A Law Unto Herself

New Maths Calculus and Justice Cunningham

The New Zealand Mongrel Mob and Hells Angels and all the other members of the Criminal Gangs Association (CGA) have, through their national association, petitioned the Solicitor General to ensure that all gang cases be heard before Judge Philippa Cunningham.  

Cunningham is the most motherly District Court Judge.  She carefully weighs, on a set of scales unique to her, the true costs of any sentence she may hand down.  For example, if a prominent well-known member of society commits fraud, theft, or sexual assault, Justice Cunningham is likely to discharge without conviction on the grounds that the mere publication of the famous name would be a price too high to pay, for, say sexually assaulting a four year old daughter.  In this infamous case, the accused was a minor-celeb, and he made people laugh.  It was too much, according to Justice Cunningham, to have society deprived of his wholesome wit.

The CGA reasons that its petition will advance the cause of all gang members.  When trying gang members, Justice Cunningham is more than likely to consider the deprivation and humiliation and suffering already endured by your average member.  At worst, Cunningham is likely to dish out a token punishment only, like home detention, unless engaged in gang business.

An example of her enlightened judicial calculus is contained in the following article:

World View Wars

Offensive Questions

"White Privilege" is a construct--a concept to support a particular race-based ideology.  But is it just an imaginary construct to buttress a particular cause?  Is is just a cover, a pretext which allows the same-old, same-old Marxist and neo-Marxist narrative to be re-run on an endless loop?

The gentleman in the clip below asks a relevant question.  Don't all the "White Privilege" warriors speak up at once.



Ah, the politics of Guilt and Pity.  What an inexhaustible reservoir it has proved to be.  It has never failed to quicken the proletariat into a mindless, reflexive response.  Never.  And it has never failed to make the zealots feel so self-righteous whilst being manipulated.

As for the interlocutor in the clip--he is just a privileged oreo--coloured on the outside, white on the inside.  Traitor.  Neo-revisionist.  White Russian.  We could go on, but you know the drill.

[Hat Tip: Whaleoil]

Daily Devotional

The Temptations of Middle Aged Prosperity

Screwtape advises Wormwood on using time to wear down a soul:

C. S. Lewis

The Enemy has guarded him from you through the first great wave of temptations. But, if only he can be kept alive, you have time itself for your ally. The long, dull, monotonous years of middle-aged prosperity or middle-aged adversity are excellent campaigning weather.

You see, it is so hard for these creatures to persevere. The routine of adversity, the gradual decay of youthful loves and youthful hopes, the quiet despair (hardly felt as pain) of ever overcoming the chronic temptations with which we have again and again defeated them, the drabness which we create in their lives and the inarticulate resentment with which we teach them to respond to it—all this provides admirable opportunities of wearing out a soul by attrition.

If, on the other hand, the middle years prove prosperous, our position is even stronger. Prosperity knits a man to the World. He feels that he is ‘finding his place in it’, while really it is finding its place in him. His increasing reputation, his widening circle of acquaintances, his sense of importance, the growing pressure of absorbing and agreeable work, build up in him a sense of being really at home in earth, which is just what we want. You will notice that the young are generally less unwilling to die than the middle- aged and the old.

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

Global Warming As A Satirical Weapon

Manipulating the Chardonnay Set

In his dystopian novel, 1984 George Orwell describes how the State had become perpetually at war.  Or, more accurately, the State maintained a facade or pretense of perpetual war in order to justify and maintain totalitarian controls over its citizens.  

The reigning ideology was socialism; the resultant system was called English Socialism (or Ingsoc).  Orwell's brilliant perception, on display in this novel, still leaves us in disbelief today.  How did he see things so clearly?  One of the reasons--probably the prime reason--Orwell's novel is still breathtaking is that it speaks accurately about corrupt regimes and corrupt politics in today's world, well over a half-century later.

One "tell" is the way Western leaders and politicians attempt to paint a picture of  perpetual crisis.  Serious dangers and threats are on every hand.  You, the voter, must support us else we will all be engulfed in a conflagration of suffering.  More often that not, folk buy into the narrative of  the calamity-of-the-day--which is entirely understandable and expected.  We are wired for grand narratives, of fights against good and evil, of waging war against evil and overcoming by means of commitment, courage, and resolve.  Ever since the Fall, mankind has been "wired" thus.

But our present situation is ideally made for hucksters.

Hah.

Apt Mockery

The University of Michigan announced a new policy last week.  It decided it would allow all students to select their personal pronoun of choice.  The University would then require that all others use that personal pronoun with deep respect.

When the University of Michigan, in an attempt to “foster inclusiveness,” announced this week that it would allow students to choose their own “personal pronouns,” which faculty and staff would be expected to use when talking to them, Grant Strobl had an idea.

