Daily Meditation

What the Resurrection Means

Because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. (Romans 10:9)

John Piper

The meaning of the resurrection is that God is for us. He aims to close ranks with us. He aims to overcome all our sense of abandonment and alienation.

The resurrection of Jesus is God’s declaration to Israel and to the world that we cannot work our way to glory but that he intends to do the impossible to get us there.

The resurrection is the promise of God that all who trust Jesus will be the beneficiaries of God’s power to lead us in paths of righteousness and through the valley of death.

Therefore, believing in your heart that God raised Jesus from the dead is much more than accepting a fact. It means being confident that God is for you, that he has closed ranks with you, that he is transforming your life, and that he will save you for eternal joy.

Believing in the resurrection means trusting in all the promises of life and hope and righteousness for which it stands.

It means being so confident of God’s power and love that no fear of worldly loss or greed for worldly gain will lure us to disobey his will.

That’s the difference between Satan and the saints. O, might God circumcise our hearts to love him and to rest in the resurrection of his Son.

You Can't Make This Stuff Up

Scrambling for Relevance

It's not hard in New Zealand, these days, to find plenty of material to poke fun at.  The gummint looks like a huge roadside advertisement peppered with shotgun pellets.  The locals are showing their respect, no doubt.

Many commentators have poked the borax at the government's propensity to set up commissions or inquiries into anything and everything that moves.  If you brush your teeth in the morning, by lunchtime the government will have announced an inquiry into dental cosmetics which will "report" in nine months time.  We wait with baited malodorous breath.

Prime Minister Ardern cannot help herself.  Hardly a day goes by without her grandly announcing the 176th gummint inquiry into some great looming apocalypse du jour.  Each announcement assures us that we going to be taking a great leap forward.  It's all bureaucratic self-serving rubbish.

Liam Hehir, writing a guest post in Kiwiblog, gives us a hilarious account of one of the latest pronouncements from the Throne of Wonderland Wizard.

Howling Bigotry Laid Bare

Liberal Left a Howling Contradiction

Karl du Fresne
Stuff

If the furore over the Canadians Lauren Southern and Stefan Molyneux achieved nothing else, it at least destroyed the myth of the so-called liberal Left.

Extremists on the Left have been misappropriating that honourable word "liberal" for decades, aided and abetted by news media that seemed not to recognise that "liberal Left" had become a howling contradiction. A handful of genuinely liberal Leftists still exist, and some were brave enough to speak out in favour of free speech. But those few exceptions aside, the Left now stands exposed as the antithesis of classical liberalism.

No-one should be in any doubt that free speech, a fundamental hallmark of liberal democracy, is under concerted attack. We have confirmation of that from Massey University's Australian vice-chancellor Jan Thomas, who has introduced to New Zealand the repugnant practice known elsewhere as no-platforming – denying speaking rights to anyone who doesn't meekly fall into line with leftist orthodoxy.


Massey vice-chancellor Jan Thomas has laid bare the authoritarian bigotry that thrives in institutions which once stood for intellectual freedom., says Karl du Fresne.

Thomas vetoed a talk by Don Brash, supposedly on the basis that it raised safety issues, but her accompanying comments made it clear she was swayed by personal ideological objections.

In any case, who was likely to pose a safety risk? Certainly not Brash, who is unfailingly civil even when under venomous attack, and whose proposed speech had nothing to do with the contentious issues Thomas referred to. The risk, if there was one, would have come from those who want to shut him down.  I believe the Left targets Brash not because he holds extreme views, but for precisely the opposite reason: a large number of New Zealanders agree with him. That makes him a potent threat.

But Thomas may have done us all a favour. She has laid bare the authoritarian bigotry that thrives in institutions which once stood for intellectual freedom.

Daily Meditation

Probing the Remote Purpose

Ligonier Ministries

“Why did God allow it to happen?” This question seeks to probe the remote or ultimate purpose. The question assumes something crucial to our understanding of God. It assumes that God could have prevented the thing that happened. If we deny this verity, we deny the very character of God. If God could not have prevented it, He would no longer be God. By asking why, we also assume something else that is vital. We assume there is an answer to the question. We assume that God had a reason or a purpose for the thing that occurred.

The question remains—“Was God’s reason or purpose a good one?” To ask the question is to answer it—if we know anything about God. We err in our reason. We establish futile goals. We rush off on fools’ errands. We pursue sinful ends. Let us not project the same kind of vicious intentionality of God.

