Letter From America (About France)

France Down-in-the-Dumps

By Pascal Bruckner 

LA Times 

February 23, 2014

PARIS — Not long ago, I attended a colloquium of French scientists and philosophers in Corsica, France, called "How to Think About the Future." With few exceptions, the astrophysicists, economists, physicians and social theorists on hand offered dark visions of tomorrow. A new financial crisis, water and grain shortages, endless war, a general collapse of ecosystems — we were spared no catastrophic scenario.

A month earlier, I had been invited by the environmentalist think tank Breakthrough to San Francisco, where I reflected with a group of thinkers on the Schumpeterian economic idea of "creative destruction" and its application to energy production. My experience there was quite different: three days of vigorous and sometimes tense debates among advocates favoring, respectively, nuclear power, shale gas and renewable energy sources. Defenders of threatened species had their say too, but no one doubted in the slightest that we had a future, even if its contours remained unclear.

France has become a defeatist nation. A striking indicator of this attitude is the massive emigration that the country has witnessed over the last decade, with nearly 2 million French citizens choosing to leave their country and take their chances in Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, the United States and other locales.

I recall an observation that Michael Schellenberger, Breakthrough's president, made in the proceedings: "The United States' greatest hope at present lies in shale gas and in the 11 million illegal immigrants who will soon become legal, 11 million brains that will stimulate and renew our country."

Such a comment exhibited a hopefulness completely missing in Corsica — and hard to find in today's France, which has outlawed even the exploration of possible reserves of natural and shale gas, and which sees every stranger on its soil as a potential enemy. France has become a defeatist nation.

Daily Devotional

The Triumph Is Sure

Therefore strong peoples will glorify you; cities of ruthless nations will fear you. (Isaiah 25:3)

John Piper

Isaiah sees the day coming when all the nations — representatives from all the people groups — will no longer be at odds with Yahweh, the God of Israel and his Messiah, whom we know to be Jesus.  They will no longer worship Bel or Nebo or Molech or Allah or Buddha or utopian social programs or capitalistic growth possibilities or ancestors or animistic spirits. Instead they will come in faith to the banquet on God’s mountain. 

And they will have the veil of sorrow removed and death shall be swallowed up and the reproach of God's people will be removed and tears shall be gone forever.  That's the setting for understanding the vision of verse 3: “Therefore strong peoples will glorify you; cities of ruthless nations will fear you.” In other words God is stronger than the “strong people” and he is so powerful and so gracious that in the end he will turn ruthless nations to revere him.

So the picture Isaiah gives us is one of all nations turned to God in worship, a great banquet for all the peoples, the removal of all suffering and grief and reproach from the nations who have become his people, and the final putting away of death forever.

This triumph is sure because God is doing it. Therefore we can be certain of it.

Not one life spent in the cause of world evangelization is spent in vain. Not one prayer or one dollar or one sermon or one letter of encouragement mailed or one little light shining in some dark place — nothing in the cause of the advancing kingdom is in vain.

The triumph is sure.

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

Earwigs Scurrying For Cover

Politically Correcting the Corrections Department

The probation industry is fraught with tragic mistakes, errors, and pain.  It makes victim's pain more or less perpetual as successive probation hearings need to be testified at.  The anguish and pain to be re-dredged, re-remembered, and refreshed.  At times the Parole Board makes serious mistakes.  A paroled criminal re-offends and more victims suffer.

Now something even more serious has come to light.  The Probation Service and the Department of Corrections are bureaucracies (no surprises there).  Probation officers on the "front line" write reports about prisoners coming up for parole hearings.  Middle level bureaucrats in the Service and the Department of Corrections then edit the reports.  Clearly they want reports to have correct grammar and syntax.  If only.  In fact there is evidence that middle management wants probation reports to be politically correct.  They call it a "quality assurance check".  Now this may be entirely innocent.  Or not.

Letter From New Zealand (About a Christian Dentist Who Escaped ISIS)

The Dentist Who Escaped Isis

Rachel Smalley
NZ Herald
March 14, 2015

One day, he was a prosperous dental surgeon. The next, he was taken from his car at gunpoint and thrown in a bloodstained cell, where he watched as the other prisoners were taken out, one by one, to be shot. Ashour tells Rachel Smalley how he survived.



"Do you want the whole story?" he asks.  "Yes, if you can," I say. "I hear it's quite a story."

His name is Ashour (surname withheld for his protection) and he will soon turn 30. He is an oral and maxillofacial surgeon from Mosul but for the past six months he has lived in a crowded church in Kurdistan, Iraq. He has a bag of clothes, some blankets and a pillow, but little else.  "It's not so bad," Ashour says. "I am displaced but I still have my life."