While the school probably thought students would choose “he,” “she” or the new gender-neutral pronoun “ze,” Strobl chose a different one: “His Majesty.”  “I henceforth shall be referred to as: His Majesty, Grant Strobl. I encourage all U-M students to go onto Wolverine Access, and insert the identity of their dreams,” Strobl, who is the chairman of Young Americans for Freedom, told the College Fix.

The university’s pronoun committee made the decision because “asking about and correctly using someone’s designated pronoun is one of the most basic ways to show respect for their identity and to cultivate an environment that respects all gender identities,” TheBlaze previously reported.

Each student’s pronoun of choice will appear on class rosters so professors and instructors know exactly how to talk to them and how to refer to them. If faculty fail to use students’ “preferred pronouns,” they could face disciplinary actions, Heat Street reported.

While Strobl’s request might have seemed like a long shot, the university wound up approving it. Others later followed suit.

According to the report, one student chose "His Grace"; another selected "Her Royal Highness".

Laughter is the best medicine, they say.  And mockery is the most powerful social weapon--for good or evil.  In this case, it is certainly for the good.  The University of Michigan is dumber than a sack of hammers.

Daily Devotional

There Is But One Door

"He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved."  Mark 16:16

Charles H. Spurgeon

Mr. MacDonald asked the inhabitants of the island of St. Kilda how a man must be saved. An old man replied, "We shall be saved if we repent, and forsake our sins, and turn to God." "Yes," said a middle-aged female, "and with a true heart too." "Aye," rejoined a third, "and with prayer"; and, added a fourth, "It must be the prayer of the heart." "And we must be diligent too," said a fifth, "in keeping the commandments."

Thus, each having contributed his mite, feeling that a very decent creed had been made up, they all looked and listened for the preacher's approbation, but they had aroused his deepest pity. The carnal mind always maps out for itself a way in which self can work and become great, but the Lord's way is quite the reverse. Believing and being baptized are no matters of merit to be gloried in--they are so simple that boasting is excluded, and free grace bears the palm.

It may be that the reader is unsaved--what is the reason? Do you think the way of salvation as laid down in the text to be dubious? How can that be when God has pledged his own word for its certainty? Do you think it too easy? Why, then, do you not attend to it? Its ease leaves those without excuse who neglect it. To believe is simply to trust, to depend, to rely upon Christ Jesus. To be baptized is to submit to the ordinance which our Lord fulfilled at Jordan, to which the converted ones submitted at Pentecost, to which the jailer yielded obedience the very night of his conversion.

The outward sign saves not, but it sets forth to us our death, burial, and resurrection with Jesus, and, like the Lord's Supper, is not to be neglected. Reader, do you believe in Jesus? Then, dear friend, dismiss your fears, you shall be saved. Are you still an unbeliever, then remember there is but one door, and if you will not enter by it you will perish in your sins.

A Latter Day Jeremiad is Called For

False Prophets of the Mid-West Put Themselves On Notice

We have just seen Jeremiah versus the False Prophets replayed before our eyes.  OK.  That's a bit of an exaggeration.  The person representing Jeremiah was a bit mealy mouthed as he went about his work.  But the false prophets of Yahweh were right on cue.

Jeremiah, of course, was the faithful, courageous prophet serving Yahweh in Judah right at the end of that kingdom, before the final exile in 586 BC.  He was bitterly opposed by the Establishment Prophets, who hated even the merest hint that the Lord was about to bring down the Babylonians to destroy the Temple and drive thousands upon thousands into exile.  This, said Jeremiah, was coming because of their sins.  "Traitorous snake", hissed the False Prophets, who were claiming to speak for God Himself.

History, naturally, vindicated Jeremiah as the Lord's true prophet.  At the same time it utterly damned the False Prophets as being, well, false.

In the United States recently the Midwest Society of Christian Philosophers (otherwise known as the Society of False Prophets) convened for a confabulation.

Letter From America (About Bibi)

The Real Middle East Story

Walter Russell Mead
The American Interest

Precisely because he has a colder view of international affairs than Obama, Netanyahu’s leadership has made Israel stronger than ever.

Peter Baker notices something important in his dispatch this morning: at this year’s UNGA, the Israel/Palestine issue is no longer the center of attention. From The New York Times:

They took the stage, one after the other, two aging actors in a long-running drama that has begun to lose its audience. As the Israeli and Palestinian leaders recited their lines in the grand hall of the United Nations General Assembly on Thursday, many in the orchestra seats recognized the script.

“Heinous crimes,” charged Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president. “Historic catastrophe.”  “Fanaticism,” countered Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister. “Inhumanity.”

Mr. Abbas and Mr. Netanyahu have been at this for so long that between them they have addressed the world body 19 times, every year cajoling, lecturing, warning and guilt-tripping the international community into seeing their side of the bloody struggle between their two peoples. Their speeches are filled with grievance and bristling with resentment, as they summon the ghosts of history from hundreds and even thousands of years ago to make their case.

