Letter From the UK (About 'Nazi' Social Workers)

A rising tide of anger across Europe at 'Nazi’ social workers

Last weekend, hundreds of Norwegians and foreign parents marched on the parliament in Oslo to protest children being taken into 'care' by the state 

Daily Telegraph

Christopher Booker

Even I was rather surprised to see a newspaper headline reporting that the president of the Czech Republic had accused the social workers of another European country of acting “like Nazis”. As it happens, he was not talking about our own much-loved social workers but those of Norway, who four years ago took two little Czech boys into foster care, after one of them told a teacher at nursery school that his Daddy had “groped inside his pyjamas”.

Although no other evidence was given for removing the children, and the strain of the case eventually led their parents to divorce, the Norwegian authorities have refused to return the boys to their distraught mother, who has only been allowed to see them for 15 minutes twice a year and forbidden to speak with them in Czech. It was this which prompted the Czech president Milo Zeman to compare Norway’s child protection system to the Nazis’ Lebensborn forced adoption policy.

Daily Devotional

Making the Same Mistake

"Thou shalt see now whether my word shall come to pass unto thee or not."
Numbers 11:23

Charles H. Spurgeon

God had made a positive promise to Moses that for the space of a whole month he would feed the vast host in the wilderness with flesh. Moses, being overtaken by a fit of unbelief, looks to the outward means, and is at a loss to know how the promise can be fulfilled. He looked to the creature instead of the Creator. But doth the Creator expect the creature to fulfil his promise for him? No; he who makes the promise ever fulfils it by his own unaided omnipotence. If he speaks, it is done--done by himself. His promises do not depend for their fulfilment upon the co-operation of the puny strength of man.

We can at once perceive the mistake which Moses made. And yet how commonly we do the same! God has promised to supply our needs, and we look to the creature to do what God has promised to do; and then, because we perceive the creature to be weak and feeble, we indulge in unbelief. Why look we to that quarter at all? Will you look to the north pole to gather fruits ripened in the sun? Verily, you would act no more foolishly if ye did this than when you look to the weak for strength, and to the creature to do the Creator's work. Let us, then, put the question on the right footing. The ground of faith is not the sufficiency of the visible means for the performance of the promise, but the all-sufficiency of the invisible God, who will most surely do as he hath said. If after clearly seeing that the onus lies with the Lord and not with the creature, we dare to indulge in mistrust, the question of God comes home mightily to us: "Has the Lord's hand waxed short?"

May it happen, too, in his mercy, that with the question there may flash upon our souls that blessed declaration, "Thou shalt see now whether my word shall come to pass unto thee or not."

NZ's Government Schools

Slip, Slidin' Away

In New Zealand government schools are controlled by the teacher unions.  It would be more accurate to call government schools in New Zealand monopolist union schools.

To be sure, union control of the government schools is indirect.  It is not overt.  But the real power in the Ministry of Education and in the schools is held by the unions.  A NZ Herald editorial explains how one reform initiative has come to a sticky end, courtesy of the unions which exist to protect mediocre teachers.

More than two years have passed since the Government announced an impressive plan for improving schools by paying them to work more closely together. They were to form clusters under an executive principal and share their best staff who would be lead teachers in their subject. A pot of $349 million was added to the education budget.

Nothing happens in state schooling without the approval of the teachers' unions but one of them at least, the Post Primary Teachers' Association, did not reject the plan out of hand. The primary school teachers' NZ Educational Institute was much more resistant. Education Minister Hekia Parata did not force the issue. Her ministry started rounds of consultation on the details of the plan, including the terminology, "executive principal" and "lead teacher" which were not to the unions' taste.  Two years on, a watered down version of the plan appears to be getting under way.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow

Triple-D Demented

Douglas Wilson

Blog&Mablog

There is apparently some debate over whether Chesterton said it, but if he didn’t, I think we can all agree that he should have. “When people stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing–they believe in anything.” I tried to look up the source for that quote this morning, and what I ran into were pages listing “things Chesterton didn’t say.” 

Don’t tell me what to do

And I say this because our culture, what’s left of it, is no longer on a slippery slope. Neither are we at the bottom of a slippery slope. No, my friends, we are in free fall and picking up speed. But, the culture replies, you may call it free fall, but we self-identify as still being back in the plane, as snug as any passenger ever was.

