Taking Refuge in Vain Inanities

Over-Egging "Consensus Science"

It is often argued that the general consensus of scientists and the peer review process ensure the integrity of all scientific results and conclusions, and guard against faulty reasoning, over-extrapolation, poor methodology, and similar. . . . But . . . the way scientific research is actually undertaken reveals a very different story. 

Firstly, consensus should never be used to determine truth since this would be committing the logical fallacy of argumentum ad numerum.  Moreover, consensus  also seems to be applied rather inconsistently.  For example, many Christians accept the scientific consensus that the universe is 8-15 billion years old, yet those same Christians are usually vehemently opposed to the consensus that all life came about by naturalistic evolution. 

Secondly, history shows that the consensus has often been wrong--indeed, hopelessly wrong.

Letter from Turtle Bay (About France)

The ugly face of Gay-fascism

Posted on | June 20, 2013 by J.C. von Krempach, J.D.

Turtle Bay and Beyond

It is as foreseeable as it is unavoidable: a government that abuses its power to impose absurd and counter-natural laws such as on same-sex “marriages” will soon face massive protest. And given that such laws cannot be defended with rational arguments, those in power take recourse to violence and blatant human rights abuse.

Police using tear gas against peaceful defenders of marriage and family

Sadly, France is now in such a downward spiral. All those among us who believe in human rights and civil liberties should closely watch what is going on in this country, which once proudly thought of itself as the place where human rights originated, but which is now turning into something like a dictatorship in which gender-theory and homosexualist ideology hold sway, while human rights defenders are persecuted and the freedom of opinion is trampled upon.

There is now a first victim to deplore.

Calvin's Daily Devotional

Daily Devotional

June 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:
Yet if thou warn the wicked, and he turn not from his wickedness, nor from his wicked way, he shall die in his iniquity; but thou hast delivered thy soul. —Ezekiel 3:19

Devotional:
The Prophet is here taught how usefully he will lay out his labor, although he should appear to fail, for he ought to be satisfied with this alone, that God approves his efforts. Although, therefore, those who were to be brought back by holy exhortations remain obstinate, yet God's servants ought not, through fastidiousness, to throw up their commission as if it were useless, for they free their own souls.

Yawning Banalities

A Cocoon of Self-Deceit

We know that President Obama believes in the "arc of history"--which presumably means a faith commitment to human history moving towards a telos of one kind or another.  He believes that he is riding on that arc like some kind of eschatological messianic figure.  He rides the arc as an Enlightened One, capturing the wave of the future.  History is, therefore, propelling him forward to triumph and success.  At the same time, he hastens the coming of the telos because he is an active worker in its triumph. 

All of which is poppycock, but what can you do? Some people unfortunately have delusions of grandeur and significance and Obama is a prodigy of the type.  When he recently mounted the podium in Berlin to deliver yet another festival-of-grandiloquence the world was already yawning.  Historical irrelevance has set in early.  There is very little left to respect.

George F. Will reviews the recent speechifying which by now has now lost all its initial lustre and excitement.  We are left pondering how such an empty suit could be elected twice in the United States to the highest political office in the land.  How embarrassing.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From America

On the Rounded Upper Part

Wednesday, June 5, 2013 8:10 am  

Douglas Wilson

Alan Jacobs asks a question here that he does not answer. That question concerns whether he is a conservative or not.  “So is there any sense in which I might plausibly be called a conservative? I don’t really know; I’ll leave that to others to decide.” With such a kind invitation, how could I turn away? The answer is yes, Jacobs is a conservative. The three touchstones he sets out are a consistently pro-life position, a commitment to subsidiarity, and a respect for tradition.

To be fair, he offers some evidence to the contrary — he thinks, for example, that Obamacare was at least an attempt at something well-intentioned, and not, for example, what it was, which was the largest assault on the principles of subsidiarity in the history of mankind. But this just means that he is a conservative who is not being cynical enough. But such things take time — conservatives like to age in the cellar, like so many fine wines, with a thin layer of dust on their rounded upper part.

