Prayer -- Participating with God

Continuing the posts on prayer, I want to now suggest that prayers of petition are important in our lives for a second reason. In the previous post, it was argued that prayers of petition are crucial as reminders to us of our ongoing dependence upon God's personal providence. Furthermore, I tried to make the case that expressing our needs to God (even though God may know them) is critical because communing (from which we get the idea of communication) is the essence of the being made in God's image. But you can read that presentation for yourself.

Here I want to make another point about why we pray prayers of petition unto God.

We pray in this supplicative fashion because we are participating in God's own activity. Recall the words of St. Paul in Romans 8:

26In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. 27And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God's will.

Here's an intriguing question, then (at least in my mind). Why in the world would the Spirit himself intercede for us, if God's will is going to be done in our lives anyway. Perhaps the Spirit's intercession for us, "with groans that words cannot express" is God's own crying out to God. One has to wonder whose "groans" the Spirit expresses -- our human groanings or God's own.Of course, Paul could merely be speaking in some poetic fashion, but then these words would have no revelatory or theological significance.

Whatever else it means, when we pray we are actually joining with God's own activity for us and in us. So, perhaps one of the reasons we practice intercessory petitionary prayer is that we might learn how to pray as the Holy Spirit prays.

Prayer -- The First Ministry of Dependence.

Without doubt, St. Augustine's Confessions is one of the greatest books written in the entire literary history of the West. This prayer for his departed parents (especially his mother), which comes at the end of Book 9, drips with spiritual pathos, even as it confesses faith. It is a good prayer to reflect upon for the first post of the mini-series (see below) on prayer that I shall offer.

Thus now, O my Praise and my Life, O God of my heart, forgetting for a little her good deeds for which I give joyful thanks to thee, I now beseech thee for the sins of my mother. Hearken unto me, through that Medicine of our wounds, who didst hang upon the tree and who sittest at thy right hand "making intercession for us.". . I beseech thee also to forgive her debts, whatever she contracted during so many years since the water of salvation. Forgive her, O Lord, forgive her, I beseech thee. . .

Indeed, I believe thou hast already done what I ask of thee, but "accept the freewill offerings of my mouth, O Lord." [She] only desired to have her name remembered at thy altar, where she had served without the omission of a single day, and where she knew that the holy sacrifice was dispensed by which that handwriting that was against us is blotted out.

Who will repay him the price with which he bought us, so as to take us from him? Thus to the sacrament of our redemption did thy hand maid bind her soul by the bond of faith. Let none separate her from thy protection. . . .

Therefore, let her rest in peace with her husband. . . And inspire, O my Lord my God, inspire thy servants, my brothers; thy sons, my masters, who with voice and heart and writings I serve, that as many of them as shall read these confessions may also at thy altar remember Monica, thy handmaid, together with Patricius. . . .

The following line represents the mystery of prayer, for so many of us:

"Indeed, I believe thou hast already done what I ask of thee, but "accept the freewill offerings of my mouth, O Lord."

So, why do we pray? It seems to me that the first reason (although there are more) that we make petitionary prayer is because we are completely dependent upon God. This is true whether we know it or not.

However, Christians know the God upon whom we depend is clearly personal, rather than merely some force that undergirds reality. In the Triune Godhead immanently we have Three Persons in eternal communion. The Son is eternally begotten-- the Word of God (John 1); and the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father (hat tip to the East). The theology of orthodoxy is clear that the Three-One God is a communion of persons.

We would not be far afield if we were to say that the Trinity is the eternal source of personal communication; although in so speaking we must not think that we speak univocally about Triune communication and our paltry speaking of thoughts to and with one another. But, our capacity to formulate thought and express ourselves in reason and love is surely a reflection of our bearing God's Image. So, speaking to express and share our very selves is one of the ways we are, by an unspeakable grace, most like God in our creatureliness.

When we address God in petitionary prayer, therefore, we are acknowledging two vitally important realities. The first already allude to: our utter dependence upon God who made us in the Divine Image. To ask God for things or for God to do things is to identify for ourselves the source of our lives and the hope of the welfare of ourselves and our family and friends. But, this reminding is only complete when we "speak" it. (Even if we "think" it we are "speaking" it, whether oral utterances are produced or not.) This act of speaking out petitions is completing, because our dependence is upon the Tri-Personal God.

But this brings us to a second consideration. Speaking in petition to God in Christ is personal communication. Rooted as it is in the Triune Life, speaking petitionary prayer involves acknowledging our dependence upon God who is Personal Reality. Petitionary prayer, therefore, is an act that is rooted in the belief that God oversees and interacts with the world. And it considers expressing our needs and wishes to God a vital part of what it means to be in the care of this kind of God. Where as many philosophies and religious outlooks allow for conceptualizing -- as the Stoics of old would have -- about one's lot in life, petitionary prayer affirms that Trinitarian Providence is first and foremost personal involvement. The Incarnation is both the most sublime sign of this and the most powerful means.

Hence, because Trinitarian Providence is Personal, it is also contingent but not arbitrary. It is rooted completely in God's good purposes for Creation and for us as children of the Father in Christ who live by the presence and power of the Spirit. Nothing imposes itself upon us in God's providence as a necessity. Christian theology has even contended (Leibinitz's view of sufficient reason not withstanding) God's goodness to be free, even if it comes from God's own nature and unchanging character.

So, nothing is fate. In other words, no concept of Kharma can be reconciled with petitionary Trinitarian-personal prayer, for nothing is determined for us by the circumstances of our lives. (Consider even the prayers of Ninevah, who turned to God in repentance and were spared from the prophecy.) As the Psalmist says, "our help is in the Lord." And as St. Paul says in Colossians, "All things hold together in Christ" [alone, we could add].

Petitionary prayer, therefore, is first of all a ministry of the children of God in the life of the Church to one another. The very act of doing it declares to us and reminds us of our dependence upon the Triune personal source of our lives,. We are reminded, thereby, that our lives are in His hands not controlled by laws or circumstances. And when we pray we are reminding ourselves that our dependence is upon the Triune One who listens when we pray, because we bear the image of a God who commune-icates in His own Triune life.

Why *do* we pray?

ICON OF ST SERAPHIM PRAYING.

FROM JOHN WESLEY'S -- On Christian Perfection

God's command to "pray without ceasing" is founded on the necessity we have of his grace to preserve the life of God in the soul, which can no more subsist one moment without it, than the body can without air.

Whether we think of; or speak to, God, whether we act or suffer for him, all is prayer, when we have no other object than his love, and the desire of pleasing him. All that a Christian does, even in eating and sleeping, is prayer, when it is done in simplicity, according to the order of God, without either adding to or diminishing from it by his own choice.

Prayer continues in the desire of the heart, though the understanding be employed on outward things. In souls filled with love, the desire to please God is a continual prayer.

As the furious hate which the devil bears us is termed the roaring of a lion, so our vehement love may be termed crying after God.

God only requires of his adult children, that their hearts be truly purified, and that they offer him continually the wishes and vows that naturally spring from perfect love. For these desires, being the genuine fruits of love, are the most perfect prayers that can spring from it.

One of the great pastoral mysteries is prayer, especially petitionary prayer. In the Church, all acknowledge its importance, yet few practice it regularly. One wonders, why.

Some might decry the laxness in prayer as evidence of spiritual ennui; and it might certainly be. Others could complain of the lack of pastoral instruction to the faithful about how to pray; such would not be far afield.

I suggest that one reason that we fail to pray is that we have no real theology of prayer. There are all kinds of postions, of course. The "name-it-and-claim-it" crowd, if they have an operative theology, seem to assume that God sits back and awaits our instructions, because he desires to be instructed to bless us. In the past few years, Open Theism -- much more theological than the previously mentioned crew, has suggested that God's will is underdetermined regarding the future, because the future is non-existing and hence radically open. Human prayerful interaction with God does make a vast difference.

