Daily Devotional

God’s Indescribable Gift

If while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation. (Romans 5:10–11)

John Piper

How do we practically receive reconciliation and exult in God? One answer is do it through Jesus Christ. Which means, at least in part, make the portrait of Jesus in the Bible — the work and the words of Jesus portrayed in the New Testament — the essential content of your exultation over God. Exultation without the content of Christ does not honor Christ.

In 2 Corinthians 4:4–6, Paul describes conversion two ways. In verse 4, he says it is seeing “the glory of Christ who is the image of God.” And in verse 6, he says it is seeing “the glory of God in the face of Christ.” In either case you see the point. We have Christ, the image of God, and we have God in the face of Christ.
Practically, to exult in God, you exult in what you see and know of God in the portrait of Jesus Christ. And this comes to its fullest experience when the love of God is poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit, as Romans 5:5 says.

So here’s the Christmas point.

Merry Christmas

Best Wishes

ContraCelsum wishes all its readers a very Merry Christmas.  

May the Lord prosper you all in the coming New Year.

John Tertullian

Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow

L’Affaire Sony NORK

Douglas Wilson

Blog and Mablog

December 22, 2014

If festivals of hypocrisy were to be compared with the riotous celebrations that are actually already on the calendar, L’Affaire Sony NORK would have to rank right up there with the Mardi Gras in Rio.

Let us recap and without any snorting. Sony made what I have no doubt was a perfectly appalling movie called The Interview. The movie is a comedy about the assassination of Kim Jong-un, the Dear Leader of an electrically challenged portion of the globe. North Korea didn’t like it at all, and no doubt with the help of other regional commies, hacked into Sony’s computer systems and released all the juicy info they found down there to the interwebs.

At this point, Western journalists — major privacy advocates all, provided we are talking about the NSA — couldn’t resist the chance to dish on Angelina, and responded to this particular North Korean dinner gong by getting all four feet in the trough.

Daily Devotional

The Birth of the Ancient of Days

Then Pilate said to him, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world — to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.” (John 18:37)

John Piper

This is a great Christmas text even though it comes from the end of Jesus’s life on earth, not the beginning.
The uniqueness of his birth is that he did not originate at his birth. He existed before he was born in a manger. The personhood, the character, the personality of Jesus of Nazareth existed before the man Jesus of Nazareth was born.

The theological word to describe this mystery is not creation, but incarnation. The person, not the body, but the essential personhood of Jesus existed before he was born as man. His birth was not a coming into being of a new person, but a coming into the world of an infinitely old person.

Micah 5:2 puts it like this, 700 years before Jesus was born:

But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah, who are too little to be among the clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel, whose coming forth is from of old, from ancient days.

The mystery of the birth of Jesus is not merely that he was born of a virgin. That miracle was intended by God to witness to an even greater one — namely, that the child born at Christmas was a person who existed “from of old, from ancient days.”

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

Deserving Poor

The Salvation Army Has Got It Right

Christians talk about helping the deserving poor.  It is true that such a qualification as "deserving" can cover up an awful lot of unkindness, coldness and uncharitable hardness of heart.  You can always find some reason or other as to why someone is not deserving of help.

Nevertheless, when not employed as a pretext for hardness of heart, the concept is helpful.  There are plenty people who believe they are owed charity by everyone else.  It is their right to get support from other people. Their job, if they think of themselves as having one, is to extract money from other people to sustain them. Deserving poor people are not like that.  They do not particularly appreciate being dependant upon others.  They strive as best they can to better the circumstances of themselves and their families so that they are not a burden upon others.  In other words, the deserving poor are those who are doing the best they can to be self-supporting.

It goes without saying that state welfare is built upon concept that welfare provision is a duty of everyone else, and a right of the recipient.  It proceeds on the idea that society "owes" me and that I have a human right to their support.

Better Than Neddie Seagoon and Eccles

You Could Not Make This Up

The Telegraph's Tim Blair provides a list of "best quotations" heard or read in Australia over the past twelve months:

The Telegraph

Tim Blair

December 17, 2014


Presenting this year’s collection of notable quotables:

JANUARY
“Ah, well, ah, it, you know, it’s, ah, not, not for me, ah, to, ah, you know, determine how, ah, countries and individuals determine these issues.” – Having previously promised to “call out misogyny and sexism wherever I see it”, ex-PM Julia Gillard takes a different stance when asked about female representation in Middle Eastern politics.

Daily Devotional

Christmas Solidarity

The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. (1 John 3:8)

John Piper

The assembly line of Satan turns out millions of sins every day. He packs them into huge cargo planes and flies them to heaven and spreads them out before God and laughs and laughs and laughs.  Some people work full-time on the assembly line. Others have quit their jobs there and only now and then return.