Ashour is one of two million Iraqis displaced after fleeing Isis and its jihadist agenda of torture, indiscriminate killing and religious persecution.  Almost one million have sought refuge in Kurdistan, the small, semi-autonomous region in the north of the country, sheltering in schools, informal tent settlements, churches, and the bare, concrete skeletons of unfinished buildings that pepper the Middle East's landscape.

I meet Ashour in Duhok, a city encircled by mountains in the rich, fertile basin of the Tigris River.

Daily Devotional

No Exceptions

"We must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God."
Acts 14:22

Charles H. Spurgeon

God's people have their trials. It was never designed by God, when he chose his people, that they should be an untried people. They were chosen in the furnace of affliction; they were never chosen to worldly peace and earthly joy. Freedom from sickness and the pains of mortality was never promised them; but when their Lord drew up the charter of privileges, he included chastisements amongst the things to which they should inevitably be heirs.

Trials are a part of our lot; they were predestinated for us in Christ's last legacy. So surely as the stars are fashioned by his hands, and their orbits fixed by him, so surely are our trials allotted to us: he has ordained their season and their place, their intensity and the effect they shall have upon us. Good men must never expect to escape troubles; if they do, they will be disappointed, for none of their predecessors have been without them.

Mark the patience of Job; remember Abraham, for he had his trials, and by his faith under them, he became the "Father of the faithful." Note well the biographies of all the patriarchs, prophets, apostles, and martyrs, and you shall discover none of those whom God made vessels of mercy, who were not made to pass through the fire of affliction. It is ordained of old that the cross of trouble should be engraved on every vessel of mercy, as the royal mark whereby the King's vessels of honour are distinguished.

But although tribulation is thus the path of God's children, they have the comfort of knowing that their Master has traversed it before them; they have his presence and sympathy to cheer them, his grace to support them, and his example to teach them how to endure; and when they reach "the kingdom," it will more than make amends for the "much tribulation" through which they passed to enter it.

Long Term Thinking

Inter-Generational Inequity

Here is something you don't see every day.  A local Maori tribe has bought up some state houses in the area of its traditional tribal lands.  It plans to lease them out to tribal members.  Nothing unusual there.  But it is the terms of the lease which are startling.

"Buying land close to Orakei is important to Ngati Whatua Orakei. Our focus is securing land within the tribal boundaries and then using it in the best way to ensure sustainable benefit for the hapu," he said.  The iwi would convert three freehold titles at 38 Takitimu St, 29 Te Arawa St and 11 Ngaio St into leasehold titles and advertise them for sale. 

Leases of 125 years, 150 years or 175 years could be bought, he said.  But ground rent review issues would be avoided because purchases of the leasehold interests in those three properties would be sold with prepaid ground rents. 

Mr Hutchison said such arrangements were relatively rare on suburban residential properties but common overseas.  "There will be no rent reviews throughout the term and the ground leases are prepaid, which we believe removes uncertainly and will make budgeting easier. After 175 years the land can come back to Ngati Whatua Orakei." [NZ Herald]

The first thing that is unusual is the long term view which the tribe is taking of land ownership.  It genuinely believes its newly acquired land is to be held in perpetuity for its descendants.  Ancestral or family land is largely a thing of the past in modern Western economies.  Ngati Whatua is to be commended by thinking in a manner consistent with its tribal ideology.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow

Making John Knox’s Bones Twitch

Douglas Wilson

Blog&Mablog

March 12, 2015

Rachel Marie Stone wrote an article for Christianity Today urging us to “reconsider” Margaret Sanger. The point was that while Sanger was emphatic about the personal and social good that comes from freely available contraception — contraception that was under the control of women — she was also opposed to abortion.

I learned about this article through a lot of good Christians what-the-helling on Twitter and so on, and so I thought I should go take a look. Having done so, let me acknowledge an important point made by a number of respondents thus far. Sanger was a white supremacist, and she was promoting her methods as a way of keeping the human weeds under control. Her outlook was perfectly appalling, and this illustrates yet again that we shouldn’t really care how good Mussolini was with train schedules, or how disciplined and coordinated the North Korean flag-waving drill team is.

The prefix eu in eugenics was a thin code for those white folks who have now dropped the word eugenics like a hot rock, but who still continue to disproportionately target black boys and girls — with the connivance of black quislings — and it should be pointed out by somebody that they have a kill rate much higher than that of the Ferguson Police Department.

Daily Devotional

I Love Real Mice

C. S. Lewis

TO HILA NEWMAN, an eleven-year-old girl who had sent Lewis her drawings and a letter of appreciation for the first three Chronicles of Narnia: On Lewis’s care not to decode the Chronicles of Narnia.