On the other hand, there are another set of Christians who hold a diametrically opposite view; our prayers change nothing about God's actions, as all that God has determined to do God will do. In this senario, prayer is more about aligning our wills to God's than making actual petition. And lastly there are those who simply say, it is a mystery. Well, no doubt............

So, I am wondering, how would we best begin to articulate a theology of prayer? As I see it, there are at least four related theological/pastoral issues that must be addressed. First, what is the character of God's providence, i.e. how determined is it? Second, what role are human persons designed to play in God's providential oversight, as bearers of God's image with a role of shepherding creation for him(Genesis 1-2)? Third, how does the Church understand itself in the work of redemption in the world, since Jesus (at least in John's Gospel) suggests that the Church would "do what he had been doing," and "could ask in his name" and expect the Father to hear and answer? Fourth, how does our eschatology inform our concepts of prayer and its efficacy?

I'll be posting on this issue during this next week or so, but I would love to have a bit of a conversation among the few of you who read my ramdom and eclectic musings from time to time. Until later. . .

What We Know About. . . .Anything

During the last 150 years vast improvements have been brought to our world through the efforts of scientists and researchers. Hooray!

And yet, in some fields of scientific inquiry there is an ongoing resistance to ideas that challenge the accepted wisdom. The most obvious of these, I think, is in the area of biological origins, where neo-Darwinism has reigned supreme. That is, until recently. Beginning with Paul Johnson's book, Darwin on Trial, a new movement was launched publicly -- Intelligent Design Theory. Since then there has been a firestorm about the new conclusions (which are quite old actually) of IDT.

In the upcoming edition of National Review Magazine, George Gilder has an article entitled "Darwin and Me." He describes among other things in this excellent essay the way that neo-Darwinian theory fails to account for the way that the very existence of DNA information in living beings undercuts the main tenents of the reigning orthodoxy in science.

I came to see that the computer offers an insuperable obstacle to Darwinian materialism. In a computer, as information theory shows, the content is manifestly independent of its material substrate. No possible knowledge of the computer’s materials can yield any information whatsoever about the actual content of its computations. In the usual hierarchy of causation, they reflect the software or “source code” used to program the device; and, like the design of the computer itself, the software is contrived by human intelligence.

As I pondered this materialist superstition, it became increasingly clear to me that in all the sciences I studied, information comes first, and regulates the flesh and the world, not the other way around. The pattern seemed to echo some familiar wisdom. Could it be, I asked myself one day in astonishment, that the opening of St. John’s Gospel, In the beginning was the Word, is a central dogma of modern science?

In raising this question I was not affirming a religious stance. At the time it first occurred to me, I was still a mostly secular intellectual. But after some 35 years of writing and study in science and technology, I can now affirm the principle empirically. Salient in virtually every technical field — from quantum theory and molecular biology to computer science and economics — is an increasing concern with the word. It passes by many names: logos, logic, bits, bytes, mathematics, software, knowledge, syntax, semantics, code, plan, program, design, algorithm, as well as the ubiquitous “information.” In every case, the information is independent of its physical embodiment or carrier.

Biologists commonly blur the information into the slippery synecdoche of DNA, a material molecule, and imply that life is biochemistry rather than information processing. But even here, the deoxyribonucleic acid that bears the word is not itself the word. Like a sheet of paper or a computer memory chip, DNA bears messages but its chemistry is irrelevant to its content. The alphabet’s nucleotide “bases” form “words” without help from their bonds with the helical sugar-phosphate backbone that frames them. The genetic words are no more dictated by the chemistry of their frame than the words in Scrabble are determined by the chemistry of their wooden racks or by the force of gravity that holds them.

This reality expresses a key insight of Francis Crick, the Nobel laureate co-author of the discovery of the double-helix structure of DNA. Crick expounded and enshrined what he called the “Central Dogma” of molecular biology. The Central Dogma shows that influence can flow from the arrangement of the nucleotides on the DNA molecule to the arrangement of amino acids in proteins, but not from proteins to DNA. Like a sheet of paper or a series of magnetic points on a computer’s hard disk or the electrical domains in a random-access memory — or indeed all the undulations of the electromagnetic spectrum that bear information through air or wires in telecommunications — DNA is a neutral carrier of information, independent of its chemistry and physics. By asserting that the DNA message precedes and regulates the form of the proteins, and that proteins cannot specify a DNA program, Crick’s Central Dogma unintentionally recapitulates St. John’s assertion of the primacy of the word over the flesh.

By assuming that inheritance is a chemical process, Darwin ran afoul of the Central Dogma. He believed that the process of inherita The Origin of Species, though, Gregor Mendel showed that genes do not blend together like chemicals mixing. As the Central Dogma ordains and information theory dictates, the DNA program is discrete and digital, and its information is transferred through chemical carriers — but it is not specified by chemical forces. Each unit of biological information is passed on according to a digital program — a biological code — that is transcribed and translated into amino acids. . . . .

After 100 years or so of attempted philosophical leveling, however, it turns out that the universe is stubbornly hierarchical. It is a top-down “nested hierarchy,” in which the higher levels command more degrees of freedom than the levels below them, which they use and constrain. Thus, the higher levels can neither eclipse the lower levels nor be reduced to them. Resisted at every step across the range of reductive sciences, this realization is now inexorable. We know now that no accumulation of knowledge about chemistry and physics will yield the slightest insight into the origins of life or the processes of computation or the sources of consciousness or the nature of intelligence or the causes of economic growth. As the famed chemist Michael Polanyi pointed out in 1961, all these fields depend on chemical and physical processes, but are not defined by them. Operating farther up the hierarchy, biological macro-systems such as brains, minds, human beings, businesses, societies, and economies consist of intelligent agents that harness chemical and physical laws to higher purposes but are not reducible to lower entities or explicable by them.

Materialism generally and Darwinian reductionism, specifically, comprise thoughts that deny thought, and contradict themselves. As British biologist J. B. S. Haldane wrote in 1927, “If my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain, I have no reason to suppose my beliefs are true . . . and hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms.” Nobel-laureate biologist Max Delbrück (who was trained as a physicist) described the contradiction in an amusing epigram when he said that the neuroscientist’s effort to explain the brain as mere meat or matter “reminds me of nothing so much as Baron Munchausen’s attempt to extract himself from a swamp by pulling on his own hair.”

A GREAT ARTICLE, so read it all HERE

Those who find the insights of men like Gilder and other ID Theorists should remember that the history of scientific research is dotted with resistance to new scientific conclusions. Consider the following from "The World Question Center."

The Hungarian surgeon Ignaz Semmelweiss in 1847 reduced the death rate in his hospital from twelve to two percent, simply by washing hands between operations -- a concept that today would be advocated by a four year old child. When Semmelweiss urged his colleagues to introduce hygiene to the operating rooms, they had him committed to a mental hospital where he eventually died.

When Louis Pasteur stated that bacteria could cause disease, colleagues treated the idea as "an absurd fantasy'!

Lord Kelvin, President of the Royal Society, only eight years before Orville and Wilbur Wright left the ground in an aeroplane, remarked: "Machines that are heavier than air will never be able to fly!"

The Perils of Cloning

That's the title of an excellent and infomrative article in Time.com.

Here's a conclusion about the impossibility of safe cloning by one prominent cloning scientist.

But the fact that clones have defects--however minor--only bolsters the arguments that scientists have made against human cloning. Based on his studies of the faults introduced by reprogramming, Jaenisch, for one, thinks human cloning is now out of the question. "I think we cannot make human reproductive cloning safe," he says. "And it's not a technological issue. It's a biological barrier. The pattern of methylation of a normal embryo cannot be re-created consistently in cloning

Read the whole thing.


