Rivers of Angry Tears

Will The Real Author Please Stand Up

Children's Commissioner, Judge Andrew Becroft has had a chasm open up before his feet, and he has stepped right into it.  Silly man.  One would have thought that someone of his experience and reputation would have avoided the trap with aplomb, but sadly no.

New Zealand has been, once again, assailed by scolds within the European Union and the UN.  This time it is a report on the welfare of children: nations are ranked according to how children are being looked after, from best to worst.  Poor old NZ has copped the lot.  Its ranking has fallen precipitously: from  45th to 158th.  We are near the bottom of the world: there are only 165 countries in the list: New Zealand, apparently, is one of the worst countries in the world in which to bear and raise children.

The judge is deeply concerned.

A European advocacy group has ranked New Zealand 158th out of 165 countries on children's rights. Children's Commissioner Andrew Becroft said the ranking was "a wake-up call" for New Zealand to protect children better from abuse and neglect and to give children a say on new laws and policies.  [NZ Herald] 

Maybe he should have spent more time in chambers thinking, researching, and reading before putting his mouth into gear.

Austrian Justice

Migrant Who Raped 10-Year-Old Boy Has Sentence Reduced

Chris Tomlinson
BreitbartLondon

The Iraqi asylum seeker who raped a 10-year-old boy in a swimming centre in Vienna will have his sentence reduced from six to four years after a judge felt his punishment was too “draconian”.


On the 2nd of December 2015,  the 20-year-old Iraqi Amir A. brutally raped a 10-year-old boy at the Theresienbad in Vienna and shocked the country after claiming that he had a “sexual emergency”.  The Iraqi was found guilty of rape and sentenced to six years, but may see freedom much sooner as a judge has now reduced his sentence to four years, meaning he may be free as early as 2019, Kronen Zeitung reports.

Amir A., who came to Austria purely for economic reasons and was found to not have been persecuted in his native Iraq, confessed to the brutal rape. He said he had “not had sex for four months” and that it was an “emergency”.

Roland Kier, the lawyer for the attacker, appealed the initial judgement claiming the sentence had been too “draconian” for the crime and too “excessive”.  The appeal process eventually made it all the way to the Austrian supreme court (OGH). Senate president judge Thomas Philipp agreed with Kier and said the sentence of six years was too much.

Daily Meditation

On Hope

C. S. Lewis

Then Aslan turned to them and said: “You do not yet look so happy as I mean you to be.”

Lucy said, “We’re so afraid of being sent away, Aslan. And you have sent us back into our own world so often.”

“No fear of that,” said Aslan. “Have you not guessed?” Their hearts leaped and a wild hope rose within them. “There was a real railway accident,” said Aslan softly. “Your father and mother and all of you are—as you used to call it in the Shadowlands—dead. The term is over: the holidays have begun. The dream is ended: this is the morning.”

And as He spoke He no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.

From The Last Battle
Compiled in Words to Live By The Last Battle. Copyright © 1956 by C. S. Lewis Pte., Ltd. Copyright renewed © 1984 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.

Hard Pressed and In Pain

Embarrassing and Awkward

One of the delicious ironies swirling around cosmology and the study of matter is that the possible options are few and far between.  What makes the universe a law-complying realm?  Or alternatively, "What is it that makes the electrons continue to follow the laws?"

The possible answers to that question are only three.  One solution is to presuppose the eternal, all controlling, all commanding, all conditioning Conditioner.  But this answer is disturbing and offensive to fallen man, the one asking the question.  The reason is that man to consider God as the One who makes the universe follow laws with any degree of objectivity.  Why?  Because man cannot be neutral on the subject.  Man has form in denying this as the solution to the problem because of a fundamental and abiding conflict of interest.  To acknowledge the existence of such a Being is necessarily to require worship, adoration and service to Him.  No other consequent would make any sense.  But since fallen man hates God and His threat to human autonomy, man cannot be neutral or objective in dismissing this solution to the problem of "why?" the cosmos acts in the law-abiding way it does.  It is the answer that is the least palatable and the last to which he will give consent.

The second answer offered is that electrons follow natural laws because the laws of nature are necessary--they just are.

Blackbirds Coming Home to Roost

Tories Targeted Critics of Islam Instead of Terrorists

Robert Spencer
BreitbartLondon

The United Kingdom and the world are still reeling from the jihad terror attack at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester that murdered 22 people and injured 59, and the country remains on high alert as police have uncovered and are hunting for the members of an entire jihadi network connected with the Manchester attack.

