Seeing Things In A New Light

Cruz Not So Bad

Endorsements for Ted Cruz are starting to come thick and fast.  As Senator Rubio seems to be fading, the increasingly stark choice for the Republican Party is either Donald Trump or Cruz.  When put in those terms, the eyes of most become focused and clear--rapidly.  

Here is a sample of some recent endorsements.

Carly Fiorina, who has dropped out of the Republican race:

Daily Devotional

When The Iron Gates Open

"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.

Bang, Bang. You're Dead.

False Allegiances and Irrelevance

We have often observed that the materialistic atheists amongst us are often the most strident moralisers in the market place.  They are always telling us what they deem to be right and wrong, moral and immoral, evil and good.  Islam, insists Richard Dawkins, is a perverse, wicked thing.  Christianity is so morally bankrupt that any parent who attempts to teach its basic doctrines to her or her child, should suffer their children to be removed from their care.  Morally bankrupt?

Christopher Hitchens, whilst alive, thundered like a Titan against totalitarianism, communism, and any authoritarian standard within his line of sight. He thought abortion was OK, but grabbing someone off the street and torturing them was very bad form.  All of which was and is entertaining but hardly relevant to materialism or atheism, let alone their conjoint.

There is an instructive video entitled Collision in which Christopher Hitchens debates Douglas Wilson.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow

The Case for Cruz

Douglas Wilson
Blog&Mablog

Idaho’s primary is tomorrow, and for a first time in a long time, the Idaho primary actually matters. I have previously endorsed Cruz, and wanted to take this opportunity to exhort my fellow Idahoans to help do their part in deflating the Trump balloon.Trumpistan

But first, for my foreign readers, a few words of encouragement. I imagine this whole thing is not unlike an American watching a cricket match. You can tell by the cheering which side is happy, but beyond that the whole thing recedes into the great cloud of unknowing. So here is a quick explanation for you.

Just as the parliamentary system invites the existence of splinter parties and coalitions, so the American constitutional system “invites” two parties. Throughout our history, we have always had two major parties, and then the small groups are off on the edges. The two major parties are not immortal, and sometimes one of the edge parties replaces a major party, but the simple fact of two major parties is very much part of our unwritten constitution.

So here is a handy glossary.

Daily Devotional

How Can I Be Filled with the Spirit?

Whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope. (Romans 15:4)

John Piper

How can we be filled with the Holy Spirit? How can we experience an outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon our church that fills us with indomitable joy and frees us and empowers us to love those around us in ways so authentic that they are won to Christ?

Answer: meditate day and night upon the incomparable, hope-giving promises of God. As the verse above shows us, that’s the way Paul kept his heart full of hope and joy and love.

The full assurance of hope comes from meditating on the promises of God's Word. And this does not contradict the sentence eight verses later that says that the Holy Spirit gives us hope (Romans 15:13). This is because the Holy Spirit is the divine author of Scripture. It is no contradiction that the way he fills us with hope is by filling us with his own word of promise.

Hope is not some vague emotion that comes out of nowhere, like a stomachache. Hope is the confidence that the stupendous future promised to us by the Word of the Spirit is going to really come true. Therefore, the way to be filled with the Spirit is to be filled with his Word. The way to have the power of the Spirit is to believe the promises of his Word.

For it is the word of promise that fills us with hope, and hope fills us with joy, and joy overflows in the power and freedom to love our neighbor. And that is the fullness of the Holy Spirit.

Private Christianity Alone is Tolerable

Foxy Secularism

Secularism thinks of itself as uber tolerant.  It's version of tolerance is so advanced and righteous, secularism insists upon and demands compliance with its dogma at every point.  It is profoundly intolerant in the matter.  

The urbane secularist will tell you that he smiles upon all religions.  Why would one get upset at the equivalent of a childish nursery rhymes?  Does the secularist get all wound up about Jemima Puddleduck?  Does the secularist get agitated over the Christian?  Never.  Provided, of course, that Christianity is restricted and restrained to the private square.  It has no place in the public square.  The secularist's perversion of tolerance demands an exclusive hold over the public square.  As soon as the Christian offers a scintilla of Christian reasoning or argumentation in the public square for a Christian position or belief, off to the gas chambers with him.  The public square is for secularism only and the secularist is the sole licensed operator therein.