I predict that one of the great side benefits, for Christian believers, from the whole lust after cloning by the scientific community will be further proof of the vast complexity of creating life as we have it on this planet. Will that ever prove to the already convinced that we just couldn't have accidentally arrived out of nothing? Probably not, but all the same....

What to do when the Supreme Court gets it wrong?

I concur with the opinion of those like John Yoo, who in this column, suggests that the Supreme Court got things exactly wrong in the Hamdan case that deals with the "right" to a "fair trial" by those who are held as prisoners capatured in the war on terror.

What the justices did would have been unthinkable in prior military conflicts: Judicial intervention in the decisions of the president and Congress on how best to wage war. They replaced his wartime judgment and Congress' support with their own speculation that open trials would not run intelligence risks. Their decision to impose specific rules and override political judgments about military necessity mistakes war — inherently unpredictable, and where our government must act quickly and sometimes secretly to protect national security — for the familiarity of the criminal justice system.

I think that one of the things that will occur as a part of the new situation that President Bush's vigorous and edgy execution of the WOT will produce is a strain on the "separation of powers" clause in the Constitution.

If folks like John Yoo are correct, that the high court has overstepped it bounds, how are we to expect the court to correct itself? Of course the Court has imposed its reach where it has no Constitutional business! So, I think (humbly, modestly, mildly) that the Congress should not only act to pass the legislation that the Court is calling for regarding the creation of statues to guide the Executive Branch in the trying of these enemies of our country.

They should also exercise their powers that the Constitution grants them the power to set the jurisdiction of the courts.

Article III, Section 2 of the Constitution grants the Legislative Branch this "check and balance" over the Judicial Branch. It reads:

Section 2. The judicial power shall extend to all cases, in law and equity, arising under this Constitution, the laws of the United States, and treaties made, or which shall be made, under their authority;--to all cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls;--to all cases of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction;--to controversies to which the United States shall be a party;--to controversies between two or more states;--between a state and citizens of another state;--between citizens of different states;--between citizens of the same state claiming lands under grants of different states, and between a state, or the citizens thereof, and foreign states, citizens or subjects.

In all cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, and those in which a state shall be party, the Supreme Court shall have original jurisdiction. In all the other cases before mentioned, the Supreme Court shall have appellate jurisdiction, both as to law and fact, with such exceptions, and under such regulations as the Congress shall make.

In other words, the Congress can make specific that the Supreme Court has not jurisdiction in the matters of the question of the execution of the constitutional authority of the President to carry out the Legislative instructions to wage conflict (and all that entails).

The framers of the Constitution wrote this into the checks against the Judicial Branch, because they wanted to ensure that The United States would always be a nation of laws democratically enacted through the people's representatives and never a nation of laws enacted by the "wisdom" of non-elected and unaccountable judges. If people do not like the way that the WOT is being waged, then vote out the Republicans and elect different leaders in the White House and the Congress. But don't be happy when the Supreme Court oversteps it bounds.

So, let the Congress act to remind the Supremes that "we the people" not they the people's judiciary are the sovereign authority under the constitutional provisions by which our lives are ordered.

The Vatican Announces. . . . . . . Embryonic Stem-Cell Researchers---------EXCOMMUNICATED

Hat Tip to Drudge. The UK Telegraph is reporting the story here.

Here's an interesting reaction from a researcher who will be affected.

But the threat was shrugged off yesterday by Italy's leading expert on cloning, Prof Cesare Galli, of the Laboratory of Reproductive Technologies in Cremona, who was the first scientist to clone a horse.

Prof Galli likened the Vatican to the Taliban and added: "I can bear excommunication. I was raised as a Catholic, I share Catholic values, but I am able to make my own judgment on some issues and I do not need to be told by the Church what to do or to think."

SOME THOUGHTS BY A METHODIST (aka ME).

What strikes me as very intriquing about Prof Galli's response is his confused and contradictory reasoning. He says two things that can't be reconciled: 1)"I share Catholic values;" and 2) I am able to make my own judgement on some issues."

Fair enough, on one level. Certainly he can make judgements for himself on a large variety of issues. But, if he rejects a central Catholic teaching about the nature of human life and the continuity of human existence and worth from conception to death, how can he say that he "shares Catholic values." He might share a kind of Catholic aesthetic sensibility of a generally Catholic religious world-view. But, he surely does not embrace Catholic moral teaching.

Further, he says he "shares" the values. That way of putting the issue reveals that he conceives of himself as being theologically, philosophically, ethically, and spiritually on the same axiological footing as the magesterium. The "values" of the Catholic, as I understand them as a Protestant, are not to be shared, but to be embraced (not merely surrendered to, but thoughtfully and faithfully embraced). The language of sharing implies that he has values that might or might not be taught by the Church, but he nonetheless shares some of the Catholic values.

Finally, when he says that he can "make his own judgement" on some issues, I wonder a couple of things. First, why only some issues. In fact, if he jettisons values as he sees fit he is essentially making his judgement the trump card on all issues. Second, on what basis would he make up his own mind. The fact is we reason about things (all things) based on some particular presupposed primary perspective about the way the "way things are." As Stanley Hauerwas, of Duke Divinity School would say -- our reasoning is always based on some narrative account of the value of the world, our place in the world, and what we should be doing ultimately. So, as Prof Galli "makes his own judgement" he owes it to other Catholics (especially those he teaches) to reveal the world-view that is shaping his own reasoning. It could be that he has embraced an intellectual perspective that is, indeed, antithetical to the Catholic world.

P.S. if he can so blithely dismiss the threat of excommunication, he really no longer believes in the saving ministry and soul-guiding ministry of the Church, anyway. Again, fair enough, but don't pretend to "share" Catholic values.

Canterbury Speaks

Arch-Bishop Williams has spoken regarding the debate in the Anglican communion over homosexuality, marriage, and ordination. This strikes me as right. What do some of you Anglicans or Anglo-ecclesio-philes think?

WASHINGTON BUREAU: Terry Mattingly's religion column for 6/28/06.

Thousands of Episcopalians believe the Sacrament of Marriage should
be modernized to include same-sex unions.

Thousands of others across America disagree.

Many regional dioceses have become battlegrounds, with liberal
parishes clashing with conservative parishes. At the national level,
some bishops have tried, with little success, to convince their
church hierarchy to repent after its 2003 consecration of the openly
gay Bishop V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire. This war has rocked the
70-million-member Anglican Communion, where traditionalists hold a
majority among the world's bishops.

So everyone has been waiting for a sign from the throne of St.
Augustine. Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has been pulled in
both directions, although his progressive views on sexuality are well
known.

"What is the current tension in the Anglican Communion actually
about? Plenty of people are confident that they know the answer,"
wrote Williams, in a letter this week to the Anglican primates. "It's
about gay bishops, or possibly women bishops. The American Church is
in favor and others are against -- and the Church of England is not
sure (as usual)."

But this is a conflict inside a global, sacramental communion, he
stressed. It cannot be debated in political terms.

Anglicans can even appreciate the role homosexuals have played in
church life, he said, yet believe that this "doesn't settle the
question of whether the Christian Church has the freedom, on the
basis of the Bible, and its historic teachings, to bless homosexual
partnerships as a clear expression of God's will. That is disputed
among Christians, and, as a bare matter of fact, only a small
minority would answer yes to the question."

Thus, Williams believes it's time for Anglicans to write a covenant
that would bind the communion together on crucial points of ancient
Christian doctrine and practice. Liberal churches that declined to
sign would become "associate" members of the communion and remain
linked by bonds of history and friendship -- but not "constituent"
members at the legal and sacramental levels.

Anglicanism would split, along lines defined by the global majority.

