]  Our advice would be to save money and by-pass this volume, notwithstanding positive blurbs from Richard J. Mouw, Mark A. Noll, and Ronald J. Sider.

Few books are universally inept or bad.  But this gets pretty close.  It has been written for the pop-Christian market in the US.  It has many broad-sweeping generalisations that irritate more than inform.  Gerson and Wehner are establishment figures in the United States.  (They served in the Bush Administration.  Gerson was a former policy adviser and chief speechwriter to George Bush.  Wehner was a former deputy assistant to the President and a director of the White House Office of Strategic Initiatives.)

Its core weakness is its trite question begging.

Letter From the UK (About Thought Police)

Christian arrested for calling homosexuality a 'sin' warns of 'real-life thought police'

A Christian street preacher has been arrested and questioned about his beliefs after saying that he thinks homosexuality is a “sin”.

By John Bingham,
Religious Affairs Editor
Daily Telegraph

11:45AM BST 04 Jul 2013

Tony Miano, 49, a former senior police officer from the US, was held for around six hours, had his fingerprints and DNA taken and was questioned about his faith, after delivering a sermon about “sexual immorality” on a London street.

Mr Miano, who served as a Deputy Sherriff in Los Angeles County, said his experience suggested that the term “thought police” had become a reality in the UK. He said he was amazed that it was now possible “in the country that produced the Magna Carta” for people to be arrested for what they say.

Mr Miano, who was provided with a solicitor by the Christian Legal Centre, was arrested under the controversial clause of the Public Order Act which bans “insulting” words or behaviour. The clause has recently been dropped by the House of Lords after a high-profile free speech campaign but the change has yet to come into force.

Calvin's Daily Devotional

Daily Devotional

July 15

Thine Is My Heart: Devotional Readings from the Writings of John Calvin

by John Calvin (compiled by John H. Kromminga)
Republished from the OPC Website

Bible Text:
He that overcometh, the same shall be clothed in white raiment; and I will not blot out his name out of the book of life, but I will confess his name before my Father, and before his angels. —Revelation 3:5

Devotional:
Therefore we have need to be armed and equipped at every point. But you need not be daunted, seeing that God has promised to equip his own according as they are assaulted by Satan. Only commit yourself to him, distrusting all in yourself, and hope that he only will suffice to sustain you. Further you have to take heed chiefly to two things; first, what the side is you defend, and next, what crown is promised to those who continue steadfast in the Gospel.

The service of God, the boundless grace which he has manifested to us in his Son, and all the glory of his kingdom, are such precious things, that no mortal man ought to think it hard to spend his life in fighting against the base corruptions, whose reign throughout the world tends to bring to naught those blessings.

And then, we know what will be the end of our warfare, and that he who has bought us will never suffer so dear a price as his blood to be lost, if we be but signed with it.

The West and Islam

See No Evil, Hear No Evil

We published recently on the small matter of gang rape in Egypt, here.  The occasion was evidence of a "see no evil, hear no evil" attitude on the part of the literary set in the UK.  This gets mighty close to a re-run of "Stalin is a good-guy" and "Soviet Communism is a breathtaking advance in human civilization" we saw in the previous century amongst the intellectual and literary sets in both the UK and the US. 

Never, ever let the facts get in the way of a good story--that is the blindness of the Left.  So ridden with (false) ideology they are wilfully self-blinded to what is patently obvious before their face.  Mark Steyn added his clear voice to the purblind lunacy of many on the Left on this matter.

Letter From America (About Egypt)

The Princess and the Brotherhood

For nine decades, Egypt has fled modernity.

By  Mark Steyn

July 5, 2013 7:00 PM

NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE           

www.nationalreview.com     

 

After midday prayers on Wednesday, just about the time the army were heading over to the presidential palace to evict Mohammed Morsi, the last king of Egypt was laying to rest his aunt, Princess Fawzia, who died in Alexandria on Tuesday at the grand old age of 91. She was born in 1921, a few months before the imperial civil servants of London and Paris invented the modern Middle East and the British protectorate of Egypt was upgraded to a kingdom, and seven years before Hassan al-Banna founded the Muslim Brotherhood.