MI5 has also revealed that there are as many as 23,000 jihad terrorists on the streets of Britain today.
That’s an army. And Britain is indeed at war. But this is not just a problem that Prime Minister Theresa May has the responsibility to solve. It is also a problem that she and her colleagues have created.

This Britain of troops on the streets and high tension over another imminent jihad attack is the Britain that Theresa May and her ilk have chosen. This is the Britain of the policies that she and her predecessors, David Cameron,Gordon Brown, and Tony Blair have followed for years. They now have the Britain they have made. In getting to today’s traumatized, bloodied, nervous, frightened Britain, they followed a multi-pronged strategy.

One chief element of this strategy was to demonize and marginalize anyone who spoke too clearly about the motivating ideology behind jihad terrorism.

For years, May and her cohorts have hounded, stigmatized, and demonized foes of jihad terror, falsely claiming that they represent a “far-right” equivalent to jihad terrorists, while appeasing and accommodating Muslim groups in Britain, many of which were by no stretch of the imagination “moderate,” and allowing numerous jihad preachers to operate without hindrance.

Daily Meditation

Deserts into Gardens

"He will make her wilderness like Eden."  Isaiah 51:3

Charles H. Spurgeon

Methinks, I see in vision a howling wilderness, a great and terrible desert, like to the Sahara. I perceive nothing in it to relieve the eye, all around I am wearied with a vision of hot and arid sand, strewn with ten thousand bleaching skeletons of wretched men who have expired in anguish, having lost their way in the pitiless waste. What an appalling sight! How horrible! a sea of sand without a bound, and without an oasis, a cheerless graveyard for a race forlorn!

But behold and wonder! Upon a sudden, upspringing from the scorching sand I see a plant of renown; and as it grows it buds, the bud expands--it is a rose, and at its side a lily bows its modest head; and, miracle of miracles! as the fragrance of those flowers is diffused the wilderness is transformed into a fruitful field, and all around it blossoms exceedingly, the glory of Lebanon is given unto it, the excellency of Carmel and Sharon.

Call it not Sahara, call it Paradise. Speak not of it any longer as the valley of deathshade, for where the skeletons lay bleaching in the sun, behold a resurrection is proclaimed, and up spring the dead, a mighty army, full of life immortal. Jesus is that plant of renown, and his presence makes all things new.

Nor is the wonder less in each individual's salvation. Yonder I behold you, dear reader, cast out, an infant, unswathed, unwashed, defiled with your own blood, left to be food for beasts of prey. But lo, a jewel has been thrown into your bosom by a divine hand, and for its sake you have been pitied and tended by divine providence, you are washed and cleansed from your defilement, you are adopted into heaven's family, the fair seal of love is upon your forehead, and the ring of faithfulness is on your hand--you are now a prince unto God, though once an orphan, cast away. O prize exceedingly the matchless power and grace which changes deserts into gardens, and makes the barren heart to sing for joy.

From the Greater to the Lesser

Preaching Daily to The Soul

We have had occasion recently to think upon one of the more famous passages in the Pauline library: namely Romans 8: 31-39.  This is one of those passages which demands it be firmly anchored into its context, lest it be twisted by perverted minds.

The reason why context is so important is the otherwise unqualified, open-ended nature of the initial promise:

What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?  [Romans 8: 31-32]

This is a favorite text of the Prosperity Gospellers.  "Look, mate.  You want that swanky car?  God will give it to you if you believe with faith of sufficient quantity and quality.  Does it not say that God will give you all things?  Oh, and since God is going to give you all this, you are freed up to give me what you do have."

Since old-style theological and biblical liberalism has departed to the plains of Moab whence it came, and is left bubbling in the cauldrons of radical pomo agnosticism, the Church is left to contend with idiots who preach the gospel of money.  The Prosperity Gospellers are a great curse upon our times.  Their avarice and distortion of texts such as the passage in Romans above must be exposed and utterly rejected.