Every minute of work on the assembly line makes God the laughing stock of Satan. Sin is Satan’s business because he hates the light and beauty and purity and glory of God. Nothing pleases him more than when creatures distrust and disobey their Maker.

Therefore, Christmas is good news for man and good news for God.

“The saying is sure and worthy of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners” (1 Timothy 1:15). That’s good news for us.

“The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil” (1 John 3:8). That’s good news for God.

Relishing A Messy Society

No Mess, No Life

A free society is always a mess.  Because folk don't like a messy society, they end up wanting to curtail freedoms left, right, and centre.  As Chesterton acerbically put it, when people stop believing in God they end up believing in anything and everything.  One of the things they inevitably come to believe is that society can get rid of all messiness; virtual perfection is attainable.  If we had this authority, that rule, a new extension of government regulations and powers every messy problem we face would be duly solved.

A Christian society, on the other hand, is a mess.  Always.  Why?  For two reasons.  The first arises out of an acceptance of human limitations.  We are finite creatures, with limited understanding and abilities.  The second and worse cause of mess is that we are fallen creatures, in a fallen world, with hearts that are deceitful and desperately wicked.  Yet it is Christian society which maximises freedoms (even while accepting the inevitable messiness.)  In this sense, Christians love the mess, because the alternative is unthinkable.

Panoptican Tony

With Friends Like This, Enemies Are Redundant

The phrase, Panoptican State refers to a real threat.  Sadly, the threat is coming not from terrorists, nor criminals in general, but from our governments.

As a result of the threat of terrorist crimes, Western governments want to transform the State into one which observes citizens at all times.  In Australia, Prime Minister Tony Abbott foolishly and recklessly wants the Parliament to approve collecting "metadata" on all Australians, storing it for up to two years.  "It will help us interdict and catch the malefactors," says Tony.  Yes, and so would stationing a member of the intelligence service at our right shoulder, observing all we do and say, twenty-four seven. But would that justify the horrendous invasion of government power into our lives.  Tony says it would. 

Fairfax media have done us all a service.  With the assistance of a Liberal Senator, David Leyonhjelm they have demonstrated just how much information on all citizens will be available to government spies.  Leyonhjelm "turned over" his metadata to the analysts and what they learned about him was significant indeed.

Daily Devotional

Anxiety

"The lot is cast into the lap, but the whole disposing thereof is of the Lord."
Proverbs 16:33

Charles Spurgeon

If the disposal of the lot is the Lord's whose is the arrangement of our whole life? If the simple casting of a lot is guided by him, how much more the events of our entire life--especially when we are told by our blessed Saviour: "The very hairs of your head are all numbered: not a sparrow falleth to the ground without your Father."

It would bring a holy calm over your mind, dear friend, if you were always to remember this. It would so relieve your mind from anxiety, that you would be the better able to walk in patience, quiet, and cheerfulness as a Christian should. When a man is anxious he cannot pray with faith; when he is troubled about the world, he cannot serve his Master, his thoughts are serving himself. If you would "seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness," all things would then be added unto you.

You are meddling with Christ's business, and neglecting your own when you fret about your lot and circumstances. You have been trying "providing" work and forgetting that it is yours to obey. Be wise and attend to the obeying, and let Christ manage the providing.

Come and survey your Father's storehouse, and ask whether he will let you starve while he has laid up so great an abundance in his garner? Look at his heart of mercy; see if that can ever prove unkind! Look at his inscrutable wisdom; see if that will ever be at fault. Above all, look up to Jesus Christ your Intercessor, and ask yourself, while he pleads, can your Father deal ungraciously with you? If he remembers even sparrows, will he forget one of the least of his poor children?

"Cast thy burden upon the Lord, and he will sustain thee. He will never suffer the righteous to be moved."

More True With Each Passing Century

The Work of One Who Lives

All around the world this Christmas season people will be coming to new life.  Once dead in their sins and trespasses, they will arise and and see the Son of God for the first time.  They will be born again by the Spirit of God.  In every land.  In every nation.

In the early fourth century AD, church father, Athanasius reflected on the reality of his day which continues to our day.  Same truths, same realities, same Lord.  To the arguments and evidences that Athanasius lists, we can add this consideration: his case is tenfold more weighty nigh two millennia later.  The same realities of which he speaks, we, today, can testify to.  But our testimony is even more powerful, since it is about a living Saviour and a living faith which have, like an irresistible leaven, penetrated into many more centuries, many more cultures, more languages, more countries, and many more families and souls. 