3 June 1953
Thank you so much for your lovely letter and pictures. I realised at once that the coloured one was not a particular scene but a sort of line-up like what you would have at the very end if it was a play instead of stories. The [Voyage of the] DAWN TREADER is not to be the last: There are to be 4 more, 7 in all. Didn’t you notice that Aslan said nothing about Eustace not going back? I thought the best of your pictures was the one of Mr. Tumnus at the bottom of the letter.

As to Aslan’s other name, well I want you to guess. Has there never been anyone in this world who (1.) Arrived at the same time as Father Christmas. (2.) Said he was the son of the Great Emperor. (3.) Gave himself up for someone else’s fault to be jeered at and killed by wicked people. (4.) Came to life again. (5.) Is sometimes spoken of as a Lamb (see the end of the Dawn Treader). Don’t you really know His name in this world? Think it over and let me know your answer!

Reepicheep in your coloured picture has just the right perky, cheeky expression. I love real mice. There are lots in my rooms in College but I have never set a trap. When I sit up late working they poke their heads out from behind the curtains just as if they were saying, ‘Hi! Time for you to go to bed. We want to come out and play.’

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.

Policing in the UK

Systemic Failures

It would seem that policing in the UK is a dog's breakfast, and even that's putting it kindly.  We have been shocked by revelations of British police systematically ignoring horrendous crimes and criminal gangs out of political correctness and the values of multi-culturalism.  Apparently the grooming and systematic rape of young girls is a traditional cultural practice in Pakistan, so British police have turned a blind eye to its manifestation in the UK.

But the problems are far deeper and more systemic than we might realise.  The first problem is the prejudice against preventive policing in favour of "fire-brigade policing" (by which we mean attending actual crimes in progress).  Preventative policing now has enormous bureaucratic hurdles.  Take, for example, the bureaucratic morass that clings to the simplest prevention policing action--the issuing of a caution to a petty offender.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow

Ukraine #3

Douglas Wilson

Blog&Mablog

March 10, 2015

We have already noted how complicated things in Ukraine are, and I trust I have cast suspicion on any approach that wants to reduce everything to clear and simple (and therefore ideological) talking points.

To the extent we are involved in this kind of thing at all, our chief job is to stay out of the current pending disaster, and possibly the one right after that. Our first task is not to set up shop to redress grievances going back to the 1300’s. We are not competent to untangle that skein of yarn, and this is why we need a Day of Judgment, with a more competent Judge than anything the Security Council could ever have.

Our task is more simple, which is to keep things from spiraling out of control now. In the medieval period, the Church attempted to restrain the constant violence by means of the Pax Dei and Treuga Dei (the peace of God and the truce of God respectively). The former attempted to establish a permanent set of “off limits” regulations, while the latter restrictions were more temporary in nature. For example, the Pax Dei prohibited making war on women and children. The Treuga Dei did things like attempting to keep the nobles from fighting on Thursdays. Not very effective, but better than nothing.

Daily Devotional

Open the Windows of Your Heart

I have put my Spirit upon him . . . a bruised reed he will not break, and a dimly burning wick he will not quench. (Isaiah 42:1–3)

John Piper

Probably the most encouraging words I have heard in weeks came from a prophecy in Isaiah 42:1–3 about how Jesus will use his spiritual power.

Do you feel like a “bruised reed” — like one of those big top-heavy Easter lilies whose stem has been squashed so that the flower slops to the ground and gets no juice? Do you ever feel like your faith is just a little spark instead of a flame — like that little red dot on the wick after you blow out the birthday candle?
Take heart! The Spirit of Christ is the Spirit of encouragement: he will not snap off your flower; he will not snuff out your spark.

“The Spirit is upon me to preach good news to the poor” (Luke 4:18). “The Sun of righteousness is rising with healing in his wings” (Malachi 4:2). “He is meek and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls” (Matthew 11:29). “Wait for the Lord, be strong and let your heart take courage; yea, wait for the Lord!” (Psalm 27:14).

It may be a grief to us that we are only a spark instead of a flaming fire. But listen! And be encouraged: yes, there is a big difference between a spark and a fire. But there is an infinite difference between a spark and no spark! A mustard seed (of faith) is infinitely closer to being a mountain than it is to being no seed.

Open the window of God's promises and let the Spirit blow into every room of your heart. The Holy Wind of God will not break or quench. He will lift up your head and fan your spark into a flame. He is the Spirit of encouragement.

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

The Most Selfish of Self-Interests

Politicians Know Best

One of the great advances in governance in New Zealand has been the Reserve Bank Act (1989).  Prior to that time the Reserve Bank operated as a personal fiefdom of the Prime Minister.  Consequently monetary policy before 1989 was under the influence, if not outright control, of the most powerful politician in the land. 

