Miles to Go

Secular Winds . . . and Whirlwinds

New Zealand is a proudly secular country.  In this it is not alone: most Western countries either share the vanguard with us, or are fast followers in the drive to work out the secularist mantra: "Man is the master of all things, and nothing human is foreign to me". 

The seedlings of secularism began in the Enlightenment, but have since grown into mighty trees. There are no chainsaws in sight.  The forest is now in full bloom, and the fruits of secularism are ripening.  But some are starting to complain that the taste of the fruit is a bit off.

Once we were able to see the blue sky.  Once we could see the sparkling lights of the Milky Way.  Now there is just the close, fetid air of Fangorn.  The secularist state has become our father, our mother, our nursery, our sustainer and provider, our Great White Hope.  The state has become our grand insurance policy, and, as Neddie Seagoon once observed, insurance is the White Man's Burden.

What does the secularist regime actually look like, metaphors aside?

Not a Laudable Religion

Greenists Would Have Us Subdued and Enslaved by Nature

The Truth About Polar Bears: They’re a Dangerous, Out of Control Pest…

James Delingpole
Breitbart London

Polar bear populations are getting out of control and posing a threat to human lives. Obviously the greenies don’t want you to know this.

Last month in  Tuktoyaktuk in Canada, on the edge of the East Beaufort Sea, five children were terrified out of their lives by the extremely rare sight of a polar bear roaming through their village. The bear was so close they could hear it breathing.

At first, the other kids didn’t believe their cousin when she said a polar bear was nearby. And then they started running — and so did the “ever big” polar bear.  “That polar bear started running towards them,” said Kikoak. “And one of my twins, she was maybe about six feet away from the stairs [of the house], but she was so in shock to see that polar bear, she was just standing there looking at it. And it didn’t move. It kept on staring at her.”

Daily Devotional

The Master Servant

. . . so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. (Ephesians 2:7)

John Piper

To me, the Bible’s most astonishing image of Christ’s second coming is in Luke 12:35–37, which pictures the return of a master from a marriage feast:

“Stay dressed for action and keep your lamps burning, and be like men who are waiting for their master to come home from the wedding feast, so that they may open the door to him at once when he comes and knocks. Blessed are those servants whom the master finds awake when he comes. Truly, I say to you, he will dress himself for service and have them recline at table, and he will come and serve them.”

To be sure, we are called servants — and that no doubt means we are to do exactly as we are told. But the wonder of this picture is that the “master” insists on “serving” even in the age to come when he appears in all his glory “with his mighty angels in flaming fire” (2 Thessalonians 1:7–8). Why?

Because the very heart of his glory is the fullness of grace that overflows in kindness to needy people. Therefore, he aims “in the coming ages [to] show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:7).

What is the greatness of our God? What is his uniqueness in the world? Isaiah answers: “From of old no one has heard or perceived by the ear, no eye has seen a God besides thee, who works for those who wait for him” (Isaiah 64:4, RSV).

An Idiot In Search of Fame

On A Ship of Fools

We in New Zealand were treated recently to a right, royal display of hypocritical tomfoolery.  One of our political representatives has taken the cake for hypocritical cant.

Said representative, Green MP Marama Davidson has been taken to task in an opinion piece in one of our daily newspapers.  The occasion was Davidson's trotting off to Israel to protest that country's application of international law in patrollingl its seas to protect itself from water borne attacks by Islamist mujaheddin.

Now, it does not need too much intelligence to sense just the slightest whiff of hypocrisy here.

By Far The Leading Cause of Death

The Biggest Killer Of All

Paul Stark
LifeNews

Abortion ends the life of a human organism—an individual member of the species Homo sapiens. Yet abortions are not classified as deaths in U.S. vital statistics. What would those statistics look like if this omission were corrected?

A team of researchers from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte decided to find out.

“There is no credible scientific opposition to the fact that a new genetically distinct human organism begins with fertilization,” James Studnicki, Sharon J. MacKinnon, and John W. Fisher explain in their paper, published in June 2016 in the Open Journal of Preventive Medicine.  “Yet, despite the universal acknowledgement that the act of abortion results in a death, abortion is not reported as a cause of death in the vital statistics system in the United States. … The exclusion of a major cause of death …, especially one with large racial and ethnic disparities, should be a major concern to the scientific community and society as a whole.”