Abortionists Have Abandoned the Argument

Mordor in Pale Pastels

Douglas Wilson
Blog&Mablog

INTRODUCTION

For those who have eyes to see, the most recent video released by CMP is striking, staggering, stupefying. One of the most remarkable things about this most recent episode is the fact that the pro-choice forces have officially abandoned argument, about which more below. Another is the fact that in the video, the people who are discussing the most appalling crimes with Mengelesque aplomb are overwhelmingly women. We have gotten to the point where we might as well form an association called Harpies for Abortion, and get Congress to fund it. If you oppose the violent dismemberment of a small child, in order that her parts may then be sold for a tidy sum, then you are probably a hater of some sort.

SHATTERED CHAINS

Cecile Richards goes out there and gives it her PR best, talking about “women’s health,” and “reproductive freedom,” but we have now been given a stark view of what she is actually talking about. And this makes sense of the larger picture—I find it telling that these people don’t want to say anything about reproductive freedom for Chinese women, say—nothing about forced abortions, or child limit policies, etc. “If you want three kids, have three kids.” That would be reproductive freedom. But if you take a close look at what feminism intends by shattering the chains of the patriarchy, you will find, courtesy of the hidden camera, what makes up those chains. Those chains are people — kids — and my, they do get shattered.

We are not up against a Mordor with an Eye of Doom, the kind of eye that can look at you and count all your bones. We are not talking about a black mountain at night, with lurid orange flowing down its sides. We are not talking about jagged lightning bolts throwing the rocky landscape into high relief, with shadows sharp enough to cut your hand. No cartoon villainy here. Rather, we are talking about Mordor with a PR Department. We are talking about Mordor with talking points and well-groomed lobbyists. We are talking about Mordor in pale pastels. People still die though.

In the preface to Screwtape, C.S. Lewis wrote presciently about this very thing:

Daily Meditation

On Holiness

C. S. Lewis

If He does not support us, not one of us is safe from some gross sin. On the other hand, no possible degree of holiness or heroism which has ever been recorded of the greatest saints is beyond what He is determined to produce in every one of us in the end. The job will not be completed in this life: but He means to get us as far as possible before death.

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.

Civil War

Sizing the Problem

Those politicians and advocacy groups which have pushed Britain more and more in the direction of open borders have an awful lot to answer for.  It turns out that the "jihadi" problem is much, much bigger than previously announced.

Government sources have confessed that there are at least 23,000 jihadists in Britain – more than seven times higher than previously revealed.   Until recently, the public had been led to believe there were around 3,000 known jihadists in Britain, with 500 being subject to active investigations led by MI5. Whitehall officials have now disclosed that a further 20,000 individuals have been identified as posing a “residual risk”, according to The Times.  [BreitbartLondon]

Assuming this is correct, the effort to keep Britain safe from jihadi attacks will need to be prodigious.  As one expert put it:

Anthony Glees, the Centre for Security and Intelligence Studies director who recently estimated the number of jihadists in Britain at “between 6,000 and 10,000”, described the Whitehall revelations as “horrifying”.  “To have 23,000 potential killers in our midst is horrifying. We should double the size of MI5, as we did in World War Two, and expand the number of intelligence-led police by thousands,” he said.

In times of war, it is expected that normal civil rights will contract to some extent, and even to a significant extent, depending upon the threats.  It appears that we are now entering such a time.  The first duty is to tell the truth to the public.   Britain is entering a time and state of civil war.  It's time to call a spade and spade.

Barbaric Self-Deification of the State

The Horror of Socialized Medicine

European Courts Sentence a Baby to Death

Matt Walsh
TheBlaze




There’s a horrific case over in the U.K. that hasn’t gotten a ton of attention here, but it should. If we look closely, we may see our future — and our present.

Charlie Gard is a 10-month-old baby who suffers from a rare genetic disorder called mitochondrial DNA depletion syndrome. It’s a horrendous condition that leads to organ malfunction, brain damage, and other symptoms. The hospital that had been treating the boy, Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children in London, made the determination that nothing more can be done for him and he must be taken off of life support. He should “die with dignity,” they said. The parents, Chris Gard and Connie Yates, disagreed.

This is the very crucial thing to understand: they are not insisting that GOSH be forced to keep Charlie on life support. Rather, they want to take him out of the hospital and to America to undergo a form of experimental therapy that a doctor here had already agreed to administer.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow (About Being Liberated From Accord du Paris)

A Dead Rat on the High Altar

Douglas Wilson
Blog&Mablog

So President Trump pulled us out of the Paris Climate Shakedown, and I have been frankly surprised at the extent and depth of the progressive meltdown over it. The reaction has been fervently religious, as though the president left a dead rat on the high altar or something. So many liberals have their hair on fire that one wonders about what kind of carbon footprint that will have.