A long life reminds us of how short history is: Princess Fawzia outlived the Egyptian monarchy, and the Nasserist fascism and pan-Arabism that succeeded it, and the doomed “United Arab Republic” of Egypt and Syria, and the fetid third-of-a-century “stability” of the Mubarak kleptocracy. And she came within 24 hours of outliving the Muslim Brotherhood’s brief, disastrous grip on power. In the days before her death, it was reported that 14 million people took to the streets of Egypt’s cities to protest against Morsi (and Obama and his ambassador Anne Paterson). If so, that’s more than the population of the entire country in the year Princess Fawzia was born. The Mubarak era alone saw the citizenry double from 40 million to 80 million, a majority of which live on less than two dollars a day. The old pharaoh was toppled by his own baby boom, most of whom went for Morsi. The new pharaoh was toppled by his own stupidity. The Muslim Brotherhood waited 85 years for their moment and then blew it in nothing flat.

Calvin's Daily Devotional

Daily Devotional

July 13

Thine Is My Heart: Devotional Readings from the Writings of John Calvin

by John Calvin (compiled by John H. Kromminga)
Republished from the OPC Website

Bible Text:
In that day, saith the Lord, I will smite every horse with astonishment, and his rider with madness: and I will open mine eyes upon the house of Judah, and will smite every horse of the people with blindness. —Zechariah 12:4

Devotional:
There is nothing better for us than to be gathered under the shadow of God's protection, however destitute of any fortress the Church may be, yea, were she to have innumerable enemies hostile to her, and to be without any strength to resist them.

Though then the Church were thus grievously tried, and be in the midst of many dangers, and exposed even to death, let us learn from this passage that those are miserable indeed who through fear or cowardice separate themselves from her,

The Owen Glenn Inquiry

A Bit of a Yawn

The Owen Glenn inquiry into family violence has taken some strange turns down a back country road.  Glenn is a wealthy philanthropist. He has more money than most New Zealanders' could shake a stick at--which in a country racked with covetousness and a deep sense of grievance is not well received by many.  More than a small minority believe there is only one thing Owen Glenn should do with his money: he should give it us me, myself, and I, since guys like Glenn are implicitly responsible for my hardship and my degradation.

Then there's another thing.  Glenn wanting to "invest" private money to find out the causes of family violence does not sit well because everyone agrees that preventing family violence is the government's responsibility.  If a private individual starts to pay for a public good, concerns surface that maybe we are seeing the first steps towards privatisation of government welfare by stealth.  Inconceivable!  Wouldn't it be better for Glenn just to donate the money to the government and let it get on with it?   The government could even pass special legislation, entitled "The Glenn Special Surtax Bill"--or something of that ilk. 

And then there's the "what's the point?" argument.

Cartoon of the Moment

 Taking Liberty

Calvin's Daily Devotional

Daily Devotional

July 12

Thine Is My Heart: Devotional Readings from the Writings of John Calvin

by John Calvin (compiled by John H. Kromminga)
Republished from the OPC Website

Bible Text:
Will he reprove thee for fear of thee? will he enter with thee into judgment? —Job 22:4

Devotional:
It is true that men make great noise when they conspire together. And especially if kings and princes conspire together against the living God, and the people also agree with them, they make much ado. And yet all this takes place here beneath, and they are like grasshoppers. Grasshoppers have such long legs that they can leap; but they must fall down again after a while. So then they may make a great stir here, but can they leap above the clouds? Certainly not.

However he that dwells in the high places will laugh them to scorn.

Becoming Blonde

The Swedenising of Egypt

The Guardian has reviewed a brouhaha that has erupted over some non-PC remarks by novelist, Joyce Carol Oates.  Apparently that particular curmudgeon had the temerity to suggest that there was a causal connection between Islam and violence against women.  Many, apparently, were outraged at the very idea.

Here are the remarks of Oates, as reported in the Guardian:

Author Joyce Carol Oates has sparked a social media ruckus with a series of tweets linking rape culture to Islam, drawing a stream of responses from other writers and users of the site.  Oates is not the first high-profile writer to stumble into the political arena, but her choice of timing, topic and media were particularly incendiary.  Oates's 140-word political tweet-bombs began by remarking: "Something dispiriting about 'Brotherhood' political parties – wonder what it is."  And drove on with "Where 99.3% of women report having been sexually harassed & rape is epidemic – Egypt – natural to inquire: what's the predominant religion?"