Now even Jemima Puddleduck, that most gullible of ducks, knows that the sly secularist fox has endless conniptions and consternations when defining what is public and what it private.

A Bridge Too Far

Apolitical Christians Speaking Up

TheBlaze
Billy Hallowell

Famed pastor and author Max Lucado typically avoids weighing in on political candidates, but the continued rise and popularity of Republican businessman Donald Trump recently led him to break that silence, penning an op-ed about the importance of “decency.”

Lucado, pastor of Oak Hills Church in San Antonio, Texas, told Christianity Today that the public statement was spawned after Trump made a series of claims about his Christian faith while on the campaign trail.

“There was one occasion he held up a Bible. On another occasion, at Liberty University, he read from scripture. On multiple occasions he’s said ‘Of course I’m a Christian,’” Lucado said. “There was a time in Iowa when he said ‘I’m a Christian,’ and somebody asked about forgiveness and he said ‘I’ve never asked God for forgiveness.’”

The pastor said that he simply can’t comprehend Trump’s latter response.

Daily Devotional

On faith

C. S. Lewis

It is a profound mistake to imagine that Christianity ever intended to dissipate the bewilderment and even the terror, the sense of our own nothingness, which come upon us when we think about the nature of things. It comes to intensify them. Without such sensations there is no religion. Many a man, brought up in the glib profession of some shallow form of Christianity, who comes through reading Astronomy to realise for the first time how majestically indifferent most reality is to man, and who perhaps abandons his religion on that account, may at that moment be having his first genuinely religious experience.

From Miracles
Compiled in Words to Live By

Miracles: A Preliminary Study. Copyright 1947 C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. Copyright renewed © 1947 C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. Revised 1960, restored 1996 C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers. 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.

"For the Sake of Their Forefathers"

"Christ Killers" and Antisemitism

Antisemitism is a grotesque affliction.  Unfortunately it seems to lurk just beneath the surface of the West, ready to spring out in full force, when times and conditions are opportune.  Antisemitism, however, requires a number of correlated beliefs in order to become a true social movement.  

One such belief is that Jewish people (abstracted into a collective noun with a definite article--"the Jews") control and manipulate most of world affairs.  Antisemitism cannot arise or survive as a movement in the West until it is linked with a conspiracy theory about Jewish influence, if not control, over virtually everything.  It goes further than the assertion that Jews control money, and banking, and international finance.  It mushrooms into the belief that "Jewish money" buys influence everywhere to the extent that all political institutions and powers do the bidding of their Jewish paymasters.

Another corollary of European antisemitism has the Jews as being ultimately responsible for all evil.  Disease, crime, public disorder, drunkenness, poverty, debauchery, and so forth--all social ills can be ultimately traced back to the insidious influence of Jewish morals, practices, and funding.  Is Greece teetering on the edge of bankruptcy?  The Jews are bleeding the country dry.  Is Europe now bailing out Greece?  The Jews have secretly influenced the bailout so as to ramp up their ruinous exploitation of Greece.  Is zika virus infecting the world?  The Jews have carefully nurtured the disease deep in their caverns of Isengard,  waiting for the right moment to infect humanity.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From America

Jovial Introspection

Douglas Wilson
Blog&Mablog

Over the course of the last year I have been doing a major review of C.S. Lewis’s work. I had been shaped by Narnia as a kid, and began reading his theological works while I was still in high school. In short I did a bunch of binge reading early on, and periodically returned to this work or that one, and occasionally read something I hadn’t read before. But over the last year, largely as the result of getting into audio books that help me redeem my time in my truck, I have been binge listening again. And, as always, Lewis is a delight, even when he is saying something appalling.

Lewis Jovial

A few weeks ago I noticed a couple of things about him that I had always known, but which I hadn’t ever known in juxtaposition. I knew this and I also knew that, but I didn’t know thisnthat. Here it is.

On the one hand, Lewis is a jovial personality. His heart is capacious — he overflows. He is openhanded and jolly. And he doesn’t just come off this way in print — all the reports of his classroom lectures, of his humor, of his warmth toward his friends, indicate the same thing. Lewis is sunny.

At the same time, Lewis is a hardline introspectionist. Nobody slices motivation as thinly as he does, and he does it in a way that makes it plain that he knows how to do this through his own personal experience. He slices it so thin that when you hold the pieces of your motivation up afterward, you see they are translucent. He doesn’t cut himself any slack, ever. This comes up again and again, over and over. It is a constant theme throughout his writing. Not just Screwtape — this is ubiquitous.