And of course, I am delighted with the move. Some were arguing that the fact that we had joined an international agreement that had no enforcement teeth meant that the fuss over staying or going was all a bunch of nothing. But no, actually. The fact that it was “the law” meant that our administrative state could use it in their grasping and overweening attempts to cripple American productivity—which, of course, has been the entire point all along.

Stop for a moment to admire the regulatory genius (not to mention hubris) of the environmental totalitarians. They have successfully branded as a pollutant that which every mother’s son of you exhales through your nose, that mysterious substance which keeps green plants lush, leafy and green.

Daily Meditation

Soon

"Whom he justified, them he also glorified."  Romans 8:30

Charles H. Spurgeon

Here is a precious truth for thee, believer. Thou mayest be poor, or in suffering, or unknown, but for thine encouragement take a review of thy "calling" and the consequences that flow from it, and especially that blessed result here spoken of.

As surely as thou art God's child today, so surely shall all thy trials soon be at an end, and thou shalt be rich to all the intents of bliss. Wait awhile, and that weary head shall wear the crown of glory, and that hand of labour shall grasp the palm-branch of victory. Lament not thy troubles, but rather rejoice that ere long thou wilt be where "there shall be neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain." The chariots of fire are at thy door, and a moment will suffice to bear thee to the glorified.

The everlasting song is almost on thy lip. The portals of heaven stand open for thee. Think not that thou canst fail of entering into rest. If he hath called thee, nothing can divide thee from his love. Distress cannot sever the bond; the fire of persecution cannot burn the link; the hammer of hell cannot break the chain. Thou art secure; that voice which called thee at first, shall call thee yet again from earth to heaven, from death's dark gloom to immortality's unuttered splendours. Rest assured, the heart of him who has justified thee beats with infinite love towards thee.

Thou shalt soon be with the glorified, where thy portion is; thou art only waiting here to be made meet for the inheritance, and that done, the wings of angels shall waft thee far away, to the mount of peace, and joy, and blessedness, where,

"Far from a world of grief and sin,
With God eternally shut in,"

thou shalt rest forever and ever.

Zealots in Control

The Ministry of Health Breaches Fundamental Medical Ethics

The disparaging term, "health-Nazi" refers to individuals, companies, or governments who believe in forcing people to do what is deemed good by others.   These days we are awash with officials, authorities, and do-gooders telling us what to eat, what not to eat, how to spend leisure time, how to exercise, and how to breathe.  It's all in the name of doing good.

More often than not, it seems, the advice and the hectoring demands turn out to be wrong, inappropriate, or harmful in the long term.  We remind our readers that two generations have been raised amidst the incessant propaganda that fat is harmful; the best diet reduces fat intake.  The tacit assumption of  this "advice" has been that ingested fat turns to body fat.  It is now clear that this is poppycock, the stuff of nonsense.  But, in the meantime, for two generations health Nazis and officials misled the public.

It's not just that the advice was wrong: it was framed as a moral crusade.

A Moderate, Reasonable Perspective

We’ll Never Have Paris

The Editors
National Review Online

President Donald Trump has decided to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate accord. The United States never should have been in it in the first place, and it’s not even entirely clear that it ever was. In choosing American interests over Davos pieties — in the face of resistance from some within his own administration — the president here has made good on his promise to put America first.

The Paris Agreement is a treaty in all but name: The European signatories put it through their usual treaty-ratification protocols, but the United States did not. President Obama went to great lengths to pretend that the treaty was something other than a treaty because he did not wish to submit it for ratification by the Senate, which was almost sure to reject it — as, indeed, the Senate would likely reject it today. In a government of laws, process matters.

Substance matters, too, and here the Paris Agreement is deficient.

Even if one accepts, for the sake of argument, the alarmist interpretation of climate-change data, the Paris Agreement is unlikely to produce the desired result — and may not produce any result at all.

Daily Meditation

The Payout for Patience

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

John Piper

The story of Joseph in Genesis 37–50 is a great lesson in why we should have faith in the sovereign future grace of God.

