Another Court Victory

Court Dismisses Bogus Charges Against David Daleiden 

Exposing Planned Parenthood

Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.Com

In a huge victory, a California court has dismissed almost all of the criminal charges abortion activists filed against the pro-life advocates who recorded undercover videos exposing Planned Parenthood selling the body parts from aborted babies.

California Attorney General Xavier Becerra filed 15 felony charges against both David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt. Becerra is a longtime abortion advocate with financial connections to the Planned Parenthood abortion company that the two pro-life Advocates exposed in the videos for selling body parts such as fetal brains and livers.

At the time, pro-life advocates said Becerra’s 15 felony charges were bogus charges meant to belittle the expose’ campaign and to cast aspersions on Daleiden and the organization behind the videos. They said the attempt was about drawing attention away from Planned Parenthood’s sales of aborted baby parts.

The San Francisco Superior Court on Wednesday dismissed 14 of 15 criminal counts but the pair are still charged with one count of conspiracy to invade privacy.

Daily Meditation

Gradually Hardening Into Life or Death

C. S. Lewis

It will be too late then to choose your side. There is no use saying you choose to lie down when it has become impossible to stand up. That will not be the time for choosing: it will be the time when we discover which side we really have chosen, whether we realised it before or not. Now, today, this moment, is our chance to choose the right side. God is holding back to give us that chance. It will not last forever. We must take it or leave it.

Every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before. And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing either into a heavenly creature or into a hellish creature: either into a creature that is in harmony with God, and with other creatures, and with itself, or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with its fellow-creatures, and with itself. To be the one kind of creature is heaven: that is, it is joy and peace and knowledge and power. To be the other means madness, horror, idiocy, rage, impotence, and eternal loneliness. Each of us at each moment is progressing to the one state or the other.

From Mere Christianity
Compiled in Words to Live By 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. 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.

Exemplary Bi-Partisanship

How Politics and Government Are Supposed to Be

New Zealand is a small country with a concomitant population.  It is relatively easy for companies to achieve near monopoly market power.  In the past there have been instances of "big business" being far too cosy with politicians and bureaucrats.  In recent times, less so.  The New Zealand economy is now one of the most open in the world.  Most kiwi businesses are now competing against global or international competitors--on our home ground.  

But the risk remains of oligarchies or duopolies emerging over time.  The oil/gasoline industry is one example.  Market power is concentrated in the hands of just a few large corporates--most with huge multi-national "parents".  It is, therefore, salutary and encouraging to see the Energy and Resources Minister, Judith Collins take an interest in the industry.

Energy and Resources Minister Judith Collins said a report into the retail fuel market had found "features which may not be consistent with a workably competitive market."  The gross profit margin on fuel at the pump had doubled to about 30 cents a litre in Wellington and the South Island over the past four years, the report found.   Higher profit margins in the South Island and Wellington were also "not explained by higher costs in those areas", it found.  [Stuff]

Collins is one tough Minister of the Crown.

Romans 11: 31-32 In Action

Yeshua For Jews

Yet another example of the great things God is doing in our midst and in our times.


https://www.facebook.com/oneforIsrael/videos/1814579855226632/?hc_ref=NEWSFEED

The  ContraCelsum team.

Daily Meditation

Good News: God Is Happy

“ . . . the gospel of the glory of the blessed God” (1 Timothy 1:11)

John Piper

This is a beautiful phrase in 1 Timothy, buried beneath the too-familiar surface of Bible buzzwords. But after you dig it up, it sounds like this: “The good news of the glory of the happy God.”

A great part of God’s glory is his happiness.

It was inconceivable to the apostle Paul that God could be denied infinite joy and still be all glorious. To be infinitely glorious was to be infinitely happy. He used the phrase, “the glory of the happy God,” because it is a glorious thing for God to be as happy as he is.

God’s glory consists much in the fact that he is happy beyond our wildest imagination. As the great eighteenth-century preacher, Jonathan Edwards, said, “Part of God’s fullness which he communicates is his happiness. This happiness consists in enjoying and rejoicing in himself; so does also the creature’s happiness.”  And this is the gospel: “The gospel of the glory of the happy God.” It is good news that God is gloriously happy. No one would want to spend eternity with an unhappy God.

If God is unhappy, then the goal of the gospel is not a happy goal, and that means it would be no gospel at all. But, in fact, Jesus invites us to spend eternity with a happy God when he says, “Enter into the joy of your master” (Matthew 25:23).