The Reserve Bank Act made the Governor of the RB, appointed by the government of the day, independent of any political masters.  He (and the Bank) were responsible to the law--to carry out the Reserve Bank Act.  One of the key advances of that Act was to make controlling inflation the number one duty of the Bank when it came to monetary policy settings.  In effect, this created a check and balance upon the venality of politicians.  Virtually every Prime Minister (and Minister of Finance) since the passing of the Act has complained about the settings of monetary policy and has lectured and hectored the incumbent Reserve Bank governor.

Islamic Millenarians Clean the Slate

The Islamic State's Shocking Assault on History

by Alexander H. Joffe
The National Interest
March 11, 2015

(Originally published under the title, "ISIS' Shocking Assault on History.")

Members of ISIS use sledgehammers to destroy a statue at Mosul Museum in an undated video made public by the group last month.

The terrible spectacle of Islamic State (ISIS) members destroying ancient Mesopotamian statuary in the Mosul Museum and at the Assyrian site of Nimrud has shocked the world, as intended. These actions were met with swift condemnation from the world's scholars and cultural authorities, as well as its political authorities. To Western eyes, the perpetrators' self-evident glee was especially bizarre. From childhood, we are taught to tread carefully in museums lest we damage artifacts. So what comes next for archeological treasures in the Middle East?

The problem is that in its accompanying statements, the Islamic State made it perfectly clear its motivations derived from Islam. A spokesman for the group, speaking at the scene of destruction, said:

Daily Devotional

Keeping Near

"Abide in me."
John 15:4

Charles H. Spurgeon

Communion with Christ is a certain cure for every ill. Whether it be the wormwood of woe, or the cloying surfeit of earthly delight, close fellowship with the Lord Jesus will take bitterness from the one, and satiety from the other.

Live near to Jesus, Christian, and it is a matter of secondary importance whether thou livest on the mountain of honour or in the valley of humiliation. Living near to Jesus, thou art covered with the wings of God, and underneath thee are the everlasting arms. Let nothing keep thee from that hallowed intercourse, which is the choice privilege of a soul wedded to the well-beloved.

Be not content with an interview now and then, but seek always to retain his company, for only in his presence hast thou either comfort or safety. Jesus should not be unto us a friend who calls upon us now and then, but one with whom we walk evermore. Thou hast a difficult road before thee: see, O traveller to heaven, that thou go not without thy guide. Thou hast to pass through the fiery furnace; enter it not unless, like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, thou hast the Son of God to be thy companion. Thou hast to storm the Jericho of thine own corruptions: attempt not the warfare until, like Joshua, thou hast seen the Captain of the Lord's host, with his sword drawn in his hand. Thou art to meet the Esau of thy many temptations: meet him not until at Jabbok's brook thou hast laid hold upon the angel, and prevailed.

In every case, in every condition, thou wilt need Jesus; but most of all, when the iron gates of death shall open to thee. Keep thou close to thy soul's Husband, lean thy head upon his bosom, ask to be refreshed with the spiced wine of his pomegranate, and thou shalt be found of him at the last, without spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing. Seeing thou hast lived with him, and lived in him here, thou shalt abide with him forever.

Decay and Rot Is A Perpetual Norm

A Perpetual Fifth Column

It has been said that the price of liberty is eternal vigilance.  Why?  The presumption behind the adage is that men are not just corruptible, which alone would be sufficient reason for eternal vigilance, but that men are prone to corruption.  Given half a chance the ever nascent spectre of the Lord of the Flies emerges from a putrescent carcass.  We must needs be vigilant precisely because the risk of tyranny is real. 

Not that this should surprise us.  All Nature is in decay in one way or the other.  Steel rusts.  Foundations rot.  Rivers flood.  Species die out.  It's no surprise, therefore, that the human species would be prone to decay and retrogression.  It's what made the Cold War a very real threat.

G. K Chesterton takes this a stage further.  He suggests that the threat to human liberty is that liberty itself allows--even promotes--decay and rot from within.  A previous generation's glory becomes the downfall of the next.  Our glory becomes our next curse.  It is for this reason that eternal vigilance is required.  He cites some historical examples of liberties producing tyrannies in fast order:

Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow

The Prophet Sober and the Culture Drunk

Douglas Wilson

Blog&Magblog

March 9, 2015

Well, it is Monday morning, so let me write something outrageous. We can sweep up the pieces later. But also keep in mind the fact that just because something is outrageous, it does not follow that it is untrue or unnecessary. In fact, now that the cultural headquarters of our republic has been transferred to the National Zoo’s central monkey house, every day that goes by makes normality more and more outrageous. So there’s that.

