Daily Devotional

Losing One's Life

TO BEDE GRIFFITHS, with whom Lewis shares an insight from The Great Divorce (Chapter 9), which he is writing at the time: On the utter truth of losing one’s life to save it (with another word about Charles Williams).

C. S. Lewis

25 May 1944
Thanks for your letter. I too was delighted with our meeting. About the past, and nothing being lost, the point is that ‘He who loses his life shall save it’ [Matthew 10:39] is totally true, true on every level. Everything we crucify will rise again: nothing we try to hold onto will be left us.

I wrote the other day ‘Good and evil when they attain their full stature are retrospective. That is why, at the end of all things, the damned will say we were always in Hell, and the blessed we have never lived anywhere but in heaven.’ Do you agree?

You’re right about C.W. He has an undisciplined mind and sometimes admits into his theology ideas whose proper place is in his romances. What keeps him right is his love of which (and I have now known him long) he radiates more than any man I know. . . . Continue to pray for me as I do for you.

From The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume II
Compiled in Yours, Jack
The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, Volume II: Family Letters 1905-1931. Copyright © 2004 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.

How Has It Come to This?

Not On Our Watch

Closing down local bodies and running them by commissioners appointed by central government is rare, but it does happen from time to time. Often it is due to financial mismanagement.  Other occasions have been due to council infighting leading to dysfunctional decision-making.  We suspect that when the UK government recently closed down Rotherham Council, it was due to a reason never before seen.

The hegemony of political correctness and the religion of multi-culturalism in that council led to a reign predatory terror by gangs of Pakistani youth upon vulnerable children.  The council turned a blind eye, lest it be guilty of racism, or, worse,  be in violation of the ultimate social ethic of multi-culturalism.  Caught up in the evil were police commanders and police bureaucrats, politicians, and social workers. 

Rotherham Council Closed Down Following Sexual Abuse Failure

by Andre Walker 
4 Feb 2015
BreitbartLondon

The Government  has closed down ‘dysfunctional’ Rotherham Council until an election can be held in 2016, with all powers currently held by the council’s Cabinet to be transferred to Commissioners answerable to the Secretary of State for Local Government.

Eric Pickles [Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government] made the announcement at the House of Commons today, after Rotherham was shown to have failed to protect children from being sexually abused by organised gangs from the town’s Kashmiri Pakistani community.  The Council has fourteen days to write to Pickles should they wish to object to the plan to bring in the five commissioners. He said he was taking the steps because the council was “seriously failing the people of Rotherham, and particularly the most vulnerable”.

Pickles said that he was minded to appoint the commissioners to replace the “wholly dysfunctional cabinet”. This means that all executive power currently held by democratically elected councillors would pass to the appointed officials if he presses ahead, which is all but guaranteed.  In forcing the council to accept a full ‘all out’ election of councillors in 2016 he claimed he would restore “pride” and “local accountability” to the borough. This is likely to make UKIP a serious contender to win the council, but in any case it is now unlikely democracy will be restored until that election is successfully completed.

Pickles claimed the current council leadership was opposed to democracy as it regularly cracked down on whistleblowers. He said senior managers had created an “unhealthy climate where people are afraid to speak out because they have seen the consequences for those who do.” Pickles said his plan would “put an end to the councils on going failure” and to “restore good local governance to Rotherham”.

Hilary Benn for Labour said it was time for Rotherham to “accept the truth” that they had failed to protect children. He said the “process of healing” could not take place until that happened. During the debate the Rotherham Cabinet announced they would all resign.

Rotherham Council was exposed as having failed to protect as many as 2000 victims from Muslim grooming gangs. They stand accused of refusing to stop the abuse of young white girls by Muslim men for fear of being accused of racism.

Austerity?

Not Seen Anything Yet

Michael Lewis has had a sterling career as a premier finance-sector-skewer.  He has popped more bubbles than most.  Memorable and significant as diagnoses and explanations of "what really went on" include: Liars Poker, The Big Short, and Flash Boys. One is always left with the overwhelming impression that the modern Western financial system is out of control, that fear and greed dominate the sector, and that it cannot continue. 

Lewis has penned a lengthy essay upon Greece, published in Vanity Fair in 2010.  Once again the truth is beyond belief.  Here are some highlights:

Firstly, the size of the debt back in 2010

Daily Devotional

Five Ways Affliction Helps

Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I keep your word. (Psalm 119:67)

John Piper

This verse shows that God sends affliction to help us learn his word. We should ask how affliction helps us understand God’s word and keep it.

There are innumerable answers, as there are innumerable experiences. But here are five:

1. Affliction takes the glibness of life away and makes us more serious so that our mindset is more in tune with the seriousness of God’s word.