Jesus lived and died that his joy — God’s joy — might be in us and our joy might be full (John 15:11; 17:13). Therefore the gospel is “the gospel of the glory of the happy God.”

Beyond Doubt

A Case of State Failure

The stark, blackened image of Grenfell Tower is a picture more powerful than a thousand words.  But what does the picture tell us?  What's the message?  The reflexive Left has lost no time telling us its version of what Grenfell Tower represents.  It's greed.  It's capitalist rapacity.  It's profit ahead of people.  An example of the trope is provided by Workers World:

Capitalist greed is the root cause of the raging inferno that killed at least 79 residents of Grenfell Tower in London on June 14 and left hundreds homeless. It began and spread through unsafe building materials that even some capitalist countries have barred from use.

The British government is guilty of neglect and prioritizing cost-cutting above all in maintaining and renovating the high-rise building.  Of lesser — or no — importance to the British rulers was ensuring safe public housing for the multinational working-class and poor families, including many immigrants, who lived there.

Capitalist greed the root cause, eh?  As they say, never let the facts get in the way of a sensationalist story.  But similar views have been cascading down the mountain side from more "respectable" ideological positions.  The real blame for Grenfell Tower lies not with capitalist greed, but neoliberalism, whatever that might be conjured to be.

Letter From the UK (About Mind Distorting Drugs and Violent Crime)

Nothing to Do With Terrorism

Peter Hitchens
MailOnline

Far too often, we make the world worse than it is by imposing a pattern on it that has little or nothing to do with reality. I say this though I am a keen pessimist. I know the glass is half-empty unless someone is actually refilling it at the time.

But what a foolish mess we get into over so much of the violence that has recently ripped through our society. For instance, we have been marking the terrible death of Jo Cox, a young wife and mother and a delightful, beloved person missed terribly by all who knew her.  It is quite right that she should be remembered. This was a dreadful event. Yet the authorities and the media have decided to insist that her murder was political.  I think this is wrong. Her killer was quite obviously a deranged, muttering loner, with no serious understanding of politics.




Psychiatrists know that such people often latch on to political or religious movements to make themselves seem important.  Why help him magnify his wretched life, his twisted mind and his cruel violence? I have my own suspicions that, by classifying his act as terror, the authorities closed their minds to other possibilities.

Daily Meditation

The Saints Are People of Honour

He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart; who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity, nor sworn deceitfully.  Psalm 24:4

Charles H. Spurgeon

Outward practical holiness is a very precious mark of grace. It is to be feared that many professors have perverted the doctrine of justification by faith in such a way as to treat good works with contempt; if so, they will receive everlasting contempt at the last great day. If our hands are not clean, let us wash them in Jesus' precious blood, and so let us lift up pure hands unto God. But "clean hands" will not suffice, unless they are connected with "a pure heart." True religion is heart-work. We may wash the outside of the cup and the platter as long as we please, but if the inward parts be filthy, we are filthy altogether in the sight of God, for our hearts are more truly ourselves than our hands are; the very life of our being lies in the inner nature, and hence the imperative need of purity within. The pure in heart shall see God, all others are but blind bats.

The man who is born for heaven "hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity." All men have their joys, by which their souls are lifted up; the worldling lifts up his soul in carnal delights, which are mere empty vanities; but the saint loves more substantial things; like Jehoshaphat, he is lifted up in the ways of the Lord. He who is content with husks, will be reckoned with the swine. Does the world satisfy thee? Then thou hast thy reward and portion in this life; make much of it, for thou shalt know no other joy.

"Nor sworn deceitfully." The saints are men of honour still. The Christian man's word is his only oath; but that is as good as twenty oaths of other men. False speaking will shut any man out of heaven, for a liar shall not enter into God's house, whatever may be his professions or doings. Reader, does the text before us condemn thee, or dost thou hope to ascend into the hill of the Lord?

The Foolish Self-Made Saint

The Chameleon Who Inspired Robespierre

Jean-Jacques Rousseau is a name to conjure with.  Many in our post-Christian world remain intensely loyal to him and his writings.  The irony is that Rousseau was in many ways a charlatan, a fraud.  He was an emotionally unstable man.  His biographer, J. H. Huizinga uses the phrase "weathercock nature" to characterize him--meaning, essentially, that Rousseau was a past master at sensing the way the wind was blowing, and setting his sails accordingly.