Dead men cannot take effective action; their power of influence on others lasts only till the grave.  Deeds and actions that energise others belong only to the living.  Well, then, look at the facts in this case.  The Saviour is working mightily among men; every day He is invisibly persuading numbers of people all over the world, both within and beyond  the Greek-speaking world, to accept His faith and be obedient to His teaching.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow

Natural Evil and the Classical Christian School

Blog and Mablog

Douglas Wilson

December 17, 2014

One of the central arguments that materialistic atheism offers against the Christian faith is that the reality and universality of suffering is inconsistent with the doctrine that we were created by, and are loved by, a gracious heavenly Father. If we intend to do our job in training our students to be able to defend their faith as they go out into the world, it seems to me that we ought not to begin by granting the foundational premise of unbelief.

Believe me, the pressing reality of natural evil is a major argument that the atheists use, and the theistic evolutionists will have to do a lot better than they have done thus far in mounting a reply.

If evolution was God’s means of creating, then this means that pain, struggle, suffering, agony, and torment were His means of creation, and He pronounced all of it “good.”

Daily Devotional

The Greatest Salvation Imaginable

“Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah . . . ” (Jeremiah 31:31)

John Piper

God is just and holy and separated from sinners like us. This is our main problem at Christmas and every other season. How shall we get right with a just and holy God?

Nevertheless, God is merciful and has promised in Jeremiah 31 (five hundred years before Christ) that someday he would do something new. He would replace shadows with the Reality of the Messiah. And he would powerfully move into our lives and write his will on our hearts so that we are not constrained from outside but are willing from inside to love him and trust him and follow him.

That would be the greatest salvation imaginable — if God should offer us the greatest Reality in the universe to enjoy and then move in us to see to it that we could enjoy it with the greatest freedom and joy possible. That would be a Christmas gift worth singing about.

That is, in fact, what he promised. But there was a huge obstacle. Our sin. Our separation from God because of our unrighteousness.  How shall a holy and just God treat us sinners with so much kindness as to give us the greatest Reality in the universe (his Son) to enjoy with the greatest joy possible?

The answer is that God put our sins on his Son, and judged them there, so that he could put them out of his mind, and deal with us mercifully and remain just and holy at the same time. Hebrews 9:28 says, “Christ was offered once to bear the sins of many.”

Christ bore our sins in his own body when he died. He took our judgment. He canceled our guilt. And that means the sins are gone. They do not remain in God’s mind as a basis for condemnation. In that sense, he “forgets” them. They are consumed in the death of Christ.

Which means that God is now free, in his justice, to lavish us with the new covenant. He gives us Christ, the greatest Reality in the universe, for our enjoyment. And he writes his own will — his own heart — on our hearts so that we can love Christ and trust Christ and follow Christ from the inside out, with freedom and joy.

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

US Tort Law Facilitating Pyongyang Victory

Great Leader Strikes Again

It's official.  The FBI has confirmed that the hack of Sony computers came from a foreign "power", North Korea.  The psy-ops war has so far been a total victory for one of the nodes in Bush's Axis of Evil.  Allegedly, a specialist hacking unit operating out of North Korea hacked into Sony's computers and databases to "punish" the company for daring to make and planning to screen The Interview, a satirical comedy sending the North Korean dictator up the creek.  Sony could not have chosen a more fitting and worthy subject for a satirical roast. 

North Korea finally disclosed its hand when it threatening to bomb any movie theatre showing the film.  The language employed in the threat was eerily reminiscent of your average, every day fulminating eructation out of Pyongyang.  Ironically, in the long term, this would likely make the movie one of the great cult classics of all time.  Kim Jong Un would forever be remembered as a pompous idiot with no sense of humour (as well as a moral monster).  Watching the movie would become a delicious act of sedition against a petty tyrant; laughing at Dear Leader would become a political act, a blow for freedom.  Sony could never buy that much notoriety and publicity in their wildest dreams.  (We have no doubt that conspiracists will eventually claim that the Sony hacking was all an inside job to immortalise the movie.)

That is, unless Sony completely caves in.  There are signs that it will do so.

Evolution and Cool-Shaming

BioLogos, Respectability, and Classical Christian Education

Douglas Wilson

Blog and Mablog

December 15, 2014

As classical Christian education has made it through our first round of trials, which threatened to make us fail through failure, we have now come to the much greater test, one that would make us fail through success. With hard work comes success, and with success comes respectability, and with respectability comes . . . spiritual heat death. As Cotton Mather once put it with regard to physical blessings, faithfulness begets prosperity, and the daughter devours the mother. Or as Moses put it, on the same topic, “Lest when thou hast eaten and art full, and hast built goodly houses, and dwelt therein . . . thou say in thine heart, My power and the might of mine hand hath gotten me this wealth” (Deut. 8:17). The same principle applies to the intellectual fruit of hard academic labor.