2. Affliction knocks worldly props from under us and forces us to rely more on God, which brings us more in tune with the aim of the word.


3. Affliction makes us search the Scriptures with greater desperation for help, rather than treating it as marginal to life.


4. Affliction brings us into the fellowship of Christ’s sufferings so that we fellowship more closely with him and see the world more readily through his eyes.


5. Affliction mortifies deceitful and distracting fleshly desires, and so brings us into a more spiritual frame which fits God’s word more.

May the Holy Spirit give us grace to not begrudge the pedagogy of God.

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

Here We Stand . . .

. . . We Can Do No Other

---

Richard John Neuhaus:

We contend, and we contend relentlessly, for the dignity of the human person, of every human person, created in the image and likeness of God, destined from eternity for eternity—every human person, no matter how weak or how strong, no matter how young or how old, no matter how productive or how burdensome, no matter how welcome or how inconvenient. Nobody is a nobody; nobody is unwanted. All are wanted by God, and therefore to be respected, protected, and cherished by us.

We shall not weary, we shall not rest, until every unborn child is protected in law and welcomed in life. We shall not weary, we shall not rest, until all the elderly who have run life’s course are protected against despair and abandonment, protected by the rule of law and the bonds of love. We shall not weary, we shall not rest, until every young woman is given the help she needs to recognize the problem of pregnancy as the gift of life. We shall not weary, we shall not rest, as we stand guard at the entrance gates and the exit gates of life, and at every step along way of life, bearing witness in word and deed to the dignity of the human person—of every human person.

Against the encroaching shadows of the culture of death, against forces commanding immense power and wealth, against the perverse doctrine that a woman’s dignity depends upon her right to destroy her child, against what St. Paul calls the principalities and powers of the present time, this convention renews our resolve that we shall not weary, we shall not rest, until the culture of life is reflected in the rule of law and lived in the law of love.

---

Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow (About Silly, "Enlightened" Women)

Enlightening the Silly Women

Douglas Wilson

Blog&Mablog

February 7, 2015

The path of feminism has been a straight one, like the flight of an arrow. It has gone straight from women’s liberation to handcuffs by the bed. You’ve come a long way, baby.

Those whose ideas about individual sexual liberty are formed best while galloping with the herd are in for a real treat this Valentine’s Day. 50 Shades of Grey is due to be released to a breathless audience of sexual goobers. And that, incidentally, is no small feat — it is somewhat difficult for mouth breathers to be breathless like that.

Here on the right you may see that the Vermont Teddy Bear company has even gotten in on the action, manufacturing a gray little teddy bear with a sharp silk necktie and handcuffs. Nothing says “be my Valentine” like a little gray teddy bear with twisted desires. I was provoked by this image to go and watch the trailer for 50 Shades, which I did as my pastoral duty. The stupid, it burns.

In that trailer, Anastasia Steele, a mousy little nobody, asks Christian Grey, a demented but steely-eyed business magnate, to “enlighten” her. What does that mean? I will tell you what it means! It means that some dim bulb winds up tied to a bed! Yay!

Yay? This is consensual, right? Well, says the secularist eroti-despot, whip in hand, “I can tell you that for now if it makes you feel any better. We just do the consensual rape fantasies now as a catechetical preparation for the real thing later.”

Daily Devotional

Indebted to What?

"Therefore, brethren, we are debtors."
Romans 8:12

Charles H. Spurgeon

As God's creatures, we are all debtors to him: to obey him with all our body, and soul, and strength. Having broken his commandments, as we all have, we are debtors to his justice, and we owe to him a vast amount which we are not able to pay.

But of the Christian it can be said that he does not owe God's justice anything, for Christ has paid the debt his people owed; for this reason the believer owes the more to love. I am a debtor to God's grace and forgiving mercy; but I am no debtor to his justice, for he will never accuse me of a debt already paid. Christ said, "It is finished!" and by that he meant, that whatever his people owed was wiped away forever from the book of remembrance. Christ, to the uttermost, has satisfied divine justice; the account is settled; the handwriting is nailed to the cross; the receipt is given, and we are debtors to God's justice no longer.

But then, because we are not debtors to our Lord in that sense, we become ten times more debtors to God than we should have been otherwise.

Revenue Problems

It's a Strange, Strange World

Imagine for a minute a bizarre parallel universe in which institutions of government were so perverse they refused to do things on the grounds they did not have sufficient funds.  Free libraries for citizens?  Yeah, that would be wonderful, but--Nah, we can't afford it.  Next.  Clearly such behaviour would indicate derangement by all concerned.