Worldview thinkers know that everything is connected. The world is all of a piece, and in the final analysis, the long war between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent is an interpretive war over the whole. The seed of the woman seek to understand the world as the Creator of it understands it, and the seed of the serpent seek to understand it in evolutionary terms, which is to say, on its own terms.

The cosmos is here because God put it here. Or, taking the other route, the cosmos — in some form — was always here. Either God is eternal, or matter/energy are. In the former scenario, there was nothing material and then bam, there was everything that is. In the latter, you have constant, everlasting, unrelenting change. No hope, but lots of change.

Daily Devotional

Love Versus Unselfishness

C.S. Lewis 

If you asked twenty good men today what they thought the highest of the virtues, nineteen of them would reply, Unselfishness. But if you had asked almost any of the great Christians of old, he would have replied, Love.

You see what has happened? A negative term has been substituted for a positive, and this is of more than philological importance. The negative idea of Unselfishness carries with it the suggestion not primarily of securing good things for others, but of going without them ourselves, as if our abstinence and not their happiness was the important point.

I do not think this is the Christian virtue of Love. The New Testament has lots to say about self-denial, but not about self- denial as an end in itself. We are told to deny ourselves and to take up our crosses in order that we may follow Christ; and nearly every description of what we shall ultimately find if we do so contains an appeal to desire. If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith.

Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.

From The Weight of Glory
Compiled in A Year with C.S. Lewis
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. 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.

Neo-Nazi Revival

Anti-Semitism Rising in Britain

Hatred of the Jewish people is on the rise in the UK (and in some European countries).  In a recent research experiment, a reporter put on a yarmulke (a traditional Jewish skull cap) and walked down streets in Manchester and Bradford.  Within minutes he was being publicly insulted and event spat at. 

The headlines which of the Daily Mail report read:

EXCLUSIVE: 'Fight the Jewish scum!' Shocking anti-Semitism on streets of BRITAIN as Jewish journalist is spat at, abused and even stalked... and the same happens in Copenhagen

• Journalist donned traditional Jewish head covering 'kippah' to test reaction
• It took one minute for first abuse to be hurled on Britain's streets 
• Spat at in Manchester and boy walking with father called out 'Jew'
• 'Stalked' by a man in Bradford for five minutes as he took photos
• Prime Minister David Cameron told MailOnline: 'There are no excuses for the shocking anti-Semitism revealed in this report'
• Same test in Copenhagen saw a similar taunts to 'Jewish man'
• But Stockholm and Berlin walkabouts went without any incident  

By Jonathan Kalmus For Mailonline

Published: 09:47 GMT, 6 March 2015 | Updated: 16:50 GMT, 6 March 2015

We believe that what is transpiring before our eyes is an unholy alliance.  On the one side are mainly Pakistani immigrants to the UK settling in ghettoes in cities like Manchester and Bradford whilst continuing to live within the traditional doctrines and dictats of Islam.  On the other side--far removed from the ghettoes--is the Leftist (now UK mainstream) ideology which frames Israel (and, therefore, the world-wide global conspiracy of Zionism) as being the relentless oppressor of Palestinians, in particular, and Middle Eastern peoples in general.  (Yes, we know it's a troglodyte's position, owned by the impeccably ignorant, but there you go.)

In Britain, Leftist ideology also frames the Islamic ghettoes as being populated by victims, the have-nots, the disenfranchised, the exploited and the oppressed.  The Left must stand with them and help facilitate the struggle against oppression within Britain itself.  Both groups, now joined at the hip in group-think, hate the Jewish people and Israel as the unjust monster with its foot on the neck of deprived and exploited peoples.

The Left has made anti-semitism and hatred of the Jewish people fashionable and respectable once again in the UK. 

Behold the Madness of Unbelief

Unleashed Demons

Whenever a culture rejects the Lord Jesus Christ, it begins a relentless integration into the void.  One thing leads to another, as they say.  Liberties become an occasion for license; license generates libertinism.  It may take a few generations, but the void beckons and comes more and more close. 

Unbelief becomes so perverse that its stupidity and foolishness becomes unconscious to a perverse culture.  Here is but one example: a gym in a small town in Michigan adopts a gender policy entirely consistent with materialist secularism.  A male was found in female changing rooms.  Gym management said he had an absolute right to be there.  The woman who complained was barred from the gym.  How did this come about?  Duh.  The gym had a non-discrimination policy (of course). 

“Our gender identity non-discrimination policy states that members and guests may use all gym facilities based on their sincere self-reported gender identity,” the statement said. “The manner in which this member expressed her concerns about the policy exhibited behavior that management at the Midland club deemed inappropriate and disruptive to other members, which is a violation of the membership agreement and as a result her membership was cancelled.” [The Blaze]

So, the bloke was perfectly entitled to use the female changing rooms because he identified himself as a female. He had a "sincere self-reported gender identity."  Glad we got that clear.  Failure to respect that sincere self-identification process meant the presence of a deeper evil--DISCRIMINATION.