While each year finds some new twist, often nuanced, sometimes incendiary, the argument has been running long enough that the world has begun to move on. Where the Israeli-Palestinian conflict once dominated the annual meeting of the United Nations, this year it has become a side show as Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Abbas compete for attention against seemingly more urgent crises like the civil war in Syria and the threat from the Islamic State.

Baker (and presumably many of his readers) don’t go on to the next, obvious question: What does this tell us about the relative success or failure of the leaders involved?

Daily Devotional

God Isn’t Gloomy

“The LORD brings the counsel of the nations to nothing; he frustrates the plans of the peoples. The counsel of the LORD stands forever, the plans of his heart to all generations.” (Psalm 33:10–11)

John Piper

“Our God is in the heavens; he does all that he pleases” (Psalm 115:3). The implication of this text is that God has the right and power to do whatever makes him happy. That is what it means to say that God is sovereign.

Think about it for a moment: If God is sovereign and can do anything he pleases, then none of his purposes can be frustrated. “The LORD brings the counsel of the nations to nothing; he frustrates the plans of the peoples. The counsel of the LORD stands forever, the plans of his heart to all generations” (Psalm 33:10–11)

And if none of his purposes can be frustrated, then he must be the happiest of all beings.

This infinite, divine happiness is the fountain from which the Christian (Hedonist) drinks and longs to drink more deeply.

Can you imagine what it would be like if the God who ruled the world were not happy? What if God were given to grumbling and pouting and depression, like some Jack-and-the-beanstalk giant in the sky? What if God were frustrated and despondent and gloomy and dismal and discontented and dejected?

Could we join David and say, “O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water” (Psalm 63:1)? I don’t think so.

We would all relate to God like little children who have a frustrated, gloomy, dismal, discontented father. They can’t enjoy him. They can only try not to bother him, or maybe try to work for him to earn some little favor. For the aim of the Christian Hedonist is to be happy in God, to delight in God, to cherish and enjoy his fellowship and favor.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow

500 Pounds of Stratosphere

Douglas Wilson
Blog&Mablog

We are now at that stage of our cultural devolutionary farce when, any day now, some bright kid is going to wear a tee-shirt to his government school, and on that tee-shirt a message will be emblazoned, and the message will read “endowed by his Creator with certain unalienable rights,” and he will be sent home for having displayed un-American sentiments.

The news in this department is unrelentingly bad. This next item is not to be filed under “hypothetical reductio,” but rather under what looks to be standard operating procedure in blue states now. In just a few weeks, Massachusetts begins its official persecution of churches that remain faithful to the Bible. Churches are included in the sweeping diktat, and these churches must refer to all sexually confused people in accordance with their chosen “gender identity,” or else.

As one web site has aptly summarized it, “Inside every liberal is a totalitarian screaming to get out.” We have moved well past the point where we need to document such abuses—no need for that when it is raining abuses now. Not only is it raining abuses, it is raining absurd abuses. The secularist, tethered to nothing, anchored firmly to 500 pounds of stratosphere, sets up a hue and cry about genital mutilation in the Middle East, and then in the next breath wants to make it illegal for anyone in this country even to object to our forms of secularist genital mutilation (i.e. youth transgenderism).

In Yemen, the mutilation of a young girl’s genitals is descried as primitive and backward. And yet now in Massachusetts, if a church objects to vile parents having a young boy’s penis cut off, those who object to this are classified as haters.

Rapid Shape-shifting

In God We Most Certainly Do Not Trust

Angelo Codevilla's volume, The Character of Nations [New York: Basic Books, 1997] is well worth the investment and reading time--in our humble opinion.  We will probably find ourselves excerpting quotations and citations in this blog over the next six months or so.  

Codevilla's basic thesis is that the ruling "regime" of a nation shapes the character, faith, beliefs, hopes, fears and habits of citizens.  The regime shapes the culture of a nation profoundly.  It has often been argued that as go the people, so goes the State.  There is certainly truth in this maxim.  But the reverse is also true: as goes the regime, so go the people.

As Lorenzo De Medici put it, "What the Prince does then do many, for upon the Prince are the eyes of all."  Codevilla makes the obvious point that there has been a pervasive regime change throughout the West in the last one hundred years.  That change has been from societies grounded in Christendom's doctrines to societies grounded in secular materialism.  The consequent regime changes have been substantial, comprehensive, and profound.

Writes Codevilla:

The ancients, however, realized that changes in political rules favor one set of habits over others and lay down new layers of habits.  We have difficulty understanding this because we are the intellectual heirs of Western Christianity, which made society and individuals less dependent on government than ever before or since.

Mocking the Labour Leader

No Way the Centre Will Hold Now

You don't see this too often--which is indicative of the esteem (or lack thereof) in which Mr Little, leader of the NZ Labour Party, is beginning to be held amongst some of the media.  Claire Trevett actually mocks Little. 