Joseph is sold into slavery by his brothers, which must have tested his patience tremendously. But he is given a good job in Potiphar’s household. Then, when he is acting uprightly in the unplanned place of obedience, Potiphar’s wife lies about his integrity and has him thrown into prison — another great trial to his patience.

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

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

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

The Disintegration of the West

Amoral Tribalism

In an amoral age, such as ours, morality becomes tribal.  What is right is what our tribe says is right; what our tribe condemns is wrong, period.  Everything depends upon who is judging, us or "them".  In this context, "them" refers to anyone not of our tribe.

In a previous age, tribes and tribalism was considered to be primitive.  Making ethical decisions or moral constructs by referencing a tribe was to display ignorance and base prejudice.  But, as amorality has spread throughout the Western world increasingly people have resorted to tribalism.  Nowhere is this more evident than in modern political discourse.  Political Party A condemns Party B for a certain act or policy.  But when Party A does the exact same thing, overnight it becomes a wonderful idea and a great leap forward.

One of our local NZ scribes recently got stuck into the Labour Party for its gross hypocrisy over donations.  Our cynical take is that there is nothing to see here and that all should move along.  When there are no ethical absolutes, tribal loyalties are what bind, ethics be damned.  How else could any person or group function?

Not so long ago, Labour professed outrage at its political opponent "selling access to Cabinet Ministers for cash".  The idea is that big donors would be invited to have dinner with the "people of power".  Corruption!  Shame!  Evil!  We get the point.  Now, however, Labour racked with impecuniosity, has launched a similar scheme.  The details are not relevant, the operator is.  Bottom line: when our political opponents do it, all is evil.  When we do it, holiness flows down in sanctimonious rivers.

Behold the inevitable tribalism when amorality is the norm.

One for the Good Guys

A Faux-Calamity Kicked Out of the Park

So, Trump has pulled the United States out of the Paris Accord (Treaty?).   At the White House Rose Garden, Trump stated his principal objections to the Accord:

Trump complained in the White House's Rose Garden that major polluters like China are allowed to increase their emissions under the agreement in a way that the US cannot. India is hinging its participation on billions of dollars of foreign aid.

'The bottom line is that the Paris Accord is very unfair, at the highest level, to the United States,' he said.   He argued later, 'The agreement is a massive redistribution of United States wealth to other countries.  This agreement is less about the climate and more about other countries gaining a financial advantage over the United States,' he contended. . . .

As of today the United States will cease all implementation of the nonbinding Paris Accord and the draconian financial and economic burdens the agreement imposes on our country.   This includes ending the implementation of the National Determined Contribution and – very importantly – the Green Climate Fund, which is costing the United States a vast fortune.   The bottom line is that the Paris Accord is very unfair, at the highest level, to the United States.

Compliance...could cost America as much as 2.7 million lost jobs by 2025, according to the National Rconomic Research Associates.  The cost to the economy at this time [by 2050] would be close to $3 trillion in lost GDP and 6.5 million industrial jobs, while households would have $7,000 less income and in many cases much worse than that. 

Daily Meditation

The Bedrock of Your Assurance

God chose you from the beginning to be saved through sanctification by the Spirit. (2 Thessalonians 2:13)

John Piper

Dozens of passages in the Bible speak of our final salvation (though not our election) as conditional upon a changed heart and life. The question arises then, how can I have the assurance I will persevere in faith and in the holiness necessary for inheriting eternal life?

The answer is that assurance is rooted in our election (2 Peter 1:10). Divine election is the guarantee that God will undertake to complete by sanctifying grace what his electing grace has begun.

This is the meaning of the new covenant: God does not merely command obedience, he gives it. “The LORD your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring, so that you will love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live” (Deuteronomy 30:6). “I will put my Spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes” (Ezekiel 36:27; 11:20).

Election secures that “those who are justified will be glorified” (Romans 8:30), so that all the conditions laid down for glorification will be met by the power of God’s grace.

Election is the final ground of assurance because, since it is God’s commitment to save, it is also God’s commitment to enable all that is necessary for salvation.

The More Things Change . . .

Migration in the Name of Religious Belief

The Scots and the Scots-Irish had a hard time after the death of Cromwell and the restoration of Charles II in England.  After the Glorious Revolution of 1688, things were better, but the Scots continued to labour under restrictions of various kinds.  One consequence of this oppression was "voting feet": large numbers of Scots and Scots-Irish sailed for America.  