Allow me to link you to three demented stories. The first has to do with the mainstreaming of incest. The second has to do with folks cutting off limbs or opting for a wheelchair while perfectly healthy so that they can “identify” as transabled. And then last, but certainly most celebrated, Bruce Jenner now identifies himself as Caitlyn Jenner after having himself fixed. Being the kind of hater I am, I am afraid that I am not going to be addressing him as Caitlyn — the most accommodation I will offer is that of calling him Jenner. As a result of the marvels of modern surgery and the even greater marvels of Photoshop, Jenner now graces the cover of Vanity Fair in much the same way that he used to adorn those old boxes of Wheaties.

Daily Devotional

Who Are the Children of Abraham?

In you all the families of the earth shall be blessed. (Genesis 12:3)

John Piper

You who hope in Christ and follow him in the obedience of faith are Abraham’s descendants and heirs of his covenant promises.  God said to Abraham in Genesis 17:4, “Behold, my covenant is with you and you shall be the father of a multitude of nations.” But Genesis makes plain that Abraham did not father a multitude of nations in a physical or political sense. Therefore the meaning of God’s promise was probably that a multitude of nations would somehow enjoy the blessings of sonship even though physically unrelated to Abraham.

That’s no doubt what God meant in Genesis 12:3 when he said to Abraham, “In you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” From the very beginning, God had in view that Jesus Christ would be the descendant of Abraham and that everyone who trusts in Christ would become an heir of Abraham’s promise.  So it says in Galatians 3:29, “If you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise.”

So when God said to Abraham 4,000 years ago, “Behold, my covenant is with you and you shall be the father of a multitude of nations,” he opened the way for anyone of us, no matter what nation we belong to, to become a child of Abraham and an heir of God’s promises. All we have to do is share the faith of Abraham — that is, bank our hope on God’s promises, so much so that if obedience requires it, we could give up our dearest possession like Abraham gave up Isaac.

We don't become heirs of Abraham’s promises by working for God but by being confident that God works for us.

Dirty Money

Exploiting the Poor and Vulnerable

One of the things we really, really despise about this evil system under which we operate is people making money off other people.  Especially vulnerable people.  Think about that Shylockian leech who owns the corner dairy.  All those underprivileged kids flocking into his store on the way home from school, purchasing whatever their desires and credit will permit.  All the while, Shylock is making money out of the desires and weaknesses of other, more vulnerable people.  See him rubbing his hands. 

Schooling is a sector which always seems to attract this kind of nonsensical analysis.  For some reason the slightest whiff of anyone making a profit from providing education services is declared to be rapaciously evil--just like the leech who owns the corner dairy.  And if a school were to make a profit, or run a surplus, well that just goes to prove they were taking advantage of the most vulnerable. Profits mean exploitation, by definition.

And it is at this juncture in the road we are confronted by the real objection so many people appear to have to charter schools.  They make profits.  They are fattening themselves by living off the vulnerabilities of poor students and their families.  Mandy Hager, education reporter for the NZ Herald, tweeted this week:

This is incredibly worrying: our govt now wants to make money out of our most vulnerable people - just disgusting.

She was objecting to the noisome news that the six New Zealand charter schools had made a profit.  (Actually, all of these charter schools are non-profits, so any surpluses will have to be re-invested in the schools in some way, shape or form--but we digress.)  Making a profit--it's disgusting!  And not just a profit--it is being made off vulnerable people. 

Yes, it does have a bad taste.  We admit it.

Letter From America (About Junk Science)

Media Promotes Junk Science on Fetal Pain

James D. Agresti

TheBlaze

James D. Agresti is the president of Just Facts, a think tank dedicated to researching and publishing verifiable facts about the leading public policy issues of our time.

The U.S. House of Representatives recently passed an act that would prohibit abortions from 20 weeks after fertilization, except in cases of rape, incest or when the life of a mother is endangered.

A photograph in the womb at this stage of development:

(Life Issues Institue) 

The legislation states that its purpose is to protect “the lives of unborn children from the stage at which substantial medical evidence indicates that they are capable of feeling pain.” According to the bill’s authors, this occurs “by 20 weeks after fertilization, if not earlier.”