Daily Devotional

Look to Jesus for Your Joy

“They do all their deeds to be seen by others . . . and they love the place of honor at feasts and the best seats in the synagogues and greetings in the marketplaces and being called rabbi by others.” (Matthew 23:5–7)

John Piper

The itch of self-regard craves the scratch of self-approval. That is, if we are getting our pleasure from feeling self-sufficient, we will not be satisfied without others seeing and applauding our self-sufficiency.
Hence Jesus’s description of the scribes and Pharisees in Matthew 23:5–7.

This is ironic. Self-sufficiency should free the proud person from the need to be made much of by others. That’s what “sufficient” means. But evidently there is a void in this so-called self-sufficiency.
The self was never designed to satisfy itself or rely upon itself. It never can be sufficient. We are but in the image of God, not God himself. We are shadows and echoes. So there will always be an emptiness in the soul that struggles to be satisfied with the resources of self.

This empty craving for the praise of others signals the failure of pride and the absence of faith in God’s ongoing grace. Jesus saw the terrible effect of this itch for human glory. He named it in John 5:44, “How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God?” The answer is, you can’t. Itching for glory from other people makes faith impossible. Why?
Because faith is being satisfied with all that God is for you in Jesus. And if you are bent on getting the satisfaction of your itch from the scratch of others’ acclaim, you will turn away from Jesus.

But if you would turn from self as the source of satisfaction (repentance), and come to Jesus for the enjoyment of all that God is for us in him (faith), then the itch would be replaced by a spring of water welling up to eternal life (John 4:14).

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

Privy Council Wake

A Closed Shop in a Small Village

On October 14, 2003 the New Zealand Parliament voted by a very narrow majority to abolish appeals to the Privy Council.  A significant constitutional change was effected by the smallest of parliamentary majorities.  Then Attorney General, Margaret Wilson's motivation was not justice, nor the law.  It was purely political.

The Campaign for the Privy Council was established in 2003 to oppose the abolition of appeals from New Zealand to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council.  The then Attorney-General Margaret Wilson proposed the abolition of appeals, primarily for political rather than legal or constitutional reasons.  The majority of the legal fraternity, business leaders, and the general public opposed the abolition of appeals. A large majority supported proposals for a referendum.

Although the Campaign was ultimately unsuccessful, it did give Margaret Wilson reason to pause. She later admitted that the degree of opposition to her plans almost led her to abandon the proposal.  Nevertheless the third reading of the Supreme Court Bill occurred on Tuesday 14 October 2003. Parliament passed by a narrow majority the bill to end future appeals from New Zealand to the Privy Council, and to establish a new Supreme Court.

The new law allowed convictions and court verdicts entered before 2003 to be appealed to the UK Privy Council--a genuinely august court, consisting of some of the finest legal minds in the world.

Nothing New Here . . .

Unintended Irony

ISIS has attracted much loathing over recent days.  Its wanton destruction of historical artefacts has outraged many.  The heading in The Telegraph said it all:

Islamic State's thugs are trying to wipe an entire civilisation from the face of the earth

Just as the Nazis destroyed synagogues as well as those who worshipped in them, so Isil aspires to erase all traces of those it condemns as kuffar

Columnist Tom Holland went on to write:

Last week, a video was released showing the destruction of antiquities in Mosul’s museums. Since the antiquities themselves were probably smashed months ago, the dust in the display-rooms will long since have settled. Meanwhile, in the world beyond, the brutal and deliberate attack on treasures spanning millennia is already yesterday’s news.

The Islamic State, whose goons perpetrated the vandalism, appreciate more cynically than anyone that the world’s media feeds on a rapid turnover of atrocities. One succeeds another in a murderous churn. Why, then, should the destruction of statues matter more than the loss of human life? It is a question that troubles me: for I must acknowledge, if I am honest, that no images from the hell that is the Islamic State have upset me more than those which showed a winged bull more than two-and-a-half thousand years old being deliberately and methodically power-drilled.

His conclusion:

Daily Devotional

Regeneration

"Ye must be born again."
John 3:7

Charles H. Spurgeon

Regeneration is a subject which lies at the very basis of salvation, and we should be very diligent to take heed that we really are "born again," for there are many who fancy they are, who are not. Be assured that the name of a Christian is not the nature of a Christian; and that being born in a Christian land, and being recognized as professing the Christian religion is of no avail whatever, unless there be something more added to it.