Consequently, in our more sane world, local government has never let a lack of money stand in the way of new spending projects.  That's what all government exist for, right?  To spend more of other peoples' money.  It was completely predictable, therefore, that as the pressure group, Local Government New Zealand (representing local and municipal governments in New Zealand) recently faced up to the unexpected crisis of no-money-left, it would come up with an equally unexpected solution.  More money, please.  They have thought long and hard about how local governments can extract more money out of the citizens to pay for all the big-spending, wonderful ideas and plans local governments are so adept at creating. 

Local government has a revenue problem, not a spending problem--or so we are told.  Ratepayers (that is, property owners) have reached the limits of their ability to pay more. There are murmurings of rates revolts.  So now, local councils want new ways to tax and extract money citizens' money.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow

Until Someone Unsettles It

Douglas Wilson

Blog&Mablog

2 February, 2015

The creation account in Genesis is read in different ways. It would be easy therefore, to jump right into the Genesis text and show that I read it in one of those different ways.

I do read it in one of those different ways, and bringing out arguments accordingly would be easy. Before getting to my main set of points, let me give just one example. All sides agree that the Hebrew word for day — yom — admits of different meanings, just as the English word day does. For example, I could say, “Back in my grandfather’s day, he was a champion at picking corn, and, while it was day, could average ten bushels a day.”

Now several things are true about this. One is that my grandfather really was a champion at picking corn, but that is another story for another time. The second thing is that day has three different meanings in the course of just one sentence. Day first means time, “in my grandfather’s time.” Second, it means “while the sun was up,” day as opposed to night. And third, it meant “twenty-hour increments,” Tuesday and then Wednesday, and so on.

But the third thing to note about this is that for native speakers of English, the different uses of day do not throw us in a state of consternation. We pick up on all kinds of contextual clues that enable us to tell what is going on.

Daily Devotional

The Forgiveness Cycle

And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us. And lead us not into temptation. (Luke 11:4)

John Piper

Who forgives whom first?

• “Forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us.” (Luke 11:4)
• “As the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.” (Colossians 3:13)

When Jesus teaches us to pray that God forgive us “for we ourselves forgive,” he is not saying that the first move in forgiveness was our move. Rather, it goes like this: God forgave us when we believed in Christ (Acts 10:43). Then, from this broken, joyful, grateful, hopeful, experience of being forgiven, we offer forgiveness to others.

This signifies that we have been savingly forgiven. That is, our forgiving others shows that we have faith; we are united to Christ; we are indwelt by the Spirit.

But we still sin (1 John 1:8, 10). So we still turn to God for fresh applications of the work of Christ on our behalf — fresh applications of forgiveness. We cannot do this with any confidence if we are harboring an unforgiving spirit (Matthew 18:23–35).

That’s why Jesus says we ask for forgiveness because we are forgiving. This is like saying: “Father, continue to extend to me the mercies purchased by Christ because by these mercies I forsake vengeance and extend to others what you have extended to me.”

May you know God’s forgiveness afresh today, and may that grace overflow in your heart in forgiveness toward others.

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

Misplaced Responsibity

It's Everyone Else's Fault

The politics of guilt and pity have a lot to answer for.  It's a national plague.  The modern phenomenon of culture-wide guilt and pity arises out of the world-view of egalitarianism.  In this wretched perspective anyone who is less well off, or less wealthy than oneself is an object of pity.  They are the deprived, the suffering, and the afflicted--worthy objects of our compassion.

The welling up of pity assuages the guilt which is also the product of egalitarianism.  The prevailing idea of egalitarianism is that if someone has less, the cause of their deprivation is that others have more.  The pie is fixed in size.  There are only so many pieces to go around.  If someone has a smaller piece than others, it is because others have unjustly seized bigger pieces. 

The politics of guilt and pity lead to one outcome.  A demand that the state "do more" and rule, regulate, and intervene to ensure the greediness of the guilty is compensated by the government, which will "do something" for the deprived.  Hence, in this way, guilt and pity are perfectly reconciled.  Except they are not.  The pity was false to begin with.  As false as the guilt.  Both are products of a madcap and bizarre egalitarianism, which is one of the stupidist notions ever to afflict the most stupid of stupid people.  The escalating of the "problem" to the government to rule, regulate, and fix puts salve on both the guilt and pity feelings.  But the problem was false to begin with.  The "solutions" are equally false. 

Below is an illustration of guilt and pity at work.  Lauren Priestley tells us how a young mum has been hard hit by the housing shortage.

Chesterton Explains How Unbelief Drove Him to Belief

The Absurdity of the Rationalist Mind

In a delightful essay entitled, "The Paradoxes of Christianity", G. K. Chesterton describes how he was provoked into becoming a Christian by reading the rationalist attacks upon it.