Labour leader Andrew Little has presented his election winning strategy for 2017 and it is shaped like a donut.  There is a big hole in the centre.

He presented this sweet treat after former Prime Minister Helen Clark advised that in order to win an election in New Zealand "you must command the centre ground."  Not so, Little said. The centre did not exist. It was a "hollow term". It was the middle of the donut. This came as a shock to many. It has long been accepted wisdom that reaping votes from the centre was the key recipe for electoral success.

Then again, it was also once accepted wisdom that the earth was flat. Just as Ferdinand Magellan set out to prove the earth was round, Little embarked to disprove the centre ground theory.  He would not win in 2017 by taking the centre ground. Instead, he would win by taking "middle New Zealand".

He would do this by appealing to "a coalition of constituencies".  These constituencies included the following. Low and middle income earners worried about housing, and business people who didn't think National had done enough.  Little would not go left or right, these were equally ridiculous concepts which did not exist in the lives of middle New Zealand.  He would not go north or south, or up and down. He would go to the middle. To be clear, that is the middle which did exist and not the centre which did not.

Let us not ruin such brave thinking by pointing out to Little the thesaurus lists "middle" as a synonym for "centre" and Clark's "centre ground" was exactly the same thing as his own "middle New Zealand".

Daily Devotional

A Most Potent Force for Virtue

"The hope which is laid up for you in heaven."  Colossians 1:5

Charles H. Spurgeon

Our hope in Christ for the future is the mainspring and the mainstay of our joy here. It will animate our hearts to think often of heaven, for all that we can desire is promised there. Here we are weary and toilworn, but yonder is the land of rest where the sweat of labour shall no more bedew the worker's brow, and fatigue shall be forever banished.

To those who are weary and spent, the word "rest" is full of heaven. We are always in the field of battle; we are so tempted within, and so molested by foes without, that we have little or no peace; but in heaven we shall enjoy the victory, when the banner shall be waved aloft in triumph, and the sword shall be sheathed, and we shall hear our Captain say, "Well done, good and faithful servant."

We have suffered bereavement after bereavement, but we are going to the land of the immortal where graves are unknown things. Here sin is a constant grief to us, but there we shall be perfectly holy, for there shall by no means enter into that kingdom anything which defileth. Hemlock springs not up in the furrows of celestial fields. Oh! is it not joy, that you are not to be in banishment forever, that you are not to dwell eternally in this wilderness, but shall soon inherit Canaan?

Nevertheless let it never be said of us, that we are dreaming about the future and forgetting the present, let the future sanctify the present to highest uses. Through the Spirit of God the hope of heaven is the most potent force for the product of virtue; it is a fountain of joyous effort, it is the corner stone of cheerful holiness. The man who has this hope in him goes about his work with vigour, for the joy of the Lord is his strength. He fights against temptation with ardour, for the hope of the next world repels the fiery darts of the adversary. He can labour without present reward, for he looks for a reward in the world to come.

Living in a Swamp of Quicksand

A Morass of Educational Failures In New Zealand Schools

In New Zealand our upper high school examinations are called the National Certificate in Educational Qualification ("NCEA").  It is a broken system.  It has been from its inception (2002).  We have had 14 years of NCEA and its critics are more animated than ever.  

No other country in the world has been as foolish as the Ministry of Education, its Teacher Union controllers, successive governments, and Education academics.  We take the cake.  We may be generally dumb in this country, but when we decide to have a decent crack at idiocy as a nation, we go all the way.  And we will double down on foolishness for decades, even generations.  None can doubt our zealous enthusiasm for foolishness.

The NCEA was conceived and designed so that everyone would leave school a winner.

Letter From the UK (About South Australia's Blackout)

Ill Wind: Australia’s Greenest State Blacked Out By Power Cuts

James Delingpole
Breitbart London

The entire state of South Australia was blacked out by power cuts night sending 1.67 million householders back to the dark ages. This comes just days after a report called Keeping The Lights On warned that black outs might be a consequence of the state’s radical green energy policies.
Local media has blamed it on “the most extreme weather systems to hit in 50 years.” But a more likely culprit would seem to be the state’s disastrous “clean” energy policy which has driven up electricity prices to insane levels and severely threatened the reliability and stability of the state’s grid.

As we reported at Breitbart earlier this year, South Australia now has the cleanest energy in Australia – 40 per cent of its energy capacity comes from wind – but also by far the most expensive. The wholesale price for electricity in most Australian states is $30/MWh and $32/MWh. Earlier this year, in South Australia it reached an eye-watering $1400/MWh – wreaking havoc on energy-intensive local industries such as BHP.

A renewable energy lobby group called the Clean Energy Council has been quick to deny that the massive blackout has anything to do with green energy policy:

“The blackout in South Australia appears to have been caused by extreme winds which have caused damage to large electricity pylons at multiple locations across the state, policy manager Tom Butler said.  “This is not an issue relating to power generation – whether renewable energy, gas or otherwise – and by all accounts there was little that could have been done to prevent it.