"Some actions -- and sacramental actions in particular -- just do
have the effect of putting a Church outside or even across the
central stream of the life they have shared with other Churches,"
wrote Williams. "It isn't a question of throwing people into outer
darkness, but of recognizing that actions have consequences -- and
that actions believed in good faith to be 'prophetic' in their
radicalism are likely to have costly consequences."

What would this look like in practice? The relationship, said the
archbishop, would not be "unlike that between the Church of England
and the Methodist Church," which broke away from Anglicanism in 1791.

The Episcopal Church posted the Williams letter on its website,
without initial comment. However, activists on both sides quickly
linked Canterbury's sobering epistle with the decision during their
recent General Convention to change the church's name from the
Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America to the
Episcopal Church -- period. This underlined the fact that it already
includes small jurisdictions in the Caribbean, Latin America and
Europe. Might it soon include Canada, New Zealand, Scotland other
churches that reject a doctrinal covenant?

Money will be an issue as Anglican leaders write their covenant.

The older, richer churches control massive endowments, pensions,
seminaries, properties and the ecclesiastical structures in their
lands. They control the resources of the past and will use them to
defend what they believe is the theology of the future.

However, traditionalists in the Third World and in some giant
American parishes are thriving in the here and now. They believe they
can use the resources of the present to defend the theology of the
past.

It's crucial that Williams repeatedly stressed that changes are
coming no matter what, said Father David Roseberry, rector of the
4,500-member Christ Church in Plano, Texas. This week, the parish
announced that it would leave the Episcopal Church, while striving to
remain in the Anglican Communion.

"I'm impressed that Rowan Williams is not willing to sacrifice the
doctrine, discipline and worship of Anglicanism in order to accept
the doctrine, discipline and worship of the modern Episcopal Church,"
said Roseberry. "In fact, it appears that he is sacrificing his own
personal views in order to preserve the unity of the church. This is
exactly what we believe a bishop should do."

Gay from birth?

From Drudge we read this report

Here's the punch line of the article. I am adding emphasis in order to comment below.

"These results support a prenatal origin to sexual orientation development in men."

He suggests the effect is probably the result of a "maternal memory" in the womb for male births.

A woman's body may see a male foetus as "foreign", he says, prompting an immune reaction which may grow progressively stronger with each male child.

The antibodies created may affect the developing male brain.

In an accompanying article, scientists from Michigan State University said: "These data strengthen the notion that the common denominator between biological brothers, the mother, provides a prenatal environment that fosters homosexuality in her younger sons."

"But the question of mechanism remains."

Andy Forrest, a spokesman for gay rights group Stonewall, said: "Increasingly, credible evidence appears to indicate that being gay is genetically determined rather than being a so-called lifestyle choice.

"It adds further weight to the argument that lesbian and gay people should be treated equally in society and not discriminated against for something that's just as inherent as skin colour."

Well, no doubt there is likely a possible biological factor that can be identified as a part of the development of homosexuality. However, let's look at what the article actually reports.

1. The scientists are looking for the "causative" mechanism to account for a phenomenon -- why the chances of a man being homosexual increase in relation to the greater number of older brothers he has. But, the article posits a hypothesis -- antibodies formed by the mother MAY affect male fetal brain development. That is a hypothesis to be tested, not a scientific conclusion. Since they don't find a correlation between social factors and increased homosexuality, the scientists observe that the lack of said social factor being identified strengthens the notion that there is a intra-uterine mechanism. That is not a proof and anyone who tries to imply it is is being either inexact or misleading.

2. But even if it turns out to be the case, one has to ask what it actually implies. It does not imply that such a state of affairs is one to be applauded or acknowledged. For instance, we find many, many human conditions that are caused because of things that go on in the womb during the development of the child. But, that does not mean that the status of those conditions is automatically affirmed as good. Some new research suggests that obeseity and diabetes result from developmental issues that are not what they should be in the womb. Hence, even if the research turns out to be correct and the hypothesis were to be shown to be adequate, one can still ask what it implies.

3. So, the claims by Andy Forrest that there is credible evidence that appears to indicate that being gay is genetically determined is far from true. First, a hypothesis that attempts to make sense of phenomena is not the same thing as credible evidence. So, it cannot appear to indicate anything in particular. But even more importantly, the hypothesis is not anywhere near concerned with homosexuality as genetically determined. The kind of biological determinations that the hypothesis suggests are not genetic, they are hormonal or electro-chemical, but they are not genetic. That is a different issue all together.

4. All things being equal then, this new research can provide us with some interesting insights and some further information to consider, but it does not trump the further metaphysical and moral questions that Christian faith has raised about the nature of homosexuality across the ages. Those are questions that cannot be dismissed.

Missing a point. . . .

THE PICTURE IS OF ST. FRANCIS -- A MAN WHO COURAGEOUSLY AND SELF-DENYINGLY BORE WITNESS TO CHRIST AND THE GOSPEL




Diana West, who writes for Townhall.com misses an important point in THIS article.

She is writing about the problem that some of the moral introspection that some Americans engage in (read liberals and the media) is ultimately counter productive for the purposes of defending American interests. She writes:

If we still valued our own men more than the enemy's and the "civilians" he hides among -- and now I'm talking about the war in Iraq -- our tactics would be totally different, and, not incidentally, infinitely more successful. We would drop bombs on city blocks, for example, not waste men in dangerous house-to-house searches. We would destroy enemy sanctuaries in Syria and Iran, not disarm "insurgents" at perilous checkpoints in hostile Iraqi strongholds.

In the 21st century, however, there is something that our society values more than our own lives -- and more than the survival of civilization itself. That something may be described as the kind of moral superiority that comes from a good wallow in Abu Ghraib, Haditha, CIA interrogations or Guantanamo Bay. Morally superior people -- Western elites -- never "humiliate" prisoners, never kill civilians, never torture or incarcerate jihadis. Indeed, they would like to kill, I mean, prosecute, or at least tie the hands of anyone who does.

This, of course, only enhances their own moral superiority. But it doesn't win wars. And it won't save civilization.

Why not? Because such smugness masks a massive moral paralysis. The morally superior (read: paralyzed) don't really take sides; don't really believe one culture is qualitatively better or worse than the other. They don't even believe one culture is just plain different from the other.

She observes an important point in that there are many, many persons who (on the left) talk as though they can live as citizens of no particular culture, without allegiances or commitments other than to some abstract ideals about multi-cultural relativism and the equality of persons. We always have to live our lives from a particular point of view and with particular commitments. Hence, her critique of those who embrace multi-culturalism and moral relativism are on target.

I am concerned, however, with Christians who might read her criticism and not reflect a fully as they might need to about the nature of a Christian response to the war.

What West does not envision, in her Spartanesque retrenchment of moral certitude based on a certainty of the nobility and necessity of American interests, is that a Christian might have a completely non-liberal rationale for taking pause about the "war on terror." Rather, than being unclear about the questions of moral superiority of -- say -- American democratic respect for human life and being fuzzy about the barbarity of the jihadists acts in comparison to those of the American armed forces, a Christian might, indeed, embrace resistance to the war and to the violence necessary to successfully wage because they perceive in Jesus Christ that God's kingdom demands their first and foremost fealty. So, one might not accept the particular moral calculus that West suggests has to be employed. One might, instead, insist that God's kingdom on earth demands of Christian disciples an embrace of peaceableness, non-violence, and courageous witness against the God-denying nature of all violence.