I read the scientific and sceptical literature of my time--all of it, at least, that I could find written in English and lying about; . . . .  I never read a line of Christian apologetics. I read as little as I can of them now. . . . Our grandmothers were quite right when they said that Tom Paine and the freethinkers unsettled the mind.  They do.  They unsettled mine horribly.  The rationalist made me question whether reason was of any use whatever; and when I had finished reading Herbert Spencer I had got as far as doubting (for the first time) whether evolution had occurred at all.  As I laid down the last of Colonel Ingersoll's atheistic lectures the dreadful thought  broke across my mind, "Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian."  I was in a dreadful way.  [G. K. Chesterton, "The Paradoxes of Christianity,"  Collected Works, Volume I (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986), p. 288.]

The Weapons of Our Warfare are Powerful For the Tearing Down of Strongholds.

The Church in Niger is Stronger Than You Think

Jan. 30, 2015
Billy Hallowell
TheBlaze 

After Muslim mobs attacked and torched scores of Christian churches in Niger earlier this month out of anger over cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad that were published by French satirical outlet Charlie Hebdo, Christian missionaries found a charred Bible in the smoldering ashes — a discovery that they said led to an “emotional moment.”

Neal and Danette Childs, who have been missionaries in the West African country since 1998, saw protesters destroy two of the churches associated with their Reaching Unreached Nations ministry, as violence raged and at least 10 people were killed between January 16-18, according to conservative commentator Todd Starnes.

“Our immediate response — there is that little bit of panic,” Neal Childs told Starnes, noting that he and his wife began packing up their belongings as well as important documents in case they were attacked. “We were ready. We were on guard.”

Daily Devotional

Constant Lovingkindness

"They shall sing in the ways of the Lord."
Psalm 138:5

C. H. Spurgeon

The time when Christians begin to sing in the ways of the Lord is when they first lose their burden at the foot of the Cross. Not even the songs of the angels seem so sweet as the first song of rapture which gushes from the inmost soul of the forgiven child of God. You know how John Bunyan describes it. He says when poor Pilgrim lost his burden at the Cross, he gave three great leaps, and went on his way singing--

"Blest Cross! blest Sepulchre! blest rather be
The Man that there was put to shame for me!"

Believer, do you recollect the day when your fetters fell off? Do you remember the place when Jesus met you, and said, "I have loved thee with an everlasting love; I have blotted out as a cloud thy transgressions, and as a thick cloud thy sins; they shall not be mentioned against thee any more forever." Oh! what a sweet season is that when Jesus takes away the pain of sin.

When the Lord first pardoned my sin, I was so joyous that I could scarce refrain from dancing. I thought on my road home from the house where I had been set at liberty, that I must tell the stones in the street the story of my deliverance. So full was my soul of joy, that I wanted to tell every snow-flake that was falling from heaven of the wondrous love of Jesus, who had blotted out the sins of one of the chief of rebels.

But it is not only at the commencement of the Christian life that believers have reason for song; as long as they live they discover cause to sing in the ways of the Lord, and their experience of his constant lovingkindness leads them to say, "I will bless the Lord at all times: his praise shall continually be in my mouth." See to it, brother, that thou magnifiest the Lord this day.

"Long as we tread this desert land,
New mercies shall new songs demand."

Faux Rage

Pitiable, Risible Stephen Fry

Poor old Stephen Fry.  There are few things more pathetic than the moral indignation of an ageing atheist.  And, sadly, Stephen in his dotage appears to be growing in his particular moral outrage.

Stephen does not believe in God's existence.  His reason?  There is EEEEEvil in the world!  He works himself up into a lather telling us that the Creator of such eeeeeevil must be hated and rejected, were He to exist.  But Stephen Fry, either consciously or unconsciously, is holding himself up to ridicule.

He was asked recently by a media interviewer what he would say to God if he were to die (which is a certainty) and were confronted by Him (also a certainty).  Suddenly amoral Stephen got all morally indignant.  It almost sounded like he was trying to deflect his own deep sense of guilt and blame, as in, "I have done bad things, but God has done worse than me."

In his imaginary conversation with God, Fry says he would tell him: “How dare you create a world in which there is such misery that is not our fault? It’s not right.  “It’s utterly, utterly evil. Why should I respect a capricious, mean-minded, stupid God who creates a world which is so full of injustice and pain?”

Now, it's somewhat embarrassing to his argument that poor old Stephen appears to hold to antiquated notions of right and wrong, misery and felicity.