Consequently, much of his writing was (and remains) chaotically incoherent.  Choose any opinion or position about man and society you wish and somewhere in his writing Rousseau will agree with you, and somewhere else he will attack you.  Here are some of Rousseau's hypocritical behaviours:

Another Win

The Supreme Court’s Religious-Freedom Message: There Are No Second-Class Citizens

Public programs must be open to all.

By David French
National Review Online

While there are many threats to religious liberty, few are more consequential over the long term than the state’s ever-expanding role in private life. If the government is able to vacuum up tax dollars, create programs large and small for public benefit, and then exclude religious individuals or institutions from those programs, it has functionally created two tiers of citizenship. Secular individuals and institutions enjoy full access to the government they fund, while religious individuals and institutions find themselves funding a government that overtly discriminates against them.

That’s the issue the Supreme Court addressed today in Trinity Lutheran Church v. Comer. By a 7–2 margin, the Court held that when a state creates a neutral program for public benefit — in this case a program that uses scrap tires to provide rubberized safety flooring for playgrounds — it can’t exclude a church from that program, even if that means state benefits flow directly to a house of worship. Justice Roberts, writing for the majority, was emphatic:

Daily Meditation

The Powerful Root of Practical Love

We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers. (1 John 3:14)

John Piper

The Bible sometimes makes love the condition of the ongoing and final experience of future grace. It does not mean that love must precede faith in the promise. On the contrary, it means that faith in the promise must be so real that the love it produces proves the reality of the faith.

Thus love for others is a condition of future grace in the sense that it confirms that the primary condition, faith, is genuine. We could call love for others a secondary condition, which confirms the authenticity of the primary condition of faith.

Faith perceives the glory of God in the promises of future grace and embraces all that the promises reveal of what God is for us in Jesus. This spiritual apprehension and delight in God is the self-authenticating evidence that God has called us to be a beneficiary of his grace. This evidence frees us to bank on the promise as our own. And this banking on the promise empowers us to love. Which in turn confirms that our faith is real.

The world is desperate for a faith that combines two things: awestruck apprehension of unshakable divine Truth, and utterly practical, round-the-clock power to make a liberating difference in life. That is what I want too. Which is why I am a Christian.

There is a great God of grace who magnifies his own infinite self-sufficiency by fulfilling promises to helpless people who trust him. And there is a power that comes from prizing this God that leaves no nook and cranny of life untouched. It empowers us to love in the most practical ways.

When Power Lusts for Money

What Now, Red Cow

The NZ Labour Party is nostalgically wishing that it could enter a time machine and get back to the late sixties.  Those were the days when Rob Muldoon, leader of the National Party, ran campaign attack ads against the Labour Party festooned with dancing Cossacks and warnings about "Reds under the bed."  Nowadays, as another election approaches, the Labour Party is wishing that it could go back to its glory days and find a few beds to hide under.

The problem is that the Labour Party has dragged out a revolutionary Pancho Villa pistol and shot every red foot in sight.  There was no force involved, you understand.  This was a pure "home goal".

Labour's coffers are a bit on the empty side.  The unions  have successfully captured the party machine and caucus but are scroogish when it comes to dolling out the lucre.  Labour therefore needs an army of gullible unpaid volunteers to work the political campaign.  New Zealand kids are pretty smart, though.  They know full-well that they can sit comfortably on the dole and do virtually nothing.  So, the uber-smart NZ young people looked at the "bargain" the Labour Party was offering them.  Live on the dole, work your butts off as a volunteer at the dirty end of a political campaign (door knocking, phone calling, working eighteen hours a day)--and all for nothing.  Just live off your dole payments.  It was an offer they refused faster than you can say, "Dancing Cossacks".  

So, the Labour Party turned overseas.

Worship and Death

We Worship By Faith, Not By Fun

Bill Smith
Kuyperian

As you approach the outer court of the Tabernacle with an animal in tow, your journey has been filled with thoughts of what is about to happen. This little animal, an animal of which you may have grown fond, is about to be slaughtered in your place. There may even be some thoughts of turning back.

The priest meets you in the outer court somewhere around the bronze altar; this big, hollow box with four horns on the top in which a fire is constantly burning. You lay your hands on the head of the animal, ordaining it to stand in your place to be offered up. The knife is then taken in hand and the throat of the animal is cut. The blood that gushes from its throat, being pumped out by a heart taking its last beats, is caught in a basin so that it can be splashed on the sides of the altar. The smells of death fill your nostrils. The priest finishes filleting the animal, cutting it up into pieces, washing the parts, and then placing it in this bronze altar in a particular order.