This was a bridge too far for her fellow travellers.   One writer tweeted:

Writer Edward Champion (@drmabuse) replied "80 sexual assaults in one day, @joycecaroloates? Try 720 in one day in the US…"

. . . which amounts to a rather strange kind of moral equivalence.

Letter From America (About Felonies)

Commit any felonies lately?

A. Barton Hinkle bhinkle@timesdispatch.com

Posted: Wednesday, July 3, 2013 12:00 am
Updated: 12:13 am, Wed Jul 3, 2013.

Elizabeth Daly went to jail over a case of bottled water.

According to the Charlottesville Daily Progress, shortly after 10 p.m. April 11, the University of Virginia student bought ice cream, cookie dough and a carton of LaCroix sparkling water from the Harris Teeter grocery store at the popular Barracks Road Shopping Center. In the parking lot, a half-dozen men and a woman approached her car, flashing some kind of badges. One jumped on the hood. Another drew a gun. Others started trying to break the windows.

Daly understandably panicked. With her roommate in the passenger seat yelling “Go, go, go!” Daly drove off, hoping to reach the nearest police station. The women dialed 911. Then a vehicle with lights and sirens pulled them over, and the situation clarified: The people who had swarmed Daly’s vehicle were plainclothes agents of the Virginia Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control. The agents had thought the sparkling water was a 12-pack of beer.

Did the ABC’s enforcers apologize? Not in the slightest.

Calvin's Daily Devotional

Daily Devotional

July 11

Thine Is My Heart: Devotional Readings from the Writings of John Calvin

by John Calvin (compiled by John H. Kromminga)
Reprinted from the OPC Website

Bible Text:
He delighteth not in the strength of the horse: he taketh not pleasure in the legs of a man. —Psalm 147:10

Devotional:
"Not in the strength of the horse." After the Psalmist has shown that there is proof of the divine goodness in every part of the world, he takes particular notice that men have no strength but what is given them from above, and this he adds with the express purpose of checking the pride by which almost all men are inflamed, and which leads them to trust in their own strength.

The meaning of the passage is, that let man come in the preparation of his own strength, and with all the assistances that seem to him most prevalent, this will only issue in smoke and vanity; nay, that in arrogating the very least to himself, this will only be a hindrance in the way of the mercy of God, by which alone we stand.

The strength of the horse is mentioned to denote any kind of protection.

Progress

Fairness Ethic Has Its Good Points

The New Zealand government is starting to crack down on some beneficiaries who have their cake and want to eat it too.  The hapless left describes this as "beneficiary bashing".  But the measures are showing up as well supported by the electorate.  This is because New Zealanders don't like "unfairness".  It's a cultural value which has ill-served the nation of often, but at times it proves helpful. 

The first group being targeted by the government is student loan beneficiaries who refuse (or wilfully neglect) to repay their loans.  The worst offenders are those who have gone overseas for extended periods and have declined to repay their loans.  They have effectively skipped town.  The government announced recently that the worst offenders--the hardened recidivists--risk arrest when they return (even temporarily) to New Zealand.  This means they are effectively exiled from their home country. 

It is reported that this has prompted a flurry of activity on the part of some of the overseas negligent payers to start to make appropriate "arrangements" and commence repayments.  It is also reported that a majority of the electorate in New Zealand supports the move.

Letter From America (About the US Intelligence Community)

U.S. intelligence community is out of control

By David Rothkopf, Special to CNN

July 2, 2013 

CNN

Some did it for the money, some did it for idealism, others didn't do it at all. The U.S. has seen a number of high profile leak scandals including the Pentagon Papers during the administration of President Richard Nixon. 

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STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• David Rothkopf: The U.S. intelligence community is being slammed as overreaching
• He says more news of spying, on United States' European allies, has drawn shock and anger
• He says it's out of control, with poor oversight and disregard for laws and U.S. values
• Rothkopf: There are real threats, but intelligence community hasn't shown spying is only answer

Editor's note: David Rothkopf writes regularly for CNN.com. He is CEO and editor-at-large of the FP Group, publishers of Foreign Policy magazine, and a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Follow him on Twitter.