Graduates of classical Christian schools are much sought after. They have been taught well, and it shows, and those of us in the movement have heard story after story of how this graduate got a high flying scholarship, and how that one was recruited for the honors program, and so on. We are proud of our students, and rightfully so. But one of the central tests of how we are teaching our students is going to be seen in how they respond to this praise from the world. With the arrival of this praise comes the temptation to want it in the wrong way. The respectability that got there by not caring at all what they think becomes the kind of respectability that cares very much what they think.

And I am convinced that this is one of the reasons why evolutionary thinking is starting to make a play for our community of schools.

Daily Devotional

Life and Death at Christmas

“The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.” (John 10:10)

John Piper

As I was about to begin this devotional, I received word that Marion Newstrum had just died. Marion and her husband Elmer have been part of Bethlehem longer than most of our members have been alive. She was 87. They had been married 64 years.

When I spoke to Elmer and told him I wanted him to be strong in the Lord and not give up on life, he said, “He has been a true friend.” I pray that all Christians will be able to say at the end of life, “Christ has been a true friend.”

Each Advent I mark the anniversary of my mother’s death. She was cut off in her 56th year in a bus accident in Israel. It was December 16, 1974. Those events are incredibly real to me even today. If I allow myself, I can easily come to tears — for example, thinking that my sons never knew her. We buried her the day after Christmas. What a precious Christmas it was!

Many of you will feel your loss this Christmas more pointedly than before. Don’t block it out. Let it come. Feel it. What is love for, if not to intensify our affections — both in life and death? But, O, do not be bitter. It is tragically self-destructive to be bitter.

Jesus came at Christmas that we might have eternal life. “I came that they might have life, and have it abundantly” (John 10:10). Elmer and Marion had discussed where they would spend their final years. Elmer said, “Marion and I agreed that our final home would be with the Lord.”

Do you feel restless for home? I have family coming home for the holidays. It feels good. I think the bottom line reason for why it feels good is that they and I are destined in the depths of our being for an ultimate Homecoming. All other homecomings are foretastes. And foretastes are good.

Unless they become substitutes. O, don’t let all the sweet things of this season become substitutes of the final great, all-satisfying Sweetness. Let every loss and every delight send your hearts a-homing after heaven.
Christmas. What is it but this: I came that they might have life? Marion Newstrum, Ruth Piper, and you and I — that we might have Life, now and forever.

Make your Now the richer and deeper this Christmas by drinking at the fountain of Forever. It is so near.

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

The Fall and Rise of Idolatry

Philosophers' Noisy Talk

In the fourth century AD, Athanasius (one of the great early church fathers) described the impact upon idolatry from the time of Christ's coming down to his day (circa 325AD).  He argues that the coming of Christ amongst men drove out superstition and idolatry in the Roman Empire and the Mediterranean nations.

Idolatry amongst the Gentiles was real, pervasive, and local.  Every town had its shrines and deities.  Athanasius witnessed the decline and decrepitude of the established religion of idolatry.  But what caused it?

When did people begin to abandon the worship of idols, unless it were since the very Word of God came among men?  When have oracles ceased and become void of meaning, among the Greeks and everywhere, except since the Saviour had revealed Himself on earth?

When did those whom the poets call gods and heroes begin to be adjudged as mere mortals, except when the Lord took the spoils of death and preserved incorruptible the body He had taken, raising it from among the dead?  Or when did the deceitfulness and madness of daemons fall under contempt, save when the Word, the Power of God, the Master of all these as well, condescended on account of the weakness of mankind and appeared on earth?

When did the practice and theory of magic begin to be spurned under foot, if not at the manifestation of the Divine Word to men?  In a word, when did the wisdom of the Greeks become foolish, save when the true Wisdom of God revealed Himself on earth?  In old times the whole world and every place in it was led astray by the worship of idols, and men thought the idols were the only gods that were.  But now, all over the world men are forsaking the fear of idols and taking refuge with Christ; and by worshipping Him as God they come through Him to know the Father also, Whom formerly they did not know.

The objects of worship formerly were varied and countless; each place had its own idol and the so-called god of one place could not pass over to another in order to persuade the people there to worship him, but was barely reverenced even by his own.  Indeed no! Nobody worshipped his neighbour's god, but every man had his own idol and thought that it was lord of all.  But now Christ alone is worshipped, as One and the Same among all peoples everywhere; and what the feebleness of idols could not do, namely convince even those dwelling close at hand, He has effected.  He has persuaded not only those close at hand, but literally the entire world to worship one and the same Lord and through Him the Father.