Letter From New Zealand (About an American Who Met Reality)

How George McGovern Discovered the Real World

Liam Hehir
Manawatu Standard

. . . I have always liked the story of how former United States senator and Democratic presidential nominee George McGovern came to appreciate this. After losing a re-election in the Republican wave election of 1980, McGovern needed something to do in his retirement years. Having long held an interest in hospitality, he decided to use his savings to buy a small hotel and conference facility in Stratford, Connecticut.

It was not long before a terrible truth dawned on McGovern: being a small businessman was much, much harder than it looked when he was a history professor and a politician. His business went under in less than three years. Most of McGovern's savings went with it.

In the years that followed, McGovern often wrote about his business failure with great intellectual honesty.

Daily Devotional

Little Sights and Sounds

TO ARTHUR GREEVES: On the meaning of interruptions and real life; on the difficulty of being patient; and on expiating through embracing one’s own sufferings.
20 December 1943

C. S. Lewis

Things are pretty bad here. Minto’s varicose ulcer gets worse and worse, domestic help harder and harder to come by. Sometimes I am very unhappy, but less so than I have often been in what were (by external standards) better times.

The great thing, if one can, is to stop regarding all the unpleasant things as interruptions of one’s ‘own’, or ‘real’ life. The truth is of course that what one calls the interruptions are precisely one’s real life—the life God is sending one day by day: what one calls one’s ‘real life’ is a phantom of one’s own imagination. This at least is what I see at moments of insight: but it’s hard to remember it all the time—I know your problems must be much the same as mine (with the important difference that mine are of my own making, a very appropriate punishment and, like all God’s punishments, a chance for expiation.)

Isn’t it hard to go on being patient, to go on supplying sympathy? One’s stock of love turns out, when the testing time comes, to be so very inadequate: I suppose it is well that one should be forced to discover the fact!  I find too (do you?) that hard days drive one back on Nature. I don’t mean walks . . . but little sights and sounds seen at windows in odd moments.

I had a most vivid, tranquil dream about you the other night, just chatting in the old way. Let’s hope it will happen sometime. For the rest, I’ve no news.

From The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume II
Compiled in Yours, Jack
The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, Volume II: Family Letters 1905-1931. Copyright © 2004 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.

Picketty, Licketty, Splittery

Tumbling into the Trap

When a book or opinion co-incides with one's own, one's credulity quotient rises exponentially.  So it has been with Thomas Picketty's tome on egalitarianism, Capital in the Twenty-First Century.  The central thesis is that capitalism (by which is meant in part a largely unregulated free-market) leads to vast discrepancies of wealth and property, which in turn means that the exclusive minority of rich folk get richer, and the vast majority of people remain poor.  The Commentariat and the chattering classes have swooned over the book.  It "proves" their theories and prejudices and what they had suspected all along. Private capital is dangerous and destructive.  State owned and controlled capital is eminently more virtuous, with vastly superior (and just) outcomes.

Coupled with this has been the self-evident scientific rigour of the book.  How do we know it's rigorous?  Why, it's filled with numbers.  Anything with numbers has to be objective and factually based.  How sad, then, that the book has now been thoroughly discredited.  Picketty's charge of the egalitarian light brigade fizzled out in the first fifty yards before it even got into full stride.  Colonel Picketty is left exposed as little more than a cheap huckster.

It turns out that Picketty cooked the books, and made up data to suit his prejudices. The Financial Times in the UK started to look closely at his "data".

Political Schizophrenics

Greek election reflects country’s differences with the EU

By Bruce Stokes

January 27, 2015
PewResearch

Alexis Tsipras, leader of Greece’s Syriza party, signs a book as he is sworn in as Greek Prime Minister in Athens. (ARIS MESSINIS/AFP/Getty Images)

The outcome of the Greek parliamentary election Sunday, which gave power to Syriza, the left-wing, anti-austerity party that has pledged to restructure Greece’s crushing government debt, should have come as no surprise given the views of the Greek public about the European Union. Likewise, other Europeans’ views of Greeks suggest the difficulty the new government in Athens faces in getting a better deal from its European partners.

1 Greeks have little regard for the EU. Only about a third of Greeks have a positive view of the EU, according to a spring 2014 Pew Research Center survey. Just 17% think that European economic integration has been good for Greece.

2 Despite their frustrations with the EU, and in the face of speculation that restructuring of Greek debt could lead to abandonment of the common European currency, 69% of Greeks want to keep the euro and not return to the drachma. 

Daily Devotional

Prevailing Grace

“I have seen his ways, but I will heal him; I will lead him and restore comfort to him and his mourners . . .” (Isaiah 57:18)

John Piper

Learn your doctrine from biblical texts. It stands up better that way, and feeds the soul.