So the researchers, using data from 2009 (the latest year for which all the relevant information is available), considered abortion among other causes of death. They found that induced abortion was by far the leading cause of death (1.152 million deaths), easily surpassing heart disease (599,413 deaths) and cancer (567,628 deaths) and accounting for 32.1 percent of all deaths that year. Disturbingly, among African Americans, abortions made up 61.1 percent of total deaths; among Hispanics, they accounted for 64 percent.

Daily Devotional

Cavilling Objections

C. S. Lewis

I have heard some people complain that if Jesus was God as well as man, then His sufferings and death lose all value in their eyes, ‘because it must have been so easy for Him’. Others may (very rightly) rebuke the ingratitude and ungraciousness of this objection; what staggers me is the misunderstanding it betrays. In one sense, of course, those who make it are right. They have even understated their own case. The perfect submission, the perfect suffering, the perfect death were not only easier to Jesus because He was God, but were possible only because He was God. But surely that is a very odd reason for not accepting them?

The teacher is able to form the letters for the child because the teacher is grown-up and knows how to write. That, of course, makes it easier for the teacher; and only because it is easier for him can he help the child. If it rejected him because ‘it’s easy for grown-ups’ and waited to learn writing from another child who could not write itself (and so had no ‘unfair’ advantage), it would not get on very quickly.

If I am drowning in a rapid river, a man who still has one foot on the bank may give me a hand which saves my life. Ought I to shout back (between my gasps) ‘No, it’s not fair! You have an advantage! You’re keeping one foot on the bank’? That advantage—call it ‘unfair’ if you like—is the only reason why he can be of any use to me. To what will you look for help if you will not look to that which is stronger than yourself?

From Mere Christianity
Compiled in A Year with C.S. Lewis Mere Christianity. Copyright © 1952, C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. Copyright renewed © 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.

Enrolling in the School of the Prophets

The Dervishes of Baal

As we have mentioned before these are great times for satirists to practise their art.  There is so much folly, so much lunacy, so much self-righteous poppy-cock masquerading as wisdom that Elijah would be rolling around on the floor, laughing fit to bust.

It is high time for Elijah to come again.  The Scriptures give some interesting insight into Elijah and his successors.  Elijah, of course, was the Lord's prophet who spent much of his ministry denouncing the established religion of Northern Israel--Baalism--during the reign of Ahab and Jezebel.  A good deal of his work involved excoriating the worship of Baal and the wickedness of King Ahab and his Phoenician queen.  The high point of his ministry was the contest on Mount Carmel and the subsequent defeat and destruction of Baal's prophets--much to Jezebel's fury. [I Kings 18:20ff] Elijah mocked the false prophets mercilessly as they proved to be,  not just impotent and powerless, but also liars and deceivers.

Fast forward to the day of the Lord.

Triumphalism Wearing Thin

Electoral Oblivion Beckons

Further commentary on the growing popular disaffection with Progressivism in the West, from Yahoo News.

Brutal Headwinds Blast Europe's Centre-Left

London (AFP)
James Pheby

Bitter internal strife, plunging support among voters and surging populism: has there ever been a worse time to be a centre-left party in Europe?  A dozen years ago, left-of-centre giants seemed a natural source of government in many European states.  But today the tally of parties that are declining, sidelined or ideologically adrift is long.

The sick list is headed by Britain's Labour Party, where veteran radical Jeremy Corbyn last week easily won a leadership challenge by centrist MPs angry at his part in the shock Brexit vote.  But political analysts say the venerable party -- founded in 1900 -- faces electoral oblivion despite his victory.  Its dismal standing in the opinion polls is mirrored across Europe.

Daily Devotional

The Christian's Path of Sorrow

"Godly sorrow worketh repentance."  2 Corinthians 7:10

Charles H. Spurgeon

Genuine, spiritual mourning for sin is the work of the Spirit of God. Repentance is too choice a flower to grow in nature's garden. Pearls grow naturally in oysters, but penitence never shows itself in sinners except divine grace works it in them. If thou hast one particle of real hatred for sin, God must have given it thee, for human nature's thorns never produced a single fig. "That which is born of the flesh is flesh."