Calvin's Daily Devotional

Daily Devotional

June 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:
But thou, Israel, art my servant, Jacob whom I have chosen, the seed of Abraham my friend. —Isaiah 41:8

Devotional:
"My friend." It was an extraordinary honor which the Lord bestowed on Abraham when he called him his friend. To he called "the servant of God" is high and honorable; for if it be reckoned a distinguished favor to he admitted into the family of a king or a prince, how much more highly should we esteem it, when God accounts us as his servants and members of his family? But, not satisfied with that, he bestows on him even a higher honor and adorns him with the name of "friend."

Attempts to Curry Favour

Unworthy of God and Man

One of the sad features of many modern Christians is how deeply they have been influenced by the propaganda of Unbelief. 

A central plank of the cascade of scepticism towards the Christian faith is that (Unbelieving, rationalistic, atheistic) science is objective and deals only with brute facts.  Therefore, to many  the pronouncements of science reflect infallible and certain truths which are testable and verifiable.  Anyone who denies or questions the veracities of Unbelieving rationalistic science consequently must be ignorant, foolish, stubborn or blind--of a combination of all of the above. 

Many Christians dislike the idea that they would be regarded as ignorant or foolish.

Letter From the UK (About Wind Farming)

True cost of Britain's wind farm industry revealed

Every job in Britain’s wind farm industry is effectively subsidised to the extent of £100,000 per year

By Robert Mendick, and Edward Malnick

5 Jun 2013

The Telegraph

 

A new analysis of government and industry figures shows that wind turbine owners received £1.2billion in the form of a consumer subsidy, paid by a supplement on electricity bills last year. They employed 12,000 people, to produce an effective £100,000 subsidy on each job.The disclosure is potentially embarrassing for the wind industry, which claims it is an economically dynamic sector that creates jobs. It was described by critics as proof the sector was not economically viable, with one calling it evidence of “soft jobs” that depended on the taxpayer.

The subsidy was disclosed in a new analysis of official figures, which showed that:

Calvin's Daily Devotional

Daily Devotional

June 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:
The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise. —Psalm 51:17

Devotional:
The man of broken spirit is one who has been emptied of all vainglorious confidence, and brought to acknowledge that he is nothing. The contrite heart abjures the idea of merit, and has no dealings with God upon the principle of exchange. Is it objected that faith is a more excellent sacrifice than that which is here commended by the Psalmist, and of greater efficacy in procuring the Divine favor, as it presents to the view of God that Savior who is the true and only propitiation?

I would observe that faith cannot be separated from the humility of which David speaks. This is such a humility as is altogether unknown to the wicked. They may tremble in the presence of God, and the obstinacy and rebellion of their hearts may be partially restrained, but they still retain some remainders of inward pride.

Big Problems

Leaking Sieves

One of the interesting components of the current scandal in the US about government eavesdropping on private citizens is how the story changes.  When the scandal first broke out we were told about metadata: Big Ears was hoovering up the circumstantial data concerning private phone calls and e-mails (when, where, to whom, how long, etc.) but not the actual content itself. 

People who clearly knew better--that is, they were in the know--rushed to assure everyone that metadata was all it was.  Then the whistleblower asserted that he could listen in on any call or review the content of any electronic communication whenever he wanted to.  No warrants or probable cause required.  Rubbish, said the apologists.  Not true. 

But now it emerges that it actually is true.  The whistle blower, Edward Snowden was telling the truth.  Those covering for the government were lying. This, from C/Net

Douglas Wilson's Letter From America

The Way Liberace Used to Walk

Saturday, June 15, 2013

Douglas Wilson

 

In the previous post, the one where I mentioned that homosexual acts ought eventually to be prohibited by law, one commenter asked about my “constant hammering” on this issue. Why do I keep going on about it? Why don’t I write about sins my parishioners might actually be committing? Well, actually I do that too — one of my books was written for that express purpose. So that front is actually covered.

However, the central part of this question still needs to be answered. But before answering it, let me set the stage first.