The only purpose or intention God ever has is altogether good. When the Bible speaks of the sovereign exercise of the pleasure of His will, there is no hint of arbitrariness or wicked intent. The pleasure of His will is always the good pleasure of His will. His pleasure is always good, His will is always good, and His intentions are always good.

Coram Deo

What past or present circumstances in your life have caused you to ask “Why?” Ask God to show you how His good intentions are reflected in these situations.

Passages for Further Study

Deuteronomy 29:29
Philippians 2:13
Ephesians 1:4-5

Never Trust Large Companies

This Conspiracy Appears Well Past the "Theory" Stage

Here is an interesting tale.  It appears at The Federalist,  entitled  "These Screenshots Show How Google Shadowbans Conservative And Pro-Trump Content".   Author and commentator, Doug Wead says: "It appears that Google, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter have all gone to war with President Trump, and are punishing anyone who dares to speak up for him."

He presents an extensive account of his own experience as a case study to establish the claim.  It seems like Google, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter need to be made to take a long draught of castor oil, served up under US Antitrust laws.  (Antitrust laws, also referred to as "competition laws," are statutes developed by the U.S. Government to protect consumers from predatory business practices by ensuring that fair competition exists in an open-market economy.  [Investopedia])

Let's hope that the Trump Administration and the Congress are up for serving up the medicine.  Ah, if we could only see a re-make of AT&T, Kodak, and Standard Oil.  Them's were the days.

We would do well to remember Adam Smith's dictum--when you get a dozen business leaders into the same room, you will be confronted with two dozen self-serving conspiracies.  At least that will be the case when mercantilism is the dominant economic theory--as appears to be case among the giant tech media companies.

Not Quite a Counter Revolution, But . . .

Sit Back and Watch the Show

Jordan Peterson has become a bit of a thing.  He is a psychologist.  He bases his views and opinions on foundations of empirical observation and research.  He tosses in a bit of common sense.  He enjoys exposing the gaping irrational holes in populist ideologies. 

For those who are not aware of his work, an extended interview published in The Listener is not a bad introduction.  Some excerpts:
 
Jordan Peterson Talks Gender Pay Gap, Neo-Nazis and Preferred Pronouns

by Mark Broatch
NZ Listener

Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson has become an internet sensation for his outspoken criticism of what he calls “political correctness” and “cultural Marxism”.

Camille Paglia has called him “the most important and influential Canadian thinker since Marshall McLuhan”. Right-wing British commentator Melanie Phillips described him as “a kind of secular prophet who, in an era of lobotomised conformism, thinks out of the box”. A columnist for the Canadian magazine Maclean’s said he was “the stupid man’s smart person”. Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek dubbed aspects of his work “ridiculous”.

Oracle or kook, Canadian psychology professor Jordan Peterson is having a moment. You can't escape his video lectures and Ted talks online, suggesting that Western society is being undermined by the likes of “postmodernists and “cultural Marxists”, who push pernicious concepts such as identity politics; turn minorities and marginalised groups into perpetual victims; and use political correctness to deaden thought and threaten freedom of speech. . . .

Daily Meditation

God Forgives and Is Still Fair

The Lord also has put away your sin; you shall not die. Nevertheless, because by this deed you have utterly scorned the Lord, the child who is born to you shall die. (2 Samuel 12:13–14)

John Piper

This is outrageous. Uriah is dead. Bathsheba is raped. The baby will die. And Nathan says, “The Lord has put away your sin.”  Just like that? David committed adultery. He ordered murder. He lied. He “despised the word of the Lord.” He “scorned God.” And the Lord “put away [his] sin.”

What kind of a righteous judge is God? You don’t just pass over rape and murder and lying. Righteous judges don’t do that.

Here is what Paul said in Romans 3:25–26:

God put [Christ] forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

In other words, the outrage that we feel when God seems to simply pass over David’s sin would be good outrage if God were simply sweeping David’s sin under the rug. He is not.

God sees from the time of David down the centuries to the death of his Son, Jesus Christ, who would die in David’s place, so that David’s faith in God’s mercy and God’s future redeeming work unites David with Christ. And in God’s all-knowing mind, David’s sins are counted as Christ’s sins and Christ’s righteousness is counted as his righteousness, and God justly passes over David’s sin.

The death of the Son of God is outrageous enough, and the glory of God that it upholds is great enough, that God is vindicated in passing over David’s adultery and murder and lying.

And so God maintains his perfect righteousness and justice while at the same time showing mercy to those who have faith in Jesus, no matter how many or how monstrous their sins. This is good news.