Being "born again," is a matter so mysterious, that human words cannot describe it. "The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit." Nevertheless, it is a change which is known and felt: known by works of holiness, and felt by a gracious experience. This great work is supernatural. It is not an operation which a man performs for himself: a new principle is infused, which works in the heart, renews the soul, and affects the entire man.

Soft-Despotism vs The Rule of Law

The Law Under The Tender Caresses of Despots

In a Christian commonwealth the rule of law is a fundamental bulwark against absolutist, tyrannical government.  Slogans like, "we are a nation ruled by law, not by men" are meaningful and significant, insofar as no one man or no one authority owns and controls the law.

Laws, historically considered (as least within the Anglo-Saxon tradition), are written and promulgated and enforced by a diversity of powers: popular assemblies, titular assemblies, the courts of justice, and the crown.  Once laws are promulgated, the power of everyone, including all authorities and kings, is limited insofar as all kings and authorities are under the law thus made.  Their authority and power are necessarily limited thereby.

Now, of course, human laws are not divine.  There are just and unjust laws.  Laws at times need to be repealed, amended, and replaced.  The rule of law on its own is, therefore, no guarantee in and of itself of a just society.  Rather, the rule of law helps institutionalise the separation of powers and impedes the development of tyranny.  But, when tyrants control the law making and law enforcement processes the law becomes no friend to liberty.  The USSR--one of the most egregious dictatorships and tyrannies in recent history--could claim that it was a nation ruled by laws.  It's just that the dictators totally controlled the law-making processes.

In the soft-despotic state, such as found now throughout the West, a great deal of time is spent on promulgating, approving, and enforcing laws.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow

Ukraine #2

Douglas Wilson

Blog&Mablog

March 4, 2015

Back in the old days, when Americanism was more robust than it is now, it used to be said that “politics stops at the water’s edge.” What this was supposed to mean is that our domestic disagreements paled in comparison to whatever it was the Nazis were doing. Now there was a time when this was at least plausible, whether or not it was correct. When there was, or seemed to be, a more cohesive cultural unity tying us all together domestically, it was easier to present a united front to the world, and it was easier to get Americans to all pull together in order to do so.

But at home that cohesive cultural unity is now long gone, and it is taking conservative Christians some time to recognize that it is long gone overseas as well. In short, if Obama is creating so much wreckage here at home, as we all recognize, then why should we believe that he is somehow spreading sweetness and light abroad? If Hillary is as corrupt elsewhere as she is here, then we have every reason to believe her flights around the world were simply an International Shakedown Tour. Why should I unite behind that?

We need to get loose of the simple binary formula that has America in the automatic white hat, with the baddies being anyone we identify as such. However, some critics of American foreign policy don’t want to let go of the standard binary system — they have kept the system but simply switched their default sympathies. But America shouldn’t get the automatic black hat either. It ain’t that simple.

Daily Devotional

Endure the Inexplicable

All the promises of God find their Yes in him. (2 Corinthians 1:20)

John Piper

When Christ died he purchased for you the “Yes” to all God’s promises (2 Corinthians 1:20), and that includes the promise to use his sovereign power to govern all the inexplicable, maddening detours and delays of your life for wise and loving purposes. He is doing a thousand things for you and for his glory in your disappointed plans.

Richard Wurmbrand tells a story that illustrates the necessity of believing God for good, unseen purposes, when all we can see is evil and frustration:

A legend says that Moses once sat near a well in meditation. A wayfarer stopped to drink from the well, and when he did so his purse fell from his girdle into the sand. The man departed. Shortly afterwards another man passed near the well, saw the purse and picked it up.
Later a third man stopped to assuage his thirst and went to sleep in the shadow of the well. Meanwhile, the first man had discovered that his purse was missing, and, assuming that he must have lost it at the well, returned, awoke the sleeper (who of course knew nothing) and demanded his money back. An argument followed, and irate, the first man slew the latter.

Whereupon Moses said to God, “You see, therefore men do not believe you. There is too much evil and injustice in the world. Why should the first man have lost his purse and then become a murderer? Why should the second have gotten a purse full of gold without having worked for it? The third was completely innocent. Why was he slain?”

God answered, “For once and only once, I will give you an explanation. I cannot do it at every step. The first man was a thief’s son. The purse contained money stolen by his father from the father of the second man, who finding the purse only found what was due him. The third was a murderer whose crime had never been revealed and who received from the first the punishment he deserved. In the future, believe that there is sense and righteousness in what transpires even when you do not understand." (100 Prison Meditations, pages 6–7)

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

Not a Peace-Train, But a Gravy-Train

Fitting Up the Nation

Have you ever wondered what goes on inside the carriages of the Treaty of Waitangi gravy train?  One Maori, David Rankin, a direct descendant of Hone Heke, speaks out.  Encouragingly, he tells us that a growing number of Maori are deeply disquieted with what is more and more becoming evident to be a rort.