Again, in former times every place was full of the fraud of the oracles, and the utterances of those at Delphi and Dordona and in Boeotia and Lycia and Libya and Egypt and those of the Kabiri and the Pythoness were considered marvellous by the minds of men.  But now, since Christ has been proclaimed everywhere, their madness too has ceased, and there is no one left among them to give oracles at all. . . .

And what is one to say about the magic that they think so marvellous?  Before the sojourn of the Word, it was strong and active among Egyptians and Chaldeans and Indians and filled all who saw it with terror and astonishment.  But by the coming of the Truth and the manifestation of the Word it too has been confuted and entirely destroyed.

As to Greek wisdom, however, and the philosophers' noisy talk, I really think no one requires argument from us, for the amazing fact is patent to all that, for all that they have written so much, the Greeks failed to convince even a few from their own neighbourhood in regard to immortality and the virtuous ordering of life.  Christ alone, using common speech and through he agency of men not clever with their tongues, has convinced whole assemblies of people all the world over to despise death, and to take heed to the thing that do not die, to look past the things of time and gaze on things eternal, to think nothing of earthly glory and to aspire only to immortality.  [Athanasius, On the Incarnation.  Translated and edited by Sister Penelope Lawson.  (New York: Macmillan Publishing House, 1946.), p.75ff.] 

Idolatry still exists in places around the world.  But when the Christian Gospel of Christ takes hold, idolatry is the first and abiding casualty.  The reverse is also true: if a civilisation rebels against the gentle yoke of Christ, it is not long before superstition and various idols make a comeback.  Consider how many "scientists" have become reverently superstitious about Evolution, seeing its hand, influence, control, and explanatory power everywhere.  Consider how our Most High Priests of scientism gravely propound an infinite number of parallel universes to warrant the complexity of the one in which we live.  For Stochasticity to have a chance of producing such an exquisitely balanced and fine tuned universe, there must needs be an infinite number of other universes where the emergence of life is impossible or has failed.  These nonsenses and contradictions are uttered most gravely and reverently by the most superstitious of all.

The Delphic oracle--the alleged voice of Apollo himself--was a charlatan's purse (and at root everyone knew it).  It survived for so long because of the wilful credulity of those who needed such things to make some kind of superstitious sense of the world. The coming of the Gospel eradicated that need.  But deny or ignore the Gospel and gross ignorance soon makes a return.

The distance between our modern superstitious scientists and the devotees of Delphi is less than a cigarette paper. 

Daily Devotional

All That Can Be Enjoyed

TO KEITH MANSHIP: On the slow process of being more in Christ; and on doing one’s duty, especially the duty to enjoy.
13 September 1962

C. S. Lewis

You state the problem very clearly, and the fact that you can do so really shows that you are very much on the right road. Many don’t even get so far.

The whole problem of our life was neatly expressed by John the Baptist when he said (John, chap 3, v. 30) ‘He must increase, but I must decrease.’ This you have realised. But you are expecting it to happen suddenly: and also expecting that you should be clearly aware when it does. But neither of these is usual. We are doing well enough if the slow process of being more in Christ and less in ourselves has made a decent beginning in a long life (it will be completed only in the next world). Nor can we observe it happening. All our reports on ourselves are unbelievable, even in worldly matters (no one really hears his own voice as others do, or sees his own face). Much more in spiritual matters. God sees us, and we don’t see ourselves. And by trying too hard to do so, we only get the fidgets and become either too complacent or too much the other way.

Your question what to do is already answered. Go on (as you apparently are going on) doing all your duties. And, in all lawful ways, go on enjoying all that can be enjoyed—your friends, your music, your books. Remember we are told to ‘rejoice’ [Philippians 4:4]. Sometimes when you are wondering what God wants you to do, He really wants to give you something.

As to your spiritual state, try my plan. I pray ‘Lord, show me just so much (neither more nor less) about myself as I need for doing thy will now.’

From The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume III
Compiled in Yours, Jack

The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, Volume III: Narnia, Cambridge, and Joy 1950-1963. Copyright © 2007 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers. Yours, Jack: Spiritual Direction from C. S. Lewis. Copyright © 2008 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers. Sourced from BibleGateway.

The Sydney Postscript

Dying Day by Day, One Way or the Other

The dust has started to settle in Sydney, after the Islamic hostage drama.  We are now in a position to reflect upon what happened and upon the wider implications.

Here is a summary of events as they unfolded:

• Siege ends after police storm building

• Gunman identified as Haron Monis - a self-styled cleric - accused of being an accessory to the murder of his former wife and once notorious for sending poison letters to the family of deceased Diggers.