So here is the juxtaposition.

Daily Devotional

The Rock of Ages

"It is better to trust in the Lord, than to put confidence in man."
Psalm 118:8

Charles H. Spurgeon

Doubtless the reader has been tried with the temptation to rely upon the things which are seen, instead of resting alone upon the invisible God. Christians often look to man for help and counsel, and mar the noble simplicity of their reliance upon their God.

You trust in Jesus, and only in Jesus, for your salvation, then why are you troubled? "Because of my great care." Is it not written, "Cast thy burden upon the Lord"? "Be careful for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication make known your wants unto God." Cannot you trust God for temporals? "Ah! I wish I could." If you cannot trust God for temporals, how dare you trust him for spirituals? Can you trust him for your soul's redemption, and not rely upon him for a few lesser mercies? Is not God enough for thy need, or is his all-sufficiency too narrow for thy wants? Dost thou want another eye beside that of him who sees every secret thing? Is his heart faint? Is his arm weary?

If so, seek another God; but if he be infinite, omnipotent, faithful, true, and all-wise, why gaddest thou abroad so much to seek another confidence? Why dost thou rake the earth to find another foundation, when this is strong enough to bear all the weight which thou canst ever build thereon? Christian, mix not only thy wine with water, do not alloy thy gold of faith with the dross of human confidence. Wait thou only upon God, and let thine expectation be from him. Covet not Jonah's gourd, but rest in Jonah's God. Let the sandy foundations of terrestrial trust be the choice of fools, but do thou, like one who foresees the storm, build for thyself an abiding place upon the Rock of Ages.

You Get More of What You Pay For

Subsidising Criminal Gangs

Gangs, criminal gangs, are a real problem in New Zealand.  They have now been around long enough that they are creating inter-generational problems.  Officials have started  researching the cycle of violence and criminal behaviour that moves from one generation to another.  Most of this stuff is what everyone really suspected or expected, but measuring and quantifying is very useful.

Firstly, it shows that the taxpayers subsidise gangs and virtually fund their continuing existence.  The old adage has it, What you pay for, you get more of.  To the extent that society (the taxpayer) funds and supports gangs and gang members is the extent to which gangs and gang culture will always be with us.

Make Donald Drumpf Great Again

Beware of What We Wish For

Below is a cribbed post from Patterico on Donald Drumpf.

Some times political satire can cut through a thousand hours of "framing" and carefully cultivated PR, crudities and coarseness notwithstanding.  When the pagans can see through the bovine scatology, albeit replete with their own profanity, one can but be thankful for rough mercies.  

The John Oliver Bit on Trump

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 7:40 am

I saw it all over Facebook and Twitter and didn’t bother to watch. You know: another one of these ex-Daily Show guys. Parrots the usual liberal line (e.g. Net Neutrality) to a mindless crowd of millenials. And every headline screams “John Oliver DESTROYS Donald Trump” like all the lefty blogs used to trumpet every stupid Jon Stewart clip. Destroys destroys destroys. Why should I bother?

Then a homicide detective told me I needed to watch it, and that was the push I needed. It is, in fact, very entertaining — all 20 minutes of it. What’s more, it seems to be more careful about the facts, and more effective, than either Serious Media or Marco Rubio’s attacks have been. Worth your time.

My favorite line comes after he shows Trump advocating killing terrorists’ families — something that regular readers know appalled me when Trump first said it. Oliver says:

That is the frontrunner for the Republican nomination advocating a war crime. And he might say he was joking or he’s changed his mind about any of these things, and private individuals are allowed to change their minds—we all do it—but when he’s sworn in as president on January 20, 2017, on that day, his opinions are going to matter. And you will remember that date, because it’s the one that time travelers from the future will come back to to try and stop the whole thing from happening.

Daily Devotional

Arm Yourself with Promises

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” (Matthew 5:8)

John Piper

When Paul says to put to death the deeds of the body “by the Spirit” (Romans 8:13), I take him to mean that we should use the one weapon in the Spirit’s armor that is used to kill. Namely, the sword. Which is the word of God (Ephesians 6:17).

So when the body is about to be led into a sinful action by some fear or craving, we are to take the sword of the Spirit and kill that fear and that craving. In my experience, that means mainly severing the root of sin’s promise by the power of a superior promise.