As one historian put it:

After the year 1714, their ships began to cross the sea from Ulster in a long unbroken line.  For more than sixty years they continued to come.  It was the most extensive movement ever made from Europe to America before the modern days of steamships.  Often as many as 12,000 came in a single year. . . . In the two years, 1773 and 1774, more than 30,000 came.  A body of about 600,000 Scots was thus brought from Ulster and Scotland to the American colonies, making about one-fourth of our population at the time of the Revolution.  [H. A. White, cited by Douglas Wilson, Five Cities that Ruled the World (Nashville, Tn.: Thomas Nelson, 2009), p. 144.]

These migrants were both economic and political in their motivation.  That is, they were poor and the prospects for  life were better  in the New World, than the Old.  But they were also second class citizens by dint of official policy in England.  These things have a contemporary sound about them, given the mass migration now underway from the Middle East, Africa, and Central Asia into Europe and probably, eventually, into the United States.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow (to President Trump)

A Proposal for the President

Douglas Wilson
Blog&Mablog

Dear Mr. President,

I should begin by acknowledging that I was not among those who supported your campaign for the Republican nomination, and that I did not vote for you in the general election. This was centrally because—speaking frankly—I did not trust your professed conversion to the pro-life cause. At the same time, I need to say that I have been pleasantly surprised by your appointments and behavior in this regard thus far, and have been greatly encouraged.

In line with this, I am writing to propose something that would be an even greater encouragement to people in my position, and which is well within your capacity to do. It is far more like an executive order than it is like getting a fiscally-sane budget through Congress, and so I wanted to write you this open letter, and suggest the proposal to you.

The proposal is this: that you award the Presidential Medal of Freedom to David Daleiden, founder of the Center for Medical Progress, and the man who courageously exposed the trafficking in human parts that has been conducted by Planned Parenthood.

Here are some of the reasons why I believe this should be done:

Daily Meditation

Tell What God Has Shown You

"And they rose up the same hour, and returned to Jerusalem ... and they told what things were done in the way, and how he was known of them."  Luke 24:33-35

Charles H. Spurgeon

When the two disciples had reached Emmaus, and were refreshing themselves at the evening meal, the mysterious stranger who had so enchanted them upon the road, took bread and brake it, made himself known to them, and then vanished out of their sight. They had constrained him to abide with them, because the day was far spent; but now, although it was much later, their love was a lamp to their feet, yea, wings also; they forgot the darkness, their weariness was all gone, and forthwith they journeyed back the threescore furlongs to tell the gladsome news of a risen Lord, who had appeared to them by the way.

They reached the Christians in Jerusalem, and were received by a burst of joyful news before they could tell their own tale. These early Christians were all on fire to speak of Christ's resurrection, and to proclaim what they knew of the Lord; they made common property of their experiences.

Let their example impress us deeply. We too must bear our witness concerning Jesus. John's account of the sepulchre needed to be supplemented by Peter; and Mary could speak of something further still; combined, we have a full testimony from which nothing can be spared. We have each of us peculiar gifts and special manifestations; but the one object God has in view is the perfecting of the whole body of Christ.

We must, therefore, bring our spiritual possessions and lay them at the apostle's feet, and make distribution unto all of what God has given to us. Keep back no part of the precious truth, but speak what you know, and testify what you have seen. Let not the toil or darkness, or possible unbelief of your friends, weigh one moment in the scale. Up, and be marching to the place of duty, and there tell what great things God has shown to your soul.

Haters of Mankind

The Grubby Basement

Why has capitalism "triumphed" in the West, but languished in most other nations around the world?  Doubtless the reasons are many, but one in particular stands out.  Western nations have developed and deployed systems of universal recognition of property, and sanctioned them with property law and rights of ownership.

One reason this has occurred in the West, but not elsewhere, is a consequence of  the Christian faith.  Property, according to the Christian world-and-life view, is not just sanctioned by the eternal omnipotent God: it is protected by His holy law.  To the extent that a society does not comply with the rights of ownership, of private property, and attendant due penalties against theft and covetousness, property ownership will be undermined and under attack.

One consequence of such beliefs is the necessity of registering title to property, which in turn requires accurate and widely recognised definitions and descriptions of the property in question.  Think motor-vehicle registers, along with number or registration plates for example.  Or reliance upon serial numbers, for another.  It is hard--impossible--for private enterprise and capitalism to develop in nations which have no way of representing, defining, and describing what is owned by whom.