For example, learn irresistible grace from texts. In this way, you will see it does not mean grace cannot be resisted; it means that when God chooses, he can and will overcome that resistance.

In Isaiah 57:17–19, for instance, God chastises his rebellious people by striking them and hiding his face: “Because of the iniquity of his unjust gain I was angry, I struck him; I hid my face and was angry” (verse 17).
But they did not respond with repentance. Rather, they kept backsliding. They resisted: “But he went on backsliding in the way of his own heart” (verse 17).

So grace can be resisted. In fact, Stephen said to the Jewish leaders, “You always resist the Holy Spirit” (Acts 7:51).

What then does God do?

Leviathan Stirring

Sauron Taking Shape and Form Before our Eyes

The threat of the state gradually, imperceptibly moving towards an authoritarian tyranny is real enough.  Since the legal corpus of most Western nations, certainly the Anglo-Saxon nations (Britain, Canada, the US, Australia and New Zealand) defers to and references the law in one another's countries as precedent, the erosion and undermining of traditional rights in any is an implicit threat to all. 

Peter Hitchens documents some of the more tyrannical laws and powers now operative in the United Kingdom.

Letter From America (About Culpable Blindness)

‘Voluntary’ Sharia Tribunal in Texas

This Is How It Starts

by Pamela Geller 
28 Jan 2015
BreitbartNews

Breitbart Texas confirmed Tuesday that “an Islamic Tribunal using Sharia law” is indeed operating in Texas. But not to worry: an attorney for the tribunal assures us that participation is “voluntary,” and one of the Sharia judges, Dr. Taher El-badawi, says it’s devoted only to “non-binding dispute resolution.”

This is how it starts. This is how it started in the United Kingdom. When Sharia courts were instituted there, Muslim and non-Muslim officials alike all assured the British public and the world that they would be voluntary, restricted to matters involving non-criminal matters, and subject to the British courts. Any areas in which British law and Sharia law conflicted would be referred not to the Sharia courts, but to the British courts.

That is not how it worked out. The Telegraph reported in August 2011 that “there are growing concerns” that the Sharia courts “are creating a parallel legal system — and one that is developing completely unchecked.” The Independent stated in April 2012 “some Sharia law bodies have been misrepresented by the media as being transparent, voluntary and operating in accordance with human rights and equality legislation. This is not the case. Many Sharia law bodies rule on a range of disputes from domestic violence to child residence all of which should be dealt with by UK courts of law.” Instead, “they operate within a misogynist and patriarchal framework which is incompatible with UK legislation.”

Daily Devotional

Forgetting What Lies Behind

"The things which are not seen."
2 Corinthians 4:18

Charles Spurgeon

In our Christian pilgrimage it is well, for the most part, to be looking forward. Forward lies the crown, and onward is the goal. Whether it be for hope, for joy, for consolation, or for the inspiring of our love, the future must, after all, be the grand object of the eye of faith.

Looking into the future we see sin cast out, the body of sin and death destroyed, the soul made perfect, and fit to be a partaker of the inheritance of the saints in light. Looking further yet, the believer's enlightened eye can see death's river passed, the gloomy stream forded, and the hills of light attained on which standeth the celestial city; he seeth himself enter within the pearly gates, hailed as more than conqueror, crowned by the hand of Christ, embraced in the arms of Jesus, glorified with him, and made to sit together with him on his throne, even as he has overcome and has sat down with the Father on his throne.

The thought of this future may well relieve the darkness of the past and the gloom of the present. The joys of heaven will surely compensate for the sorrows of earth. Hush, hush, my doubts! death is but a narrow stream, and thou shalt soon have forded it. Time, how short--eternity, how long! Death, how brief--immortality, how endless! Methinks I even now eat of Eshcol's clusters, and sip of the well which is within the gate. The road is so, so short! I shall soon be there.

"When the world my heart is rending
With its heaviest storm of care,
My glad thoughts to heaven ascending,
Find a refuge from despair.
Faith's bright vision shall sustain me
Till life's pilgrimage is past;
Fears may vex and troubles pain me,
I shall reach my home at last."

Flogging a Dying Horse

Something Not Quite Right Down at the Ranch

When the National Certificate of Educational Achievement ("NCEA") was introduced in New Zealand with strong bi-partisan support it was designed to affirm the worth of all secondary school students by ensuring that they did not pass out without some qualification of some sort.  Consequently, the curriculum was broadened to include all manner of subjects, in which one could gain academic credits.  Failing a child was deemed to be psychologically damaging.