True repentance has a distinct reference to the Saviour. When we repent of sin, we must have one eye upon sin and another upon the cross, or it will be better still if we fix both our eyes upon Christ and see our transgressions only, in the light of his love.

True sorrow for sin is eminently practical. No man may say he hates sin, if he lives in it. Repentance makes us see the evil of sin, not merely as a theory, but experimentally--as a burnt child dreads fire. We shall be as much afraid of it, as a man who has lately been stopped and robbed is afraid of the thief upon the highway; and we shall shun it--shun it in everything--not in great things only, but in little things, as men shun little vipers as well as great snakes. True mourning for sin will make us very jealous over our tongue, lest it should say a wrong word; we shall be very watchful over our daily actions, lest in anything we offend, and each night we shall close the day with painful confessions of shortcoming, and each morning awaken with anxious prayers, that this day God would hold us up that we may not sin against him.

Sincere repentance is continual. Believers repent until their dying day. This dropping well is not intermittent. Every other sorrow yields to time, but this dear sorrow grows with our growth, and it is so sweet a bitter, that we thank God we are permitted to enjoy and to suffer it until we enter our eternal rest.

The Mystery of Capital

Of Course!

We have just completed reading Hernando De Soto's The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else (New York: Perseus/Basic Books, 2000.)  It is a seminal piece of work and deserves wide readership.

De Soto's thesis can be summarised in a series of seven propositions (which he sets about establishing in the book).

1.  The existence of capital is inextricably related to establishing a system of legal title for property.

2. Once legal title is established, property can be transformed into other forms of wealth.  Land to which one has legal title, for example, can be used as collateral for a bank loan.

3. Long before a system of legal title is established in a country or state, an informal system of ownership usually exists which recognises (amongst the participants) a person's title to property.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow

The Religious Right Is Dead. 

Long Live the Religious Right.

Douglas Wilson
Blog&Mablog

In the ongoing aftermath of the ever-generous fiasco that we call the Trump campaign, Russell Moore wrote that if Donald Trump has accomplished anything of value, it is that he has snuffed out the religious right. The first half of his piece says a lot of things that are pertinent, trenchant, on the mark, and otherwise okay.

I believe, with Moore, that this particular disaster-on-stilts is what we might call a “teachable moment.” It is filled with lessons we must learn if Trump goes down in flames, and with very similar lessons if Hillary does. But it is by no means assured that we have learned, are learning, or will learn those lessons.

My evidence for this is the second half of Moore’s post, and so I propose we take a brief walking tour through his comments.

“There is good news, though, behind all of this, regardless of how this election turns out. The old-school political Religious Right establishment wonders why the evangelical next generation rejects their way. The past year is illustration enough.”

First, it is always dicey to speak for something as ill-defined as the “next generation.” But second, to the extent that we can do so, it by no means clear to me that anybody is “rejecting their way.”

Daily Devotional

Beware of Serving God

“The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.” (Acts 17:24–25)

John Piper

We do not glorify God by providing his needs, but by praying that he would provide ours — and trusting him to answer.

Here we are at the heart of the good news of Christian Hedonism. God’s insistence that we ask him to give us help so that he gets glory (Psalm 50:15) forces on us the startling fact that we must beware of serving God and take special care to let him serve us, lest we rob him of his glory.

This sounds very strange. Most of us think serving God is a totally positive thing; we have not considered that serving God may be an insult to him. But meditation on the meaning of prayer demands this consideration. Acts 17:24–25 makes this plain.

This is the same reasoning as in Robinson Crusoe’s text on prayer: “If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world and its fullness are mine. . . . Call upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me” (Psalm 50:12, 15).

Evidently, there is a way to serve God that would belittle him as needy of our service. “The Son of Man came not to be served” ((Mark 10:45). He aims to be the servant. He aims to get the glory as Giver.