As De Soto puts it:

Correcting Obama's Overreach On The Much Vaunted Climate "Treaty"

Submit the Paris Treaty to the Senate

It’s the best way out of the climate morass.

By Jon Basil Utley
The American Conservative

The so-called Paris “Treaty” has all sorts of grounds for complicated lawsuits to restrict America’s new found energy independence and growing massive natural-gas production. We need to get out from under it. Yet a weakened President Trump is hesitating while the global-warming lobby tries desperately to confound the issues.

There have recently been stories raising concerns about how South Pole ice might one day melt and raise sea levels. But this because ice has been increasing at the South Pole. (See my earlier article for details on South Pole ice and new cold weather records in Asia.)

It is seldom mentioned that the “Treaty” received nearly unanimous support among developing nations because they were promised billions per year to pay for cutbacks on their energy production. As Bloomberg verified, “many poor nations signed up to the treaty largely because of a promise of $100 billion a year of ‘climate aid’ from rich nations, starting from 2020.” Of course, most of this money is supposed to come from Washington and Obama committed a billion for it before leaving office.

Daily Meditation

. . . To Sir Henry Willink, Whose Wife Had Just Died 

On bereavement and grieving

3 December 1959

C. S. Lewis

Dear Master,

I have learned now that while those who speak about one’s miseries usually hurt one, those who keep silence hurt more. They help to increase the sense of general isolation which makes a sort of fringe to the sorrow itself. You know what cogent reason I have to feel with you: but I can feel for you too. I know that what you are facing must be worse than what I must shortly face myself, because your happiness has lasted so much longer and is therefore so much more intertwined with your whole life. As Scott said in like case, ‘What am I to do with that daily portion of my thoughts which has for so many years been hers?’

People talk as if grief were just a feeling—as if it weren’t the continually renewed shock of setting out again and again on familiar roads and being brought up short by the grim frontier post that now blocks them. I, to be sure, believe there is something beyond it: but the moment one tries to use that as a consolation (that is not its function) the belief crumbles. It is quite useless knocking at the door of Heaven for earthly comfort: it’s not the sort of comfort they supply there.

You are probably very exhausted physically. Hug that and all the little indulgences to which it entitles you. I think it is tiny little things which (next to the very greatest things) help most at such a time.

I have myself twice known, after a loss, a strange excited (but utterly un-spooky) sense of the person’s presence all about me. It may be a pure hallucination. But the fact that it always goes off after a few weeks proves nothing either way.

I wish I had known your wife better. But she has a bright place in my memory. . . . She will be very greatly missed—on her own account, quite apart from any sympathy with you—by every fellow of this College.

. . . I shall not be at the funeral. You can understand and forgive my desire, now, to spend every possible moment at home. Forgive me if I have said anything amiss in this letter. I am too much involved myself to practise any skill.

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.

Free to Serve

Thy Will Be Done . . . On The Earth

The Kingdom of God is from above.  The Kingdom of God brings freedom.  It liberates mankind from sin and sin's enslavement.  The Kingdom of God manumits the slave and restores him to freedom.  But for the individual the achievement of freedom is both instantaneous and a protracted process of deliverance.

When a person believes upon the Lord Jesus Christ as his God and Saviour he is justified.  He is declared righteous in God's sight and presence;  all the guilt of all his sinfulness is removed.  It is transferred to Christ Himself who bore our guilt upon the cross.  But the perfect righteousness of the Man, Christ Jesus is imputed to each believer.  Thus, upon repenting and believing, every man is declared free from the guilt of sin.  He is declared just and sinless before God.

As the Shorter Catechism [Q.33] puts it:

Justification is an act of Gods free grace, wherein he pardoneth all our sins, and accepteth us as righteous in his sight, only for the righteousness of Christ imputed to us, and received by faith alone.

But sin's habits and corruptions remain.  For the rest of our lives upon earth, we daily fight against residual sin.  But sin's power has been broken.