Sodomy was a felony in all 50 states as recently as 1962, when I was nine-years-old. The establishment narrative — a very clever perversion of the Whig view of history, which was in its turn a perversion of postmillennialism — is that we are all of us gradually emerging from the dark woods of old-timey superstitions, and that these things take time. That gradual evolutionary emergence has us leaving behind the way we “used to be” and walking toward the higher mountain meadows of egalitarianism, where everything is bright and sunny, and the clouds are fluffy.

As a result of this narrative, we see a facile equation of “civil rights” for homosexuals with the actual expansion of civil rights for other minorities.

Calvin's Daily Devotional

Daily Devotional

June 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:
There was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews.... Nicodemus answered and said unto him, How can these things be? —John 3:1, 9

Devotional:
"Of the Pharisees." This designation was, no doubt, regarded by his countrymen as honorable to Nicodemus. But it is not for the sake of honor that it is given to him by the Evangelist, who, on the contrary, draws our attention to it as having prevented him from coming freely and cheerfully to Christ.

Hence we are reminded that they who occupy a lofty station in the world are, for the most part, entangled by very dangerous snares; nay, we see many of them held so firmly bound that not even the slightest wish or prayer arises from them towards heaven throughout their whole life.

"How can these things be?" We see what is the chief obstacle in the way of Nicodemus. Everything that he hears appears monstrous, because he does not understand the manner of it; so that there is no greater obstacle to us than our own pride; that is, we always wish to be wise beyond what is proper, and therefore we reject with diabolical pride everything that is not explained to our reason; as if it were proper to limit the infinite power of God to our poor capacity.

We are, indeed, permitted, to a certain extent, to inquire into the manner and reason of the works of God, provided that we do so with sobriety and reverence. —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.

Not So Fast

The Myth of Religion's Extinction

In the nineteen sixties sociologists were confidently predicting the end of religion as a social phenomenon.  It would be most certainly replaced by secularism.  Here is sociologist, Peter Berger's take in 1968 writing in the New York Times:

[By] the 21st century, religious believers are likely to be found only in small sects, huddled together to resist a worldwide secular culture. . . . [T]he predicament of the believer is increasingly like that of a Tibetan astrologer on a prolonged visit to an American university.  [Rodney Stark, The Triumph of Christianity: How the Jesus Movement Became the World's Largest Religion (New York: Harper One, 2011), p. 369f.]

How foolish and naive.  Yet to his credit, Berger retracted.  Stark provides this account:

Douglas Wilson's Letter From America

The Right Kind of Bright in Their Eyes

Thursday, June 6, 2013 1:46 pm 

Douglas Wilson

Many conservative Christians know that the culture war we are fighting is a desperate battle for our children. Now fighting for your children and grandchildren is a noble enterprise. It is what we are called to do. When such fighting is necessary, as in a fallen world it constantly is, it is something we are called to do for the sake of others, and this includes our children.

“And I looked, and rose up, and said unto the nobles, and to the rulers, and to the rest of the people, Be not ye afraid of them: remember the Lord, which is great and terrible, and fight for your brethren, your sons, and your daughters, your wives, and your houses” (Neh. 4:14).

But as good as this is, we need to move past it.

Calvin's Daily Devotional

Daily Devotional

June 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:
But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint. —Isaiah 40:31

Devotional:
"They shall run and not be weary." It is as if he had said that the Lord will assist them, so that they shall pursue their course without any molestation. It is a figurative expression, by which he suggests that believers will always be ready to perform their duty with cheerfulness.

But it will be said, "There are so many troubles which we must endure in this life; how then does he say that we shall be free from weariness?" I reply, believers are indeed distressed and wearied, but they are at length delivered from their distresses, and feel that they have been restored by the power of God; for it happens to them according to the saying of Paul, "While we are troubled on every side, we are not overwhelmed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; we suffer persecution, but are not forsaken; we are cast down, but are not destroyed."

Let us therefore learn to flee to the Lord, who, after we have encountered many storms, will at length conduct us to the harbor; for he who has opened up a path, and has commanded us to advance in that course in which he has placed us, does not intend to assist us only for a single day and to forsake us in the middle of our course, but will conduct us to the goal. —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.