So, for example, when I begin to crave some illicit sexual pleasure, the sword-swing that has often severed the root of this promised pleasure is: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” (Matthew 5:8). I recall the pleasures I have tasted of seeing God more clearly from an undefiled conscience; and I recall the brevity and superficiality and oppressive aftertaste of sin’s pleasures, and with that, God has killed the conquering power of sin.

Having promises at hand that suit the temptation of the hour is one key to successful warfare against sin.

But there are times when we don’t have a perfectly suited word from God in our minds. And there is no time to look through the Bible for a tailor-made promise. So we all need to have a small arsenal of general promises ready to use whenever fear or craving threaten to lead us astray.

Be constantly adding to your arsenal of promises. But never lose sight of the chosen few that God has blessed in your life. Do both. Be ever-ready with the old. And every morning look for a new one to take with you through the day.

Willing Executioners

Eliminationist Anti-Semitism is Alive and Kicking

We have been reading Daniel Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioners with great interest.  [Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust (New York: Abacus, 1997)].  The book has attracted significant academic controversy.  Goldhagen's central thesis is that ordinary Germans in the nineteen thirties and forties were captured by an ideology of eliminationalist anti-semitism.  

The idea is that the great majority of German people were not just anti-semitic, but had come to believe that the only solution to the "Jewish problem" was the elimination of Jews from Germany--not by expulsion, but by their extermination.  The Nazis institutionalised this idea and sought to effect it as the "Final Solution".  But--and this is where Goldhagen's thesis becomes more controversial--eliminationist anti-semitism was not distinctly Nazi; it was, argued Goldhagen, a widely held idea within Germany.  One fundamental trail of evidence produced by Goldhagen was the enthusiastic extermination of Jewish people perpetrated by non-Nazi, German Order Police Reserve Battalions,  made up of older, middle-aged German men.

The historical reality is that anti-semitism became "eliminationist" in Germany.

Schism

Michael Mann, the Unbeliever

James Delingpole
Breitbart London

The “Pause” in global warming is real – not an urban myth concocted by evil ‘deniers’ – a study has found, signalling the development of a major schism within the climate alarmist camp.

“It has been claimed that the early-2000s global warming slowdown or hiatus, characterized by a reduced rate of global surface warming, has been overstated, lacks sound scientific basis, or is unsupported by observations. The evidence presented here contradicts these claims,” the paper in Nature Climate Change says.

Though the paper’s findings are not controversial – few serious scientists dispute the evidence of the temperature datasets showing that there has been little if any global warming for nearly 19 years – they represent a tremendous blow to the climate alarmist “consensus”, which has long sought to deny the “Pause’s” existence.

First, the study was published in Nature Climate Change a fervently alarmist journal which rarely if ever runs papers that cast doubt on the man-made-global-warming scare narrative.

Daily Devotional

The Ultimate Law

TO ARTHUR GREEVES: On his brother’s admission to an Oxford hospital, for treatment of alcoholism; and on the meaning of vicarious suffering, or what Lewis will call, in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the “Deeper Magic,” mentioned above in his letter to Sister Penelope, 19 November 1941.

C. S. Lewis

2 July 1949

Thanks for your most kind and comforting letter—like a touch of a friend’s hand in a dark place. For it is much darker than I feared. W’s trouble is to be called ‘nervous insomnia’ in speaking to Janie and others; but in reality (this for your private ear) it is Drink. This bout started about ten days ago. Last Sunday the doctor and I begged him to go into a nursing home (that has always effectively ended previous bouts) and he refused. Yesterday we succeeded in getting him in; but alas, too late. The nursing home has announced this morning that he is out of control and they refuse to keep him. Today a mental specialist is to see him and he will be transferred, I hope for a short stay, to what is called a hospital but is really an asylum. Naturally there is no question of a later Irish jaunt for me this year. A few odd days here and there in England is the best I can hope for.


Don’t imagine I doubt for a moment that what God sends us must be sent in love and will all be for the best if we have grace to use it so. My mind doesn’t waver on this point; my feelings sometimes do. That’s why it does me good to hear what I believe repeated in your voice—it being the rule of the universe that others can do for us what we cannot do for ourselves and one can paddle every canoe except one’s own. That is why Christ’s suffering for us is not a mere theological dodge but the supreme case of the law that governs the whole world; and when they mocked him by saying, ‘He saved others, himself he cannot save,’ [Matthew 27:42; Mark 15:31] they were really uttering, little as they knew it, the ultimate law of the spiritual world.