Boris Nemtsov and Vladimir Kara-Murza

Cry The Beloved Country

[We have characterized Vladimir Putin as a step child of Vlad the Impaler.  Some readers may wonder why we would connect Putin with such a former Russian tyrant.  Hyperbole?  Well, yes.  We concede there is an element of truth to the charge.  But the following piece suggests that the comparison may well be much more apt than might first appear.  Ed]

Boris Nemtsov’s Legacy Haunts Putin’s Russia

A new documentary on the liberal opposition figure shines a light on his achievements.

By Nat Brown
National Review Online


Amidst the hundreds of Russia-related headlines saturating the current U.S. media landscape, it was almost inevitable that a small but significant one of them would go almost unnoticed. On May 13, the U.S. Senate came one step closer to renaming the Washington, D.C., street on which the Russian embassy is located after one of the Kremlin’s most vocal critics: the late Boris Nemtsov.

Nemtsov, who once served as Boris Yeltsin’s deputy prime minister and was one of the most important liberal political figures in 1990s Russia, ended his life a steadfast opponent of Vladimir Putin and his authoritarian regime. On February 27, 2015, he was shot to death by a car full of assassins while walking home across a Moscow bridge mere yards away from the Kremlin.

Nemtsov’s life and work is the subject of a new documentary written and directed by Vladimir Kara-Murza, himself a well-known Kremlin critic and former adviser to Nemtsov who worked closely with him in various human-rights- and democracy-promotion efforts. With a running time of just over an hour, the film does an excellent job of deftly laying out Nemtsov’s many achievements, both as one of the principal figures of the Yeltsin era, and later as a key figure in the liberal opposition to the Putin government.

Daily Meditation

Transformed Into The Image of Christ

C. S. Lewis

I find I must borrow yet another parable from George MacDonald. Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on: you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently he starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of—throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were going to be made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.

The command Be ye perfect is not idealistic gas. Nor is it a command to do the impossible. He is going to make us into creatures that can obey that command. He said (in the Bible) that we were ‘gods’ and He is going to make good His words. If we let Him—for we can prevent Him, if we choose—He will make the feeblest and filthiest of us into a god or goddess, a dazzling, radiant, immortal creature, pulsating all through with such energy and joy and wisdom and love as we cannot now imagine, a bright stainless mirror which reflects back to God perfectly (though, of course, on a smaller scale) His own boundless power and delight and goodness. The process will be long and in parts very painful, but that is what we are in for. Nothing less. He meant what He said.

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.

Freedom

The Jerusalem of God

The thirst for liberty is strong amongst mankind.  Many have been the ways and attempts to secure it.  Most have failed.  "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity" in France turned into the "freedom" of the guillotine and the embrace of the Emperor Napoleon.  Freedom in the United States is morphing ineluctably towards greater and greater government rules, regulations, laws, and controls.  The same is true in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.  Freedom in the EU means submitting to the laws, rules, and regulations of the unelected Eurocrats.

Yet the longing for human freedom remains unabated.

It is significant, therefore, that the Gospel makes clear that human liberty is intrinsic to its presence and power.  Consider how the Lord of all announced His coming:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.  He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed.  [Luke 4:18]

Now this when read is usually taken to refer to Christ liberating men from the guilt and slavery to sin.  This is a legitimate interpretation.  Charles Wesley captured this interpretation/application perfectly:

The Apostate Experience: Former Muslims Describe Their Plight

Inside the Secret World of Ex-Muslims

Even in America, these ‘apostates’ must meet in private.

By Andy Ngo
National Review Online

In April, a defiant group of self-identified “apostates” convened in downtown Portland, Oregon, to revel in the joys of brew culture, bacon burgers, and atheism. Nine ex-Muslims from several states in the region gathered for a local meeting of the Ex-Muslims of North America [EXMNA].

EXMNA is a nonprofit that provides support to individuals who have left Islam. Some of its members have faced disownership and death threats from family members for renouncing their religion.

Chapter gatherings across the United States and Canada are closed-group meetings for safety reasons. Individuals who wish to join the organization go through a screening process to authenticate their identities, explained Sarah Haider, who co-founded EXMNA in 2013. “Unfortunately, it is not paranoia that requires us to be careful,” Haider said. “In the Muslim world, we are openly persecuted and regularly meet grisly ends. In the Western world we are safer, but even here open meetings can be a big risk.”

In traditional interpretations of Islam, apostasy — the act of leaving one’s religion — is punishable by death or imprisonment. Across the globe, apostasy from Islam remains a capital offense in 13 Muslim-majority countries.