The Echo Chamber

Utopian Left Wingers

Long May They Ride

We have published several posts on the desuetude of the Left in many Western countries.  We have argued that the maintenance of the "Centre Right" in government--despite all its faults and errors--is better for the Church and Christians because the Centre Right is less likely to persecute Christians.  We are more likely to be permitted to live in peace, able to serve our Lord without punishment.

The Left in New Zealand is approaching the more extreme fringes of the ideological spectrum.  Consequently, its national support has slumped to around 27 percent of the electorate, according to what is now a pretty stable polling trend.  A recent article in The Listener lamented this turn of events, even whilst many Christians are thankful.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow

A Fight in the Leper Colony

Douglas Wilson
Blog&Mablog

INTRODUCTION

It is easy to treat the spectacle that is presidential politics in 2016 as though we were dismayed spectators, but we are not spectators at all. We are all participants. We are not watching a movie that contains a food fight in a junior high cafeteria; we are in the cafeteria. And if it is not too jarring to use the phrase casus belli about such a fracas, the causes for all of this lie deep within ourselves.dont-vote

To change my metaphor, this whole thing is a three-layer hypocrite cake.

THE FIRST LAYER

The bottom layer is the Donald himself, the least hypocritical in this entire business. He has never made much of a secret of the fact that he is a boorish pig, and that he likes being a boorish pig, and so he at least has the virtue of largely being himself, to whatever extent that might be called a virtue. Anybody who was surprised by this recent fiasco is a person who could probably have written Gullible’s Travels in one sitting. There are traces of hypocrisy in his behavior, but for the most part Trump gained the Republican nomination as a known quantity.

This is why the feckless Republican distancing from Trump is so grimly amusing. Republicans who were reluctant to endorse Trump in the first place because of what everybody already knew are now jumping overboard because somebody produced proof of what everybody already knew. “The pope is Catholic? Talk about a bridge too far. I’m outta here.”

Now I don’t mind qualified prophets speaking a word of righteousness to Trump. He needs it, and the religious hacks he has surrounded himself with do not appear to be interested in fulfilling that duty. And the political hacks are not rats deserting a sinking ship. They are rats deserting a ship that some polls indicate might be sinking sometime soon, but there is nothing here that a few polls running the other direction couldn’t fix. If the polls run the other way, so will the rats.

Daily Devotional

On effort

C. S. Lewis

Many things—such as loving, going to sleep, or behaving unaffectedly—are done worst when we try hardest to do them.

From Studies in Medieval Literature
Compiled in Words to Live By 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.

South Australia's Backward-to-the-Future Move

Energy Insecurity

South Australia had a bit of a storm a few days ago.  It resulted in a state-wide power black out.  How did that happen?  Green energy.

South Australia has become seriously committed to wind power.  It plans to help stop the world warming up, and this is a great way to do it.  Now over fifty percent of South Australia's electricity comes from wind power.  There is just a wee problem.  The storm winds a few days ago were so powerful, the state's wind turbines were automatically shut down.  Ergo: brown outs and no electricity.

Australia's Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull lost no time pointing out the obvious:

. . . Mr Turnbull told reporters [South Australia Premier] Mr Weatherill still had a case to answer to “keep the lights on” in his state.  “What we need to do across all levels of government is this - we have to deliver energy security. Rule one - keep the lights on,” he said.  “Second, we have to ensure that energy is affordable. SA has the highest wholesale energy costs in Australia.  So that is a problem for SA and the government, Mr Weatherill has to answer for that.”  [Newscom.au]

The first official report into the disaster concluded that the state's wind power over-capacity was the first cause of the problem.  Everything else cascaded down from that.  This was not a politically correct conclusion, but facts can be stubborn things, it seems.

Iconoclasm and Hypocrisy

Inconsistency Writ Large

Here is Alan Duff's take on modern attempts to erase the past so as to make ourselves more pure in the present.

Not For Us To Retry Crimes of Past Eras

Alan Duff
NZ Herald

According to Maori lecturer Steve Elers, the name of his university - Massey - should be changed because back in history Prime Minister William Massey was a racist who believed in the superiority of the white race, had a particular dislike for Chinese and no doubt looked down on Maori.