Mr Butler said wind power was generating lots of electricity at the time the system went down, with the rest of the state supplied by gas-fired power and the interconnector.  “It is important to remember that this is a once-in-50-year storm, and no power system can fully prepare for the savage winds, lightning and hail that pounded the state today. It is a freak event.”

But Australia is not a Third World country and is well used to freak weather events. Indeed, it’s an island of almost nothing but freak weather events The idea that a storm – even an alleged once-in-fifty-years storm chucking down hailstones the size of golfballs and comprising over 130,000 lightning strikes – should be capable of immobilising an entire state’s grid network is more a case of culpable incompetence than an Act of God.

This is what a report published earlier this week by Australia’s Grattan Institute warned would happen. And it wasn’t even a particularly anti-renewables report. It simply pointed out that the drive for renewables in South Australia – led by a character called Tom Koutsantonis, who came to power as South Australia’s Energy Minister with a bold promise to reduce net carbon emissions in his jurisdiction to zero by 2050 – has driven many, traditional brown-coal-fired power stations out of business. This means that there is a dangerous shortage of reliable, baseload power capacity in times of crisis.

South Australia’s experience offers a salutary warning to all those other countries foolish enough to imagine – as the Labour party does in Britain, for example – that renewables represent any kind of workable solution to the world’s energy problems

Daily Devotional

On Easter

C. S. Lewis

Tomorrow we shall celebrate the glorious Resurrection of Christ. I shall be remembering you in the Holy communion. Away with tears and fears and troubles! United in wedlock with the eternal Godhead Itself, our nature ascends into the Heaven of Heavens, so it would be impious to call ourselves “miserable.” On the contrary, man is a creature whom angels—were they capable of envy—would envy. Let us lift up our hearts!

From The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume II
Compiled in Words to Live By
The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, Volume II: Family Letters 1905-1931. Copyright © 2004 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers. 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.

Fewer Rabid Overreaches

Why the Centre Right is Better For Christians

Questions are now being asked openly with respect to the future of the Left and Leftism.  Often in Western democratic structures, there is a pendulum effect.  The Left gets elected, dramatic steps are taken towards a more statist society and economy, with all its promise of the secular Paradise to come.  Then folk, having been over-promised yet finding the delivery underwhelming, retreat to the Right or the Centre.  The Left is turfed out of government.  The centre-Right is re-elected.

Then the pendulum effect arrears to stop.  The Left withers on the vine.  There is no swing back.  The Left is shut out of political power for a long, long time.  In the UK, for example, Jeremy Corbyn has been re-elected as leader of the Labour Party by the vote of the party members (not sitting MP's).  Yet, the popular support of that Party is lessening by the day, it seems.  Pundits are speculating that the Labour Party is now so radically Left, so generally unpopular, it has become unelectable.

In New Zealand, Labour's popular support has withered and withered.

Family Liturgy

Liturgies for Young and Old

You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit, James K.A. Smith, Brazos Press, 224 pages.  A book review.

Gracy Olmstead
The American Conservative

. . . . A Christian home should be mindful of formative liturgies—“story, poetry, music, symbols, and images”—that foster children’s spiritual growth “under the hood” of consciousness. “Children are ritual animals,” he [James K. Smith] writes, “who absorb the gospel in practices that speak to their imaginations.” Participation in the liturgical calendar—using candles, colors, feasts, festivals, and stories—can help integrate our children into the family of faith.

But quotidian home practices matter, too: a family that regularly gathers around the dinner table is practicing a liturgy. So, too, the family in which gardening or other household chores are done together, bringing order and beauty to the home and its surroundings. Such practices help shape and cultivate the life within.

In education, there are also proper liturgies we can foster. Smith notes that from Sunday school to the university, there are stories of the good life, of what we ought to love, that are constantly propagated to our kids. He suggests fostering their moral imaginations at every opportunity, whether learning economics, U.S. history, or social studies. If we believe there’s a telos to human existence, and we want our children to recognize it, we should craft their education in such a way that they learn to trace its patterns throughout life. A “holistic, formative approach to education … is bound up with a teleological purview—embedding the tasks of teaching and learning in a bigger vision and ultimate Story that guide and govern learning.”

Smith warns that, if we do not tell such stories, we run the risk of our children tuning their hearts to culture’s alternative messages—to what he calls “rival liturgies.”

Daily Devotional

The Eyes of the Lord Run

"The Lord looketh from heaven; he beholdeth all the sons of men."  Psalm 33:13

Charles H. Spurgeon

Perhaps no figure of speech represents God in a more gracious light than when he is spoken of as stooping from his throne, and coming down from heaven to attend to the wants and to behold the woes of mankind. We love him, who, when Sodom and Gomorrah were full of iniquity, would not destroy those cities until he had made a personal visitation of them.