Eventually some of the worst excesses of the system were planed off as rules, regulations and governance improved.  But stubborn realities remain.  NCEA is an academic standard not used or recognised in any other country.  An increasing number of subjects are being assessed internally by the schools teaching the courses--setting up a conflict of interest where teaching staff are also the assessing staff in an environment where one's professional standing and assessment depends significantly on certain pass rates being achieved.  Moreover, NCEA implicitly makes all subjects equal.  So one can get "soft" qualifications that hardly represent academic achievement, though a student may have a piece of paper telling them they have "educational" achievement. Finally, students are not provided with marks, but with a bland assertion that they have "achieved" a respective standard. 

A number of secondary schools have decided to offer additional academic standards to compensate for the intrinsic, systemic inadequacies of NCEA.

Letter From the UK (About the "War" on Carbon Dioxide)

Ten Reasons Why the War on CO2 Has Done Great Harm

by Donna Rachel Edmunds 
22 Jan 2015
BreitbartUK

Environmental campaigners make much of the potentially catastrophic outcomes of increased atmospheric CO₂ levels, often exaggerating their claims in order to gain public support for policies designed to tackle anthropogenic climate change. If challenged they often fall back on the precautionary principle: doing something has no negative outcome, whereas doing nothing might.

But what if doing something does have a negative outcome? In a new paper for the Global Warming Policy Foundation, Andrew Montford, author of the Bishop Hill blog on climate change, has identified quite a number of negative outcomes of environmentalist-driven climate change policies – or what William Happer, Professor of Physics at Princeton University, terms in the foreword “the jihad against atmospheric carbon dioxide”.

They range from the economic: market fixing and transfers of wealth from the poor to the rich; to the environmental: slaughter of wildlife and clearing of rainforests; to the human cost: hunger and starvation, and other human rights abuses.

Here’s a round-up. Consider it a sort of anti eco-bore crib sheet.

Daily Devotional

How to Repent

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. (1 John 1:9)

John Piper

A vague, bad feeling that you are a crummy person is not the same as conviction for sin. Feeling rotten is not the same as repentance.  This morning I began to pray, and felt unworthy to be talking to the Creator of the universe. It was a vague sense of unworthiness. So I told him so. Now what?

Nothing changed until I began to get specific about my sins. Crummy feelings can be useful if they lead to conviction for sins. Vague feelings of being a bad person are not very helpful.  The fog of unworthiness needs to take shape into clear dark pillars of disobedience. Then you can point to them and repent and ask for forgiveness and take aim to blow them up.

So I began to call to mind the commands I frequently break. These are the ones that came to mind.

• Love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. Not 95%, but 100%. (Matthew 22:37)
• Love your neighbor as you love yourself. Be as eager for things to go well for him as you are for things to go well for you. (Matthew 22:39)
• Do all things without grumbling. No grumbling—inside or outside. (Philippians 2:14)
• Cast all your anxieties on him—so you are not being weighed down by it anymore. (1 Peter 5:7)
• Only say things that give grace to others—especially those closest to you. (Ephesians 4:29)
• Redeem the time. Don’t fritter or dawdle. (Ephesians 5:16)

So much for any pretensions to great holiness! I’m undone.

But now it is specific. I look it in the eye. I’m not whining about feeling crummy. I’m apologizing to Christ for not keeping all that he commanded.  I’m broken and I’m angry at my sin. I want to kill it, not me. I’m not suicidal. I’m a sin hater and a sin murderer. (“Put to death what is earthly in you,” Colossians 3:5; “Put to death the deeds of the body,” Romans 8:13.)

In this conflict, I hear the promise, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). Peace rises.

Prayer feels possible and right and powerful again.

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

It's a Mad, Mad, Mad World

It's The Way the Electrons Are Configured

It's a mad, mad, mad world.  Every so often the inanity and madness of Western ideology strikes one afresh.  Yes, it really is that mad.  For most of the time, we cope.  We make our compromises.  We come to terms with the way the world is structured and ruled.  We shrug our shoulders and move on.  In many ways, for day-to-day existence this is the appropriate and best response. Ignore the idiots and the idiocy.  Get on with doing our duties and fulfilling our responsibilities to our Lord. 

The madness of the modern world is due to the "big ideas" that dominate, and, therefore, govern our culture and society.  One is materialism: the belief that matter is all there is; there ain't nothing else.  One application of this quasi-religious ideology is that property and possessions are part of the essence of life itself--since matter is all and everything.  Therefore, it is inevitable that social policies, government, and politics degenerate into endless debates about who has what and how much is it worth.  The most important role of the state (in a materialistic world) is to ensure "fair" distribution of stuff, or matter.