The alleged "white supremacist" of the early 20th Century is being judged by present-day views. Not only does Mr Elers want to revise history, he wants to reverse it. Come on, mate. When would it stop? Different Maori war chiefs, pre-European and post, believed their tribes were superior to others and went out attacking other tribes all over the land. (It wasn't a country then.) Should we toss them into the hall of shame?

Daily Devotional

Inward Digestion

"I will meditate in thy precepts."  Psalm 119:15

Charles H. Spurgeon

There are times when solitude is better than society, and silence is wiser than speech. We should be better Christians if we were more alone, waiting upon God, and gathering through meditation on his Word spiritual strength for labour in his service. We ought to muse upon the things of God, because we thus get the real nutriment out of them.

Truth is something like the cluster of the vine: if we would have wine from it, we must bruise it; we must press and squeeze it many times. The bruiser's feet must come down joyfully upon the bunches, or else the juice will not flow; and they must well tread the grapes, or else much of the precious liquid will be wasted. So we must, by meditation, tread the clusters of truth, if we would get the wine of consolation therefrom. Our bodies are not supported by merely taking food into the mouth, but the process which really supplies the muscle, and the nerve, and the sinew, and the bone, is the process of digestion. It is by digestion that the outward food becomes assimilated with the inner life.

Our souls are not nourished merely by listening awhile to this, and then to that, and then to the other part of divine truth. Hearing, reading, marking, and learning, all require inwardly digesting to complete their usefulness, and the inward digesting of the truth lies for the most part in meditating upon it.

Why is it that some Christians, although they hear many sermons, make but slow advances in the divine life? Because they neglect their closets, and do not thoughtfully meditate on God's Word. They love the wheat, but they do not grind it; they would have the corn, but they will not go forth into the fields to gather it; the fruit hangs upon the tree, but they will not pluck it; the water flows at their feet, but they will not stoop to drink it. From such folly deliver us, O Lord, and be this our resolve this day, "I will meditate in thy precepts."

Taking Back One's Country

Breathe the Free Air

We will make an educated guess that we'all did not know there was a such a beast as the European Commission Against Racism and Intolerance.  Not that we are surprised us to find out that such an animal actually exists: it's just that there are so many committees and commissions in the EU that if you laid out all the members serving on all the regulatory bodies head to tail, face down, in a long row . . . it would be a good start.

If ever there was an occasion to rejoice over the Brexit decision, the EU Commission Against Racism and Intolerance has provided one.

European human rights chiefs have told the British press it must not report when terrorists are Muslim.  The recommendations came as part of a list of 23 meddling demands to Theresa May’s government on how to run the media in an alarming  threat to freedom speech.

The report, drawn up by the Council of Europe's human rights watchdog, blamed the recent increase in hate crimes and racism in the UK on the 'worrying examples of intolerance and hate speech in the newspapers, online and even among politicians', although the research was done before the EU referendum campaign had even begun. [Daily Mail]

This oh-so-holy Committee of Rectitude has ordered the UK Government to forbid the media mentioning that an Islamic terrorist who commits atrocities is a professing Islamic adherent.  To mention such things provokes "hate crimes".

One thinks of King Theoden in Tolkien's Two Towers under the thrall of Wormtongue.  Once released by Gandalf, he is invited to come outside his palace-prison and "breathe the free air" once again.  What a jolt of Red Bull energy must now be running through the veins of the present UK government.  At last they are free to ignore such authoritarian, meddling rulings emanating out of Mordor-like Brussels.

Erasing the Past for Purity's Sake

More on ISIS-Like Purity

Massey, history, and memory

Why we honour flawed heroes

Jonathan Tracy
Stuff

I am deeply troubled by the recent call to rename Massey University, on the ground of racist utterances made by New Zealand Prime Minister William Massey a century ago.  There is not a single historical figure, of any race, nation, culture, religion, sexual orientation, gender, or political creed, who could possibly stand the test of absolute ideological purity by modern standards.

Abraham Lincoln and Mahatma Gandhi both advocated forms of racial segregation and discrimination.  Should their homelands therefore stop honouring them as national martyrs and liberators?

There have been calls to change the name of Massey University because of racist comments made by William Massey almost a century ago.