Media Matters

Misguided Self-Respect

President Trump is not for turning.  He is what he is, and he appears to revel in it.  In the broadest brush strokes possible he lambastes his opponents, making ad hominem attacks left, right, and centre.  Maybe it's effective politics.  Who knows.  But it is largely irrelevant to whether his policies are good, bad, or indifferent. 

The "Fake-News Media" have come in for particular attention from the Mouth-In-Chief.  But, hilariously, the media in the United States have reacted in such a way as to prove that Trump's views have merit.

Newspapers and media outlets across the U.S. launched a widespread effort Thursday aimed at combating the constant attacks from President Donald Trump as well as negative feelings about the media's role in society.  More than 300 newspapers around the nation joined together to each publish editorials that explained the role of journalists and amplified the positive role journalism plays in society.

Co-ordinated editorials published by more than 300 newspapers would seem to be compelling evidence of an orchestrated Groupthink amongst the media--which is sort of what Trump had been lambasting the media for.  How ironic that the media would go out of their way to demonstrate that there is truth in Trump's ad hominem attacks.

Speaking As An Academic . . .

Embarrassed By The Silence Over Brash Ban

Michael Johnston
Senior Lecturer in Education
Victoria University
Stuff

OPINION: For a time I have been observing from afar, with rising horror, attacks on open debate and free speech on university campuses in North America, the United Kingdom and Australia.

Speakers – usually, but not always, from the right of politics – have been harassed and assaulted by protesters and sometimes 'de-platformed' – a euphemism for being deprived of the opportunity to speak – by university administrations.

Until very recently New Zealand campuses were blessedly free of this phenomenon. Now, thanks to Professor Jan Thomas, Vice-Chancellor of Massey University, that has changed. Her university has cancelled an event at which ex-Reserve Bank governor and former leader of the opposition Dr Don Brash was to speak about his time at the helm of the National Party.

What is almost as outrageous as the Massey decision itself is that, to the best of my knowledge, the other universities and their leaders have been virtually silent on the incident. As an academic, I am embarrassed by this silence.

Daily Meditation

Exposing the Permissive Will of God

Ligonier Ministries

The distinction between the sovereign will of God and the permissive will of God is fraught with peril and tends to generate untold confusion.

In ordinary language, the term permission suggests some sort of positive sanction. To say that God “allows” or “permits” evil does not mean that He sanctions it in the sense that He approves of it. It is easy to discern that God never permits sin in the sense that He sanctions it in His creatures.

What is usually meant by divine permission is that God simply lets it happen. That is, He does not directly intervene to prevent its happening. Here is where grave dangers lurk. Some theologies view this drama as if God were impotent to do anything about human sin.

This view makes man sovereign, not God. God is reduced to the role of spectator or cheerleader, by which God’s exercise in providence is that of a helpless Father who, having done all He can do, must now sit back and simply hope for the best. He permits what He cannot help but permit because He has no sovereign power over it. This ghastly view is not merely a defective view of theism; it is unvarnished atheism.

Coram Deo

How has a false view of God’s permissive will affected your Christian walk in the past? Do you have a different view of His permissive will now? How will it affect your walk in the future?

Passages for Further Study

John 7:17
Psalm 37:23
Psalm 27:11

The Emperor Has No Clothes

The Delusions and Illusions of Xi Jinping

A fascinating article has recently been published in National Review Online.  The piece is entitled "The Belt and Road Illusion" and is written by Therese Shaheen, CEO of US Asia International. She was the chairman of the State Department’s American Institute in Taiwan from 2002 to 2004.

A salient point of the article is that when it comes to China, things are not what they seem  In fact, the Chinese Premier, Xi Jinping appears more like a cross between a master illusionist and a con man.

Xi is the master — okay, there’s at least one other leader in his league — of making people respond to his utterances and declarations as though they were fact, distracting his observers to obscure the reality in the background. In the foreground, the world sees China’s conspicuous urban wealth, global companies dominating its sectors, the largest banks in the world, military expansion, and diplomatic energy. This obscures runaway public and private debt, an aging population with no social-support system after decades of the disastrous one-child policy, and rural poverty that approaches the worst found anywhere else in the world.

A present iteration in this vast propaganda effort is the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

Additional Reporting on Chinese Government Tyranny

Chinese Regime Holds Million Uighurs in Secret Camps

Credible Reports

By Reuters

GENEVA—A U.N. human rights panel said on Friday that it had received many credible reports that 1 million ethnic Uighurs in China are held in what resembles a “massive internment camp that is shrouded in secrecy.”

Gay McDougall, a member of the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, cited estimates that 2 million Uighurs and Muslim minorities were forced into “political camps for indoctrination” in the western Xinjiang autonomous region.