Though after a while in a culture that practices this day-in and day-out you become somewhat accustomed to this, it is not really what you would consider fun. In fact, this is something of a chore. It is difficult at many levels. You can think of many other things that you would rather be doing with your time. So, why do you do it?

You do it because God commanded you to do it. You walk by faith, not by fun. You are created by God to be a worshiper, and this is what worshipers do.

Daily Meditation

On Sin

C. S. Lewis

[The demon Screwtape writes:] Even of his sins the Enemy does not want him to think too much: once they are repented, the sooner the man turns his attention outward, the better the Enemy is pleased.

From The Screwtape Letters
Compiled in Words to Live By 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. 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

Euthanasia and the Love of Death

The Netherlands Recommissions the Ovens of Belsen

In Proverbs 8, Divine Wisdom is personified and calls out to human societies everywhere.

Does not wisdom call?
    Does not understanding raise her voice?
On the heights beside the way,
    at the crossroads she takes her stand;
beside the gates in front of the town,
    at the entrance of the portals she cries aloud:
“To you, O men, I call,
    and my cry is to the children of man.
O simple ones, learn prudence;
    O fools, learn sense.
Hear, for I will speak noble things,
    and from my lips will come what is right,
for my mouth will utter truth;
    wickedness is an abomination to my lips. [Proverbs 8: 1-7]

Wisdom, divine wisdom, is crying out every day to humanity.  But men are weak, stubborn, and foolish.  Men, in vast arrogance, think they can ignore the Living God and forge their own path and make up their own wisdom.  But the cry of Wisdom ends on a final, determinative climax:

For whoever finds me finds life
    and obtains favour from the Lord,
but he who fails to find me injures himself;
    all who hate me love death.

Those who shut their ears to God experience self-inflicted injury; those who hate God's wisdom love death.   At first glance some may advance the idea that "loving death" is a mere figure of speech, possibly an example of hyperbole.  But as humanism gains strength throughout the post-Christian West it is becoming literally true.  There is a growing love of death, as opposed to living and life.

Emma Elliott Freire writes:

The Overwhelming Arrogance of (Some) Doctors

The Brutal Battle Against Medical Kidnappers

Doctors held a teenager involuntarily for a year and a half and said they were helping her.

By Michelle Malkin
National Review Online

Boston – On the day Boston Children’s Hospital celebrated being named “the number one pediatric hospital in the nation” by US News & World Report, I was interviewing Dana Gottesfeld in nearby Somerville, Mass.  Dana is the young wife of Martin “Marty G” Gottesfeld, an imprisoned engineer/activist who used his skills to fight against medical child abuse committed at Boston’s Children’s Hospital.

“That is so Boston,” Dana observed Tuesday in response to the new ranking — which is already splashed in multiple gold medallions across the hospital’s website.  It’s all about power, prestige and pull in the top echelons of the Bay State’s medical community, many New Englanders have informed me. BCH’s teaching affiliate is Harvard Medical School. The ties between and among influential and wealthy alumni in the realms of health care, politics and the courts are innumerable.

It’s a network that’s “practically untouchable,” Dana explained.  And, as with the third rail, those who dare challenge these renowned institutions risk great danger to their freedom and their lives.

Dana’s husband, Marty, faces felony charges of computer hacking and conspiracy related to distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks in April 2014 against Boston Children’s and the nearby Wayside Youth and Family Support Network residential treatment. Marty had organized a social-media army to knock the computer networks of both institutions offline to protest the medical kidnapping of then-15-year-old Justina Pelletier. Hackers from the loose-knit collective, Anonymous, allegedly participated in the campaign.

Justina’s plight had become international news in Marty’s backyard. One fateful winter day in February 2013, Justina traveled with her mom to BCH from her West Hartford, Conn., home, seeking relief from a severe case of the flu. Ordinary sickness compounded Justina’s rare medical conditions, including mitochondrial disease and postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome. But those illnesses hadn’t stopped her from participating in school, competitive ice skating, and an active family life.

Instead of receiving top-notch care and attention at BCH, however, Justina was snatched from her parents and recklessly rediagnosed with a psychological condition, “somatoform disorder.” She was dragged from BCH’s neurology department to its infamous psych ward, where she was reprimanded for being unable to move her bowels or walk unassisted in her weakened state. At Wayside, she was harassed by a staffer while taking a shower. The physical and mental torture lasted 16 months.