As for names of New Zealand places or institutions, Abel Tasman, the Duke of Wellington, the Earl of Auckland, Viscount Palmerston, and Queen Victoria all held opinions that would today get them banished from polite society.  If we must shun every great man or woman of the past whose views did not precisely match our own, the only solution is to declare a Cultural Revolution, a Year Zero, and simply wipe the slate clean.

Daily Devotional

God’s Wise Mercy

We preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to the Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. (1 Corinthians 1:23–24)

John Piper

Over against the terrifying news that we have fallen under the condemnation of our Creator and that he is bound by his own righteous character to preserve the worth of his glory by pouring out eternal wrath on our sin, there is the wonderful news of the gospel.

This is a truth no one can ever learn from nature. It has to be told to neighbors and preached in churches and carried by missionaries.  The good news is that God himself has decreed a way to satisfy the demands of his justice without condemning the whole human race.

Hell is one way to settle accounts with sinners and uphold his justice. But there is another way.  The wisdom of God has ordained a way for the love of God to deliver us from the wrath of God without compromising the justice of God.

And what is this wisdom? The death of the Son of God for sinners!

The death of Christ is the wisdom of God by which the love of God saves sinners from the wrath of God, all the while upholding and demonstrating the righteousness of God in Christ.

Reality and the Past

There is None That Does Good--No, Not One

Over the past couple of years or so we have witnessed ideological cadres of the Left wanting to tear down all societal monuments and reminiscences of those who are now deemed impure.  In the United States, for example, public monuments to Robert E. Lee, the great Confederate general, are under attack--literally.

Some New Zealand academics have started a "me-too" dance.  Got to keep up with our brothers and sisters in the US.  A junior lecturer at Massey University has discovered that William F. Massey, Prime Minister of New Zealand (1912-1925) was a flippin' racist.  (Please excuse the academic jargon).  Therefore, said activist has argued, Massey University (named after the errant PM) bears guilt by association.  The name of the University should be changed.

A racially-charged debate is igniting over research that has revealed "white supremacist" comments made by the prime minister Massey University is named after.  Now, almost a century on, a top academic is calling for the university to consider a name change.  The controversial call comes from Massey lecturer and recent PhD scholar Steve Elers, who was startled to uncover blatantly racist comments made by William Ferguson Massey.  [Stuff]

Elers has discovered the following sentiments expressed by Massey:

Book Review: "Intended For Evil"

Unbroken Inside Cambodia’s Socialist Killing Fields

The question is not, ‘How could Cambodia's Khmer Rouge regime be so evil?’ but, ‘Why are we all not more like the Khmer Rouge?’

Gracy Olmstead
The Federalist

“Intended For Evil” isn’t your typical biography or memoir. It is something different—a work of narrative nonfiction that seeks to convey both the historical and theological import of one man’s life. It’s the story of Radha Manickam, and his journey through the horror and death of the Khmer Rouge prison camps in the late 1970s.

Les Sillars, a journalism professor at Patrick Henry College, spent over a year interviewing Manickam and detailing his account. The resulting work of narrative nonfiction is reminiscent of Laura Hillenbrand’s “Unbroken” in scope and character—it’s a chilling story of suffering and survival—but it’s a shorter work, and focuses more closely on the protagonist’s Christian faith. Radha’s journey through Cambodia’s killing fields was guided by his belief in God, and his assurance that God had a plan for his life.

Daily Devotional

Engaged For Our Defence

"Able to keep you from falling."  Jude 24

Charles H. Spurgeon

In some sense the path to heaven is very safe, but in other respects there is no road so dangerous. It is beset with difficulties. One false step (and how easy it is to take that if grace be absent), and down we go.

What a slippery path is that which some of us have to tread! How many times have we to exclaim with the Psalmist, "My feet were almost gone, my steps had well nigh slipped." If we were strong, sure-footed mountaineers, this would not matter so much; but in ourselves, how weak we are! In the best roads we soon falter, in the smoothest paths we quickly stumble. These feeble knees of ours can scarcely support our tottering weight. A straw may throw us, and a pebble can wound us; we are mere children tremblingly taking our first steps in the walk of faith, our heavenly Father holds us by the arms or we should soon be down.