“We are deeply concerned at the many numerous and credible reports that we have received that in the name of combating religious extremism and maintaining social stability the Chinese Regime has changed the Uighur autonomous region into something that resembles a massive internship camp that is shrouded in secrecy, a sort of ‘no rights zone,'” she told the start of a two-day regular review of China’s record, including Hong Kong and Macao.

China says Xinjiang faces a serious threat from radical Islamic terrorists and separatists who plot attacks and stir up tensions between the mostly Muslim Uighur minority who call the region home and the ethnic Han Chinese majority.

A Chinese delegation of some 50 officials made no comment on her remarks at the Geneva session that continues on Monday.



Men install a CCTV camera in a shopping street in the old town of Kashgar, Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, China. (Reuters/Thomas Peter)

The allegations came from multiple sources, including activist group Chinese Human Rights Defenders, which said in a report last month that 21 percent of all arrests recorded in China in 2017 were in Xinjiang.

Earlier, Yu Jianhua, China’s ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, said it was working towards equality and solidarity among all ethnic groups.  But McDougall said that members of the Uighur community and others Muslims were being treated as “enemies of the state” solely on the basis of their ethno-religious identity.  More than 100 Uighur students who returned to China from countries including Egypt and Turkey had been detained, with some dying in custody, she said.

Fatima-Binta Dah, a panel member, referred to “arbitrary and mass detention of almost 1 million Uighurs” and asked the Chinese delegation:

“What is the level of religious freedom available now to Uighurs in China, what legal protection exists for them to practice their religion?”

Panelists also raised reports of mistreatment of Tibetans in the autonomous region, including inadequate use of the Tibetan language in the classroom and at court proceedings.

“The U.N. body maintained its integrity, the government got a very clear message,” Golok Jigme, a Tibetan monk and former prisoner living in exile, told Reuters at the meeting.

The adherents of the spiritual practice, Falun Dafa (also known as Falun Gong) have also been violently oppressed and persecuted. The Chinese regime perceived Falun Gong’s presence as a threat to its authoritarian rule and began a campaign to eradicate the practice in July 1999.


A poster of the film Human Harvest depicts a meditating Falun Gong practitioner, with prices attached to her organs. (Flying Cloud Productions)

The official press office for Falun Gong, the Falun Dafa Information Center, estimates that millions of Falun Gong practitioners have been arrested and detained since the persecution started, often enduring torture, abuse, and even live organ harvesting while imprisoned. The regime also launched mass propaganda campaigns in an effort to turn public opinion against Falun Gong practitioners.

Daily Meditation

What We Were Made For

Christ suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God. (1 Peter 3:18)

John Piper

The gospel is the enjoyment of fellowship with God himself. This is made explicit here in 1 Peter 3:18 in the phrase “that he might bring us to God.”

All the other gifts of the gospel exist to make this one possible.

• We are forgiven so that our guilt does not keep us away from God.
• We are justified so that our condemnation does not keep us away from God.
• We are given eternal life now, with new bodies in the resurrection, so that we have the capacities for enjoying God to the fullest.

Test your heart. Why do you want forgiveness? Why do you want to be justified? Why do you want eternal life? Is the decisive answer: "because I want to enjoy God"?

The gospel-love God gives is ultimately the gift of himself. This is what we were made for. This is what we lost in our sin. This is what Christ came to restore.

“In your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore” (Psalm 16:11).

Refusing to Bow To Every "Whim and Fancy"

Sage Advice

The following piece of advice and direction to a teenager has been making the rounds on the Net.  The precise provenance is not established.  Nevertheless, its direction and advice is pretty timely.  There are few parents of teenagers who would not be found nodding affirmatively.  Unless, of course, one happened to be a metro-sexual parent who had long ago departed from the realms of received wisdom and common sense.

Open Letter to Teen-ager

Always we hear the plaintive cry of the teen-ager. What can we do?…Where can we go?

The answer is GO HOME!

Hang the storm windows, paint the woodwork. Rake the leaves, mow the lawn, shovel the walk. Wash the car, learn to cook, scrub some floors. Repair the sink, build a boat, get a job.

Help the minister, priest, or rabbi, the Red Cross, the Salvation Army. Visit the sick, assist the poor, study your lessons. And then when you are through – and not too tired – read a book.

Your parents do not owe you entertainment. Your city or village does not owe you recreational facilities.  The world does not owe you a living…You owe the world something.  You owe it your time and your energy and your talents so that no one will be at war or in poverty or sick or lonely again.