Daily Meditation

Heroic Faith

Ah Lord God, behold, thou hast made the heaven and the earth by thy great power and stretched out arm, and there is nothing too hard for thee.  Jeremiah 32:17

Charles H. Spurgeon

At the very time when the Chaldeans surrounded Jerusalem, and when the sword, famine and pestilence had desolated the land, Jeremiah was commanded by God to purchase a field, and have the deed of transfer legally sealed and witnessed.

This was a strange purchase for a rational man to make. Prudence could not justify it, for it was buying with scarcely a probability that the person purchasing could ever enjoy the possession. But it was enough for Jeremiah that his God had bidden him, for well he knew that God will be justified of all his children. He reasoned thus: "Ah, Lord God! thou canst make this plot of ground of use to me; thou canst rid this land of these oppressors; thou canst make me yet sit under my vine and my fig-tree in the heritage which I have bought; for thou didst make the heavens and the earth, and there is nothing too hard for thee."

This gave a majesty to the early saints, that they dared to do at God's command things which carnal reason would condemn. Whether it be a Noah who is to build a ship on dry land, an Abraham who is to offer up his only son, or a Moses who is to despise the treasures of Egypt, or a Joshua who is to besiege Jericho seven days, using no weapons but the blasts of rams' horns, they all act upon God's command, contrary to the dictates of carnal reason; and the Lord gives them a rich reward as the result of their obedient faith.

Would to God we had in the religion of these modern times a more potent infusion of this heroic faith in God. If we would venture more upon the naked promise of God, we should enter a world of wonders to which as yet we are strangers. Let Jeremiah's place of confidence be ours--nothing is too hard for the God that created the heavens and the earth.

When the State Preys on Citizens

Ahabism

At this blog we have raised several times the issue of civil asset forfeiture.  When the state seizes private property without due cause, we are confronted with the ancient evil of Ahab and Jezebel.  It turns out that Ahabism is alive and well in our day.  

Angelo Codevilla describes the practice as follows:

Civil forfeiture was revived as a measure against drug dealers.  But according to James Bovard, 80 percent of the people whose property is seized under drug laws are never formally charged with any crime.  The percentage of those whose property is seized by the Environmental Protection Agency and the US Fish and Wildlife Service and who are never charged, must less convicted, is even higher.  The Supreme Court has ruled that even a person's total innocence does not protect that person's property.  What a weapon against a citizen!

More On Charlie Gard

The Vatican’s Statement on the Charlie Gard Case Is a Disgrace

If the Church cannot stand for the family against the courts, who will?

By Michael Brendan Dougherty
National Review Online


Charlie Gard, an infant, is going to die without a treatment that his parents wish to deploy against his mitochondrial DNA depletion syndrome, a treatment that they can afford thanks to the generosity of others. The highest court in Europe has sided with the English hospital’s wishes that Charlie “die with dignity” over his parents’ wish that he be released into their custody to try an experimental treatment in America. Further, it is decided by the principalities and powers that Charlie is going to die in that hospital even though his parents would at least wish for him to come home with them.

Millions of people have been following this unfolding tragedy. And there is quite a lot of sensationalism in the press coverage. But not just in the press coverage. Gard’s parents, knowing that so many are rooting for them and praying for them, have released videos on YouTube, which I can barely bring myself to watch. They have a hostage-situation feel that is Kafkaesque.

Daily Meditation

Clinging to the World

Only ye shall not go very far away.  Exodus 8:28

Charles H. Spurgeon

This is a crafty word from the lip of the arch-tyrant Pharaoh. If the poor bondaged Israelites must needs go out of Egypt, then he bargains with them that it shall not be very far away; not too far for them to escape the terror of his arms, and the observation of his spies.

After the same fashion, the world loves not the non-conformity of nonconformity, or the dissidence of dissent; it would have us be more charitable and not carry matters with too severe a hand. Death to the world, and burial with Christ, are experiences which carnal minds treat with ridicule, and hence the ordinance which sets them forth is almost universally neglected, and even condemned.

Worldly wisdom recommends the path of compromise, and talks of "moderation." According to this carnal policy, purity is admitted to be very desirable, but we are warned against being too precise; truth is of course to be followed, but error is not to be severely denounced. "Yes," says the world, "be spiritually minded by all means, but do not deny yourself a little gay society, an occasional ball, and a Christmas visit to a theatre. What's the good of crying down a thing when it is so fashionable, and everybody does it?"