Oh, if we are kept from falling, how must we bless the patient power which watches over us day by day! Think, how prone we are to sin, how apt to choose danger, how strong our tendency to cast ourselves down, and these reflections will make us sing more sweetly than we have ever done, "Glory be to him, who is able to keep us from falling." We have many foes who try to push us down. The road is rough and we are weak, but in addition to this, enemies lurk in ambush, who rush out when we least expect them, and labour to trip us up, or hurl us down the nearest precipice.

Only an Almighty arm can preserve us from these unseen foes, who are seeking to destroy us. Such an arm is engaged for our defence. He is faithful that hath promised, and he is able to keep us from falling, so that with a deep sense of our utter weakness, we may cherish a firm belief in our perfect safety, and say, with joyful confidence,

"Against me earth and hell combine,
But on my side is power divine;
Jesus is all, and he is mine!"

Stark Choices Up Ahead

Christ or Caesar

One of the meta-narratives swirling around in the current US presidential election--indeed, in almost all US federal elections--is cynicism towards the state.  Donald Trump's selection as the Republican Party's nominee was essentially a protest vote reflecting disgust and antipathy towards "Washington" and the fetid swamp of Congress, as Sarah Palin once put it.  

This electoral revolt can easily morph into a worldview where the svelte set come to think that right wing protest is performed by rustic rubes who are fundamentally ignorant, and don't know how to spell.  The corollary is that those who stand with and believe in government uber-competence are the intellectual, educated, smart set.

It is possible, however, that this cynicism towards the state will not fade away.  It is possible that it will grow.  Angelo Codevilla explains why this may well turn out to be the case:

Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow

Trump Tape

Douglas Wilson
Blog&Mablog

I will have more to say about this, probably Monday, but I did want to take a moment to tell everyone something important. With the release of this TackyTrumpTape, we all ought to sit down, compose ourselves, and on the count of three, put on our surprised face.

What about this did anyone find surprising? What about this did all the Republicans who endorsed Trump find to be unexpected? And if they found it unexpected, why should we trust any of their political calculations ever again?

And who finds it disconcerting that the banner of “respect for women” will be carried at the debate tomorrow by Hillary “the Enabler” Clinton? As my son just tweeted, either way we go, degradation of women is coming to the White House. And degradation of women will come to the White House because, in just a few weeks, we the people are all going to make it happen.

FDR once glibbed, “We owe it to ourselves!” We can top that — “We did it to ourselves.”

Daily Devotional

Get On With Your Tentmaking

TO SHELDON VANAUKEN, who had asked whether he should continue with his postgraduate work in history or study theology: On the danger of combining one’s vocation with one’s spiritual interest.

C. S. Lewis

5 January 1951

We must ask three questions about the probable effect of your research subject to something more theological.

(1.) Would it be better for your immediate enjoyment? Answer, probably but not certainly, Yes.

(2.) Would it be better for your academic career? Answer, probably No. You would have to make up in haste a lot of knowledge which could not be very easily digested in the time.

(3.) Would it be better for your soul? I don’t know. I think there is a great deal to be said for having one’s deepest spiritual interest distinct from one’s ordinary duty as a student or professional man.

St. Paul’s job was tent-making. When the two coincide I should have thought there was a danger lest the natural interest in one’s job and the pleasures of gratified ambition might be mistaken for spiritual progress and spiritual consolation: and I think clergymen sometimes fall into this trap.

Contrariwise, there is the danger that what is boring or repellent in the job may alienate one from the spiritual life. And finally someone has said ‘None are so unholy as those whose hands are cauterised with holy things’: sacred things may become profane by becoming matters of the job. You now want truth for her own sake: how will it be when the same truth is also needed for an effective footnote in your thesis? In fact, the change might do good or harm.

I’ve always been glad myself that Theology is not the thing I earn my living by. On the whole, I’d advise you to get on with your tent-making. The performance of a duty will probably teach you quite as much about God as academic Theology would do. Mind, I’m not certain: but that is the view I incline to.