We cannot help pouring out our heart in affection for our Lord who inclines his ear from the highest glory, and puts it to the lip of the dying sinner, whose failing heart longs after reconciliation. How can we but love him when we know that he numbers the very hairs of our heads, marks our path, and orders our ways? Specially is this great truth brought near to our heart, when we recollect how attentive he is, not merely to the temporal interests of his creatures, but to their spiritual concerns.

Though leagues of distance lie between the finite creature and the infinite Creator, yet there are links uniting both. When a tear is wept by thee, think not that God doth not behold; for, "Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him." Thy sigh is able to move the heart of Jehovah; thy whisper can incline his ear unto thee; thy prayer can stay his hand; thy faith can move his arm.

Think not that God sits on high taking no account of thee. Remember that however poor and needy thou art, yet the Lord thinketh upon thee. For the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to show himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect towards him.

Oh! then repeat the truth that never tires;

No God is like the God my soul desires;
He at whose voice heaven trembles, even he,
Great as he is, knows how to stoop to me.

A Blacklist of Honour

A Mark of Faithfulness

In the United States the LGBT (that's Lesbian, Gay, Bi-Sexual, and Trans-sexual) Campus Pride has published a black-list of Christian schools and colleges which are not dancing to its tune.

Shane Windmeyer, the head of Campus Pride, has an op-ed up on NBCNews.com in which he calls on corporations to blacklist graduates from these universities. Excerpt:

The business case for equality is clear. If companies take pride in “being inclusive and welcoming to all” and say that “discrimination is wrong,” these same corporations must consider their associations with these 102 anti-LGBTQ campuses. Discrimination under the guise of religion is still discrimination. It is the most oppressive and hurtful kind of bias and prejudice to LGBTQ people, who have been victimized by religion-based bigotry for many years.

The harmful association with anti-LGBTQ laws and policies is cause for alarm for any business looking toward the future. If a campus wishes to have an anti-LGBTQ policy sanctioned under the law with a Title IX exemption, that is their choice. Campus Pride published the Shame List so everyone will know about these campuses.

[Hat Tip: Rod Dreher at American Conservative.]

We think this provides a huge opportunity for faithful Christian schools and colleges.  Imagine the brand and recruiting power of being able to proclaim: "xx Christian College, faithful to God and Holy Writ in all things.  Blacklisted by Campus Pride."  If any Christian school ends up not being blacklisted by Campus Pride there are all sorts of questions conscientious Christians need to start asking about that particular institution.

You can imagine concerned school presidents writing to Shane Windmeyer demanding that they be put on the Campus Pride blacklist, whilst presenting all the evidence as to why they rightly ought to be blacklisted.

Matthew 5:11  Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.

Daily Devotional

Our Good Is His Glory

“But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” (Matthew 6:6)

John Piper

One common objection to Christian Hedonism is that it puts the interests of man above the glory of God — that it puts my happiness above God’s honor. But Christian Hedonism most emphatically does not do this.

To be sure, we Christian Hedonists endeavor to pursue our interest and our happiness with all our might. We endorse the resolution of the young Jonathan Edwards: “Resolved: To endeavor to obtain for myself as much happiness in the other world as I possibly can, with all the power, might, vigor, and vehemence, yea violence, I am capable of, or can bring myself to exert, in any way that can be thought of.”

But we have learned from the Bible (and from Edwards!) that God’s interest is to magnify the fullness of his glory by spilling over in mercy to us.  Therefore, the pursuit of our interest and our happiness is never above God’s, but always in God’s. The most precious truth in the Bible is that God’s greatest interest is to glorify the wealth of his grace by making sinners happy in him — in him!

When we humble ourselves like little children and put on no airs of self-sufficiency, but run happily into the joy of our Father’s embrace, the glory of his grace is magnified and the longing of our soul is satisfied. Our interest and his glory are one.

Therefore, Christian Hedonists do not put their happiness above God’s glory when they pursue happiness in him.

Corruption on a Grand Scale

Birds of a Feather

We published a couple of pieces recently upon the systemic, habitual corruption of the Clintons.  Their habitual sin is known as simony.  The dictionary definition of simony is:

c.1200, "the sin of buying or selling sacred things," from Old French simonie"selling of church offices" (12c.), from Late Latin simonia, from Simon Magus, the Samaritan magician who was rebuked by Peter when he tried to buy the power of conferring the Holy Spirit (Acts viii:18-20). Related: Simoniac; simoniacal.  [Dictionary.com]

It is clearly an ancient term. But the evil remains alive and well and very modern. Some things never change. The Clintons' version of simony is to sell their office and its influence for pecuniary advantage.  Therefore, they enter into Simoniac bargains accepting money in exchange for special favours.