• Events sparked by gunman shooting hostage

• Police confirm gunman Haron Monis is dead, along with 34-year-old man and 38-year-old woman

• 17 hostages confirmed, including five who escaped yesterday [NZ Herald]

One columnist said that civilians remained calm and did what they ought to have done.  They refused to become terrified.  The police acted with professionalism throughout.  Less professional and more histrionic were the politicians who made sure the world understood they were shocked, outraged.  Peter Hartcher had this reflection:

Letter From America (About One of the Heroines of our Generation)

Ayaan Hirsi Ali fights radical Islam's real war on women

By Ashe Schow 
December 8, 2014
Washington Examiner

In early April of this year, Brandeis University, under pressure from student activists and the Council on American-Islamic Relations, reversed its decision to give an honorary degree to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a global advocate for women’s rights. (Graeme Jennings/Examiner)

 

In early April of this year, Brandeis University, under pressure from student activists and the Council on American-Islamic Relations, reversed its decision to give an honorary degree to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a global advocate for women’s rights. The decision was triggered by Hirsi Ali’s outspoken criticisms of Islam. The Somali-born activist has sounded alarms about the prevalence of extremism in Muslim countries and the misogyny that pervades even mainstream Islam. During the Brandeis controversy, a CAIR spokesman called her “one of the worst of the worst of the Islam-haters in America.”

But Hirsi Ali’s warnings about Islamic extremism were quickly supported by world events, as just a week after Brandeis rescinded her honorary degree, the Islamist terrorist organization Boko Haram kidnapped more than 200 Nigerian schoolgirls in the first of many such abductions throughout the summer. A few months after the kidnappings began, news spread that the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, another terrorist group, was selling Yazidi women into sexual slavery. . . . 

The real horrors facing women in the world aren’t discussed in America, where those who try to point out what is going on in other countries or criticize the trivial nature of feminist obsessions are sidelined from the public debate.  Critics have attacked Hirsi Ali as Islamophobic and have argued that the portrait she paints is not representative of Islam at large. But her disagreements with Islam are rooted in her own East African upbringing.

Daily Devotional

Dead, Yet Alive

"I am crucified with Christ."
Galatians 2:20

Charles Spurgeon

The Lord Jesus Christ acted in what he did as a great public representative person, and his dying upon the cross was the virtual dying of all his people. Then all his saints rendered unto justice what was due, and made an expiation to divine vengeance for all their sins. The apostle of the Gentiles delighted to think that as one of Christ's chosen people, he died upon the cross in Christ.

He did more than believe this doctrinally, he accepted it confidently, resting his hope upon it. He believed that by virtue of Christ's death, he had satisfied divine justice, and found reconciliation with God. Beloved, what a blessed thing it is when the soul can, as it were, stretch itself upon the cross of Christ, and feel, "I am dead; the law has slain me, and I am therefore free from its power, because in my Surety I have borne the curse, and in the person of my Substitute the whole that the law could do, by way of condemnation, has been executed upon me, for I am crucified with Christ."

But Paul meant even more than this. He not only believed in Christ's death, and trusted in it, but he actually felt its power in himself in causing the crucifixion of his old corrupt nature. When he saw the pleasures of sin, he said, "I cannot enjoy these: I am dead to them." Such is the experience of every true Christian. Having received Christ, he is to this world as one who is utterly dead. Yet, while conscious of death to the world, he can, at the same time, exclaim with the apostle, "Nevertheless I live." He is fully alive unto God.

The Christian's life is a matchless riddle. No worldling can comprehend it; even the believer himself cannot understand it. Dead, yet alive! crucified with Christ, and yet at the same time risen with Christ in newness of life! Union with the suffering, bleeding Saviour, and death to the world and sin, are soul-cheering things. O for more enjoyment of them!

What do Hacking and Torture Have in Common?

Conflicts of Interest

The moral vacuity of Unbelief has been on display in recent days.  Firstly, the prurient frenzied delight over the hacking of Sony digital property, the breathless headlines about who said what to whom (to sell more newspapers and subscriptions) and the joy in seeing senior executives at Sony shown up to be nasty little people.  Hollywood and the gossip columnists (virtually the entire media set) are all atwitter.  Yet, in the same breath said media will condemn hacking as theft and an egregious crime.  Recall the moral outrage and self-righteous fulminations of the media and the Chattering Classes at the phone hacking undertaken by Rupert Murdoch's News of the World. But that was "them" not "us".  It makes all the moral difference in the world, apparently.

We have seen the same phenomenon in New Zealand.  One self-righteous moral pygmy receives stolen e-mails from notorious "right-wing" blogger, Cameron Slater and the media engage in an orgy of prurient, sensationalist twittering.  Quietly ignored is the fact they were profiting from the proceeds of a crime.  Ah, well, everyone was doing it, so we could not afford to ignore it.  The end (making a dirty profits) justified the means (exploiting stolen property).