Disintegration

There Goes the Hood

The crumbling of order and resulting self-destruction of the community start with broken windows not being fixed; next prostitutes and vagrants are allowed to loiter; soon delinquents and youth gangs realize they can act with impunity; and by then the neighbourhood is well on its way toward disintegration.  [Andrew Peyton Thomas]

Man is not an island.  Man was created to live in community.  Communities share a common life; they can exist only so long as common values, beliefs hold it together.   This is a fundamental Christian doctrine, traced all the way back to the Garden of Eden, when God declared it was not good that man should live alone.  To fight crime and the disintegration of a neighbourhood, the community has to exert itself.  This requires a co-ordinated effort between civil authorities, the police, and citizens above all.

Letter From America (About Bumbling Incompetence)

Big Politically Correct Brother

The bozo leviathan sees everything . . . and nothing.

By  Mark Steyn 

 

NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE         

June 14, 2013 4:30 PM

Every time I go on his show, my radio pal Hugh Hewitt asks me why congressional Republicans aren’t doing more to insist that the GOP suicide note known as “the immigration deal” include a requirement for a border fence. I don’t like to tell Hugh that, if they ever get around to building the fence, it won’t be to keep the foreigners out but to keep you guys in.

I jest, but only very slightly and only because the government doesn’t build much of anything these days — except for that vast complex five times the size of the Capitol the NSA is throwing up in Utah to house everybody’s data on everything everyone’s ever done with anyone ever.

A few weeks after 9/11, when government was hastily retooling its 1970s hijacking procedures for the new century, I wrote a column for the National Post of Canada and various other publications that, if you’re so interested, is preserved in my anthology The Face of the Tiger. It began by noting the observation of President Bush’s transportation secretary, Norman Mineta, that if “a 70-year-old white woman from Vero Beach, Florida” and “a Muslim young man” were in line to board a flight, he hoped there would be no difference in the scrutiny to which each would be subjected.

Calvin's Daily Devotional

Daily Devotional

June 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:
For who hath despised the day of small things? for they shall rejoice, and shall see the plummet in the hand of Zerubbabel with those seven; they are the eyes of the Lord, which run to and fro through the whole earth. —Zechariah 4:10

Devotional:
This doctrine may also be applied to us; for God, to exhibit the more his power, begins with small things in building his spiritual temple; nothing grand is seen, which attracts the eyes and thoughts of men, but everything is almost contemptible.

God indeed could immediately put forth his power, and thus rouse the attention of all men and fill them with wonder; he could indeed do so; but as I have already said, his purpose is to increase, by doing wonders, the brightness of his power; which he does when from a small beginning he brings forth what no one would have thought; and besides, his purpose is to prove the faith of his people; for it behooves us ever to hope beyond hope.

The Decline and Fall of Rome

Blowing in the Wind

Gibbon blamed the decline and fall of the Roman Empire upon Christianity.  He was, of course, grinding an ideological axe.  The causes of Rome's decline are, as to be expected, complex and multiple.  One of them is that economies based upon slave labour are remarkably inefficient and unproductive.  Without consistent plunder of others, they cannot survive.  Another cause was the Empire's declining population.  This curse also had various causes, one of which was the lack of male commitment to their wives bearing children and the fathers taking the responsibility to raise them.  Apart from the occupations of soldiering, peasant farming, property speculation, and politics there were not too many avenues for successful income generation.

There is a significant body of contemporary testimony that the fecundity of Roman women was low.  Rodney Stark comments as follows:

Douglas Wilson's Letter From America

But I Don’t Want Internal Safeguards . . .

Douglas Wilson

Wednesday, June 12, 2013

Once we established the supposedly constitutional right to abortion, grounded in the right to privacy, it was just a matter of time before the genuine right to privacy came apart in our hands. A nation that does not know what privacy is can hardly protect it. You can’t guard what you can’t define.

The NSA surveillance program, on paper, works like this. They vacuum up all this data, and store it in cyber-bins, and then, if something in the computer searches of the metadata arises that makes them want to peek into one of the bins, they have to go to a (secret) court to get permission to do so. Feel better?