(CNN) -- It's hard to think of a time in the history of America's intelligence community when it has been more battered by accusations of over-stepping or mismanaging its mission: to secretly gather information to support the activities of the U.S. government

The list of recent revelations grew over the weekend with allegations that America has been systematically spying on its European allies. Reports in the European press, apparently drawn from documents provided by Edward Snowden, suggested that America spied on the European Union, France, Italy, Greece and other close international friends, listening in on encrypted fax transmissions and planting bugs and other devices at 38 embassies and missions in Washington and New York, as well as locations in Europe.

David Rothkopf

The timing is not great: the eve of scheduled trade talks with the Europeans, a priority of the Obama administration.

Calvin's Daily Devotional

Daily Devotional

July 10

Thine Is My Heart: Devotional Readings from the Writings of John Calvin

by John Calvin (compiled by John H. Kromminga)
Republished from the OPC Website

Bible Text:
For, brethren, ye have been called unto liberty; only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another. —Galatians 5:13

Devotional:
Ivory and gold, and riches of all kinds, are certainly blessings of Divine Providence; not only permitted, but expressly designed for the use of men; nor are we anywhere prohibited to laugh, or to be satiated with food, or to annex new possessions to those already enjoyed by ourselves or by our ancestors, or to be delighted with musical harmony, or to drink wine.

This indeed is true; but amidst an abundance of all things, to be immersed in sensual delights, to inebriate the heart and mind with present pleasures, and perpetually to grasp at new ones—these things are very remote from a legitimate use of Divine blessings.

Let them banish, therefore, immoderate desire, excessive profusion, vanity, and arrogance; that with a pure conscience they may make a proper use of the gifts of God.

What Would the Martyrs Be Thinking?

A Full Centimetre Longer Than High Street Minis

The by-line in an article published in the Daily Telegraph informs us that the new Archbishop of Canterbury is warning that 'the Church of England . . . had to face up to a “revolution” in attitudes to homosexuality.'  So far, so good.

That a "revolution" in attitudes to homosexuality is taking place in the West, including Britain, is undeniable, although arguably the word "revolution" is misleading.  Change, or more accurately, devolution is certainly occurring.  But it is consistent change.  It is expected change.  The West has no moral absolutes, no ethical fundamentals.  It gave that away a long time ago, when it rebelled against the God of the heavens and the earth. Instead the creed, "Man is the measure of all things, and nothing human is foreign or immoral to me" has become the UK's established religion.  Homosexuality is a human activity, non?  Therefore, there can be nothing foreign nor immoral about it.  Consequently, in the West homosexuality must inevitably come to be recognised as a human right, an activity protected by law.  The duty and function of the law then becomes to  condemn and punish any who disagree because they refuse to accept and submit to the (now) established humanist religion. 

How is the Church of England to face up to such a "revolution"  is the key question?

Douglas Wilson's Letter

The Fourth of July: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Posted on Thursday, July 4, 2013

Douglas Wilson

Genuine patriotism is not surprised or derailed by flaws, sins or wickedness in the object of our love. Sentimental patriotism, by contrast, treats love of country the same way a maudlin Hallmark card writer would treat, after three beers, love of mother. Mothers Day becomes a high, holy, and sacred thing — a sanctifying thing, rather than what it is, something needing to be sanctified, like everything else we do.

So real love understands grace, and the need for it. Real love understands gratitude, and the need for it. The need for grace does not eradicate the need for gratitude. The need for gratitude does not mean that grace has become unnecessary and superfluous. Leftists sneer at the need for gratitude, and the sentimental right sneers at the need for grace, revealing both sides to be idolatrous.

And so this brings us to the 4th of July, 2013 — the good, the bad, and the ugly. But lest we become hardened in cynicism, we will return to the top again. We will focus on the good, the bad, the ugly, and the good again.

Calvin's Daily Devotional

Daily Devotional

July 09

Thine Is My Heart: Devotional Readings from the Writings of John Calvin

by John Calvin (compiled by John H. Kromminga)
Republished from the OPC Website

Bible Text:
And he said unto me, Son of man, I send thee to the children of Israel, to a rebellious nation that hath rebelled against me.... —Ezekiel 2:3a

Devotional:
He threatens them, therefore, and that not only once, because such was the hardheartedness of the people that it was not enough to utter the threatenings of God three or four times, unless he should continually impress them.