A Christian who embraces this understanding of the meaning of Jesus Christ's life, death, and resurrection would not be guilty of the moral equivalancy that leads to "moral paralysis" as West describes it. Rather, the point of such a Christian's resolve would be to declare witnes to the reality that in Jesus Christ we have learned that one does not overcome evil with another act that is itself (even if remarkably less so) evil. That a Christian is called to bear the abuse of others in the name of Jesus, because in Jesus Christ the world has been overcome. But, the perspective of this Christian pacificist would not be passivity. Rather, it would entail a courageous engagement with acts of self-giving love on behalf of one's fellow citizens, as well as one's enemies. Such a Christian might believe that the best service he could give to his country would be to insist that focusing of Abu Ghraib or other American failures far from being "a good wallow in Abu Ghraib, Haditha, CIA interrogations or Guantanamo Bay" actually helps approximate the values of the kingdom that Jesus came to inaugurate and make possible.

One can disagree with that kind of interpretation of the meaning of the Gospel in relation to political exigency, of course. But, let's be clear, it is not an example of failing to be clear about moral issues. Rather, it is a perspective that will not allow a moral issue to be discussed outside of the universal and all-inclusive claim of the Christian faith that Jesus Christ is Lord of all life -- even one's citizenship in a democratic republic that is morally superior to a barbaric jihad.

Thomas Aquinas on God's Presence to all things

CHAPTER LXVI—That nothing gives Being except in as much as it acts in the Power of God

NOTHING gives being except in so much as it is an actual being. But God preserves things in actuality.

5. The order of effects is according to the order of causes. But among all effects the first is being: all other things, as they proceed from their cause, are determinations of being. Therefore being is the proper effect of the prime agent, and all other things act inasmuch as they act in the power of the prime agent. Secondary agents, which are in a manner particular determinants of the action of the prime agent, have for the proper effects of their action other perfections determinant of being.[1]

6. What is essentially of a certain nature, is properly the cause of that which comes to have that nature only by participation.[1] But God alone is being by essence, all others are beings by participation. Therefore the being of everything that exists is an effect properly due to God; so that anything that brings anything else into being does so insomuch as it acts in the power of God.

Hence it is said: God created all things to be (Wisd. i, 14).

CHAPTER LXVII—That God is the Cause of Activity in all Active Agents

AS God not only gave being to things when they first began to be, but also causes being in them so long as they exist (Chap. LXV); so He did not once for all furnish them with active powers, but continually causes those powers in them, so that, if the divine influx were to cease, all activity would cease.

Hence it is said: Thou hast wrought all our works in us, O Lord (Isa. xxvi, 12). And for this reason frequently in the Scriptures the effects of nature are put down to the working of God, because He it is that works in every agent, physical or voluntary: e.g., Hast thou not drawn me out like milk, and curdled me like cheese? with skin and flesh thou hast clothed me, with bones and sinews thou hast put me together (Job x, 10, 11).

From -- OF God and His Creatures

It is late; and one should know better than to post anything about Aquinas when sleep is nigh, but here goes anyway.

Such a perspective as this, I think, can help greatly in overcoming many of the contemporary arguments over God's sovereignty. The extremes are as follows. For some, sovereignty must mean that God causes all things by a particular action or a particular will in every instance. For others, sovereignty is a notion that does away with human freedom, hence they are willing to redefine it -- almost away. For others sovereignty means God is never not able to cause or to stop an action. Hence, all that occurs happens because God allows it to occur. For others, God is open and therefore the world is undetermined.

But if Aquinas is anywhere near correct in his formulation of the relationship that creatures have to God, sovereignty can take on a new meaning, one which does acknowledges God's involvement in all things but does not deny human freedom. On this view, no act can take place without the "divine influx" (as Aquinas puts it) making that action (excuse the neologism) existible. Each and every thought, act of an agent, or event among non-agent entities (ex. growing flowers and speeding comets) is only possible as God shares his own activity of existing with them.

Hence, we can begin to meditate on the great mystery of iniquity (as St. Paul says) as well as the tragedy of sin. No sinful act by any human being can take place apart from God's enabling the very existence of the act by allowing it to participate in his own activity of existing. Human desire and human will, therefore, as existential acts have no being apart from God. But, (and here is the mystery) God enables free acts to exist that are not blue-printed out by his eternal design, but nonetheless are only possible only as he gives the reality of existence in the human agent to the POSSIBILITY of free acts, as well as the acts themselves performed by said agents. Freedom of response to God or freedom of rejection of God, therefore, are enabled by his own design as he allowes these to participate in his existence.

The tragedy is that the freedom God's own being enables even a sinful act to have existence, in that it partakes in a paltry way of God's own freedom of existence. But the sinful act introduces something into the participatory relationship that is contrary to God's will for his creation and its character. This, of course, does not affect God, because his essence cannot change. But the act that is contrary to God's nature can, and does, disrupt the way one participates in God's life and being.

Hence, God is the sovereign cause of all acts, in that he -- and only he -- enables their existence by his own being. But, what he enables in agents that bear his image is a shadowy reflection of his freedom of act. One which eventuates in the human agent sin freely committed. But that same participation -- graciously bestowed in creation and by God's ongoing sustaining presence -- enables "whosoever will" to respond to him in Christ freely, as well. Here the notion of irrestibility of grace, becomes unnecessary. This response is not a human initiative, for nothing is ultimately based in human initiative. Thanks be to God that in Christ we find ourselves reordered and reclaimed to rightful and transformed participation in God's life.

The NY Times as an useful idiot

During the Cold War between Soviet Communism and the United States, communist party officials would refer to persons who, for various reason, could be co-opted to their cause as "useful idiots." These were folk who did not understand the real nature of the Soviet-communist threat to the ideals of a democratic republic that values person liberty, but they found communism a kind of avant garde or radically chic philosophy to play with.

Well, the New York Times has proved its mettle as a "useful idiot," but not for the now defunct USSR. Rather, they are useful for the purposes of radical islamist terrorism. The proof: the publication of THIS REPORT.

Data from the Brussels-based banking consortium, formally known as the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, has allowed officials from the C.I.A., the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other agencies to examine "tens of thousands" of financial transactions, Mr. Levey said.

While many of those transactions have occurred entirely on foreign soil, officials have also been keenly interested in international transfers of money by individuals, businesses, charities and other groups under suspicion inside the United States, officials said. A small fraction of Swift's records involve transactions entirely within this country, but Treasury officials said they were uncertain whether any had been examined.

Of course, the Times thinks it has a right to publish any and all things that it uncovers, but it does not report all it uncovers -- no paper does. So, one has to wonder how the Times decides to print such a story, especially when the context in which it arose was the successful squashing of a terrorist plot to blow up the Sears building in Chicago and the FBI headquarters in Miami. And it is even further ironic when the Times own reporting of the matter acknowledges that the practice is entirely within the law of the United States of America. So, where is the news value. No great government conspiracy is uncovered, not even an illegality. Just something sensational that can arouse certain left-wing passions, I guess.

As a Christian, I am quite aware of the potential evil that an unaccountable government can be. It can become demonic. But, a Christian has to recognize that government has a provisional role to play in the purposes of God. And when some other entity, such as the New York Times, undercuts the ability of the government to carry out a proper provisional role (i.e., protecting the citizens of a nation) then one must say -- enough!

It is a well-known reality that the NYT management hate the Bush administration. All well and good. But, reporting in detail a strategy that has been effective in protecting innocent Americans from terror crosses the line. Don't they get it! If (or God forbid when) another terrorist attack occurs, it will not be politicians that the Times despises who will be killed. It will be the average Joe or Jane in America. Should such a horror occur, no doubt the good reporters and editorialists at the Times would tell us that the Bush administration had not done enough to protect us then.

Get real, you people at the Times.

The Science Mythology

Rev Sam at Elizaphanian has a great post in which he describes the mythology that undergirds modern scientism in the West. Read it and benefit

Hat tip to Patrik at God in a Shrinking Universe.

Loving humanity, but hating people. . . .

That's an old line about persons who in principle think human beings ought to be valued, but who find it difficult to care about the individual persons they encounter with all of their messiness and their unsavory behavior. Well, environmentalists (of a certain stripe) are spewing a similar swill.