Even if this were a good idea, which it isn’t, the reason this scandal is so damaging is that has come hard on the heels of a series of other revelations, all of them demonstrating that the government simply cannot be trusted with the information they have on you.

Never forget that Obama got his start in national politics by arranging to have the sealed court documents in his senatorial opponent’s divorce case made public.

Calvin's Daily Devotional

Daily Devotional

June 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:
Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. —James 4:7

Devotional:
Yet, notwithstanding, because of your singular piety, and that good will which you express toward me, you will not, perhaps, be unwilling to recognize in my letter thoughts which have spontaneously occurred to your own mind at some other time. The son whom the Lord had lent you for a season he has taken away. There is no ground, therefore, for those silly and wicked complaints of foolish men; O blind death! O horrid fate! O implacable daughters of destiny! O cruel fortune!

The Lord who had lodged him here for a season, at this stage of his career has called him away. What the Lord has done, we must, at the same time, consider has not been done rashly, nor by chance, neither from having been impelled from without; but by that determinate counsel, whereby he not only foresees, decrees, and executes nothing but what is just and upright in itself, but also nothing but what is good and wholesome for us. Where justice and good judgment reign paramount, there it is impious to remonstrate. —Correspondence

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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.

Our Orwellian World

NZ Herald columnist, John Roughan reflects on the outrage being expressed against a government's electronic spying on its own citizens.  He argues that while the spying is not particularly welcome, it is a necessary price we pay in a world where (Islamic) terrorists are able to operate far more secretively, with less footprint than in previous ages.  

The terrorism of 40 years ago was different from today's in one important respect. Those holding hostages at Entebbe or the Munich Olympics didn't want to die. That means they needed an organisation, facilities for negotiating, backchannels, lines of escape, a country of refuge. They had something for spies to watch.

Today's suicide bombers have no such organisation. With the inspiration of 9/11 they need only some knowledge of explosives and detonation, readily available on the net. They can live quietly and unobtrusively in a modern city until their chosen hour.  All things considered, it is remarkable there have not been more explosions like those in the London underground in 2005 and at the Boston marathon this year. If access to phone and internet logs has helped prevent more of them, the spies are welcome to mine.

It's generous of John to welcome the spies to his own phone and internet logs.

Chrestomathy

Capturing the Imagination

So the arrival of mere Christendom will therefore be convulsive — but it won’t be a legal revolution. It will be a great reformation and revival — it will happen the same way the early Christians conquered Rome. Their program of conquest consisted largely of two elements — gospel preaching and being eaten by lions — a strategy that has not yet captured the imagination of the the contemporary church.
Douglas Wilson

Calvin's Daily Devotional

Daily Devotional

June 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:
But though he had done so many miracles before them, yet they believed not on him: —John 12:37

Devotional:
"And though he had done so many signs." That no man may be disturbed or perplexed at seeing that Christ was despised by the Jews, the Evangelist removes this offence by showing that he was supported by clear and undoubted testimonies, which proved that credit was due to him and to his doctrine; but that the blind did not behold the glory and power of God, which were openly displayed in his miracles.

First, therefore, we ought to believe that it was not owing to Christ that the Jews did not place confidence in him, because by many miracles he abundantly testified who he was, and that it was therefore unjust and highly unreasonable that their unbelief should diminish his authority.

Crony Capitalists and Spy Networks

Walking the Corridors of Corruption

One of the inevitable ramifications of the vast trawling US electronic spying programme appears to be playing out in New Zealand.  We are parties to an intelligence sharing agreement with the United States and Canada, Australia and the UK, entitled "Five Eyes".  The information shared includes--probably almost exclusively so--the kinds of electronic data on the activities of citizens now being collected ceaselessly by the United States. 

While the ostensible and immediate reason for the data gathering is to "get terrorists before they get us", what governments can do, they inevitably will do.  Since it is becoming clear that they can now spy comprehensively upon the thoughts, intents, and actions of citizens via electronic media, it is axiomatic that eventually they inevitably will do so--despite the protestations that this was never was, nor is now, the intent.  Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.  And there are few manifestation of absolute power more compelling than the panoptican state, where the government sees all and spies constantly and comprehensively on its own citizens.