Multitudes of professors yield to this cunning advice, to their own eternal ruin. If we would follow the Lord wholly, we must go right away into the wilderness of separation, and leave the Egypt of the carnal world behind us. We must leave its maxims, its pleasures, and its religion too, and go far away to the place where the Lord calls his sanctified ones. When the town is on fire, our house cannot be too far from the flames. When the plague is abroad, a man cannot be too far from its haunts.

The further from a viper the better, and the further from worldly conformity the better. To all true believers let the trumpet-call be sounded, "Come ye out from among them, be ye separate."

Another Left-Wing Stooge

Riding the Hobby Horse, Hard

Mass media are often held in contempt.  Much of it is self-caused.  It is not uncommon to observe media personnel acting as if they were politicians in their own right.  They strive to push public opinion one way or the other.  Media scribes appear to have a political world-view which they strive to impose upon the community.  Their ideology now defines right and wrong, truth and lies, falsehood and verity.  No facts or base data is necessary.

All of this is pretty well known.  It is a reason why media in Western democracies are generally held in contempt.  In New Zealand recently we have seen another example of this trope.  Two political "scandals".  One a beat-up; the other more genuine.  One story pursued with relentless energy; the other ignored.  The reason is pretty obvious: it is yet another example of media attempting to influence the vote along partisan lines.

One of our local blogs has been working on the abacus.

Childishness on a Grand Scale

Increasingly Irrelevant

The "gutter-sniping" between Donald Trump and the news media establishment in the United States long ago lost whatever entertainment it once might have had.   Now, it is looking more narcissistic, where both sides need the conflict to ratify their self-righteousness, and neither side can help itself.

Dana, writing at Patterico.com puts it this way.

Does anyone really believe that because [Trump] tweeted some petty and vindictive rants, he has now gotten #FakeNews out of his system, freeing him up to to focus fully on the important issues that impact us all? Because if you do, you have not been paying attention. These outbursts feed an insatiable appetite of vanity and wounded pride. It is small, it is petty, it is a waste of time. And, unfortunately for us, it is his lifeblood.

We have a perpetual victim in the White House. And we have an indignant, puffed-up mainstream media which believe themselves victims at the hands of this president. They feed off of one another like tortured lovers in the most unhealthy and doomed of relationships. It is CNN that skillfully baits this man-child into throwing public tantrums on a regular basis, and it is the president that causes a collective ringing of hands and clutching of pearls as the wounded and outraged media works to avoid any self-scrutiny. Mutual hate and self-indulgence, shared need and desperation, torment and despair. Unfortunately, neither entity has our best interest at heart. There isn’t room for any third party in this tortured romance.

While CNN has revealed itself to be a dumb and dishonest media outlet with a self-serving agenda, so too has our president. And yet it is Trump who sits in the Oval Office, elected to serve the American people – not himself.

Daily Meditation

The Fear That Draws Us In

“Do not fear, for God has come to test you, that the fear of him may be before you, that you may not sin.” (Exodus 20:20)

John Piper

There is a fear that is slavish and drives us away from God, and there is a fear that is sweet and draws us to God. Moses warned against the one and called for the other in the very same verse, Exodus 20:20: “Moses said to the people, ‘Do not fear, for God has come to test you, that the fear of him may be before you, that you may not sin.’”

The clearest illustration I have ever seen of this kind of fear was the time one of my sons looked a German shepherd in the eye. We were visiting a family from our church. My son Karsten was about seven years old. They had a huge dog that stood eye to eye with a seven-year-old.

He was friendly and Karsten had no problem making friends. But when we sent Karsten back to the car to get something we had forgotten, he started to run, and the dog galloped up behind him with a low growl. Of course, this frightened Karsten. But the owner said, “Karsten, why don’t you just walk? The dog doesn’t like it when people run away from him.”

If Karsten hugged the dog, he was friendly and would even lick his face. But if he ran from the dog, the dog would growl and fill Karsten with fear.  Now that is a picture of what it means to fear the Lord. God means for his power and holiness to kindle fear in us, not to drive us from him, but to drive us to him.

Sinking in the Sea of Foggy Confusion

The Robot Said, "It Does Not Compute"

New Zealand schools are failing to teach maths effectively.  Our national rankings are below average.  We believe that this sad state of affairs is about to get worse.  Why?   Our clever educrats and politicians have decided that, for the first ten years of schooling, all pupils in the State education system will be taught to think like a computer.