A Laugh a Minute

What Darwin Really Proved

One of the more engaging attributes of David Berlinski's book, The Devil's Delusion is its mockery of Darwinism.  As he points out, Darwinists strive valiantly to promote the theory of evolutionism, which is an enigma within a riddle.  It is a paradox.  For example, where are the physicists striving by might and main to argue for the veracity of  the theory of gravity?  Where are all the host of post-Newtonians thumping the table, insisting that the Master was right?  Where are the talking heads calling down Jeremiads upon those who demur from Newton?  Why, then, is Darwinism so widely disbelieved?

This has led to a strange situation:

Within the English-speaking world, Darwin's theory of evolution remains the only scientific theory to be widely championed by the scientific community and widely disbelieved by everyone else. No matter the effort made by biologists, the thing continues to elicit the same reaction it has always elicited: You've got to be kidding, right? There is wide appreciation of the fact that if biologists are wrong about Darwin, they are wrong about life, and if they are wrong about life, they are wrong about everything. [David Berlinski, The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions (New York: Basic Books, 2009), p.186.  Emphasis, ours.]

Explain that, if you would.  Is it that the common people are just dumb?

Lest We Forget

Miracle That Saved Girl 

The Auschwitz Gas Chamber

By Paul Ewart
NZ Herald

Yvonne Engelmann was just 15 when she was rounded up with her family and sent to Auschwitz concentration camp, one of the network of German Nazi extermination camps operated by the Third Reich in Poland in World War II from 1940-1945.

But it was an unlikely miracle that saw her survive to tell the disturbing tale.  After arriving at the camp, Yvonne was immediately sent to the gas chamber. Thanks to some strange twist of fate, it malfunctioned and she was left naked in the chamber overnight before being freed.

By some miracle, the Nazi's kept her alive, and she was sent to sort through the clothes of newly arrived Jews to find any gold or valuables they'd hidden.  Her "job" saw her stationed in between the crematorium (which burnt 24-hours daily) and the gas chambers. She ended up being the sole survivor from her entire family, and made a new life for herself in Australia.

Yvonne's Story

"I was 14 and a half when war broke out," Yvonne tells news.com.au.  "I wasn't allowed to go to school, I couldn't walk on the street, I had to wear the yellow Star of David and couldn't mix with any non-Jewish people. Friends I'd grown up with now totally ignored me, solely because I was born a Jew.

"My father was taken to the police station many times and we never knew if he would come back. One day he returned and his front teeth had been knocked out. We lived in fear constantly - we had no idea what would happen to us in the next hour, let alone in the next day."

Born in Czechoslovakia to shopkeeper parents, Yvonne was an only child.  "I had the most wonderful childhood that anyone could wish for, but unfortunately it was short-lived."  At the approach of her 15th birthday, she and her family were taken from the ghetto - along with hundreds of others - to the railway station where they were piled into dozens of cattle wagons.

Daily Devotional

Justice Will Be Done

John Piper

Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” (Romans 12:19)

All of you have been wronged at one time or another. Most of you, probably, have been wronged seriously by someone who has never apologized or done anything sufficient to make it right.  And one of the deep hindrances to your letting that hurt and bitterness go is the conviction — the justified conviction — that justice should be done, that the fabric of the universe will unravel if people can just get away with horrible wrongs and deceive everyone.

That is one of the hindrances to forgiveness and letting grudges go. It’s not the only one. We have our own sin to deal with. But it is a real one.  We feel that just to let it go would be to admit that justice simply won’t be done. And we can’t do it.

So we hold on to anger, and play the story over and over again with the feelings: It shouldn’t have happened; it shouldn’t have happened; it was wrong; it was wrong. How can he be so happy now when I am so miserable? It is so wrong. It is so wrong!

This word in Romans 12:19 is given to you by God to lift that burden from you.  “Never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God.” What does this mean for you?

Laying down the burden of anger, laying down the practice of nursing your hurt with feelings of being wronged — laying that down — does not mean there was no great wrong against you.  It does not mean there is no justice. It does not mean you will not be vindicated. It does not mean they just got away with it. No.

It means, when you lay down the burden of vengeance, God will pick it up.  This is not a subtle way of getting revenge. This is a way of giving vengeance to the one to whom it belongs.

It is taking a deep breath, perhaps for the first time in decades, and feeling like now at last you may be free to love.