Delroy Murdock tells us about it here

"We're no better than bacteria!" University of Texas biologist Eric Pianka recently announced. "Things are gonna get better after the collapse because we won't be able to decimate the Earth so much," he added. "And, I actually think the world will be much better when there's only 10 or 20 percent of us left." Pianka dreamed that disease "will control the scourge of humanity." He celebrated the potential of Ebola Reston, an airborne strain of the killer virus, to make Earth nearly human-free. "We've got airborne 90 percent mortality in humans. Killing humans. Think about that. . . .

Finnish environmentalist Pentti Linkola calls humanity a sinking ship with 100 passengers and a lifeboat for 10. "Those who hate life try to pull more people on board and drown everybody. Those who love and respect life use axes to chop off the extra hands hanging on the gunwale."


Me: It is really interesting to read of Linkola speak of loving and respecting "life." What an abstract way of thinking. There is no such thing as life, except as one finds it in particular living beings. If "life" is found only in particular living beings (which it is), then the only way to care about "life" is to care for each and every living thing. Furthermore, if one cares about life in its highest form, then the only way to care about "life" in its highest form is to care for each and every individual (at least in someway). (Those environmentalist such as the Texas University biologist Pianka who suggest that there is no difference between forms of life suffer from a profound cognitive defect. The question is not whether or not humans are better than bacteria. Human life is a much more complex and developed and richer form of life. Unless the good Dr. Pianka thinks that the capacity to care about other forms of life is itself not that valuable. The capacity to care is human == bacteria don't care at all about us)

Such silliness is hard to take seriously, but alas some will.....

The Lottery Problem

Donald Sensing over at "One Hand Clapping" has this great post with links on the regressive nature of state lotteries. They really do hurt the poor!

Read it

New Episcopal Bishop says homosexuality is not a sin

Read it here!

This report set me to wondering: in the theology of the good bishop and those who think as she, what defines a sin? To what does one refer for guidance about the qualifying acts? How might one adjudicate between acts that they are right and wrong or good and bad?

Surely not the scriptures, for she is willing to dismiss the scriptural passages that clearly indicate that homosexuality is a sin. Thus, she has some standard of judgement by which she can pick and choose the moral teaching or claims in holy writ that are unchangingly true and those that are culturally condition. What, I wonder, would it be?

Neither can she look to the tradition of the Church, for the teaching of the Christian Church has, until quite recently, been unnuanced in its rejection of homosexual practice. Thus, she has some standard of judgement by which she decides what part of the Church's moral reasoning to set aside. What, I wonder again, would it be?

Undoubtedly, her standard is essentially human experience understood in the most individualistic of terms. Add to that a good dose of Fletcher's situation ethics in which the vague idea of "love" is all-determinative; and also simply sentimentalize the notion that God is Love. Hence, the subjective self in its own inner experience that begins to determine for the bishop the truth of anything. A person experiences him or herself in a particular way and has no otehr frame of reference for said experience, so -- the bishop must conclude -- God has made this person to be the way she or he experiences her or himself. Why else would she reject the church's teaching and the scriptural witness?

As she says:

"God creates us with different gifts. Each one of us comes into this world with a different collection of things that challenge us and things that give us joy and allow us to bless the world around us," she said.

"Some people come into this world with affections ordered toward other people of the same gender and some people come into this world with affections directed at people of the other gender."

Yet, how would she make this claim, unless she accepts the primacy of individual self-definition to be the trump card in such a moral question?

As I argued in another context regarding a United Methodist bishop's embrace of homosexuality for reasons probably quite similar to the Episcopal leader's:

Were Bishop Sprague’s theological agenda to carry the day and human experience become determinative for doctrine and practice we would, in the words of Paul, be of all people the most miserable. Once this turn to the subjective self occurs, we have no self-transcending reference in terms of which we might talk to one another about ultimate things and the meaning of our lives. This is the case because one person’s experience does not necessarily have anything to do with that of another. In seeking to help us to value others, Sprague produces an ethic that isolates each of us in the dark loneliness of the self and its private, incommunicable experience. Contrast this sad individualism with Jesus’ own command that each of us repent and believe in him. Christ calls us to find our lives not in his personal experience or example but in his redeeming work accomplished for us on the Cross and made complete in the Resurrection. He affirms, redeems, and restores the goodness of God’s created order. Considered in that light, Jesus’ invitation and command that we come and be one with him and "his Father," and thus one with one another, is a summons to find our lives being made into a new and true humanity.

The great irony of both bishops' starting point is that one category of individual experience is authoritative in this matter -- the experience of the purportedly gay person. But, in the Christian experience, the issue is, as are all questions of moral and spiritual living, much more foundational and complex. Let the debate, then, contintue.

The Ditsy (Oh, I mean Dixie) Chicks

Natilie Maines, the provocateuress of the Dixie Chicks, recently gave an interview to the UK Telegraph. In it she speaks about the problem she has with patriotism in the United States of America. Speaking aboaut other country singers who wrote songs in support of American sentiments of flag and country (and mom and apple pie), she opines:

"A lot of pandering started going on, and you'd see soldiers and the American flag in every video. It became a sickening display of ultra-patriotism."

"The entire country may disagree with me, but I don't understand the necessity for patriotism," Maines resumes, through gritted teeth. "Why do you have to be a patriot? About what? This land is our land? Why? You can like where you live and like your life, but as for loving the whole country… I don't see why people care about patriotism."

Ms Maines captures the essence of western post-modernism when she says "I don't see why people care about patriotism." Surely the irony of her words are lost on the verbose singer. The very culture that allows her such freedom of speech, that affords her the opportunity to become wealthy as a song writer, that acknowledges her rights and freedoms as a woman, that . . . . well, you get the picture . . . that land is, at least, deserving of her gratitude.

Perhaps she thinks that patriotism is gingoism or chauvinism. And there are certainly alot of folks who are both of the latter. But, even if one does not like the war or the current administration, surely the constitutional democracy that has allowed her life to be launched into stardom deserves some recognition and some thankfulness. A country that protects her property rights enables her to control her songs and make money from them. A country that increasingly acknowledges the rights of women gives her a platform to speak about things she is not qualified to speak about. A country that many people died to make possible has acknowledged in its constitution her inalienable rights as a human being. So, a little gratitude might be in order, even if she does not love the whole country.

But then again (back to post-modernism), she represents the thinking of a lot of people who are incapable of admiting that their lives have been made possible by the culture and country they live in. She and many others feel no sense of appropriate dependence on history or on others. The think they live in mid-air, I guess. Or they are deluded into thinking that they are so incredibly talented or special that their lives would be wonderful no matter where they had been born.

If The Dixie Chicks want to be a "citizens of the world" rather than acknowledge their debt to the country that has made their life possible, they could at least establish some credibility if they would go to Sudan and care for the orphans or speak out against the mistreatment of women in Saudi Arabia or endeavor to help Aids victims in Africa by speaking out against the cultural practices of a continent that treats women like property to be passed along or inherited.

But instead we are treated to lines like this, from Ms Maines' co-Chick, Emily Robison, commenting on the crash of The Chicks popularity after Ms Maines infamous public statements about the war and President Bush.

"A lot of artists cashed in on being against what we said or what we stood for because that was promoting their career, which was a horrible thing to do."

I guess though, since they are still "chicks" and not yet mature women, one can be amused at their self-obsession..

GODLESS -- Ann Coulter's provocative glimpse at religion

She's received a lot of criticism, but if anyone would read a few pages they will find a substantive argument that ought to be engaged.

Here's an example:

The absence of a divinity makes liberals’ belief system no less religious. Liberals define religion as only those belief systems that subscribe to the notion of a divine being in order to dismiss other religions as mere religion and theirs as something greater. Shintoism and Buddhism have no Creator God either, and they are considered religions. Curiously, those are two of the most popular religions among leftists—at least until 9/11, when Islam became all the rage.