Media outlets, however, are reporting otherwise. For example:

Daily Devotional

Something to Boast About

For by grace you have been saved through faith. (Ephesians 2:8)

John Piper

The New Testament correlates faith and grace to make sure that we do not boast in what grace alone achieves.  One of the most familiar examples goes like this: “For by grace you have been saved through faith” (Ephesians 2:8). By grace, through faith. There’s the correlation that guards the freedom of grace.

Faith is the act of our soul that turns away from our own insufficiency to the free and all-sufficient resources of God. Faith focuses on the freedom of God to dispense grace to the unworthy. It banks on the bounty of God.  Therefore faith, by its very nature, nullifies boasting and fits with grace. Wherever faith looks, it sees grace behind every praiseworthy act. So it cannot boast, except in the Lord.

So Paul, after saying that salvation is by grace through faith, says, “And this is not of your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast” (Ephesians 2:8–9). Faith cannot boast in human goodness or competence or wisdom, because faith focuses on the free, all-supplying grace of God. Whatever goodness faith sees, it sees as the fruit of grace.  When it looks at our “wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption,” it says, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord” (1 Corinthians 1:30–31).

New Zealand's Backstreet Abortion Industry

Professional Liars

New Zealand's abortion laws are terrible.  Not just because, like all abortions, New Zealand's permissive abortion laws sanction the cowardly killing of innocent human beings.  The anti-mother has legal rights, voice, representation, advocacy.  The child she, and the Establishment,  wish to kill has none of these things--humanly speaking.  In the end, however, God will be the voice of the innocents.

But New Zealand's abortion laws are worse than even these unconscionable travesties of justice.  In this country girls up to age 14 can procure an abortion without the knowledge of their parents.  The way it works is this: the pregnant teenager can seek an abortion via her school, usually by approaching the government funded school nurse.  (Schools of course promote this "service" to their female teenage charges.)  The school, via the school nurse, confidentially arranges for the teenager to have an abortion.  She goes off to school one day (her parents completely oblivious) and she returns home having had an abortion on the sly. 

A recent case was reviewed on prime time TV.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow

Wife Beating and the Idea of Revelation

Douglas Wilson

Blog&Mablog

Revelation presupposes three things — a revealer, a recipient, and a message with an accompanying hermeneutic. There is one who speaks, there are the ones spoken to, and there is the message along with the medium that carries that message. That medium would include all the created world, with its atmosphere and sound waves, papyrus, paper, computer screens, ink, toner, ones and zeros, and . . . a hermeneutic. How many times did Jesus tell us that the one with ears should hear?

It is important to get the hermeneutic right. To illustrate how important this hermeneutic is (illustrated by two different versions of it, two distinct theologies of revelation) let us compare two very angular texts with regard to women. The first is from the Koran and the second from Exodus.

[Husbands] “are the protectors and maintainers of their [wives] because Allah has given the one more [strength] than the other, and because they support them from their means. Therefore the righteous women are devoutly obedient and guard in [the husband’s] absence what Allah would have them guard. As to the women on whose part you fear disloyalty and ill-conduct, admonish them first, refuse to share their beds, spank them, if they return to obedience, seek not against them means of [annoyance]: for Allah is Most High, Great” (Surah 4:34).

“And if a man sell his daughter to be a maidservant, she shall not go out as the menservants do. If she please not her master, who hath betrothed her to himself, then shall he let her be redeemed: to sell her unto a strange nation he shall have no power, seeing he hath dealt deceitfully with her” (Ex. 21:7–8).

The passage from the Koran instructs a husband on the process required in pious wife-beating. Begin with admonition, and then move on to a refusal to have sex with her. If that doesn’t work, then corporal punishment may be applied. And the modern world says eeeek, recoiling, and rightly so.

Daily Devotional

The Only Universal Doctor

"Who healeth all thy diseases."
Psalm 103:3

Charles H. Spurgeon

Humbling as is the statement, yet the fact is certain, that we are all more or less suffering under the disease of sin. What a comfort to know that we have a great Physician who is both able and willing to heal us! Let us think of him awhile.

His cures are very speedy--there is life in a look at him; his cures are radical--he strikes at the centre of the disease; and hence, his cures are sure and certain. He never fails, and the disease never returns. There is no relapse where Christ heals; no fear that his patients should be merely patched up for a season, he makes new men of them: a new heart also does he give them, and a right spirit does he put within them.

He is well skilled in all diseases. Physicians generally have some speciality. Although they may know a little about almost all our pains and ills, there is usually one disease which they have studied above all others; but Jesus Christ is thoroughly acquainted with the whole of human nature. He is as much at home with one sinner as with another, and never yet did he meet with an out-of-the-way case that was difficult to him. He has had extraordinary complications of strange diseases to deal with, but he has known exactly with one glance of his eye how to treat the patient. He is the only universal doctor; and the medicine he gives is the only true catholicon, healing in every instance.

Whatever our spiritual malady may be, we should apply at once to this Divine Physician. There is no brokenness of heart which Jesus cannot bind up. "His blood cleanseth from all sin." We have but to think of the myriads who have been delivered from all sorts of diseases through the power and virtue of his touch, and we shall joyfully put ourselves in his hands. We trust him, and sin dies; we love him, and grace lives; we wait for him and grace is strengthened; we see him as he is, and grace is perfected forever.

Those Dumb Republicans

Feeling Good About Oneself

There are few media voices in New Zealand which espouse "right wing" opinions.  There are no writers or broadcast commentators who consistently espouse classical liberal or consistently conservative ideological positions.  Opposing viewpoints estranged from the prevailing group think are hard to find.


Of course, there are plenty of such slurs passing for considered opinion in the US media.  But at least the US has outlets like Fox to take the other side.  But the public down under are subjected to the old saw that if a slur or a lie is repeated often enough it morphs into an infallible, received truth.  Incidentally, the corollary of the slur that Republicans are dumb is that liberal Democrats are so, so smart.  Clever, educated, thoughtful, insightful, creative . . . the list goes on.  Remember how the media drooled over candidate Obama, extolling him as the best and the brightest.  Yet Obama has turned out to be remarkably deaf and obtuse and simplistic and one-dimensional. Virtually every wrong or mistake made by him has been attributed (by him) to be the fault of the dastardly Republicans.  Every success he neatly attributes to himself.

One of the rare right-of-centre voices in New Zealand is Liam Hehir, a lawyer specialising in business and property law, who also moonlights as a freelance columnist for Fairfax Media.  He wrote a piece recently focusing upon media leftwing groupthink, and made a prediction that once again we are about to be bombarded by repetitive pieces on how dumb the current crop of Republican candidates for the GOP nomination are.  He went on to opine that in any event IQ does not necessarily make a good leader. 

More Persecution of UK Christians Coming

Christian Institute Slams ‘Dangerous’ Government Plan to Regulate Religion

By Oliver Lane
BreitbartLondon

The Christian Institute has warned measures introduced in the Queen’s Speech to tackle Muslim fundamentalism could be used to “clamp down on legitimate expressions of dissent”, with practising traditional Christians branded ‘extremists’.

Director of the Institute Simon Calvert warned that without proper safeguards Extremism Disruption Orders (EDOs) could backfire on ordinary Britons, in the same way anti-extremist measures rushed in to tackle Islamist ‘Trojan Horse’ schools were used to persecute Christian schools in England. He said:

 “The Christian Institute warns the Government not to rush through these measures, but to engage with groups with a track record of defending free speech. In the current climate, there is a real risk that EDOs will be used to clamp down on legitimate expressions of dissent.  If the Government does not ensure that there are adequate safeguards then, because of the low burden of proof, it is perfectly plausible that comedians, satirists, campaign groups, religious groups, secularist groups, and even journalists could find themselves subject to these draconian measures.”

Breitbart London has reported on the numerous occasions where previous anti-extremist rules had been turned on ordinary people for quietly pursuing their faith.

Daily Devotional

The Gain of Serving God

“They will become his slaves so that they may learn the difference between my service and the service of the kingdoms of the countries.” (2 Chronicles 12:8)

John Piper

Serving God is utterly different from serving anyone else.

God is extremely jealous that we understand this — and enjoy it. For example, he commands us, “Serve the Lord with gladness!” (Psalm 100:2). There is a reason for this gladness. It is given in Acts 17:25, “God is not served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all men life and breath and everything.”  We serve him with gladness because we do not bear the burden of meeting his needs. Rather we rejoice in a service where he meets our needs. Serving God always means receiving grace from God.

To show how jealous God is for us to get this and glory in it, there is a story in 2 Chronicles 12. Rehoboam, the Son of Solomon, who ruled the southern kingdom after the revolt of the ten tribes, “forsook the law of the Lord” (12:1). He chose against serving the Lord and gave his service to other gods and other kingdoms. As judgment God sent Shishak, the king of Egypt, against Rehoboam with 1,200 chariots and 60,000 horsemen (12:3).

In mercy God sent the prophet Shemaiah to Rehoboam with this message: “Thus says the Lord, you abandoned me, so I have abandoned you to the hand of Shishak” (12:5).

Cocoa Puffery

The Sophistry of The Intellectual Cadre

When it comes to the "educated elite" nothing is surprising.  Ignorance, prejudice, and superficiality know no bounds.  We came across this recently, which caused not a little chortling into the cornflakes.  The headline in BreitbartNews gave us a hint at what was to come:

The Big Question: How Silly Can a Philosopher Be?

Well now.  Let's see.  The appellation, "philosopher"  is usually taken to mean, at root, a lover of wisdom.  But when that wisdom is cocooned within the narrow confines of cotton wool, sometimes it degenerates into a "love of sophistry" which is an entirely different kettle of fish.  In this case, the sophist is one Daniel Dennett, who writes in Atlantic now and then.

The Fruits of Muhammedism

Yazidi Victims of Mass Rape Threatened with Death Upon Release from ISIS Captivity

by Dr. Phyllis Chesler
BreitbartNews

According to Kurdish media network Rudaw, seventeen-year-old “Suzan,” a Kurdish Yezidi girl was kidnapped, gang-raped, enslaved, and impregnated by ISIS warriors. Incredibly, she managed to escape and has told her story to Delal Sindy, a Swedish-Kurdish activist living in a Kurdish region.

“Suzan’s” story is surreal but alarmingly typical. She and other female sex slaves were lined up naked every morning, “smelled,” and then chosen either by ISIS militant Al-Russiyah, or by his bodyguards. They were beaten and gang-raped daily. When “Suzan” was sold to Al-Russiyah, she was held in a hotel in Mosul in a building full of half-naked girls and women.  The virgins were highly prized; as such, they were examined to make sure that their hymens were intact and then taken to a room filled with 30-40 men who chose among them.

Daily Devotional

The Payout for Patience

“As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive.” (Genesis 50:20)

John Piper

The story of Joseph in Genesis 37–50 is a great lesson in why we should have faith in the sovereign future grace of God.  Joseph is sold into slavery by his brothers, which must have tested his patience tremendously. But he is given a good job in Potiphar’s household. Then, when he is acting uprightly in the unplanned place of obedience, Potiphar’s wife lies about his integrity and has him thrown into prison — another great trial to his patience.

But again things turn for the better, and the prison-keeper gives him responsibility and respect. But just when he thinks he is about to get a reprieve from the Pharaoh’s cupbearer, whose dream he interpreted, the cupbearer forgets him for two more years.

Finally, the meaning of all these detours and delays becomes clear. Joseph says to his long-estranged brothers, “God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to keep alive for you many survivors. . . . As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive” (Genesis 45:7; 50:20).

What would have been the key to patience for Joseph during all those long years of exile and abuse? The answer is: faith in future grace — the sovereign grace of God to turn the unplanned place and the unplanned pace into the happiest ending imaginable.

The Control-Freak Culture

"I Did It My Way"

Charles Moore has written an insightful piece in The Telegraph.  It concerns "assisted" dying. He argues that so-called "dignitas dying" represents an ultimate attempt to be in control of oneself.  The irony is lost only on the purblind.

Genocide On An Unimaginable Scale

Lest We Forget

Data published by the U.S. Census Bureau and the pro-abortion rights Guttmacher Institute show that the number of babies aborted since the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision in 1973 is already more than the entire population of the United States in 1880.

The U.S. resident population, according to the 1880 census, was 50,189,209. According to the Guttmacher Institute, the number of reported abortions from 1973 through 2011 adds up to 51,376,750, which is 1,187,541 more than the 1880 population.  As CNS.com reports, since 1975, the number of aborted babies in the United States each year has exceeded one million.

Dr. Susan Berry
BreitbartNews

Daily Devotional

Thundering Words

"Thou hatest wickedness."
Psalm 45:7

Charles H. Spurgeon

"Be ye angry, and sin not." There can hardly be goodness in a man if he be not angry at sin; he who loves truth must hate every false way. How our Lord Jesus hated it when the temptation came! Thrice it assailed him in different forms, but ever he met it with, "Get thee behind me, Satan."

He hated it in others; none the less fervently because he showed his hate oftener in tears of pity than in words of rebuke; yet what language could be more stern, more Elijah-like, than the words, "Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye devour widows' houses, and for a pretence make long prayer." He hated wickedness, so much that he bled to wound it to the heart; he died that it might die; he was buried that he might bury it in his tomb; and he rose that he might forever trample it beneath his feet.

Christ is in the Gospel, and that Gospel is opposed to wickedness in every shape. Wickedness arrays itself in fair garments, and imitates the language of holiness; but the precepts of Jesus, like his famous scourge of small cords, chase it out of the temple, and will not tolerate it in the Church. So, too, in the heart where Jesus reigns, what war there is between Christ and Belial! And when our Redeemer shall come to be our Judge, those thundering words, "Depart, ye cursed" which are, indeed, but a prolongation of his life-teaching concerning sin, shall manifest his abhorrence of iniquity.

As warm as is his love to sinners, so hot is his hatred of sin; as perfect as is his righteousness, so complete shall be the destruction of every form of wickedness. O thou glorious champion of right, and destroyer of wrong, for this cause hath God, even thy God, anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows.

Secularism's Achilles Heel

Humbug and Mendacity

The Great Lie promulgated by secularists about secularism is that it alone is the "honest broker".  It is studiously neutral and objective when assessing morality and religious beliefs.  It alone has the disinterested neutrality which allows for an honest, objective assessment.  In Jesus Christ, we are told, there are good and bad elements: since secularism is neither for nor against religion, it alone can discern what is good and what is bad about the Christ.  Everyone else is biased and full of cant.

By this means of argument, the secularist wants to drive Christians from the public sphere.  Christians are biased and partial, subjective and prejudiced.  Secularists alone can discuss and debate such things rationally, because the secularist is neutral.  To which we reply, "Poppycock".

Every once in a while people see this clearly.  The erstwhile emperor is exposed as a crude nudist, to be mocked and shamed.  Harold Turner, a Presbyterian minister in 1945, had this to say about New Zealand's much vaunted and self-congratulatory secular education system.  He claimed:

Free Speech--One of the Greatest Freedom Rights

Taking Offence to Silence Others

An excellent editorial on the importance of free speech and and the modern fad of employing passive/aggressive attempts to silence opponents.

The Principle of Free Speech Cannot be Over-rated

Joanna Norris

The Press

As the bodies of slain cartoonists were being removed from their office in Paris in January, New Zealanders enthusiastically supported the dead by embracing the phrase #JeSuisCharlie.  Across the globe people gathered at rallies to speak for the cartoonists and editors and in doing so ensured the victims' pointed brand of freedom of expression was not curtailed by murder.

Following the killings, I wrote a piece for New Zealand publications arguing that the murder of journalists represented the worst possible attack on freedom of expression and media freedom. While the attack may have been motivated by a desire to silence satirists, it was likely to have the opposite effect, I argued. Journalists across the world would not be chilled by the attacks.

But a few moments after the piece was published on stuff.co.nz and nzherald.co.nz, I was struck by a four-word comment left by a commenter.  "Free speech is overrated," he wrote.  At the time I passed the comment off as the hopeful rant of an attention-seeking troll, but I have given it a great deal of thought since.

Daily Devotional

When You Can Feel It Least

C. S. Lewis

It is quite right that you should feel that “something terrific” has happened to you (It has) and be “all glowy.” Accept these sensations with thankfulness as birthday cards from God, but remember that they are only greetings, not the real gift. I mean, it is not the sensations that are the real thing. The real thing is the gift of the Holy Spirit which can’t usually be—perhaps not ever—experienced as a sensation or emotion. The sensations are merely the response of your nervous system. Don’t depend on them. Otherwise when they go and you are once more emotionally flat (as you certainly will be quite soon), you might think that the real thing had gone too. But it won’t. It will be there when you can’t feel it. May even be most operative when you can feel it least.
From The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume III
Compiled in Words to Live By
The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, Volume III: Narnia, Cambridge, and Joy 1950-1963. Copyright © 2007 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers. Words to Live By: A Guide for the Merely Christian. Copyright © 2007 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers.  Sourced from BibleGateway.

Good One

Thanks for the Boost

Christian schools have just received another significant fillip thoughtfully rendered by compulsory monopolistic state schools.  The authorities governing the latter have decided that gender neutrality and inclusiveness is the in-thing.  A growing number of parents will, for their part, decide that they want their children spared the mental degradation of  having to decide which toilet they ought to access.  They will thus become interested in sending their children to Christian schools or those schools where such vacuous inanity does not rule the roost. 

This from the NZ Herald:

Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow

Renewing the Patriot Farce

Douglas Wilson

Blog&Mablog

This weekend will determine whether or not the metadata collection of the Patriot Act will be renewed. I do not wish to speak to this as any kind of insider, for I clearly am not. Rather I think we all ought to step back and take a look at this from fifty yards away. Let us take an honest look at our corruptocracy, and let us do it from downwind. Let us do this having read the arguments that our Founders appealed to when they first established our liberties.

Defenders of metadata collection say that it is necessary in order to protect our liberty from terrorists, and besides, no evidence exists that such collections have ever been abused in any way.

The federal government is like some porch climbing burglar who thinks we are crazy to be worried about them pilfering the yellow house on the corner because why? Because all the controversy concerns the brown house and the red house on either side. We haven’t even thought about the yellow house.

So the metadata has not yet been abused? Okay, what has been?

Daily Devotional

Anxiety As Traitor

"Cast thy burden upon the Lord, and he shall sustain thee."
Psalm 55:22

Charles H. Spurgeon

Care, even though exercised upon legitimate objects, if carried to excess, has in it the nature of sin. The precept to avoid anxious care is earnestly inculcated by our Saviour, again and again; it is reiterated by the apostles; and it is one which cannot be neglected without involving transgression: for the very essence of anxious care is the imagining that we are wiser than God, and the thrusting ourselves into his place to do for him that which he has undertaken to do for us. We attempt to think of that which we fancy he will forget; we labour to take upon ourselves our weary burden, as if he were unable or unwilling to take it for us.

Now this disobedience to his plain precept, this unbelief in his Word, this presumption in intruding upon his province, is all sinful. Yet more than this, anxious care often leads to acts of sin. He who cannot calmly leave his affairs in God's hand, but will carry his own burden, is very likely to be tempted to use wrong means to help himself. This sin leads to a forsaking of God as our counsellor, and resorting instead to human wisdom. This is going to the "broken cistern" instead of to the "fountain;" a sin which was laid against Israel of old.

Anxiety makes us doubt God's lovingkindness, and thus our love to him grows cold; we feel mistrust, and thus grieve the Spirit of God, so that our prayers become hindered, our consistent example marred, and our life one of self-seeking. Thus want of confidence in God leads us to wander far from him; but if through simple faith in his promise, we cast each burden as it comes upon him, and are "careful for nothing" because he undertakes to care for us, it will keep us close to him, and strengthen us against much temptation. "Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on thee, because he trusteth in thee."

Thinking God's Thoughts After Him

Merry, Epistemologically Self-Conscious Warriors

When someone becomes a Christian there is a sense in which everything has changed.  But there is also a sense in which nothing has changed.

The first statement will be familiar to most Christians.  The Scriptures declare that, if any man is in Christ, he is a new creation.  The old has passed away.  Behold all things have become new.  (II Corinthians 5: 17)  But the second statement is not so familiar.  When someone emigrates to a new country and becomes a citizen they, overnight, become endowed with rights, privileges and obligations.  From the moment when citizenship is granted they will be accorded the privileges and responsibilities of a citizen.  But the habitual cultural patterns of a former life will take far longer to change and mould.  It is similar when someone becomes a citizen of the Kingdom of God.

The process of becoming a more faithful and consistent citizen of the heavenly kingdom is often slow and painful.  In particular, changing the way one thinks, the thought patterns that once unconsciously dominated, is often the most painful of all.  Theologians speak of Christians becoming epistemologically self-conscious.  It is not an easy task (unless one is born into a Christian home and has been trained from infancy in such things) but it is one of the most important battles we must fight.

Letter From the UK (About Sovereignty)

Britain Needs a Bill of Rights for the Individual and the Country

Editorial

The Telegraph

Telegraph View: We understand the concern for civil liberties expressed by those who favour retaining the Human Rights Act. But it is far too open to abuse, and it is time to repatriate legal authority 

This week will presage the first serious domestic test for the new Conservative Government. The Queen’s Speech will include a proposal to scrap the Human Rights Act and replace it with a British Bill of Rights. For some this represents an assault on the very principle of universal human rights. The Government, however, sees it as a repatriation of British legal authority. The man who has been appointed to make its argument is Michael Gove, formerly in charge of the education department and now the Justice Secretary. As one Tory put it, taking on this particular task “will make education reform look like child’s play”.

There are voices of scepticism to be found within Mr Gove’s own party – and a rebellion allied to the SNP, Lib Dems and Labour looms. As we report today, one member of the Government has threatened to resign. Speaking to this newspaper, senior Conservatives have said that they fear scrapping the Act might remove certain legal safeguards and send the message that Britain is somehow uninterested in the principle of human rights. These concerns are well motivated by people worried about the rights of their constituents.

Nevertheless, there is plainly something wrong with the Human Rights Act as it stands.

Daily Devotional

Strength to Wait

May you be strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy. (Colossians 1:11)

John Piper

Strength is the right word. The apostle Paul prayed for the church at Colossae, that they would be “strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience” (Colossians 1:11). Patience is the evidence of an inner strength.

Impatient people are weak, and therefore dependent on external supports — like schedules that go just right and circumstances that support their fragile hearts. Their outbursts of oaths and threats and harsh criticisms of the culprits who crossed their plans do not sound weak. But that noise is all a camouflage of weakness. Patience demands tremendous inner strength.

For the Christian, this strength comes from God. That is why Paul is praying for the Colossians. He is asking God to empower them for the patient endurance that the Christian life requires. But when he says that the strength of patience is “according to [God’s] glorious might” he doesn’t just mean that it takes divine power to make a person patient. He means that faith in this glorious might is the channel through which the power for patience comes.

Patience is indeed a fruit of the Holy Spirit (Galatians 5:22), but the Holy Spirit empowers (with all his fruit) through “hearing with faith” (Galatians 3:5). Therefore Paul is praying that God would connect us with the “glorious might” that empowers patience. And that connection is faith.

A Despotism of the Mind

Evidence That J. S. Mill Was Right

One terrible consequence of New Zealand's pervasive socialism-without-doctrines was that from early days a near universal consensus was that education and schooling should be a state run monopoly.  The government was not just going to fund education: it was to own and operate virtually all schools in New Zealand.  Education, according to the Education Act of 1877 was to be free, compulsory, and secular and completely controlled, regulated and provided by the State. The "far seeing" progressives were ecstatic.

Doubtless thoughtless pragmatism was a significant influence.  But J. S. Mill had published his essay On Liberty in 1859.  Contained in it was a dire warning about education being controlled by the government.  He wrote:

The objections which are urged with reason against State education, do not apply to the enforcement of education by the State, but to the State's taking upon itself to direct that education: which is a totally different thing.  [J. S. Mill, On Liberty, Representative Government, The Subjection of Women (London: Oxford University Press, 1912), p.130.]

Mill could accede to the State requiring that children be educated and chastising negligent parents.  But the idea that the State should itself produce that education as the virtual sole provider was an entirely different proposition.