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.

Redressing Imbalances

Good Moonshine in West Australia

It is received wisdom in NZ that most Australians are feral.  They are like distant relatives, coming from a questionable branch of the family, who have spent too much time in the mountains sipping moonshine.  We exaggerate--but you get the idea.

Imagine, then, the expostulations of disbelief when it became known that West Australia is considering laws to reign in protest activity.  How backward.  How primitive.  How miscegenetic.  Au contraire.  How enlightened!  All of a sudden we are finding new respect for our Aussie cousins, at least those who dwell in the West.

The United Nations has called on the West Australian Government to withdraw controversial new legislation that imposes harsh penalties on protesters.  The proposed laws were first introduced into Parliament in March 2015, and the Government insists it will only target radical protesters using devices like chains or thumb locks to block or stop lawful activities. [ABC]

The fact that the UN "special rapporteur on freedom of expression" is objecting to the proposed law is a clue that WA may be on the right track.

The Great Imposter

Multitudes in the Valley of Decision

Evangelicals are finally coming out of the closet in the current US Republican primary.  It has been disheartening to see "evangelicals" supporting Donald Trump.

The Christian Post is a widely read publication.  It rarely takes sides in political contents.  But it seems that Trump is a bridge too far.  It is good to see not just a critical piece, but an unequivocal rejection of the Christian credentials of the man.  How much of an impact it might have is difficult to tell, but it is heartening to see a principled Christian opposition to the Great Imposter, nonetheless.

Donald Trump Is a Scam  Evangelical Voters Should Back Away
CP EDITORIAL
February 29, 2016

Editors' Note: The Christian Post has not taken a position on a political candidate before today. We are making an exception because Trump is exceptionally bad and claims to speak for and represent the interests of evangelicals.

We the senior editors of The Christian Post encourage our readers to back away from Donald Trump.

Daily Devotional

Of Christ Alone

"Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, is this grace given, that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ."
Ephesians 3:8

Charles H. Spurgeon

The apostle Paul felt it a great privilege to be allowed to preach the gospel. He did not look upon his calling as a drudgery, but he entered upon it with intense delight. Yet while Paul was thus thankful for his office, his success in it greatly humbled him. The fuller a vessel becomes, the deeper it sinks in the water.

Idlers may indulge a fond conceit of their abilities, because they are untried; but the earnest worker soon learns his own weakness. If you seek humility, try hard work; if you would know your nothingness, attempt some great thing for Jesus. If you would feel how utterly powerless you are apart from the living God, attempt especially the great work of proclaiming the unsearchable riches of Christ, and you will know, as you never knew before, what a weak unworthy thing you are. Although the apostle thus knew and confessed his weakness, he was never perplexed as to the subject of his ministry. From his first sermon to his last, Paul preached Christ, and nothing but Christ. He lifted up the cross, and extolled the Son of God who bled thereon. Follow his example in all your personal efforts to spread the glad tidings of salvation, and let "Christ and him crucified" be your ever recurring theme.

The Christian should be like those lovely spring flowers which, when the sun is shining, open their golden cups, as if saying, "Fill us with thy beams!" but when the sun is hidden behind a cloud, they close their cups and droop their heads. So should the Christian feel the sweet influence of Jesus; Jesus must be his sun, and he must be the flower which yields itself to the Sun of Righteousness. Oh! to speak of Christ alone, this is the subject which is both "seed for the sower, and bread for the eater." This is the live coal for the lip of the speaker, and the master-key to the heart of the hearer.

Old China Hands

We've Been Here Before

More and more "China watchers" are calling our attention to the "Back to the Future" approach of Chinese President, Xi Jinping.  Under his reign, China has returned to the oppressions of the past.  The state is becoming more authoritarian, more centralised, more controlling.  

We have observed in the past that the great fear of the Communist government is not invasion from the East, West, North, or South but internal civil war.  The Chinese government is, in a word, frightened.  The reflexive response is to exert more totalitarian control.

The latest move is to re-assert control over Chinese media.  The state is now demanding "absolute loyalty" from journalists.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow

When Saruman Said Nyuck

Douglas Wilson
Blog&Mablog

“As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron” (H.L. Mencken).