"Computational thinking" and "designing and developing digital outcomes" will become part of New Zealand's core curriculum for all children in the first 10 years of school from next year.  Prime Minister Bill English and Education Minister Nikki Kaye visited Newmarket School in Auckland today to unveil a $40 million package to retrain teachers and help schools implement the new curriculum subjects, including a "national digital championship" modelled on an Israeli example.  "All young people from Years 1 to 10 will take part in digital technologies learning," Kaye said. [NZ Herald]

What could go wrong with this?  Lots.

Crass, Vicious and Petty

Why Trump’s Vengeful Tweeting Matters

The president has a huge impact on the country’s political culture. Trump’s misuse of the bully pulpit ensures that that impact is negative in his case.

By David French
National Review Online

So, he did it again. As we’ve learned countless times since his inauguration, President Trump is the exact same person as celebrity Trump and candidate Trump. He’s crass, vicious, and petty. This morning, he tweeted this:

I heard poorly rated @Morning_Joe speaks badly of me (don’t watch anymore). Then how come low I.Q. Crazy Mika, along with Psycho Joe, came..
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 29, 2017

Then this:

…to Mar-a-Lago 3 nights in a row around New Year’s Eve, and insisted on joining me. She was bleeding badly from a face-lift. I said no!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 29, 2017

And of course, like clockwork, his loyalists rose to his defense. Online, his Twitter army exulted in his ability to “get inside the head” of his opponents and essentially adopted the line that Mika got what she deserved. Sarah Huckabee Sanders pulled a twofer, adopting victim status and trying to claim a position of strength — saying that the president “fights fire with fire.”

.@SarahHuckabee just on Fox: “People on that show have personally attacked me many times. This is a president who fights fire with fire…” pic.twitter.com/bWVKyfoQfM
— Sopan Deb (@SopanDeb) June 29, 2017

It’s a sad symbol of our times that one feels compelled to actually make an argument why the president is wrong here. The pitiful reality is that there are people who feel like the man who sits in the seat once occupied by George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Dwight Eisenhower, and Ronald Reagan should use his bully pulpit for schoolyard insults and vicious personal attacks. But this is what we’re reduced to. So, here goes.

Daily Meditation

Do Not Be Discontented With Your Calling

Let every man abide in the same calling wherein he was called.  1 Corinthians 7:20

Charles H. Spurgeon

Some persons have the foolish notion that the only way in which they can live for God is by becoming ministers, missionaries, or Bible women. Alas! how many would be shut out from any opportunity of magnifying the Most High if this were the case. Beloved, it is not office, it is earnestness; it is not position, it is grace which will enable us to glorify God.

God is most surely glorified in that cobbler's stall, where the godly worker, as he plies the awl, sings of the Saviour's love, aye, glorified far more than in many a prebendal stall where official religiousness performs its scanty duties. The name of Jesus is glorified by the poor unlearned carter as he drives his horse, and blesses his God, or speaks to his fellow labourer by the roadside, as much as by the popular divine who, throughout the country, like Boanerges, is thundering out the gospel.

God is glorified by our serving him in our proper vocations. Take care, dear reader, that you do not forsake the path of duty by leaving your occupation, and take care you do not dishonour your profession while in it. Think little of yourselves, but do not think too little of your callings.

Every lawful trade may be sanctified by the gospel to noblest ends. Turn to the Bible, and you will find the most menial forms of labour connected either with most daring deeds of faith, or with persons whose lives have been illustrious for holiness. Therefore be not discontented with your calling. Whatever God has made your position, or your work, abide in that, unless you are quite sure that he calls you to something else.

Let your first care be to glorify God to the utmost of your power where you are. Fill your present sphere to his praise, and if he needs you in another he will show it you. This evening lay aside vexatious ambition, and embrace peaceful content.

Official Intolerance and Oppression

Secularist Religious Orthodoxy in the UK

With a few notable exceptions, New Zealand generally follows the United Kingdom in its education policies.  If this continues, we predict that before long we will see the State requiring that private Christian schools teach radical left-wing religious beliefs.

Private schools exist in New Zealand, as they do in many other countries, precisely because there is a section of the public that do not believe their particular state education system reflects the beliefs, values, and perspectives of some parents.  Therefore, parents seek non-State controlled education for their children in order that parental beliefs and values can be reflected and reinforced at the day schools attended by their children.  Moreover, such schools often produce higher educational outcomes in general.

But now, in Britain, the State is beginning to pressure, and probably ultimately persecute, such schools.

 A private Orthodox Jewish elementary school called the Vishnitz Girls School in Hackney, north London, is facing closure by the British government because it does not include curriculum that teaches children about homosexuality and gender reassignment surgery.