However, because it's the Clintons--who are donkey deep into the Establishment--few people turn a hair.  The Republic's corruption is a broad river and very deep.  The Clintons will extol their charitable work via the "Clinton Foundation" and will tell all and sundry how many people they have wondrously helped, whilst they siphon off the "charitable" donations to maintain the extravagant lifestyle to which they have become very accustomed and to which they genuinely believe they are entitled.

But what about Donald Trump, Hillary's rival?

Celebrating the Prison Ministry of Crossroads Bible Institute

A Prisoner For Every Church

Chris Hoke

I was telling a room full of retired volunteers about mystical experiences that my friend Neaners had when he was in solitary confinement in a maximum-security prison. I told how he and I—a Mexican gang member and a dorky white church guy of about the same age—had exchanged weekly handwritten letters for nearly seven years, and how it had changed both of us.

It turned me into a jail chaplain, and gang pastor.

In that isolation cell my friend Neaners had his own visions of becoming a pastor and ministering to other gang members and lost youth in our hometown when he got out. He wrote raw, tender descriptions of a mysterious love that would sometimes wash through his veins. It led him to nights of sweet and unstoppable tears as he lay alone in the bathroom-sized cell, where he existed 23 hours a day with no natural light.

I told the small audience how dozens of my friends and family members began exchanging letters with Neaners, and how those letters changed him, ignited his faith, and prepared him for life on the outside. And of how the exchange affected my friends and family. They confessed things to Neaners that he says he’ll take to the grave.

Standing in front of this gathering, I suggested that prayerful, personal letters sent to inmates like Neaners can be a subversive act, moving deep inside the human disposal system that is the prison system.

Daily Devotional

A Growing Awareness of Evil Is Good

C. S. Lewis

Remember that, as I said, the right direction leads not only to peace but to knowledge. When a man is getting better he understands more and more clearly the evil that is still left in him. When a man is getting worse he understands his own badness less and less. A moderately bad man knows he is not very good: a thoroughly bad man thinks he is all right. This is common sense, really. You understand sleep when you are awake, not while you are sleeping. You can see mistakes in arithmetic when your mind is working properly: while you are making them you cannot see them. You can understand the nature of drunkenness when you are sober, not when you are drunk. Good people know about both good and evil: bad people do not know about either.

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.

Selling Out Our Souls

Confused Mess of Pottage

The modern scientific academy appears to be populated by the self-deluded.  On the one hand, particularly when it comes to the human species, there are a series of propositions about human beings which represent professional hypotheses and claims.  Then, on the other hand, there are truths which the scientists actually believe.  All too often the two never meet.

Take, for example, that doyen of evolutionism, Richard Dawkins.  Professor Dawkins "discovered" a previously unknown human gene--which, he titled the Selfish Gene.  It was such a neat idea, it took the world by a hurricane.

When it was first published, Richard Dawkins's The Selfish Gene took the intellectual world by storm.  Conversion experiences among young men were widely reported.  They still are.  The idea that we are all "lumbering robots" designed by natural selection to advance the interests of our genes has become one of those things widely believed because widely believed.  [David Berlinski, The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions (New York: Basic Books, 2009),  p.176.]

OK.  So what's the big deal?  Who could be opposed to such a great idea?  Well, it seems that everyone who espouses the idea is also opposed to it.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow

With Only One of Them Drooling

Douglas Wilson
Blog&Mablog

The other day I was—what is the past participle of tweet?—I was twooting about the election, and commented on two possibly inconsistent emotions that were jostling beneath my sternum. You see, I want Hillary to lose in a fireball one hundred yards across, and I want Trump to lose in a fireball fifty yards across.

Both would be bad presidents. But questions immediately arise. How bad? For whom? Where? Why? Someone is going to say that the choice is simple—Hillary would be terrible for Christians, and there is a possibility that Trump wouldn’t be. He certainly promises not to be. But when you have a bad president, you have to reckon with the possibility that treachery is one of the bad possibilities.

Now going into this further would just rehearse my views on #NeverNeither. I don’t agree with those Christians who are going to vote for Trump because they simply cannot handle the idea of Hillary, but I do understand the dilemma. I share the reaction to Hillary. Rod Martin commented on my Facebook thread that there is a difference between Darius and Antiochus Epiphanes. I take the point, although maybe not the spread.

But that is not where I am going this morning. Both parties have nominated terrible candidates, and one of them is going to lose.

Daily Devotional

Jesus’s Pursuit of Joy

[Look] to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. (Hebrews 12:2)

John Piper

Does the example of Jesus contradict the principle of Christian Hedonism? Namely, that love is the way of joy and that one should choose it for that very reason, lest one be found begrudging obedience to the Almighty or chafing under the privilege of being a channel of grace or belittling the promised reward.

Hebrews 12:2 seems to say fairly clearly that Jesus did not contradict this principle.

The greatest labor of love that ever happened was possible because Jesus pursued the greatest imaginable joy, namely, the joy of being exalted to God’s right hand in the assembly of a redeemed people: “For the joy that was set before him [he] endured the cross!”