But, at the same time, he shows the causes why God determined to treat his people so severely; namely, because they were contaminated with many superstitions, because they were perfidious, greedy, cruel, and full of rapine, given up to luxury and depraved by lust; all these things are united by our Prophet, that he may show that the vengeance of God is not too severe, since the people had arrived at the very last pitch of impiety and all wickedness.

At the same time, he gives them, here and there, some taste of the mercy of God.

Overreach

 Nothing Like the Good Old Days

The environmentalist movement has long since overreached itself.  It has fallen back on a primitive nativism as the way forward.  Less is more.  Fewer people, lower standards of living, and more simple primitive lifestyles are the way ahead--if we are to save the planet.  What environmentalists fail to grasp is how they have messed in their own nest.  By over egging the pudding they have created a deep cynicism toward (legitimate) environmental concerns, which is a great pity. 

Two assumptions come together to support the environmentalist philosophy.  The first is that fewer humans means less pollution.  The second is that fewer humans means more wealth to be distributed to each individual.  Both assumptions are simplistic nostrums.  Both assumptions can only find traction on a plain of general ignorance. 

Consider the following realities:

Fables, Fantasies and Fairy Stories

What Happens When You Deprive Children of Scary Stories

Justin Taylor
July 1, 2013


Alasdair MacIntyre:

It is through hearing stories about wicked stepmothers, lost children, good but misguided kings, wolves that suckle twin boys, youngest sons who receive no inheritance but must make their own way in the world and eldest sons who waste their inheritance on riotous living and go into exile to live with the swine that children learn or mislearn both what a child and what a parent is, what the cast of characters may be in the drama into which they have been born and what the ways of the world are. Deprive children of stories and you leave them unscripted, anxious stutterers in their actions as in their words.
—Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, 3d ed. (University of Notre Dame Press, 2007), p. 216.

G. K. Chesterton:

Calvin's Daily Devotional

Daily Devotional

July 08

Thine Is My Heart: Devotional Readings from the Writings of John Calvin

by John Calvin (compiled by John H. Kromminga)
Republished from the OPC Website

Bible Text:
Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. —Matthew 6:10

Devotional:
'Thy will be done." We are therefore commanded to desire that, as in heaven nothing is done but according to the Divine will, and the angels are placidly conformed to everything that is right, so the earth, all obstinacy and depravity being annihilated, may be subject to the same government. And in praying for this, we renounce our own carnal desires; because, unless we resign all our affections to God, we are guilty of all the opposition in our power to his will, for nothing proceeds from us but what is sinful.

Established Religions

The Return of the Prodigal

Every human society has an established deity.  It's inescapable.  In this context we define deity broadly: the god who rules is the object or person in which society places their trust.  Human beings inevitably have to trust someone or something to provide what only a god can: safety, security, provision, and care along with more abstract (but vitally important) realities such as truth, justice, righteousness, and wisdom without which no society can cohere.

Secular society's god is the government.  Rules, regulations and laws coupled with property exacted from subjects and bestowed upon others in order to pay for the "justice", blessings and benefits the god wishes to bestow is how this particular religion works.  And it works a doozy.  Every Western society without exception has kowtowed to this particular deity.  Why are the peoples' of the West so resistant to the historical Christian faith?  Because they love their idol god, their respective governments.  You cannot serve God and Mammon, Jesus says.  The West now serves Mammon with a deep, abiding devotion.

Which would be great.  Apart from one minor problem.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From America

Just Like Tomorrow Morning Is

Wednesday, June 26, 2013

 Douglas Wilson

With the Supreme Court doing its part today to advance the homosexual agenda, while trying not to provoke a major backlash, as happened with Roe v. Wade, I thought a little encouragement for the saints might be in order.

All this reminds us again that there is no political solution to what ails us. We are a nation with the staggers, and our prophets and judges all have paper bags over their heads. There is such a thing as political and legislative faithfulness, but there is no such thing as political and legislative salvation. God brings us to the end of our puny little abilities so that we may trust, not in ourselves, but in Him, the God who raises the dead.
So we remind one another — as we ought to — that there is no political solution. There will be political consequences when the solution arrives, but there is no political solution. This is true as far as it goes, but there might be an assumption buried in there that is not so true.

As the old joke has it: “Well, I guess we have to pray about it.” “Oh, has it come to that?”