And as our thoughts have now turned to Mencken, he once said that democracy was the art of running the zoo from the monkey house. He also said that he loved his country the way a small boy loved the circus. As this political season continues to unfold, one begins to understand those sentiments, although it must be confessed that there is a touch of melancholy in it. It is not the demise we really expected for a once great republic. It is as though Gandalf had been trapped by Saruman in the tower, and then two shadowy figures came out of a hidden room to stand on either side of Saruman — let us call them Larry and Moe — and then Saruman said nyuck nyuck nyuck.

For — let us be frank — Donald Trump is a flimflam artist of the highest order, and he really ought to be an inspiration that establishes a host of Menckenesque careers. But alas — when Mencken’s dire prophecy finally comes true, there will be no one there with the requisite gifts to get across the gaudiness of the actual accomplishment. We are talking about a bunko game run by what Nostradamus called the Hustler at the End of Days. And as in all truly successful sting operations, the patsy cannot know that he has been taken, and thus it will be that any aspiring Menckens will simply be throwing their pithy adjectives into the stiff headwinds coming out of the void. Shall we end with an adjectival whimper and not with an adjectival bang?

But in the meantime, while some people might still be listening, let me strew a few bits of punditry out my hat. First, the endorsement of Trump the other day by Chris Christie was truly revelatory — the “establishment lane” is the first one getting bought up.

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)

Brexit, or Not?

Genuine Erosion of Sovereignty

Should Britain leave the EU?  Former Aussie Prime Minister, John Howard believes it should.  One contextual factor here is that Britain is widely uncomfortable with its EU membership, so much so that it is trying to negotiate more and more "carve outs" for Britain.  Howard believes this is tantamount to Britain wanting to be half-pregnant.  

“If I were British, I would vote to leave,” Mr Howard told the Sky News Australia on Sunday morning.  “The British people are, in effect, being asked to support an arrangement … where Britain is half in, half out and I just don’t think that is going to work.” [Breitbart London]

There are many problems with remaining in the EU.  Not the least is the deliberate, progressive loss of sovereignty for Great Britain (and all European nations).

Allegations of Institutional Evil, Part II

Get the Facts, Then Name and Shame

Rotherham sex grooming and ‘corrupt’ public sector’s collective guilt

Bill Carmichael
Yorkshire Post

THERE was some good news this week when six of the vile monsters behind the Rotherham child abuse scandal were convicted for their crimes. They will be sentenced later today.

Some of the victims were in Sheffield Crown Court to hear the jury’s verdict and see their tormenters finally face justice, after years of being ignored or branded as liars by the authorities.

But before we hang out the bunting it is worth remembering that this is just the tip of the iceberg. A 2014 report by Professor Alexis Jay made it clear that Rotherham’s child rape gangs had acted with impunity for decades and there is likely to be in the region of 1,400 victims in this one Yorkshire town alone.



Professor Alexis Jay unearthed the scale of abuse in Rotherham.

By that reckoning there must be dozens – if not hundreds – of offenders walking free today.

And let us also not forget that significant figures – not least police officers and social workers who actively colluded in the abuse – were missing from their rightful place in the dock of the court.

Daily Devotional

Demanding Rights

Screwtape outlines a fundamental deception:

C.S. Lewis

Men are not angered by mere misfortune but by misfortune conceived as injury. And the sense of injury depends on the feeling that a legitimate claim has been denied. The more claims on life, therefore, that your patient can be induced to make, the more often he will feel injured and, as a result, ill-tempered.

Now you will have noticed that nothing throws him into a passion so easily as to find a tract of time which he reckoned on having at his own disposal unexpectedly taken from him. It is the unexpected visitor (when he looked forward to a quiet evening), or the friend’s talkative wife (turning up when he looked forward to a tête-à-tête with the friend), that throw him out of gear. Now he is not yet so uncharitable or slothful that these small demands on his courtesy are in themselves too much for it. They anger him because he regards his time as his own and feels that it is being stolen.

You must therefore zealously guard in his mind the curious assumption ‘My time is my own’. Let him have the feeling that he starts each day as the lawful possessor of twenty-four hours. Let him feel as a grievous tax that portion of this property which he has to make over to his employers, and as a generous donation that further portion which he allows to religious duties. But what he must never be permitted to doubt is that the total from which these deductions have been made was, in some mysterious sense, his own personal birthright.