Grow up; quit being a crybaby. Get out of your dream world and develop a backbone, not a wishbone, and start acting like a man or a lady.  You’re supposed to be mature enough to accept some of the responsibility your parents have carried for years.

They have nursed, protected, helped, appealed, begged, excused, tolerated and denied themselves needed comforts so that you could have every benefit. This they have done gladly, for you are their dearest treasure.

But now, you have no right to expect them to bow to every whim and fancy just because selfish ego instead of common sense dominates your personality, thinking and request.

In Heaven’s name, grow up and go home!

– South Bend Tribune, Sunday, Dec. 6, 1959.

Orwellian China And The Sino-Stalags

Denial 

A Million Muslim Uighurs Held In Internment Camps

The country is responding to concerns raised by a UN committee about a crackdown and strict controls in Xinjiang region.


Muslims pray at a mosque during Ramadan in Urumqi, Xinjiang


By Greg Heffer, news reporter
Sky News

China has rejected claims one million of its mostly Muslim Uighur minority are being held in internment camps, while it has also insisted "there are no such things" as re-education centres.

The country responded to concerns, raised by a member of a UN human rights committee, that its Xinjiang region has been turned into "something resembling a massive internment camp, shrouded in secrecy, a sort of no-rights zone".

Human rights expert Gay McDougall, a member of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, last week highlighted reports that more than one million ethnic Uighurs and other Turkic Muslim minorities are being held in counter-extremism centres.  Another two million "have been forced" into re-education camps for "political and cultural indoctrination", Ms McDougall had claimed, as she cited the work of rights groups.

Daily Meditation

Examining the Preceptive Will of God

Ligonier Ministries

The preceptive will of God relates to the revealed commandments of God’s published law. When God commands us not to steal, this decree does not carry with it the immediate necessity of consequence. Where it was not possible for the light to refuse to shine in creation, it is possible for us to refuse to obey this command. In a word, we steal.

We must be careful not to make too much of this distinction. We must not be lulled into thinking that the preceptive will of God is divorced form His decretive will. It is not as though the preceptive will has no effect or no necessity of consequence. We may have the power to disobey the precept. We do not have the power to disobey it with impunity. Neither can we annul it by our disregard. His law remains intact whether we obey or disobey it.

In one sense, the preceptive will is part of the decretive will. God sovereignly and efficaciously decrees that His Law be established. It is established and nothing can disestablish it. His Law exists as surely as the light by which we read it.

Coram Deo

During the next few days, read Psalm 119, which praises the preceptive will of God as revealed in His written Word.

Passages for Further Study

Romans 12:2
John 1:12-13
Mark 3:35

Beware the Unintended Consequences

Funereal Lamentations

There is an ancient saying: when you sow to the wind, you risk reaping the whirlwind.  It is a metaphorical warning.  Another variant of the same sentiment is, what goes around comes around.  These patterns are manifestations of God's justice at work in the world.  

The lesbian worldview has been promoted as a glorification of the sisterhood.  Women within and amongst themselves are complete.  But now the whirlwind has come.  The sisterhood risks being struck down and brought to nothing by trans-genderism.  The latter is the self-same wind to which numerous women have sown over the years.  But this time the wind has returned in an altered garb and it tears at the paper-thin fabric of lesbianism.  It is showing it has the will and desire to make lesbianism null and void.

Once the lesbian movement could count on the socially liberal, the Chattering Classes, for support.  No longer.  They have abandoned the celebration of lesbianism and moved on to the next cause, the next iteration.  The next iteration is tearing down whatever constrains and binds.  It  is tearing down the protections and constraints and ideologies of lesbianism.  Beware the unintended consequences.  There is always a whirlwind following the wind.

A bill that would make it easier for people to change the gender on their birth certificate will put women and girls in danger, the Lesbian Rights Alliance Aotearoa says.

Letter From the UK (About the Totalitarian Treatment of a Nurse)

Forget Burkas

Christianity's the faith that is really under siege

Peter Hitchens
Daily Mail

How we love fretting about the wrong thing. While the country convulses itself about Islamic face veils, a truly disturbing event, affecting our freedom and our future, goes almost unobserved.

This is the creepy and totalitarian treatment of a Christian nurse, Sarah Kuteh, sacked from an NHS hospital for daring to suggest that a patient she was treating might like to go to church and (horror of horrors) ‘inappropriately gave a Bible to a patient’.

The good news is that Ms Kuteh, whose abilities as a nurse have never once been questioned, has now been allowed back to work by the political commissars who increasingly control our country. But the price of this is a humiliating process of self- criticism, of the sort once usual in communist states.