Liberalism is a comprehensive belief system denying the Christian belief in man’s immortal soul. Their religion holds that there is nothing sacred about human consciousness. It’s just an accident no more significant than our possession of opposable thumbs. They deny what we know about ourselves: that we are moral beings in God’s image. Without this fundamental understanding of man’s place in the world, we risk being lured into misguided pursuits, including bestiality, slavery, and PETA membership. Liberals swoon in pagan admiration of Mother Earth, mystified and overawed by her power. They deny the Biblical idea of dominion and progress, the most ringing affirmation of which is the United States of America. Although they are Druids, liberals masquerade as rationalists, adopting a sneering tone of scientific sophistication, which is a little like being condescended to by a tarot card reader.

Liberals hate science and react badly to it. They will literally run from the room, lightheaded and nauseated, when told of data that might suggest that the sexes have different abilities in math and science. They repudiate science when it contradicts their pagan beliefs—that the AIDS virus doesn’t discriminate, that there is no such thing as IQ, that nuclear power is dangerous and scary, or that breast implants cause disease. Liberals use the word science exactly as they use the word constitutional.

. Everything liberals believe is in elegant opposition to basic Biblical precepts.

- Our religion says that human progress proceeds from the spark of divinity in the human soul; their religion holds that human progress is achieved through sex and death.

- We believe in invention and creation; they catalogue with stupefaction the current state of our diminishing resources and tell us to stop consuming.

- We say humans stand apart from the world and our charge is Planet Earth; they say we are part of the world, and our hubristic use of nature is sinful.

- We say humans are in God’s image; they say we are no different morally from the apes.

- We believe in populating the Earth until there’s standing room only and then colonizing Mars; they believe humans are in the twilight of their existence.

Ms. Coulter is, for my taste, too shrill; and her sweeping dismissal of all things "liberal" is too categorical, I think, for intellectual honesty, but she is really on to something.

Liberalism is, in fact, an all-encompassing ideology. It fits, therefore, the definition of religion. Paul Tillich famously noted that whatever is the ultimate focus of one's interest and dependence and commitment is one's god. Living is a culture that has been profoundly shaped by theism, we often fail to realize that, as Coulter points out, non-theistic ideologies count as religions. It behooves us, therefore, to make this point again and again in the cultural debates of our day.

But, if liberalism is a religion (as I think it would qualify), what is the Christian response in light of the American experiment. Many would have us turn the all-guiding light of liberalism and instead endeavor to establish a more "christian" nation. However, one of the things that we conservatives must remember is that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is a critique of every and any ideology. One can easily make an idol when endeavoring to influence the political debate with Christian truths.

Hence, when conservative Christians read "Godless," let us benefit from the way that Ms Coulter's polemical and acidic critique lays bare the liberal pretensions to neutrality. She shows, what John Howard Yoder pointed out in a much different context, that there is no such thing as non-commital positions regarding metaphysics, morals, and spiritual questions. (Yoder helped us see that every truth claim is just one more "provincial" way of looking at things.)

However, we must remember that Christ's kingdom is "not of this world." It cannot, therefore, be reduced to any particular political ideology. So, it is not enough merely to embrace conservative politics and then add a little Jesus into the mix. What, for example, are conservatives to make of God's insistence in the Old Testament that the poor should be cared for or of Jesus' call to "turn the other cheek." In a culture filled with liberal religionists who both deny the truth claims of Christianity and despise conservative, Bible-believing Christians, will we forget that Jesus said to "do good to those who hate you" or to love one's enemies or to consider oneself blessed when persecuted. Far too often, conservative Christians complain about liberals far more than we live as Christ's disciples in the midst of liberals.

Coulter's book, short-comings and all, is an excellent critique, but . . . . . . .

What does God require of us, then?

Father's Day and Dad's Importance

New research has and is showing that Father's are much more important than previous social scientists thought. Here's a very good article that shows why.



Here's a line from the article:

Father involvement makes a real difference. Whether the outcome is intellectual development, sex-role development, or psychological development, most kids do better when their relationship with Dad is close and warm, whether Dad lives with them or not.

Now there is a big difference between being a father and being a sire. In our culture today many men sire offspring, but what is lacking is men who will step up to the plate and be the fathers of their children.

Honesty demands that we acknowledge that women cannot adequately raise children on their on as a rule, although there is the occassional remarkable example. But, that is not a statement that denigrates a woman's ability. Rather, it is statistically true; and it is statistiacally borne out, because God's design is for children to be reared in a family where the mother and the father acknowledge the child's claim upon them and acknowledge their mutual responsiblity for one another and their children. That is what marriage really is.

So, on this Father's Day, thank your Father, if he helped establish you in life. If he didn't, grieve. If you are a father, commit yourself to being what God would have you be.

Here is a link to Rich Lowry's very good essay on this subject at National Review Online.

A truly great article on what's at stake in the "same-sex_ marriage movement

Jennifer Roback Morse explains it well.

A New Study finds that Doctors who "assist" persons in suicide suffer themselves

This is an interesting study.

Although it will be rejected and ignored by the likes of the Hemlock Society and other pro "assisted suicide" networks, it is an important beginning study. If other similar studies bear-out the findings of this research, it will be a significant matter.

When doctors suffer negative effects from being a physician who assists in ending a patient's life, the find themselves being

profoundly adversely affected, being shocked by the suddenness of the death, being caught up in the patient's drive for assisted suicide, having a sense of powerlessness, and feeling isolated. There is evidence of pressure on and intimidation of doctors by some patients to assist in suicide."

"There is evidence of pressure on and intimidation of doctors by some patients to assist in suicide. Many doctors who have participated in euthanasia and/or PAS are adversely affected emotionally and psychologically by their experiences."

It is a very live and important question to ask whether or not the psychological effects described in this article end up affecting a physicians performance on other patients.

There are no actions that fail to have unforeseen, and oftentime unwanted, consequences.

Where are Mulder and Scully when you need them?

THIS sounds sooooo X-files.

I'm not given to conspiracy theories. So, what to make of the import of such a meeting?

Could be genuinely innocent with people having nothing but the world's best interest in mind.

NAH! .......... What with Original Sin and all that these closed door talks are surely tainted with deep self interest.

Probably different interests could be the unseen hand that keeps the talks balanced.

NAH! .......... Elites (as the article informs us are the attendees) are a class unto themselves in the world. You don't have to be a communist to know that! As a particular class, they often operate as though they transcend the interests of nation-states.

We should be really upset!

NAH!........ Christ is Lord! Consider Psalm 2 (New King James Translation)

1 Why do the nations rage,
And the people plot a vain thing?
2 The kings of the earth set themselves,
And the rulers take counsel together,
Against the LORD and against His Anointed, saying,
3 “Let us break Their bonds in pieces
And cast away Their cords from us.”

4 He who sits in the heavens shall laugh;
The Lord shall hold them in derision.
5 Then He shall speak to them in His wrath,
And distress them in His deep displeasure:
6 “Yet I have set My King
On My holy hill of Zion.”

7 “I will declare the decree:
The LORD has said to Me,
‘You are My Son,
Today I have begotten You.
8 Ask of Me, and I will give You
The nations for Your inheritance,
And the ends of the earth for Your possession.
9 You shall break them with a rod of iron;
You shall dash them to pieces like a potter’s vessel.’”

10 Now therefore, be wise, O kings;
Be instructed, you judges of the earth.
11 Serve the LORD with fear,
And rejoice with trembling.
12 Kiss the Son,lest He be angry,
And you perish in the way,
When His wrath is kindled but a little.
Blessed are all those who put their trust in Him.

Now that Al-Zarqawi is dead. . . . what?