It may surprise many New Zealanders, but a growing number of Maori are fed up with the Waitangi Tribunal, and the entire Treaty gravy train.  There is a stereotype of Maori collecting millions of dollars in settlement money and living the easy life.  The reality is very different.

Here are a few facts:

Atheism and the Moralisms of the Wax-Nose, Part II

Atheist Evangelicals

John Gray
The Guardian
March 3, 2015

In itself, atheism is an entirely negative position. In pagan Rome, “atheist” (from the Greek atheos) meant anyone who refused to worship the established pantheon of deities. The term was applied to Christians, who not only refused to worship the gods of the pantheon but demanded exclusive worship of their own god. Many non-western religions contain no conception of a creator-god – Buddhism and Taoism, in some of their forms, are atheist religions of this kind – and many religions have had no interest in proselytising. In modern western contexts, however, atheism and rejection of monotheism are practically interchangeable.

Roughly speaking, an atheist is anyone who has no use for the concept of God – the idea of a divine mind, which has created humankind and embodies in a perfect form the values that human beings cherish and strive to realise. Many who are atheists in this sense (including myself) regard the evangelical atheism that has emerged over the past few decades with bemusement. Why make a fuss over an idea that has no sense for you? There are untold multitudes who have no interest in waging war on beliefs that mean nothing to them. Throughout history, many have been happy to live their lives without bothering about ultimate questions. This sort of atheism is one of the perennial responses to the experience of being human.

As an organised movement, atheism is never non-committal in this way. It always goes with an alternative belief-system – typically, a set of ideas that serves to show the modern west is the high point of human development. In Europe from the late 19th century until the second world war, this was a version of evolutionary theory that marked out western peoples as being the most highly evolved. Around the time Haeckel was promoting his racial theories, a different theory of western superiority was developed by Marx. While condemning liberal societies and prophesying their doom, Marx viewed them as the high point of human development to date. (This is why he praised British colonialism in India as an essentially progressive development.) If Marx had serious reservations about Darwinism – and he did – it was because Darwin’s theory did not frame evolution as a progressive process.

Daily Devotional

Life without Him

"He is precious."
1 Peter 2:7

Charles H. Spurgeon

As all the rivers run into the sea, so all delights centre in our Beloved. The glances of his eyes outshine the sun: the beauties of his face are fairer than the choicest flowers: no fragrance is like the breath of his mouth. Gems of the mine, and pearls from the sea, are worthless things when measured by his preciousness. Peter tells us that Jesus is precious, but he did not and could not tell us how precious, nor could any of us compute the value of God's unspeakable gift.

Words cannot set forth the preciousness of the Lord Jesus to his people, nor fully tell how essential he is to their satisfaction and happiness. Believer, have you not found in the midst of plenty a sore famine if your Lord has been absent? The sun was shining, but Christ had hidden himself, and all the world was black to you; or it was night, and since the bright and morning star was gone, no other star could yield you so much as a ray of light. What a howling wilderness is this world without our Lord! If once he hideth himself from us, withered are the flowers of our garden; our pleasant fruits decay; the birds suspend their songs, and a tempest overturns our hopes.

All earth's candles cannot make daylight if the Sun of Righteousness be eclipsed. He is the soul of our soul, the light of our light, the life of our life. Dear reader, what wouldst thou do in the world without him, when thou wakest up and lookest forward to the day's battle? What wouldst thou do at night, when thou comest home jaded and weary, if there were no door of fellowship between thee and Christ? Blessed be his name, he will not suffer us to try our lot without him, for Jesus never forsakes his own. Yet, let the thought of what life would be without him enhance his preciousness.

Timidity, Reactionaries, and Reform

A Retired Tennis Player Leads By Example

A couple of years ago the NZ government launched a pilot programme of charter schools.  It was bold stuff.  A large number of charter schools easily counted on the fingers of one hand were run down the slipway into Lake Education. The education establishment erupted--in horror.  Its world was coming to an end.

The loudest accusation was that charter schools were far, far more expensive than state schools both to establish and run.  Wrong in both cases, but never let the facts get in the way of a good story, particular amidst a splenetic eruption.  (Incidentally, that particular canard has looked decidedly shonky in recent days when the latest government budgets costing for a new government school is over $20m--more than the entire budget for establishing a handful of charter schools.) 

The fact is the educational establishment is a reactionary beast.  There are only two planks which it does not oppose reflexively: anything that gives more money for teachers, on the one hand, and any policy which reduces teacher and school accountability, on the other.  Anything else is eeeeeevil.

The NZ government's foray into charter schools has been both timid and statist.