Daily Meditation

The Celestial City

"The Lord reigneth, let the earth rejoice."  Psalm 97:1

Charles H. Spurgeon

Causes for disquietude there are none so long as this blessed sentence is true. On earth the Lord's power as readily controls the rage of the wicked as the rage of the sea; his love as easily refreshes the poor with mercy as the earth with showers. Majesty gleams in flashes of fire amid the tempest's horrors, and the glory of the Lord is seen in its grandeur in the fall of empires, and the crash of thrones. In all our conflicts and tribulations, we may behold the hand of the divine King.

"God is God; he sees and hears
All our troubles, all our tears.
Soul, forget not, 'mid thy pains,
God o'er all forever reigns."

In hell, evil spirits own, with misery, his undoubted supremacy. When permitted to roam abroad, it is with a chain at their heel; the bit is in the mouth of behemoth, and the hook in the jaws of leviathan. Death's darts are under the Lord's lock, and the grave's prisons have divine power as their warder. The terrible vengeance of the Judge of all the earth makes fiends cower down and tremble, even as dogs in the kennel fear the hunter's whip.

"Fear not death, nor Satan's thrusts,
God defends who in him trusts;
Soul, remember, in thy pains,
God o'er all forever reigns."

In heaven none doubt the sovereignty of the King Eternal, but all fall on their faces to do him homage. Angels are his courtiers, the redeemed his favourites, and all delight to serve him day and night. May we soon reach the city of the great King!

"For this life's long night of sadness
He will give us peace and gladness.
Soul, remember, in thy pains,
God o'er all forever reigns."

Cheering News

Blood Crying From the Ground

We don't know about y'all but the solving of cold cases--particularly murder cases--brings a sense of satisfaction.  Justice, in this world, is a somewhat ephemeral concept; in eternity justice will be both real and holy.  Therefore, the capture and punishment of extreme evil doers brings with it a sense of "putting things right" as far as we are able, whilst awaiting that great day to come.

The Bible speaks of the blood of innocent victims of murder crying out from the ground to God.  There is an abiding curse and divine anger that broods over a society which carelessly fails to achieve preliminary justice in this world, prior to the administration of eternal justice. 

Consequently, we find that the rehearsal of cold cases in the media--cases which have never been solved by the state--has always been, not merely interesting, but important and necessary.  It is holy work, if you like.  In this vein, we are cheered by the recent progress made in one unsolved cold-case of murder.

Divinely Mandated and Required

The Death Penalty 

It Helps Preserve the Dignity of Life

By David French
National Review Online


Yesterday, my home state of Tennessee executed a man named Billy Ray Irick. It was the state’s first execution since 2009, and it was the final punishment for a crime so heinous that I hesitate to type the details. The short version is that Irick raped and asphyxiated a little girl. (If you want to read about the last moments of his victim, seven-year-old Paula Dyer, this story from the Knoxville News Sentinel is worth your time.)

He deserved to die.

The morality of the death penalty is up for renewed debate largely because Pope Francis is leading the Catholic Church to take a stronger stand against capital punishment. I’m not a Catholic, but it would be foolish for Protestants to ignore the teachings of the church and to not carefully consider its arguments. Moreover, colleagues I deeply respect, like my friend Kevin Williamson, share the Pope’s view.

Nevertheless, I disagree. I still support the death penalty — not because it’s a deterrent or a fitting act of vengeance, but because, properly carried out, it is the only penalty that truly reflects the enormous value of innocent life. There are times when it is the only punishment that truly fits the crime.

It is for this reason that the same scriptures that so clearly direct the children of Israel to “choose life” also direct that “whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image.” Nor was the power of the sword taken from government by the New Testament. To the contrary, in Romans 13, Paul explicitly acknowledges that the power of the sword should rest with government, and that it holds “terror” for those who do wrong.

The sword, it should be noted, is designed to kill.

These declarations aren’t merely practical compromises from a time before the rise of consistent, reliable life imprisonment. They are grounded — as Dennis Prager argued recently here in National Review — in the understanding that murder represents a direct attack on “human dignity and inviolability.”

It is interesting to me that as the modern West has grown increasingly post-Christian, it has increasingly signaled a desire to move beyond the death penalty. Even as it grows opposed to capital punishment, ours is a culture that protects a very different right to kill: the right to kill an innocent child in the womb. This represents the deepest possible perversion of justice:

The State Is New Zealand's Worst Parent

Our Biggest Parent Is Also our Most Abusive

Government As Parent is Failing Children

It is Also Failing Hired Helpers

Family First NZ Press Release

Family First NZ says that Judge Kevin Phillips has honourably taken responsibility for the consequences of bailing a teenager who went on to commit a serious assault on a young woman. The Judge also raised concerns relating to the multiple State Care placements the teenager had been in whilst in care.

“Sadly, far too many children and youth placed in Oranga Tamariki (previously named CYF) care, are continually being bounced between placements. What will surprise many people, are the actual reasons why,” said Mel Taylor, spokesperson for Family First, and specialist caregiver for 16 years of high at-risk teenage boys.

“More and more children needing to be placed with O.T Caregivers, have serious behavioural and mental health issues. As years progress, the high at-risk behaviours continue to come out, and one reason for children being placed in multiple homes is simply because caregivers are not equipped to deal with these behaviours. All too often, caregivers and their own children are placed at risk from young people with Foetal Alcohol and/or Foetal Drug issues.

“With teenagers in state care, the reasons for multiple placements are quite different. It is usually attributed to them being kicked out of multiple placements.

Daily Meditation

Comprehending the Decretive Will of God

Ligonier Ministries

God’s decretive will is sometimes described as the sovereign, efficacious will by which God brings to pass whatever He pleases by His divine decree. An example of this may be seen in God’s work of creation. When God said, “Let there be light” (Gen. 1:3), He issued a divine imperative. He exercised His sovereign, efficacious will. When He did so, it was impossible for the light not to appear. It appeared by the sheer necessity of consequence.

The decretive will can have no other effect, no other consequence than what God sovereignly commands. He did not request the light to shine. Neither did He coax, cajole, or woo it into existence. It was a matter of absolute authority and power.

No creature enjoys this power of will. No man’s will is that efficacious. Men issue decrees and then hope they will bring about their desired effects. God alone can decree with the necessity of consequence.

Coram Deo

Read Genesis 1, observing how God repeatedly exercised His sovereign, efficacious will in creation.

Passages for Further Study

Colossians 1:9
1 John 2:17
1 Peter 4:1-2

How the Mighty Have Fallen

Prejudice Masquerading As a Truth Claim

We recently read the following assertion from the normally reliable David Farrar:

Gay conversion therapy is a terrible thing which does cause harm. It is based on the false belief that being gay is a choice. Gay people no more choose to be gay than I choose to be heterosexual. [Kiwiblog]

Farrar asserts that it is a false belief to hold that being a homosexual is not a choice--along with (by logical extension) all the mutations of gender identificationism.  And your evidence for this is what,  pray tell. What an absurd, silly claim.

The thing that stands out here is the absolute nature of Farrar's truth claim: "gay people no more choose to be gay than I choose to be heterosexual."  For that claim to be approaching the status of being proved, established, and reified as scientifically grounded, it must be subject to falsification.  If it cannot be falsified, then scientific it ain't. 

How would Farrar prove such a claim?

Daily Meditation

The Different Tenses of Grace

We always pray for you, that our God may make you worthy of his calling and may fulfill every resolve for good and every work of faith by his power, so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ. (2 Thessalonians 1:11–12)

John Piper

Grace is not only God’s disposition to do good for us when we don’t deserve it — undeserved favor. It is also a power from God that acts in our lives and makes good things happen in us and for us.

Paul said that we fulfill our resolves for good “by his power” (verse 11). And then he adds at the end of verse 12, “according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.” The power that actually works in our lives to make Christ-exalting obedience possible is an extension of the grace of God.

You can see this also in 1 Corinthians 15:10:

By the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me.

So grace is an active, present, transformative, obedience-enabling power.

Therefore this grace which moves in power from God to you at a point in time is both past and future. It has already done something for you or in you and therefore is past. And it is about to do something in you and for you, and so it is future — both five seconds away and five million years away.

God’s grace is ever cascading over the waterfall of the present from the inexhaustible river of grace coming to us from the future into the ever-increasing reservoir of grace in the past. In the next five minutes, you will receive sustaining grace flowing to you from the future, and you will accumulate another five minutes’ worth of grace in the reservoir of the past.

Daily Meditation

The Point of Creation

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. (Genesis 1:27)

John Piper

God made humans in his image so that the world would be filled with reflectors of God. Images of God. Seven billion statues of God. So that nobody would miss the point of creation.

Nobody (unless they were stone blind) could miss the point of humanity, namely, God — knowing, loving, showing God. The angels cry in Isaiah 6:3, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!” It’s full of billions of human image bearers. Glorious ruins.

But not only humans. Also nature! Why such a breathtaking world for us to live in? Why such a vast universe?  I once read that there are more stars in the universe than there are words and sounds that all humans of all time have ever spoken. Why? The Bible is crystal clear about this: “The heavens declare the glory of God” (Psalm 19:1).

If someone asks, “If earth is the only inhabited planet and man the only rational inhabitant among the stars, why such a large and empty universe?" The answer is: It’s not about us. It’s about God. And that's an understatement.

God created us to know him and love him and show him. And then he gave us a hint of what he is like — the universe.

Family First on Gender Choice

Gender Bending Ignorance


Media Release 11 August 2018
Family First


Family First NZ says that politicians will vote on a law change which will further deem birth certificates meaningless. This comes as a result of a decision by the Government and Administration select committee to recommend that birth certificates be based on the choice of the person, including the fact that no medical evidence is required for the change.

“By choosing your own gender in your birth certificate, the certificates will become an object of unscientific gender ideology and effectively tell medical professionals that they got it wrong at time of birth. Circumstances may change but a historical document should not be able to be changed,” says Bob McCoskrie, National Director of Family First NZ.

“And just how many genders will be listed. Facebook have more than 70, and counting.”

“It is disturbing that politicians want to ignore biological reality and, in the process, bring about confusion and ambiguity. A birth certificate is a historical record based on fact – not a political tool to further an ideology.”

Family First says it is also concerning that the bill continues to allow the birth certificate of an ‘eligible child’ to be changed to the ‘nominated’ sex simply through an application of ‘the guardian’. It is well-established today that the overwhelming majority of such children – from 75% to 98% – who experience gender dysphoria grow out of it by the time they reach puberty. It is not inborn.

Moral Cowardice and Dereliction of Duty

The Lawlessness of Professor Thomas 

Chris Bishop, MP for Hutt South has penned (and published) a letter to the Vice Chancellor of Massey University.  The latter has been guilty of breaching and breaking New Zealand's Free Speech laws.

I am due to speak to the Massey University Politics Club next Wednesday. I have today written this letter to the Massey Vice-Chancellor. Her decision to ban Don Brash from speaking on campus is highly likely to be unlawful and absolutely outrageous. Below is my full letter.

Dear Professor Thomas

I am writing to you about your recent decision to ban former National Party Leader and Reserve Bank Governor Dr Don Brash from speaking at Massey University’s Palmerston North campus at an event arranged by the University’s Politics Club.

I have also been invited to speak to the club and my talk has been arranged for next Wednesday 15 August.

Freedom of expression in New Zealand is protected in law by section 14 of the Bill of Rights Act. As Justice Anderson, as he then was, famously put it in Hosking v Runting, “Freedom of expression is the first and last trench in the protection of liberty”. The right has been described by the New Zealand Court of Appeal as being “as wide as human thought and imagination.” These quotes encapsulate the protections long given by the common law to free speech, also now protected in international and domestic human rights instruments.

Universities have traditionally been regarded as bastions of free speech and critical thought. In particular, section 162 of the Education Act 1989 recognises the special role of universities as “critic(s) and conscience(s) of society”, while section 161 specifically protects:

the freedom of academic staff and students, within the law, to question and test received wisdom, to put forward new ideas and to state controversial or unpopular opinions.

With this background, your reported comments outlining your rationale for stopping Dr Brash from speaking give me extreme cause for concern and I strongly urge you to reconsider your decision.  Let me take each of your reported statements in turn.

Daily Meditation

Defining God’s Will

Ligonier Ministries

“It is the will of God.” How easily these words fall from the lips or flow from the pen. How difficult it is to penetrate exactly what they mean. Few concepts in theology generate more confusion than the will of God.

One problem we face is rooted in the multifaceted way in which the term will functions in biblical expressions. The Bible uses the expression “the will of God” in various ways. We encounter two different Greek words in the New Testament (boule and thelema), both of which are capable of several nuances. They encompass such ideas as the counsel of God, the plan of God, the decrees of God, the disposition or attitude of God, as well as other nuances.

Augustine once remarked, “In some sense, God wills everything that happens.” The immediate question raised by this comment is, In what sense? How does God “will” the presence of evil and suffering? Is He the immediate cause of evil? Does He do evil? God forbid. Yet evil is a part of His creation. If He is sovereign over the whole of His creation, we must face the conundrum: How is evil related to the divine will?

Questions like this one make distinctions necessary—sometimes fine distinctions, even technical distinctions—with respect to the will of God.

Coram Deo

What is your response to the questions raised in this reading: How does God “will” the presence of evil and suffering? Is He the immediate cause of evil? Does He do evil?

Passages for Further Study

Psalm 40:8
Psalm 143:10
Matthew 6:10