According to Heat Street, a report by the Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Schools (Ofsted) says that the Vishnitz Girls School does not teach its 212 attending children — aged three through eight — “a full understanding of fundamental British values.”  The report explained that the girls “are not taught explicitly about issues such as sexual orientation. This restricts pupils’ spiritual, moral, social and cultural development and does not promote equality of opportunity in ways that take account of differing lifestyles.” [The Blaze]

 The battle lines are drawn.  On the one hand, the private Orthodox Jewish school teaches traditional (and biblical) doctrines about gender and human sexuality.  On the other, the State is declaring that such views are unlawful and must be squashed.

The Ghosts of Ahab and Jezebel Have Returned

Tyrannical Powers

Asset forfeiture has rapidly devolved into a form of state tyranny.  In New Zealand the practice of seizing assets from criminals is still bound fairly narrowly by law.  But in the United States, the seizing of assets from innocent citizens has rapidly become an ignoble, gross injustice.  

The struggle to outlaw the practice continues.  Eventually it will be overthrown, we trust.  Opposition includes people from all sides of the political spectrum.  It is a practice so immoral, so unjust, so venal and so tyrannical that it deserves the moniker "Ahabism" after the notorious King Ahab of Israel and his Phoenician queen, Jezebel.

Kevin Williamson updates us on the current state of Ahabism in the United States.

Civil Asset Forfeiture: Where Due Process Goes to Die

Police can take your money or property and keep it, even if no charges are filed.

Kevin D. Williamson
National Review Online

Clarence Thomas is famously taciturn on the bench. But his few words carry a great deal of weight.

Though the matter has not yet come before the Supreme Court, Justice Thomas is very much at the center of a federal case with a name that sounds like it ought to have come from a William Gaddis novel: United States v. Seventeen Thousand Nine Hundred Dollars in United States Currency. The case has the potential to help rein in one of the most abused powers enjoyed by American government: asset forfeiture.

The case involves a New York couple, Angela Rodriguez and Joyce Copeland, who lost the above-mentioned $17,900 to police in a case in which no charges were ever filed against them. They sued for recovery of their money, and — incredibly — a federal court found that they lacked standing to sue for possession of their own assets. The D.C. Circuit Court sees things differently and has ruled in favor of allowing Rodriguez and Copeland to at least have their day in court and attempt to reclaim their money.
Current asset-forfeiture practice, like much that is wrong with U.S. law enforcement, has its roots in the so-called war on drugs.

Daily Meditation

Resisting the Devil, So That He Flees

C. S. Lewis

You may remember I said that the first step towards humility was to realise that one is proud. I want to add now that the next step is to make some serious attempt to practise the Christian virtues. A week is not enough. Things often go swimmingly for the first week. Try six weeks. By that time, having, as far as one can see, fallen back completely or even fallen lower than the point one began from, one will have discovered some truths about oneself.

No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good. A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is. After all, you find out the strength of the German army by fighting against it, not by giving in. You find out the strength of a wind by trying to walk against it, not by lying down. A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness. They have lived a sheltered life by always giving in.

We never find out the strength of the evil impulse inside us until we try to fight it: and Christ, because He was the only man who never yielded to temptation, is also the only man who knows to the full what temptation means—the only complete realist.

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.

Our Cuban Education System

Not Worth The Paper Its Written On

The New Zealand government owned-operated-and-run education system is increasingly of little use.  Fast follow the standard disclaimers--teachers in the "system" are generally dedicated, hard-working, and committed.   Successive governments have bravely attempted to turn the ship around.  But what no-one in the government system will face is that a universal state monopoly upon education cannot be reformed.  Government is necessarily incompetent at such things.

If we were to suggest that all commercial enterprise in New Zealand should be owned, operated, run, and controlled by central government there would be ripostes ranging from outrage to mockery.  We know that such a "system" would never work.  No government would ever be powerful enough, have sufficient resources, or achieve the necessary omni-competence to make it work.  Omni-competence, let it be said repeatedly, is an oxymoron.  Poverty would beckon.  There would soon be lines of people outside shops waiting to buy something, anything from the empty shelves within.  We know.  We have seen it.  It was called communism.  And it utterly failed.

Why, then, do we persist with the myth that when it comes to educating our youth things will be different?  When that question is put to authorities, the answer invariably comes back, "Educating our youth is too important to leave to non-governmental agencies and the 'private sector'".  To which, our retort is, On the contrary, education is far too important to leave it to inevitable government incompetence.

Control systems do not produce quality education.