In saying this, the writer means to give Jesus as another example, along with the saints of Hebrews 11, of those who are so eager for and confident in the joy God offers that they reject the “fleeting pleasures of sin” (11:25) and choose ill-treatment in order to be aligned with God’s will.

It is not unbiblical, therefore, to say that what sustained Christ in the dark hours of Gethsemane was the hope of joy beyond the cross. This does not diminish the reality and greatness of his love for us, because the joy in which he hoped was the joy of leading many sons to glory (Hebrews 2:10).

His joy is in our redemption, which redounds to God’s glory. To abandon the cross and thus to abandon us and the Father’s will was a prospect so horrible in Christ’s mind that he repulsed it and embraced death.

A Rare Sight

New Zealand Warns the United States

We were amused to read of the NZ Prime Minister's interaction with the elitist US Council of Foreign Relations in New York.  To get the opportunity to confront the reigning US-centric mindset of his audience was too good to waste.

Journalist Tracey Watkins, writing in Stuff, provided a (rough) blow-by-blow.  First up was a chap who wanted to put John Key in his place.

John Key's audience at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York was a small but well-heeled one. So a shocked gasp went around the room when one of its armchair generals rose from his seat to ask whether New Zealand was good for much more in the US than a few lamb chops.  His gripe was New Zealand's anti-nuclear legislation and not pulling our weight which, as Key pointed out, is ancient history, given our decade-plus involvement in Afghanistan and now Iraq.

Now, one supposes that Key's interlocutor was wading waist deep in the miasmic slough of "USA!, USA! USA!" cheerleader chants.  If he were better informed, however, he may have pursued the Prime Minister on this point.

The Madness of Unbelief

Transgenderism and Ugly Doctors

Walt Heyer
The Federalist

Socially indoctrinating young children toward accepting transgenderism is rampant today in public schools. In Washington state, public schools will begin teaching gender expression to kindergarteners in fall 2017, under newly approved health education learning standards. The gay advocacy network GLSEN received a grant from the federal Centers for Disease Control in 2011 for $1.425 million over five years to promote the LGBT agenda in public schools at taxpayers’ expense.

By infiltrating the curriculum in our nation’s public schools, LGBT activists can groom the next generation of participants. Young people are questioning their gender identity at an alarming rate that seems to be increasing, and are encouraged by educators and medical professionals to experiment with gender transition. Unfortunately, experimentation can cause even more confusion.

Feelings Change, Bodies Don’t

The problem with taking the steps to transition physically—cross-gender hormones and surgeries—is that physical changes are likely permanent, but the feelings driving the desire may change, especially for young people. I recently received an email from a man now in his thirties that demonstrates this reality:

I transitioned to female beginning in my late teens and changed my name in my early 20s, over ten years ago. But it wasn’t right for me; I feel only discontent now in the female role. I was told that my transgender feelings were permanent, immutable, physically deep-seated in my brain and could NEVER change, and that the only way I would ever find peace was to become female. The problem is, I don’t have those feelings anymore.

When I began seeing a psychologist a few years ago to help overcome some childhood trauma issues, my depression and anxiety began to wane but so did my transgender feelings. So two years ago I began contemplating going back to my birth gender, and it feels right to do so. I have no doubts—I want to be male!

Feelings can change. For this man, feelings that were overwhelming in his teens changed after he went to counseling to deal with childhood trauma.  My story is similar.

Daily Devotional

Life Hangs on the Word of God 

John Piper

He said to them, “Take to heart all the words by which I am warning you today, that you may command them to your children, that they may be careful to do all the words of this law. For it is no empty word for you, but your very life, and by this word you shall live long in the land that you are going over the Jordan to possess.” (Deuteronomy 32:46–47)

The Word of God is not a trifle; it is a matter of life and death. If you treat the Scriptures as a trifle or as empty words, you forfeit life.

Even our physical life depends on God’s Word, because by his Word we were created (Psalm 33:6; Hebrews 11:3) and “He upholds the universe by the word of his power” (Hebrews 1:3).

Our spiritual life begins by the Word of God: “Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth” (James 1:18). “You have been born again . . . through the living and abiding word of God” (1 Peter 1:23).

Not only do we begin to live by God’s Word, but we also go on living by God’s Word: “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:4; Deuteronomy 8:3).

Our physical life is created and upheld by the Word of God, and our spiritual life is quickened and sustained by the Word of God. How many stories could be gathered to bear witness to the life-giving power of the Word of God!

Indeed, the Bible is “no empty word for you” — it is your life! The foundation of all joy is life. Nothing is more fundamental than sheer existence — our creation and our preservation.

All this is owing to the Word of God’s power. By that same power, he has spoken in Scripture for the creation and sustenance of our spiritual life. Therefore, the Bible is no empty word, but is your very life — the kindling of your joy!