Doubtless the media would be sniffy nosed at an individual hacking into, say, hospital patient records in the attempt to profit from their theft.  But in their own case and when it concerns their own book, they grandly ignore their complicity in crime because they tell themselves are operating "in the public interest".  Self-righteous, hypocritical mendacity. 

But crimes being committed "in the public interest" are pretty acceptable these days.

Rodney Hide Gets It

Re-floated Paganism

Rodney Hide

NZ Herald

December 14, 2014

The four pou erected on the new Waikato River bridge on the Ngaruawahia section of the Expressway, it was explained, tell the stories of Tainui's involvement with the river. Photo / Getty Images

I am quite taken by the striking Maori totems on the new Kopu and Waikato Expressway bridges. I figured the taxpayer was milked for them. There would be outrage if they were Christian crosses but somehow they are okay because they're Maori.

I decided to find out more. A Google search turned up nothing. I emailed the New Zealand Transport Agency. I thought it would have a brochure to explain the history and spiritualism behind what are I now know to be called pou. Nope. Nothing.

Daily Devotional

When Mary Counted His Fingers

Douglas Wilson

Blog and Mablog

December 10, 2014

 “The absolute Truth, the one who fills all things (Eph. 1:23) condescended to a place where He would have to fill his diapers. This — to the refined and philosophical mind — was outrageous, impudent, and even blasphemous . . . The ultimate Truth suckled at His mother’s breast, had ten fingers and ten toes, which His mother counted, and He then grew a bit older and went to Nazareth High. 

The universal became a particular, and did so without ceasing to be a universal. The universal Truth has a hometown, and a mom, and is a scandal to the Greeks. He is also a scandal to the Kantians and the postmodernists, and all for the same reason” (God Rest Ye Merry, pp. 68-69).

Falling Apart

Peak Oil Will Kill Us All

Just over four years ago, the NZ Green Party was conjuring up nightmares, whispering darkly of "an imminent oil price shock".  Peak oil draweth nigh, said Russel Norman, one of the greatest of the local doomsday prophets.  Once oil production began to attenuate as the supply of oil ran out, the price would hit the stratosphere and calamity would break out upon us all.

Yup.  It has arrived.  The oil price shock is no longer imminent.  It is here and now.  It's devastating.  An apocalyptic horseman is trampling the land.  Oil prices are tumbling, falling, declining everywhere.  Opec countries are watching their finances crumble more quickly than Russel's cherished hope to govern the country.  Said Russel, at the time:

The Charter School Revolution

Revolution and innovation in some of America’s toughest neighbourhoods

The Economist

AS PUPILS file into their classroom at Kipp Renaissance, a high school in a battered corner of north-east New Orleans, each one stops to shake the hand of a history teacher. “Changes”, a rap song by Tupac about the struggles of being poor and black in America, plays quietly in the background. Within a minute or two, the dozen teenagers—all black—are busily filling in test papers. Soon afterwards, Mr Kullman, the teacher, begins rapping himself—hopping around the room demanding quick-fire answers to questions about the civil war. Pupils shout back answers in chorus.

Kipp Renaissance is one of New Orleans’s newer high schools. Since Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005, only six traditional public schools, directly run by the city, remain. Instead 94% of pupils now attend charter schools, which are publicly funded but run by independent non-profit organisations such as Kipp (in full, the “Knowledge is Power Programme”).

Daily Devotional

What We have Seen . . .

C. S. Lewis

In the earliest days of Christianity an ‘apostle’ was first and foremost a man who claimed to be an eyewitness of the Resurrection. Only a few days after the Crucifixion when two candidates were nominated for the vacancy created by the treachery of Judas, their qualification was that they had known Jesus personally both before and after His death and could offer first-hand evidence of the Resurrection in addressing the outer world (Acts 1:22). A few days later St Peter, preaching the first Christian sermon, makes the same claim—‘God raised Jesus, of which we all (we Christians) are witnesses’ (Acts 2:32). In the first Letter to the Corinthians, St Paul bases his claim to apostleship on the same ground—‘Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen the Lord Jesus?’ (1:9).

As this qualification suggests, to preach Christianity meant primarily to preach the Resurrection. . . . . The Resurrection is the central theme in every Christian sermon reported in the Acts. The Resurrection, and its consequences, were the ‘gospel’ or good news which the Christians brought: what we call the ‘gospels’, the narratives of Our Lord’s life and death, were composed later for the benefit of those who had already accepted the gospel. They were in no sense the basis of Christianity: they were written for those already converted. The miracle of the Resurrection, and the theology of that miracle, comes first: the biography comes later as a comment on it. . . . . The first fact in the history of Christendom is a number of people who say they have seen the Resurrection. If they had died without making anyone else believe this ‘gospel’ no gospels would ever have been written.