Materialism is a thoroughly Big Idea, which is a true world-and-life view.  It affects everything.  Take just one prosaic example: crime.

Letter From America (About Greece)

Greece Hits The Bottom of the Socialist Death Spiral

by John Hayward 
26 Jan 2015
BreitbartNews


In the course of critiquing President Obama’s 2015 State of the Union address, columnist George Will remarked: “Ignoring reality is part of the job description of being a progressive.” Greece’s new, far-left Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras plans to ignore reality more than any other politician in recent memory.

Americans who haven’t been paying much attention to the collapse of Greek socialism have been missing a very instructive lesson in where their own country may be heading, for Greece is the end stage of Obama-style debt-fueled dependency politics. Tsipras’ sweeping electoral victory marks the point at which the Takers, weary of intellectual pretensions and empty promises to work hard and become self-sufficient, tell the Makers to stick ‘em up and hand over their wallets. It could happen in America, too, most likely beginning with demands for huge federal bailouts by bankrupt Democrat-run basket case state governments.

Tsipras isn’t simply ignoring reality. He’s going to weaponize his own national debt, making a “too big to fail” argument to squeeze more cash out of the European Union welfare system that keeps his beggar nation running. Previous deals to resolve the Greek debt crisis involved giving its creditors “haircuts” – that is, asking them to accept a return on their investment considerably lower than what they were promised.

Tsipras says he’s going to lower that barber chair all the way and go Sweeney Todd on Greece’s creditors, writing off a big chunk of its enormous national debt – currently standing at more than 175 percent of its gross domestic product – and reneging on the terms of the 2010 bailout package Greece received from the European Union. Critics who thought that bailout was a bad idea are about to be vindicated, good and hard.
Greece’s bailout and haircut debt-reduction giveaway was premised on the country adopting “austerity” measures, an agreement not dissimilar in principle to what debt-consolidation companies might expect of an individual who seeks low-interest loans to pay down overflowing credit cards. “Stop going further into debt” is the sane demand made of every insolvent party looking for a bailout.

Tsipras, on the other hand, campaigned on spending money like it’s going out of style.

Daily Devotional

Conscience

C. S. Lewis

How do we decide what is good or evil? The usual answer is that we decide by conscience. But probably no one thinks now of conscience as a separate faculty, like one of the senses. Indeed, it cannot be so thought of. For an autonomous faculty like a sense cannot be argued with; you cannot argue a man into seeing green if he sees blue. But the conscience can be altered by argument; and if you did not think so, you would not have asked me to come and argue with you about the morality of obeying the civil law when it tells us to serve in the wars. Conscience, then, means the whole man engaged in a particular subject matter.

But even in this sense conscience still has two meanings. It can mean (a) the pressure a man feels upon his will to do what he thinks is right; (b) his judgment as to what the content of right and wrong are. In sense (a) conscience is always to be followed. It is the sovereign of the universe, which “if it had power as it has right, would absolutely rule the world.” It is not to be argued with, but obeyed, and even to question it is to incur guilt. But in sense (b) it is a very different matter. People may be mistaken about wrong and right; most people in some degree are mistaken. By what means are mistakes in this field to be corrected?

From The Weight of Glory
Compiled in Words to Live By
The Weight of Glory: And Other Addresses. Copyright © 1949, C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. Copyright renewed © 1976, revised 1980 C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers. Words to Live By: A Guide for the Merely Christian. Copyright © 2007 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers.  Sourced from BibleGateway.

Fearfully and Wonderfully Made, Or . . .

The Nothingness of Everything

Towards the end of the nineteenth century, G. K. Chesterton wrote the following perspicacious paragraph:

The real trouble with this world of ours is not that it is an unreasonable world, or even that it is a reasonable one.  The commonest kind of trouble is that it is nearly reasonable, but not quite.  Life is not an illogicality; yet it is a trap for logicians.  It looks just a little more mathematical and regular than it is; its exactitude is obvious, but its inexactitude is hidden; its wildness lies in wait. [G. K. Chesterton, "The Paradoxes of Christianity,"  Collected Works, Volume I (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986), p. 285.] 

The wildness of the world lies in wait.  Pagan Deism flowered in a world which told itself that everything operated with mechanical precision.  An impersonal deity had wound up the clock and walked away, leaving the clock to tick along with exact mathematical precision.  Of course there are aspects of the universe that are remarkably precise and regular--atomic clocks, for example.   And then quantum mechanics "came along".  Suddenly the inexactitude of the material world at its most basic (i.e. smallest components) became startlingly apparent.  This led Einstein, who disliked quantum mechanics and its negative implications for Deism, to grumble that he did not believe god played dice with the universe.