US Homeschooling--A Quiet Revolution

Report: Homeschooling Growing Seven Times Faster than Public School Enrolment

by Dr. Susan Berry  

8 Jun 2013, 

The Blaze

As dissatisfaction with the U.S. public school system grows, apparently so has the appeal of homeschooling. Educational researchers, in fact, are expecting a surge in the number of students educated at home by their parents over the next ten years, as more parents reject public schools.

A recent report in Education News states that, since 1999, the number of children who are homeschooled has increased by 75%. Though homeschooled children represent only 4% of all school-age children nationwide, the number of children whose parents choose to educate them at home rather than a traditional academic setting is growing seven times faster than the number of children enrolling in grades K-12 every year.

As homeschooling has become increasingly popular, common myths that have long been associated with the practice of homeschooling have been debunked.

Calvin's Daily Devotional

Daily Devotional

June 14

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 I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me. —John 12:32

Devotional:
"If I be lifted up." Next follows the method by which the judgment shall be conducted; namely, Christ, being lifted up on the cross, shall gather all men to himself, in order that he may raise them from earth to heaven. The Evangelist says that Christ pointed out the manner of his death; and, therefore, the meaning undoubtedly is, that the cross will be, as it were, a chariot, by which he shall raise all men, along with himself, to his Father.

Tricksie

A Grand, But False Edifice

The really momentous, but notorious contributions of the Enlightenment and the Age of Reason were the French Revolutions' Reign of Terror, the scourge of Nazism, and the totalitarian embrace of Communism.  These were all directly traceable to the doctrine of the autonomy of human reason, which was the lodestone both the Enlightenment and the Age of Reason. 

The other benefits attributed to the Enlightenment and the Age of Reason were actually incidental to both.  Benefits such as scientific and technological advances during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries occurred due to the foundations laid centuries before.  Rodney Stark has it right when he writes:

Letter From America (About State Corruption)

The All-Seeing State 

The inevitable corruption of the permanent bureaucracy 

By Mark Steyn
June 7, 2013 6:00 PM
National Review Online 

A few years ago, after one corruption scandal too many, the then Liberal government in Canada announced that, to prevent further outbreaks of malfeasance, it would be hiring 300 new federal auditors plus a bunch of ethics czars, and mandating “integrity provisions” in government contracts, including “prohibitions against paying, offering, demanding or accepting bribes.”

There were already plenty of laws against bribery, but one small additional sign on the desk should do the trick: “Please do not attempt to bribe the Minister of the Crown as a refusal may offend. Also: He’s not allowed to bribe you, whatever he says.”

A government that requires “integrity provisions” is by definition past the stage where they will do any good.

Calvin's Daily Devotional

Daily Devotional

June 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:
Wherefore he saith, Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light. —Ephesians 5:14

Devotional:
As soon as the smallest particle of grace is infused into our minds, we begin to contemplate the Divine countenance as now placid, serene, and propitious to us; it is indeed a very distant prospect, but so clear that we know we are not deceived. Afterwards, in proportion as we improve—for we ought to be continually improving by progressive advances—we arrive at a nearer, and therefore more certain view of him, and by continual habit he becomes more familiar to us.

Thus we see that a mind illuminated by the knowledge of God is at first involved in much ignorance, which is removed by slow degrees. Yet it is not prevented either by its ignorance of some things, or by its obscure view of what it beholds, from enjoying a clear knowledge of the Divine will respecting itself, which is the first and principal exercise of faith.

For, as a man who is confined in a prison, into which the sun shines only obliquely and partially through a very small window, is deprived of a full view of that luminary, yet clearly perceives its splendor and experiences its beneficial influences—thus we, who are bound with terrestrial and corporeal fetters, though surrounded on all sides with great obscurity, are nevertheless illuminated, sufficiently for all the purposes of real security, by the light of God shining ever so feebly to discover his mercy. —Institutes, III, ii, xix

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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.