No doubt it is a good thing that Al-Zarqawi has been killed. He was a truly wicked man whose obsessions with jihad could not allow him to make discriminating judgements between warriors and civilians or between enemies and innocents. In his mind (and I assume in the minds of all those who embrace radical Islamist ideology) all those who are not for you are against you. Just consider his efforts and successes at killing non-Sunni Muslims.

He has been called evil by many; and no doubt he was. But, even as that description is applied to him we might stop and ask ourselves the question: What does that mean?

The Christian theological tradition has been consistent (with some popularized exceptions) in its insistence that evil is not an actual principle in and of itself. Rather, evil in the Christian tradition has been understood as a distortion and perversion of the Good. (If one believes the biblical witness that God made all things and at the end called them "very good," then he can see how evil could not be thought of as an actual entity or principle in itself. It is, in the words of a baptist friend of mine, always parasitic.)

This theological conviction, applied to the likes of Al-Zarqawi, would lead, I think, to the affirmation that the hideous wickedness that he became was the result of perverting some other impulses that he might have had that might have been, if ordered differently, good. For instance, if he really wanted to bring glory to God, what if that passion had been directed by discipleship after Jesus Christ, seeking to follow his example? Or similarly, if he was truly interested in the integrity of Arab culture, what if he had fought for the best expressions of equality that one can find in Muslim ethics? (Remember, many of those who are working feverishly to rebuild Iraq now are devout Muslims, such as the police officers who risk their lives daily.)

But, tragically and horrifically his passions were misdirected. And he became evil! His life became a perversion of that for which God had made it. Instead of serving humanity he attacked it, because he did not think all were worthy of God's love and mercy. His ideology drove him to distort the image of God within him. And all his sins (his ideological transgressions and his muderous acts) were so serious in the eyes of God that Jesus took in his own body on the Cross. And he shall be judged by the very one who bore his iniquities. At his judgement the nature of reality was (or shall be, I don't pretend to know exactly how it all works) was revealed to him. No doubt, in the light of Jesus Christ an explosion of truth about himself took place that causes the two five hundred pound bombs to seem silent.

So, what should the Christian response to all this be? Well, of course, gladness that a terrible threat to innocent human beings has been ended, for a world filled with threats is a fallen world. Certainly we should have a sense of just deserts (one does reap what he sows), for a world without justice would be torment. But, as well, we should be saddened that a life for which Christ died was so, so marred, to the point that his eyes could reflect the very character of the devil. A world that lacks the grace to see the pitiable even in the most deserving of death is Hell.

Perhaps we ought to take a cue from J.R.R. Tolkein, who has Frodo in Tolkein's "Lord of the Rings," looks at the disgusting and dispicable Gollum and be both repulsed by his evil and filled with pity that a creature not meant for that end might come to that. Acknowledging the terribleness of sin and the necessity of it being judged and feeling sorrow for the one whose soul is lost, that is the way of Christ.

"Even so, Lord Jesus, come quickly" (Revelation 22:20).

Jesus-talk is PG

The Motion Picture Association has determined so any way. This is the story

Donald Wildmon's organization the American Family Association is pretty miffed about it. This email broadcast was sent out.

Take Action

Send an email to the MPAA asking them to stop their anti-Christian bigotry.

Click Here to Email the MPAA Now! Or paste this link to your browser https://secure.afa.net/afa/afapetition/takeaction.asp?id=201

NOw if you want to click on it go ahead. But before you do, ask yourself the following.

1. Does it surprise us that people would find a story about "following Jesus" something that parents ought to be aware of? If so, why? A call to discipleship is, of course a great blessing to all who respond to the invitation, but to come to Jesus is to have one's life radically altered. Has the church ceased to believe this and now we think of Jesus as 'harmless?'

2. Isn't Jesus always going to be "objectionable" to the world? St. Paul said that he was foolishness to the Greeks and a stumbling block to Jews. So, why the outrage? Do we just want everybody to make nice about Christ?

3. When the early Christians were called Athiests because they worshipped God in Christ exclusively, did they complain?

4. Even if the MPAA is really trying to hinder a Christian witness, should the first response of Christians be to petition them?

5. Do we have no memory of the believers in the book of Acts who "counted it a joy to suffer for Christ (Acts 4)?

Let's give thanks that the exclusive call of the Gospel that is inclusive of all is thought of as challenging and scary. Maybe in our multi-cultural, relativistic world it might begin to get noticed again. But, the church will have to be willing to be seen in marginal terms.

What is Most True about ourselves ?

This coming Sunday at churches in Western Christianity - minus some evangelicals and fundamentalists - Christian's attention could be especially concentrated upon the answer to that question, for this coming Sunday is Trinity Sunday.

What is most true about ourselvea is this declaration of faith: God is Three Persons in One Godhead. Mystery? Sure! But if we are made in God's image, then the only way to begin to comprehend our own existence is by at least realizing a few of the implications of this article of faith. So, some quick thoughts.

1. God is Three Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God does not simply manifest God's presence in three ways. That is an ancient heresy called modalism. If God is Three and yet one God, this means that there are distinctions that are made within the very essence of God. And the Father is not the Father without the Son or vice versa. Nor are the Father and the Son really the Father and the Son apart from the Holy Spirit. Persons, therefore, even divine persons are defined in relationship to and openness toward another. So, it should not surprise us that human beings are made for a human community. This is the great sadness of western individualism, especially in many churches, it denies a fundamental reality -- we are only truly ourselves in community.

2. God is Three Persons perfectly: The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are completely self-defining and self-fulfilling. God needs nothing else beyond the Triune life for fulfillment. This would mean, thereby, that God is perfectly "glorified" in the fellowship of the Triune life. And the perfect completeness of the Triune One is the perfection of love. Hence I John 4 can declare that God IS love. This means more than that God is loving toward us. As Charles Wesley declares in a hymn "Thy nature and thy name are Love." All else that we predicate about God must be articulated in the light of this reality. Holy, Just, Righteous, you name it. We must begin to understand God in our lives in terms of God's being Love.

3. God is Three Persons in completeness: God "gets" nothing from making us. The purpose of the creation of the world was not so that God could be glorified, although the creation does bring glory to God. Even further, the purpose of our existence is not first and foremost to glorify God (sorry Westminister). No, if God IS love, then the purpose of our lives is to be loved by God, which we are. But further, the purpose of our lives is to open ourselves to the One who is Love and who wants us to know that Love. God made us, in other words, to love us. The grave tragedy of sin is that it denies this truth as we attempt to live in fear of the One who is the Holy Other who alone can fulfill the meaning of our lives, for we were made for him and his love. As ST. Augustine says, "Our hearts are made for Thee and we are restless until we rest in Thee."

4. God is Three Persons in utter openness: The Triune God made creation simply to love it. But in order to love it truly he had to create it with its own integrity and liberty of action. For loving, as defined by the Triune Life is always free chosen. The Gospel of John makes it clear that the love of the Son for the Father and the Father for the Son is not some metaphysical principle, but is freely given and received. So, the Triune One makes the universe and us humans as the crown of creation simply to be able to live for that which is not God's own self or essence. And to continually woo us to wholeness and holiness.

5. As those who bear God's image we are made not only to receive God's love, but to express this same love, through the power of the Holy Spirit -- God dwelling in us -- to others and to the creation. The word the New Testament develops for this kind of love is Agape. It is the love that does not seek a return -- that Eros. Neither is it a love that is limited to those we naturally like -- that could be phileo. Agape is an open, self-offering love that receives the other and offers the other life and hope and joy and peace. That is the life of holiness that we are meant for in the community of the Church. But not limited to the Church, for the Church, if it manifests the image of God at all must, as does the Triune One, live for the world's redemption.

Good worshipping this Sunday and good discovering your true self.