From Miracles
Compiled in A Year with C.S. Lewis
Miracles: A Preliminary Study. Copyright 1947 C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. Copyright renewed © 1947 C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. Revised 1960, restored 1996 C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers. A Year With C.S. Lewis: Daily Readings from His Classic Works. Copyright © 2003 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers. Sourced from BibleGateway

Nothing Wrong With a Little Torture

If It Works, It Has to Be Right

Torture has its apologists.  A US Senate committee released a report about CIA interrogation methods following the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon exposing and condemning the CIA's use of torture to get information from enemy (Al Qaeda) combatants. 

Its opponents have condemned the Senate report as misleading, inaccurate, and wrong.  Blogger Patterico provides a summary of their objections:

Three former CIA directors — George J. Tenet, Porter J. Goss and Michael V. Hayden — as well as three Deputy CIA Directors, took to the pages of the Wall Street Journal to dispute the Democrat-penned torture report released yesterday:

What is wrong with the committee’s report?
First, its claim that the CIA’s interrogation program was ineffective in producing intelligence that helped us disrupt, capture, or kill terrorists is just not accurate. The program was invaluable in three critical ways:
• It led to the capture of senior al Qaeda operatives, thereby removing them from the battlefield.
• It led to the disruption of terrorist plots and prevented mass casualty attacks, saving American and Allied lives.
• It added enormously to what we knew about al Qaeda as an organization and therefore informed our approaches on how best to attack, thwart and degrade it.

The current CIA Director is reversing his previous declarations of agnosticism on the subject to agree that torture provided critical information.

Who is telling the truth?

The Senate report claimed that the information  gained under duress was of little worth, implying that if torture were useful in providing vital information it would somehow have been acceptable.  The supporters of the programme point out, on the contrary, how successful it was in providing information to combat the Islamist terrorists.

Both the detractors and supporters of torture are operating out of a profoundly degenerate moral abyss.

Letter From America (About The Vanguard in the Fight Against Ebola)

Time Magazine Honoring Ebola Fighters a Victory for Christians Worldwide

by Frances Martel  

11 Dec 2014

BreitbartNews

In her article explaining why Time honored Ebola medical workers as their Person of the Year in 2014, managing editor Nancy Gibbs describes the workers' weapons as "bleach and a prayer." No description could be more apt, as a great number of those on the front lines in West Africa were working to serve Christian organizations, and none were shy in expressing their belief that Christianity would save them from harm.

Global organizations, from the Center for Disease Control to the World Health Organization to the World Bank sounded the alarm on the Ebola disaster this summer. By the end of September, the WHO declared that the "world is losing the battle" to contain the disease. Some nations responded-- most notably, the United States sent thousands of troops to Liberia-- but many government entities did little. China pledged millions to the cause, but Chinese industry leaving the region because of Ebola could significantly damage the economies of west Africa just as much. In December, the WHO missed its own containment goals, including having 70% of both Ebola victims properly buried and 70% of Ebola patients isolated in medical facilities (only in Guinea did they achieve this goal).

Amid the lack of enthusiasm internationally to fight Ebola-- and the lack of resources on the part of panicked organizations like the WHO-- smaller Christian organizations stepped in, sending individual health care workers to fight Ebola on the front lines in the affected countries. These groups, with minimal resources compared to the world's largest governments, made it a personal effort to combat the disease.

Perhaps no Christian charity worker has been more high-profile than Dr. Kent Brantly, the first American doctor to contract Ebola.

Daily Devotional

Why Jesus Came

Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery. (Hebrews 2:14–15)

John Piper

Hebrews 2:14–15 is worth more than two minutes in an Advent devotional. These verses connect the beginning and the end of Jesus’s earthly life. They make clear why he came. They would be great to use with an unbelieving friend or family member to take them step by step through your Christian view of Christmas. It might go something like this…

“Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood…”

The term “children” is taken from the previous verse and refers to the spiritual offspring of Christ, the Messiah (see Isaiah 8:18; 53:10). These are also the “children of God.” In other words, in sending Christ, God has the salvation of his “children” specially in view. It is true that “God so loved the world, that he sent [Jesus].” But it is also true that God was especially “gathering the children of God who are scattered abroad” (John 11:52). God’s design was to offer Christ to the world, and to effect the salvation of his “children” (see 1 Timothy 4:10). You may experience adoption by receiving Christ (John 1:12).

“…he himself likewise partook of the same things [flesh and blood]…”