From The Screwtape Letters
Compiled in A Year with C.S. Lewis

The Screwtape Letters. Copyright © 1942, C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. Copyright restored © 1996 C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers. A Year With C.S. Lewis: Daily Readings from His Classic Works. Copyright © 2003 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers

When Democracy Becomes an Idol

Malcontent And Envy Inimical to Democratic Liberties

With the rise of Donald Trump and the prospect that a conman could become the Republican candidate for the President of the United States, a familiar quotation has once again begun circulating in the United States.  

The quotation has been unreliably attributed to Alexander Fraser Tytler, Lord Woodhouselee FRSE (15 October 1747 – 5 January 1813) who was a Scottish advocate, judge, writer and historian who served as Professor of Universal History, and Greek and Roman Antiquities at the University of Edinburgh.  The quotation runs:

 A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.

The average age of the world's greatest civilisations from the beginning of history has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith; From spiritual faith to great courage; From courage to liberty; From liberty to abundance; From abundance to selfishness; From selfishness to complacency; From complacency to apathy; From apathy to dependence; From dependence back into bondage.

Tytler may have written the above, or not.  But in any event, the observation is worth considering.

Firstly, the contention that democracies cannot and do not survive.

Allegations of Institutional Evil, Part I

Rotherham Police Had Sex With Abused Girls 

And Covered For Relative Sex Groomers

Lliam Deacon
Breitbart London

The police watchdog is examining almost 200 Rotherham officers after corrupt police, one related to the convicted groomers, allegedly conspired to protect the Muslim child sex gang.  One officer and local politician, who is a family relative of the brothers convicted yesterday, is alleged to have brokered a deal whereby one brother was given assurance that he “wouldn’t get done” if he returned one his young victims to a police station.

Another is accused of having sex with an under-age girls, passing drugs to the grooming gang and tipping them off when colleagues were searching for missing children, a court was told. .  .  .

Jahangir Akhtar, the former deputy leader of Rotherham council and deputy chairman of South Yorkshire police, is one of several alleged to have taken part in the handover. [Emphasis, ours.]  He is also a relative of Arshid, Basharat and Bannaras Hussain.  The three brothers were found guilty yesterday of multiple sexual offences against underage girls over a twenty years period in Rotherham, a town they were said to “own” thanks to their criminal and police connections.

Daily Devotional

He Drew Me To Himself

"With lovingkindness have I drawn thee."
Jeremiah 31:3

The thunders of the law and the terrors of judgment are all used to bring us to Christ; but the final victory is effected by lovingkindness. The prodigal set out to his father's house from a sense of need; but his father saw him a great way off, and ran to meet him; so that the last steps he took towards his father's house were with the kiss still warm upon his cheek, and the welcome still musical in his ears.

"Law and terrors do but harden
All the while they work alone;
But a sense of blood-bought pardon
Will dissolve a heart of stone."

The Master came one night to the door, and knocked with the iron hand of the law; the door shook and trembled upon its hinges; but the man piled every piece of furniture which he could find against the door, for he said, "I will not admit the man."

The Master turned away, but by-and-bye he came back, and with his own soft hand, using most that part where the nail had penetrated, he knocked again--oh, so softly and tenderly.

Roots And National Identity

Lest We Forget

In New Zealand we are amidst a referendum on adopting a new flag.  All the portents are that the country will vote against novelty.  The alternative flag put forward for consideration to replace the old flag has been given a fair go in terms of how it was chosen in the first place as the alternative and also in the way that it has been promoted and advertised around the shop. 

But a large section of the public are unmoved.  This has been bitterly disappointing to many amongst the Chattering Classes who have approached the issue as if the debate over a flag was in fact a debate about marketing strategies.  In fact, the Prime Minister who has led the charge to change the flag, has overtly  approached the question of a replacement flag as a marketing tactic for NZ Inc.

All the polls indicate that the referendum will result in the old flag being retained, and the alternative rejected.  We imagine this will come as a great shock to many.  After all, many talking heads and celebs have been co-opted into the change campaign.  TV ads have been run with opinionistas urging us to change.  We have remained unmoved.  It's a good feeling to be part of the silent majority for a change.

One opinionista has blamed petty politics for the rejection.  Audrey Young has a point: