Charter Schools In New Zealand

Small Beginnings

Charter schools are making tepid progress in New Zealand.  This is not a criticism of charter schools per se.  Rather it is a criticism of the Government's half-hearted commitment to such schools.  Only a few have been started and funded.  The Opposition Labour Party has vowed that it will shut down all charter schools in NZ, once elected.  It owes that to its teacher union controllers.  

It's always good news to hear that NZ charter schools are making progress educationally.  The Education Review Office ("ERO") has examined the progress of the three new schools started in 2015 and confirmed that the pupils enrolled in them are making good progress.  This is significant because charter schools, by deliberate design and government intent, typically focus upon kids who are failing in the mainstream government schools.  This, of course, means there is a huge need for more charter schools.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow

Guns and Covenants

Douglas Wilson
Blog&Mablog

Another good reason to own a gun — although you already have plenty of good reasons — is that it provides you with an opportunity to take crash course in practical theology. And of course I have in mind the critical differences between the old and new covenants.

There are certain falsehoods about the relationship between the testaments that are very easy to pick up. For example, the God of the Old Testament was a God of __________. If you didn’t fill in wrath, then you must have been squirming around during your catechism classes. This is in contrast with the God of the New Testament, who is a God of _____________. That’s right, class, the right answer is supposed to be love.

Except that God is extraordinarily loving in the Old Testament (Ps. 136), and His wrath burns more fiercely in the New Testament than anywhere else (Rev. 19:3).

Daily Devotional

It Does Not Seem Too Bad 

TO MARY VAN DEUSEN, who had written him of her diagnosis of cancer: On his empathy for her and even more for those in her situation who do not have faith; on the right to happiness; and on how fear of cancer may be worse than the reality of cancer.

C. S. Lewis

9 October 1955

I have just got your letter of the 3rd. The news which it contained came like a thunderbolt—especially as the letter began (and it was rather wonderful that it did begin) on such a trivial subject as my book. And if that first sentence flattered my egoism, imagine how I was rebuked when I came to the next, and was suddenly brought up against the real great issues.

It is difficult to write because you must know by now what I do not yet know. I can’t tell whether I am writing to one who is giving thanks for an escape (oh how I hope you are in that position) or to one who is right up against the Cross. Thank heaven it is His Cross and not merely ours. I was most struck by your saying ‘It doesn’t seem too bad: for me, that is.’ So I am sure you are being supported. (What must such a situation be to those who are the majority, who have no faith, who have never thought of death, and to whom all affliction is a mere meaningless, monstrous interruption of a worldly happiness to which they feel they have a right?)

God bless and keep you: and your husband too. You will indeed, indeed, be in my prayers. I once had a bad scare about cancer myself, so that part I can, I think, imagine. But of course it is now, for you, either better or worse than a scare. If the reality is worse. At any rate it must be different. (The Litany [in the Book of Common Prayer] distinguishes ‘thine agony and blood sweat’ from ‘Thy cross and passion’, the fear from the reality). You know how I shall await your next letter.

From The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume III
Compiled in Yours, Jack

The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, Volume III: Narnia, Cambridge, and Joy 1950-1963. Copyright © 2007 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers. Yours, Jack: Spiritual Direction from C. S. Lewis. Copyright © 2008 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

The More Things Change, The More They Stay the Same

More Failure On the Way

New Zealand is about to embark on a radical, much needed overhaul of state--official--childcare. We recognise that the current arrangement and bureaucratic organ responsible, Child Youth and Family ("CYF") have been a complete disaster, and that, yes change and reform is essential.  However, it is virtually inevitable that the proposed overhaul will fast follow CYF in its disastrous outcomes.

Here are the reasons for our assessment.

1. NZ has a long history of confusing good intentions with effective outcomes.  Such is the confidence the average Kiwi has in the competence of the State to work good outcomes--a confidence with little experiential foundation--that the "man/woman-in-the-street" usually sighs deeply in relief when a grandiloquent announcement is made about the government fixing a problem.

Here is an account of the Minister's emphatic declaration that many will interpret to mean that from now on all will be well with our suffering, vulnerable children:

Letter From the UK (About the European Union)

The EU Exists Only to Become a Superstate. 

Britain has no place in it

Nigel Lawson
The Telegraph


For Britain, the issue in the coming European referendum is not Europe, with its great history, incomparable culture, and diverse peoples, but the European Union.  To confuse the two is both geographically and historically obtuse. European civilisation existed long before the coming of the EU, and will continue long after this episode in Europe’s history is, hopefully, over.

On the European mainland it has always been well understood that the whole purpose of European integration was political, and that economic integration was simply a means to a political end.  In Britain, and perhaps also in the US, that has been much less well understood, particularly within the business community, who sometimes find it hard to grasp that politics can trump economics.

The fact that the objective has always been political does not mean that it is in any way disreputable. Indeed, the most compelling original objective was highly commendable.  It was, bluntly, to eliminate the threat to Europe and the wider world from a recrudescence of German militarism, by placing the German tiger in a European cage.

Whether or not membership of the EU has had much to do with it, that objective has been achieved: there is no longer a threat from German militarism.  But in the background there has always been another political objective behind European economic integration, one which is now firmly in the foreground.

That is the creation of a federal European superstate, a United States of Europe.

Daily Devotional

Not Despondent in the Day of Trouble

"In the world ye shall have tribulation."  John 16:33

Charles H. Spurgeon

Art thou asking the reason of this, believer? Look upward to thy heavenly Father, and behold him pure and holy. Dost thou know that thou art one day to be like him? Wilt thou easily be conformed to his image? Wilt thou not require much refining in the furnace of affliction to purify thee? Will it be an easy thing to get rid of thy corruptions, and make thee perfect even as thy Father which is in heaven is perfect?

Next, Christian, turn thine eye downward. Dost thou know what foes thou hast beneath thy feet? Thou wast once a servant of Satan, and no king will willingly lose his subjects. Dost thou think that Satan will let thee alone? No, he will be always at thee, for he "goeth about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour." Expect trouble, therefore, Christian, when thou lookest beneath thee.

Then look around thee. Where art thou? Thou art in an enemy's country, a stranger and a sojourner. The world is not thy friend. If it be, then thou art not God's friend, for he who is the friend of the world is the enemy of God. Be assured that thou shalt find foe-men everywhere. When thou sleepest, think that thou art resting on the battlefield; when thou walkest, suspect an ambush in every hedge. As mosquitoes are said to bite strangers more than natives, so will the trials of earth be sharpest to you.

Lastly, look within thee, into thine own heart and observe what is there. Sin and self are still within. Ah! if thou hadst no devil to tempt thee, no enemies to fight thee, and no world to ensnare thee, thou wouldst still find in thyself evil enough to be a sore trouble to thee, for "the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked."

Expect trouble then, but despond not on account of it, for God is with thee to help and to strengthen thee. He hath said, "I will be with thee in trouble; I will deliver thee and honour thee."

Relearning the Basics

Stumped

At the heart of quantum mechanics is a paradox--some would say an antinomy--which just does not "make sense".  The world of sub-atomic reality (at least at present) remains a mystery.  At the heart of the problem is the assertion--based on experimentation and observation, coupled with mathematical formulations--that:

Light is both a wave and a particle, and it is both a wave and a particle at the same time.  This conclusion embodies a mystery, one that no subsequent analytical efforts have dissolved.  [David Berlinski, The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretension (New York: Basic Books, 2009), p. 92.]

To which Berlinski mischievously appends

The mystery will not appear entirely unfamiliar to Christians persuaded of the threefold aspect of the deity.  If light is a particle and a wave, religious believers might observe, God is a Father, a Son, and a Holy Ghost.  This is not an analogy that has captured the allegiance of scientific atheists.  [Ibid., p. 93.]  

It seems as if the very building blocks of matter exist by means of an antinomy which appears rationally inexplicable.  At least to our minds.  Matter appears random at root--but, and here is another paradox--upon such foundations the order and regularity of the cosmos is built.  Go figure.

Chinese Government Tolerates Only What It Can Control

Destruction of Churches and Burial Alive 

The Latest Round in China’s anti-Christian Policy

Epoch Times

Leo Timm

In a recent flurry of repression against the prominent Chinese Christian community in southeast China’s Zhejiang Province, communist authorities demolished two churches on April 13 and 14.  One woman was killed in the April 14 demolition when she and her husband, both Christians protesting the destruction of their church in the city of Wenzhou, were buried alive by a bulldozer.

The 3-story, 3 million-yuan (about $460,000) Island Head Christian Church, also located in Wenzhou, was torn down on April 13 under the pretense that it had been constructed illegally and that its cross was too tall, according to China Aid, a nonprofit Christian human rights organization based in the United States.

While the Chinese Communist Party maintains a strict policy of atheism among its members, it also manages a number of politicized religious organizations that promote the Party line among the clergy of five recognized faiths.

The apparent hypocrisy was further entrenched in statements made by current Communist Party head Xi Jinping at a recent political conference, who reiterated the need to steer young people away from religious beliefs and for religious leaders to “interpret religious doctrines in a way that is conducive to modern China’s progress.”

Daily Devotional

How to Ask Forgiveness

He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins. (1 John 1:9)

John Piper

I recall hearing one of my professors in seminary say that one of the best tests of a person’s theology was the effect it has on one’s prayers.  This struck me as true because of what was happening in my own life. Noël and I had just been married and we were making it our practice to pray together each evening. I noticed that during the biblical courses which were shaping my theology most profoundly, my prayers were changing dramatically.

Probably the most significant change in those days was that I was learning to make my case before God on the ground of his glory. Beginning with “Hallowed be Thy name,” and ending with “In Jesus’ name” meant that the glory of God’s name was the goal and the ground of everything I prayed.

And what a strength came into my life when I learned that praying for forgiveness should be based not only on an appeal to God’s mercy, but also on an appeal to his justice in crediting the worth of his Son’s obedience. “God is faithful and just and will forgive your sins” (1 John 1:9).

In the New Testament, the basis of all forgiveness of sins is revealed more clearly than it was in the Old Testament, but the basis in God’s commitment to his name does not change.  Paul teaches that the death of Christ demonstrated the righteousness of God in passing over sins and vindicated God’s justice in justifying the ungodly who bank on Jesus and not themselves (Romans 3:25–26).

In other words, Christ died once for all to clear the name of God in what looks like a gross miscarriage of justice — the acquittal of sinners simply for Jesus’ sake. But Jesus died in such a way that forgiveness “for Jesus’ sake” is the same as forgiveness “for the sake of God’s name.”

Strange Permutations

Wistful Lamentations and Broken Dreams

There is no place left in New Zealand for a Leftist political party any longer.  There are a number of reasons.  One (most ignored) explanation is that New Zealand is one of the most left-wing nations on the planet--up there with the Scandinavian trident.  Therefore, it's hard to be a left-wing political party when the centre-right party is actually in the left out field.  Socialism, without doctrines has won, and won handsomely in this country.  That means socialism is the norm; the official Left, to differentiate itself, must necessarily be radical because there is no room left on the political spectrum for leftism per se.  Leftism is right through the political spectrum.

Therefore, it is with a touch of mirth that we read the wistful lamentation of New Zealand's sole resident left-wing intellectual: Chris Trotter.  He is a bitterly disappointed man.

The Left Nurtures Anti-Semitic Prejudices

Why the Left Hates Jews

Kevin D. Williamson
National Review Online

Why does the Left hate the Jews?

The Labour party in the United Kingdom is being convulsed at the moment with a public reckoning of the anti-Semitism of some of its most prominent members, including the former mayor of London, “Red” Ken Livingstone, who has just been suspended from the party for arguing that Adolf Hitler was, effectively, a Zionist. He was trying to explain away the anti-Semitic remarks of MP Naz Shah, who suggested that Israel be liquidated and its population forcibly resettled in the United States.

In the United States, the Harvard Law Record went to some lengths to conceal the identity of a law student who attacked a visiting Israeli dignitary as — in the classic anti-Semitic formulation — “smelly.” That student was Husam El-Qoulaq, a Palestinian leftist. The campus Left has, to no one’s surprise, rallied to his defense. Among those defending him were a number of Jewish law students, who insisted that El-Qoulaq couldn’t possibly have known the anti-Semitic history of “smelly Jew” rhetoric, in spite of his having been reared at the world center of such nonsense.

Others insisted that the Harvard case and the Labour cases are — this, too, will be familiar — not at all about anti-Semitism but about anti-Zionism.

That argument does not stand up to two seconds’ scrutiny, and never has.

Daily Devotional

On Love

C. S. Lewis

Even while we kill and punish we must try to feel about the enemy as we feel about ourselves—to wish that he were not bad, to hope that he may, in this world or another, be cured: in fact, to wish his good. That is what is meant in the Bible by loving him: wishing his good, not feeling fond of him nor saying he is nice when he is not.

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.

Mad As Hatters

By Their Fruits You Shall Know Them

Should a political party nourish and protect racism within its ranks?  Well, if it is the KKK, it's very raison d'etre is racist, so of course it should and would protect racism.  Should that party be deemed a legal association?  Maybe.  Maybe not.  But that is not what is primarily at issue here.  The question is whether racism should be tolerated within a political party. The answer to that question is in the hands of the political party itself.  

Freedom of speech and freedom of association (fundamental precepts of a free society) require that the rest of society respect the right of some to gather together to advance a racist platform.  But, of course, that leaves the rest of society free to pillory (figuratively speaking) the party and its platform . . .  as the US has done with respect to the KKK.

This leads us to consider the depths to which the Labour Party in the UK has sunk.  Even The Guardian, Labour's representative within the media, finds itself in a quandary.  Should it criticise the Labour Party for its embedded racism, or not?  Again, from our perspective, the UK Labour Party is free to become a political party with a racist platform if it so chooses.  It appears increasingly obvious that racism is the new normal--at least to many within it.

Letter From America (About Manufactured Crises)

$40 Oil and the Twilight of ‘Scarcity Ideology’

By Robert Bryce
National Review Online

Scarcity ideology pervades modern environmentalism. Indeed, the environmental movement has long relied on the idea that we are running out of, well, everything.

We are running out of food — that claim goes back to 1798, when Thomas Malthus argued that starvation for many people was inevitable because farmers wouldn’t be able to keep up with population growth. In 1968, Paul Ehrlich published The Population Bomb, in which he grimly declared that “the battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now.” Ehrlich’s book was commissioned and published by the Sierra Club. Two million copies were sold. Never mind that today we are feeding twice as many people as we were when Erhlich made his dire prediction and that we are doing so on about the same amount of farmland.

We’ve also heard claims about impending shortages of everything from water to rare earth elements. But no commodity has been the source of more scarcity claims than oil.

And that has led Roger Stern, an energy economist at the University of Tulsa, to coin the term “scarcity ideology.”

Daily Devotional

The Day Is at Hand

The night is far gone; the day is at hand. (Romans 13:12)

John Piper

This is a word of hope to suffering Christians. It’s a word of hope to Christians who hate their own sin and long to be done with sinning. It’s a word of hope to Christians who long for the last enemy death to be overcome and thrown into the lake of fire (Revelation 20:14).

How is it a word of hope for all these?

“The night” stands for this age of darkness and all its sin and misery and death. And what does Paul say about it? “The night is far gone.” The age of sin and misery and death is almost spent.

You might say that 2,000 years after Paul seems like a long dawn. From one standpoint it is. And we cry, How long, O Lord, how long will you let it go on? But the biblical way to think is different.

The key way it is different is that the day has dawned in Jesus Christ. Jesus is the end of this fallen age. He defeated sin and pain and death and Satan. The decisive battle is over. The kingdom has come. Eternal life has come.

And when dawn happens — as it did in the coming of Jesus — no one should doubt the coming of day. Not even if the dawn draws out 2,000 years. It is certain. The day has arrived. Nothing can stop the rising sun.

The Bureaucratic Hive At Work

Political Correctness Can Cost Lives

A New Zealand court case is proceeding which is likely to make the average citizen mad.  It concerns how parole is granted to imprisoned offenders.  In this instance a probation officer's critical report about a prisoner was removed from documentation by the Department of Corrections.  It is alleged that the Department at the time had a policy to get young offenders back out into the community as soon as possible.  One size fits all bureaucratic bungling and ineptitude.  How so?  Well, the prisoner in question was subsequently paroled and quickly went on to commit further violent offences.  

A probation officer suing his bosses for secretly removing safety warnings from a report to the Parole Board was proved right when the inmate attacked a man with a bottle just months after being released from prison.

The prisoner was jailed for attacking a man with a hammer in 2012, causing life-threatening injuries and previously stuck a knife in someone's ear. His probation officer Stan Gilmour assessed Rere Pumipi to be a high risk to the safety of the public but the paragraphs detailing the risk factors were removed from his probation report by his bosses.  These included references to alcohol and drug use, anger management and "deliberate steps to obtain weapons and use them". [NZ Herald]

In a rare move, the probation officer is taking his employer to court over the matter.

How Has It Come to This . . . ?

An Insider's View of the Rise of Donald Trump

Campbell Brown
Politico

. . .  I really would like to blame Trump. But everything he is doing is with TV news’ full acquiescence. Trump doesn’t force the networks to show his rallies live rather than do real reporting. Nor does he force anyone to accept his phone calls rather than demand that he do a face-to-face interview that would be a greater risk for him. TV news has largely given Trump editorial control. It is driven by a hunger for ratings—and the people who run the networks and the news channels are only too happy to make that Faustian bargain. Which is why you’ll see endless variations of this banner, one I saw all three cable networks put up in a single day: “Breaking news: Trump speaks for first time since Wisconsin loss.” In all these scenes, the TV reporter just stands there, off camera, essentially useless. The order doesn’t need to be stated. It’s understood in the newsroom: Air the Trump rallies live and uninterrupted. He may say something crazy; he often does, and it’s always great television.

This must be such a relief for the TV executives managing a business in decline, suffering from a thousand cuts from social media and other new platforms. Trump arrived on the scene as a kind of manna from hell. I admit I have been surprised by the public candor about this bounty. A “beaming” Jeff Zucker, president of CNN Worldwide, told New York Times media columnist Jim Rutenberg, “These numbers are crazy—crazy.” But if their bosses are frank about the great ratings, some of my friends left at the cable networks are in various degrees of denial. “Give me a break,” one told me. “You can’t put this on us. Reality has changed because of technology. Look at the White House. They’re basically running their own news organization. They bypass us every day. We’re just trying to keep up.”

And then there’s this attempt to put the best face on things, which is the most universal comment I hear: “At least this shows how much we still matter.”  But do we really matter—except as a free-media platform for a presidential candidate who almost every journalist knows could destroy the country if he ever got into the White House?

It’s OK to admit it. The bosses are saying it out loud. Take CBS President and CEO Leslie Moonves on the Trump phenomenon: “It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS.”

Daily Devotional

No Prosperity Gospel

"Thou art my hope in the day of evil."
Jeremiah 17:17

Charles H. Spurgeon

The path of the Christian is not always bright with sunshine; he has his seasons of darkness and of storm. True, it is written in God's Word, "Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace;" and it is a great truth, that religion is calculated to give a man happiness below as well as bliss above; but experience tells us that if the course of the just be "As the shining light that shineth more and more unto the perfect day," yet sometimes that light is eclipsed.

At certain periods clouds cover the believer's sun, and he walks in darkness and sees no light. There are many who have rejoiced in the presence of God for a season; they have basked in the sunshine in the earlier stages of their Christian career; they have walked along the "green pastures" by the side of the "still waters," but suddenly they find the glorious sky is clouded; instead of the Land of Goshen they have to tread the sandy desert; in the place of sweet waters, they find troubled streams, bitter to their taste, and they say, "Surely, if I were a child of God, this would not happen." Oh! say not so, thou who art walking in darkness.

The best of God's saints must drink the wormwood; the dearest of his children must bear the cross. No Christian has enjoyed perpetual prosperity; no believer can always keep his harp from the willows. Perhaps the Lord allotted you at first a smooth and unclouded path, because you were weak and timid. He tempered the wind to the shorn lamb, but now that you are stronger in the spiritual life, you must enter upon the riper and rougher experience of God's full-grown children. We need winds and tempests to exercise our faith, to tear off the rotten bough of self-dependence, and to root us more firmly in Christ. The day of evil reveals to us the value of our glorious hope.

Myths Which Dominate Our Culture

Living the Good Life

Scientism is the belief that the only existing reality is matter, time, space, and waves.  One can learn truths and make discoveries about matter by means of physical sciences.  There is no other way to truth and knowledge.  

All materialists are expositors of the philosophy of scientism, or when inconsistent with the hard, brute realities of scientism, they become mere sentimentalists.  Imagine the materialist scientist professing his devotion and love to a female who has caught his eye.  "Why do you want to shack up with me?", she inquires.  "Will your love be exclusive, permanent--the love of lifelong fidelity--or will it be the passing moment of a biological urge?"

"Ah, my dearest, I love you," he breaths fervently.  But as materialists both the breather and the one breathed upon know that he is lying and his words are mere vanity.

All's Well That Ends Well

Getting Them Out Alive

The rescue of an American mother and daughter from death by exposure over the weekend has been grabbing national attention.  The discovery and rescue of the missing trampers (hikers) occurred in the notorious Tararua Ranges, north of Wellington.  

The Tararuas are a beautiful, breathtaking range of hills.  They are home to some of the most magnificent red deer in the country.  They provide up in the tops some of the most breathtaking views in the lower North Island.  But they can be unforgiving if the weather turns unexpectedly, or if you wander off the track. Carolyn and Rachel Ward followed a set of markers away from the track (they turned out to be different coloured markers to assist possum exterminators).

The family of an American mother and daughter rescued after they spent four near-freezing nights in the New Zealand bush have thanked those involved in bringing them to safety.  Carolyn Lloyd carried her starving and exhausted daughter Rachel, 22, on her back as the pair tried to escape the Tararua Forest where they got lost during a hike on Tuesday.  The women strayed from the path on what was supposed to be a one-day hike.  [NZ Herald]

 While not particularly well equipped (beware the apparent safety of the "one day hike"), once lost they did most things right.  They kept their heads, stayed together, supported each other, rationed scarce food, and (most of all) used branches to spell out a large "Help" on the ground, which was eventually spotted by a searching helicopter.  For the search and rescue operators it was a textbook operation.

Daily Devotional

False Kindness

C. S. Lewis

Love is something more stern and splendid than mere kindness. For about a hundred years we have so concentrated on one of the virtues—“kindness” or mercy—that most of us do not feel anything except kindness to be really good or anything but cruelty to be really bad. Such lopsided ethical developments are not uncommon, and other ages too have had their pet virtues and curious insensibilities. And if one virtue must be cultivated at the expense of all the rest, none has a higher claim than mercy. . . . 

The real trouble is that “kindness” is a quality fatally easy to attribute to ourselves on quite inadequate grounds. Everyone feels benevolent if nothing happens to be annoying him at the moment. Thus a man easily comes to console himself for all his other vices by a conviction that “his heart’s in the right place” and “he wouldn’t hurt a fly,” though in fact he has never made the slightest sacrifice for a fellow creature. We think we are kind when we are only happy: it is not so easy, on the same grounds, to imagine oneself temperate, chaste, or humble. You cannot be kind unless you have all the other virtues. If, being cowardly, conceited and slothful, you have never yet done a fellow creature great mischief, that is only because your neighbour’s welfare has not yet happened to conflict with your safety, self-approval, or ease. Every vice leads to cruelty.

From The Problem of Pain
Compiled in Words to Live By

The Problem of Pain. Copyright © 1940, C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. Copyright restored © 1996 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.

Unlocking The Potential in the Creation

Change We Can Believe In

Sheik Yamani once cryptically said, "The age of oil will inevitably come to an end but not for lack of oil."  The Sheik was a smart man who had more than a basic understanding of economics and history.  On this point he was much wiser than most modern politicians, bureaucrats, and academics who show repeatedly that they have very little understanding of markets, economics, and the history of technological development.  Malthusianism remains alive and well.

The Sheik knew what should have been obvious to all adults.  The age of the horse came to an inglorious end, but not because of lack of fecundity in the species.  The age of sail ended, but not for lack of wind.  The age of steam came to an abrupt end, but not for lack of wood.  The age of coal began petering out decades ago, but not for lack of the hard black stuff.  Oil and gas took over.  But the age of both will come to an end as new, cheaper technologies emerge.

One apparently significant (and recent) technological development gives a clue to at least one technological advance that will help make oil redundant: batteries are changing.  Consider the following:

Signs of the End of the Communist Dynasty

Resting But Not Retired

The Growing Burden of China’s Freeloading Officials

By Juliet Song,
Epoch Times

A recent article by a Chinese civil servant lamenting the employment policies that coddle the masses of officials and other state-sponsored personnel as a dead weight upon the national economy and a gross social wrong.

“I feel guilty to those hard-working taxpayers,” the confession says. “They toil from dawn to dusk; why on earth should they have to support us, people who hold the office without lifting a finger, with their hard-earned money?”

Chinese delegations sleep as they attend the opening session of the National People's Congress, or parliament, on March 5, 2007 in Beijing, China. (Photo by Guang Niu/Getty Images)

The piece, first published in China’s Information Times on April 10, takes aim at the issue of civil servants who, having reached a certain degree of seniority, are reassigned to ornamental positions while continuing to receive full salary and benefits. This status is swallowed up in a Chinese phrase that means “resting but not retired.”

Daily Devotional

We Must Be Hatched

C. S. Lewis

The real problem of the Christian life comes where people do not usually look for it. It comes the very moment you wake up each morning. All your wishes and hopes for the day rush at you like wild animals. And the first job each morning consists simply in shoving them all back; in listening to that other voice, taking that other point of view, letting that other larger, stronger, quieter life come flowing in. And so on, all day. Standing back from all your natural fussings and frettings; coming in out of the wind.

We can only do it for moments at first. But from those moments the new sort of life will be spreading through our system: because now we are letting Him work at the right part of us. It is the difference between paint, which is merely laid on the surface, and a dye or stain which soaks right through. He never talked vague, idealistic gas. When He said, ‘Be perfect,’ He meant it. He meant that we must go in for the full treatment. It is hard; but the sort of compromise we are all hankering after is harder—in fact, it is impossible. It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.

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.

Language and Number

Masters of Language

One of the strong positives of the Cambridge school curriculum is that it is focused upon core subjects.  The core represents subject areas which are the basis for all other learning and knowledge.

Modern, secular education in the government schools is being ruined by curriculum inflation.  Now there are endless choices, options, and multi-form subject areas.  Even the best students are left knowing a little about many subjects, but with little competence over any..  Modern education, as the proverb has it, risks leaving a student as "Jack of all trades, Master of none."

The subject core of the Cambridge curriculum is language, number, and science.  Every year builds upon this core, with all other subjects "tucked" around it.

Here is an example from one Christian school, using the Cambridge curriculum.

Au Contraire

Contrarian Peter Hitchens Confirms What The Wise Already Know

The United States Has Always Been Self-Interested

The Daily Mail

Now will we grasp that the United States is not our friend, but a foreign country whose interests are often different from ours?  President Obama’s blatant intervention in our internal affairs is not a sudden breach of a soppy ‘special relationship’. The USA’s only real special relationship is with Saudi Arabia, a 70-year-old hard pact of oil, money and power, welded together with such cynicism it ought to make us gasp.

Barack Obama’s open desire for us to stay inside the EU is by no means the first or worst example of White House meddling here in these islands. Bill Clinton forced us to cave in to the Provisional IRA in 1998 and his successor, George W. Bush, continued the policy by making us do Sinn Fein’s bidding afterwards.

Washington came close to scuppering our recapture of the Falklands in 1982. And with the current state of our Armed Forces, which can nowadays do nothing without American support, I often wonder how the White House and the Pentagon would behave if Argentina once again seized Port Stanley.  If anyone thinks Hillary Clinton is a great friend of Britain, they’re in for a big surprise.

But surely the Americans fought with us shoulder to shoulder against the Kaiser and Hitler? Not exactly.

Daily Devotional

The Greatest Guest

"If any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him."
Revelation 3:20

Charles H. Spurgeon

What is your desire this day? Is it set upon heavenly things? Do you long to enjoy the high doctrine of eternal love? Do you desire liberty in very close communion with God? Do you aspire to know the heights, and depths, and lengths, and breadths? Then you must draw near to Jesus; you must get a clear sight of him in his preciousness and completeness; you must view him in his work, in his offices, in his person.

He who understands Christ, receives an anointing from the Holy One, by which he knows all things. Christ is the great master-key of all the chambers of God; there is no treasure-house of God which will not open and yield up all its wealth to the soul that lives near to Jesus. Are you saying, "O that he would dwell in my bosom"? "Would that he would make my heart his dwelling-place forever"? Open the door, beloved, and he will come into your souls. He has long been knocking, and all with this object, that he may sup with you, and you with him. He sups with you because you find the house or the heart, and you with him because he brings the provision. He could not sup with you if it were not in your heart, you finding the house; nor could you sup with him, for you have a bare cupboard, if he did not bring provision with him.

Fling wide, then, the portals of your soul. He will come with that love which you long to feel; he will come with that joy into which you cannot work your poor depressed spirit; he will bring the peace which now you have not; he will come with his flagons of wine and sweet apples of love, and cheer you till you have no other sickness but that of "love o'erpowering, love divine." Only open the door to him, drive out his enemies, give him the keys of your heart, and he will dwell there forever. Oh, wondrous love, that brings such a guest to dwell in such a heart!

Heady Times

Living Amidst a Kuhnian Scientific Revolution

Amongst scientists and the various scientific disciplines, evolutionism--as a cosmology--is collapsing.  The evolutionist paradigm is falling apart.  The more strident the secular evolutionists become on the matter, the more they betray their deepest doubts and uncertainties.  

Most scientific paradigms do not collapse due to a full scale frontal assault from a competing paradigm.  Usually they collapse from within.  Those who once held the reigning paradigm, who had been card carrying members of the Association of the Ruling Paradigm, begin to find data and results and research that just "does not make sense" in view of current received wisdom.  The disquiet grows gradually.  Usually, the stridency of the ruling paradigm is toned down.  Folk don't discuss it much in polite scientific society.  It becomes a bit of an ugly cousin no-one talks about much any more.  It takes on the characteristic of a myth, a just-so story which no-one really believes "nowadays".

The textbooks used in schools and colleges which teach the incumbent paradigm are the last to change.  They represent the "establishment", particularly the State establishment.  It is here that the incumbent paradigm becomes "official".  State schools use state approved textbooks.  State textbooks teach the dominant paradigm.  State schools and state textbooks are usually the last to hear about a scientific revolution overthrowing the existing paradigm because neither the State, nor State schools are engaged in real science.  Rather, they represent the propagandists for the incumbent view.  As a paradigm is being overthrown, real scientists distance themselves, grow quiet, and adopt a "yes, but" mien towards the ruling official view.

This is the state of the current evolutionist paradigm.  It is crumbling from within.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow

Jane Austen and Our Culture of Feeeeelings

Doug Wilson
Blog&Mablog

As I noted in my brief review of Pride and Prejudice below, Jane Austen is amazing. A truly wise woman, she wrote a novel of two kinds of people — people who change and grow, and people who do not. This is simply another way of marking those who are capable of repentance and those who are beyond repentance, those who come to see themselves accurately and those who are utterly incapable of doing so.

The latter group is represented well by Lydia — “Lydia was Lydia still.” And of course, the same thing can be said about Mr. Collins, who doesn’t budge, and Lady Catherine, who continues to condescend from the mount, and Mrs. Bennett, who carefully cultivates her nursery of nerves, and Mary, who perseveres in delivering sententious bromides, and so on. Folly is a constant in this book. Aping the immutability of God, the folly here seeks to be without any variation or shadow due to change.Eliza Bennett

But Eliza Bennett comes to repent of her prejudice, and the folly of having been misled by appearances. Mr. Darcy repents of his pride, having been properly humbled by Eliza. They change. They repent. They come to terms with the world as it actually is, instead of the world as they thought it was.

But there is another layer to Austen’s wisdom.

Daily Devotional

Paul’s Salvation Was for You

But I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life. (1 Timothy 1:16)

John Piper

Paul's conversion was for your sake.

I want you to take this very personally. God had you in view when he chose Paul and saved him by sovereign grace.  If you believe on Jesus for eternal life — or if you may yet believe on him for eternal life — Paul’s conversion is for your sake. It is to make Christ’s incredible patience vivid for you.

Paul’s pre-conversion life was a long, long trial to Jesus. “Why do you persecute me?” Jesus asked. “Your life of unbelief and rebellion is a persecution of me!” Paul had been set apart for God since before he was born. So all his life was one long abuse of God, and one long rejection and mockery of Jesus who loved him.

That is why Paul says his conversion is a brilliant demonstration of Jesus’ patience. And that is what he offers you today.

It was for our sake that Jesus did it the way he did it. To “display his perfect patience” to us. Lest we lose heart. Lest we think he could not really save us. Lest we think he is prone to anger. Lest we think we have gone too far away. Lest we think our dearest one cannot be converted— suddenly, unexpectedly, by the sovereign, overflowing grace of Jesus