Science is the search for useful systems of prediction. In science, you do something 100 times and try to figure out what is common between all the times. Can you predict what will happen on the 101st time based upon what has already happened? This is science. Newton’s science helps us understand what will happen when we throw a basketball or shoot a canon ball: Where will it land? How can I make it go farther? How can I make it go higher? Science helps us find common factors in observed phenomena. This is science as a search for knowledge.

Faith comes in when you decide science can take you one step further, to truth. Truth is what you look for when you try to find meaning to this senselessly unfair life. You have entered the realm of religion when you start trying to fit things together to answer the question: Why?

Science doesn’t do this on it’s own, at least as long as it remains an objective search for predicting the outcomes of experiments or finding likely correlations in those observations. When you start trying to say that science shows us why the world works and has meaning, you’ve created a sacred cow out of science. Now it is your religion. You’ve taken it out of the world of mathematics and logic and statistics and moved it into a world of philosophy, religion, and faith.

Sometimes when I read scientific literature, I am pleased to read about how useful a theory is at correlating and explaining the relationships of things. Other times, I’m disappointed to read how a theory shows us why the universe works. Scientific writing that gives species or rocks or the universe a motive, as if they were gods, is really troublesome. Just because a canon ball fired into the air follows a parabolic trajectory doesn’t mean that the y=ax² is how it works, it just means that the equation happens predict the trajectory.

If you want to believe in science as providing meaning to the universe, feel free. However, realize that you are engaging in a form of faith rather than purely scientific pursuit. Criticizing me for disagreeing with your perception of truth because your truth is based on science and mine is not, is no less dogmatic than my Christian beliefs. Science and religious belief are not orthogonal, but they are not directly correlated either.

Cheers.

Interestingly, virtually every person alive knows of this need. Some call it “the search for meaning.” Others will say that every person needs some cause “bigger than himself to serve.” Some try to quell it and say that we merely need to become at peace with the universe. Many try to satisfy it or even numb themselves by seeking sex, money, entertainment, food, drink, power, or virtually anything else. Some look to science to explain this need away. Some just look out to something or someone outside themselves and depend upon them to be their hope and fulfill that need. All humans seek a god to worship and the worship that god demands depends purely on what that person thinks his or her god wants.

Where we Christians get a little too optimistic and even a bit idealistic is when we start thinking that all of these people are somehow seeking for God. No, they are not. These people are seeking after whatever will satisfy them. They are seeking to sin against God. They don’t need God. They can invent their own gods. The only man or woman who seeks God is drawn by the Holy Spirit.

And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified. — Romans 8:28-30

You see, in order to seek, you must have first been known by God, predestined by God, and called to Him. Then and only then, do you seek to have your God-shaped hole filled. I think too many Christians believe that they themselves were responsible for their own salvation. That somehow all they needed was the information and then they got to make the decision to come to Christ. Maybe, but that doesn’t sit well with me or my reading of scripture.

For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. — Ephesians 2:8-10

I read this passage and I am convinced that it fully implies that salvation itself is completely and totally a gift from God to those He has chosen to bestow it upon. It is a gift He gives through many mediums, but a gift nonetheless. Once the Thief has chosen to rob your house, your soul is in His hands.

Some will say, but what about free will? Free will is a difficult concept to master. There are shades of liberty. As John Donne put it, “No man is an island.” He was speaking of death, but really in all things, the will of one man or our God influences, guides, prevents, changes, or manipulates our lives in certain directions we can’t really control. Free will does not indicate that I can do anything I want. If I want to rule the world from the moon, I can’t just do it. I’ll have to somehow conquer or persuade everyone to let me rule and then get to the moon.

Becoming a Christian without God doing all the work is about as difficult as trying to fly to the moon by waving your arms. It cannot be done.

Now, this is all “just” theology. When this theology meets the pavement, you get missions. If I know that men and women only come to Christ when the Spirit draws them, what does that mean for the missionary and evangelist? Not much. You must still share the message, that is our Great Commission. You must still use every form of persuasion and self-sacrifice to reach out and love those that might come to Christ. God uses people to convert people more often than anything else. That medium requires the speech and blood and sweat and life-example of Christians.

The main difference I see is peace. Contentment is the main reward of following this doctrine. God is responsible for growing the harvest and you, the evangelist, are only there to water, to weed, and possibly to gather the harvest when the season is right. If you are serving faithfully in whatever capacity you can, you’ve done your work. Everything else is up to God. If your ministry of evangelism converts none, but you have done the work you can, you have done enough. Even your imperfect service can be brought to God’s glory. That is, in itself, a small miracle given that you are merely a sinner, redeemed and justified, but still a sinner.

Let the Spirit minister through you, but let God take all the glory. Amen.

Cheers.

“Be of good courage, and let us be courageous for our people, and for the cities of our God, and may the Lord do what seems good to him.” — 2 Samuel 10:12

In the middle of 2 Samuel, here is a section covering yet another relatively unremarkable battle (or so it seems to me amongst a long stream of such). Joab, the general of the Israelite army, notes that he’s surrounded. He has the Syrians at his front and the Ammonites at his rear. He arrays his army and the verse above is the sum of the recorded pep-talk and prayer for the oncoming battle. I believe this prayer is a good contrast against which to look at how most people pray (myself included). It is a good example, I think, of how we ought to pray.

Typically, my prayers go like this: “Thank you Lord for saving me from my sin. Thank you for my family, my wife and son. Thank you for all of our blessings that we do not have to worry about what we will eat or wear or where we will live. Please be with my family that is traveling. Please keep us healthy. Please help us follow your will. In Jesus’ name, Amen.” Other than that last bit about following God’s will and possibly the first bit about salvation, I’d argue that most of that prayer was vain. There’s nothing particularly wrong with any of the things I asked for, but that was all easy. So often, what is easy is not what is best.

Joab, on the other hand, sets up his strategy for the coming battle as best as he can and then says to God, “I don’t know what You want to come out of this, but let be according to Your will.” That’s quite a contrast to a prayer that asks God to give me what I think I need or want.

It is easy to thank God for good things. Yet, there are many Christians in Africa or the Middle East or India or China or Indonesia where jail, torture, and death is the reward for belief in Jesus Christ. Can they thank God for these blessings? I know of a church in Russia where the pastor and members pray explicitly for poverty rather than prosperity because they do not want to become soft in their beliefs in exchange for wealth and comfort that doesn’t last. The question is, am I praying as well as I can? Am I being the most faithful Christian in my prayers? I’m not sure I’m even close.

Here’s another superb example of good prayer:

“Father, if it is Your will, take this cup away from Me; nevertheless not My will, but Yours, be done.” — Luke 22:42

Jesus prays this prayer in preparation for the torture and crucifixion that would begin that very morning. He knows he’s soon to die and take upon himself the sins of the entire world. The weight of the anxiety made him physically ill. Yet, he still prays for the Father to take it forward even against his own human desire to avoid what was coming. That’s a prayer.

Of course, one can go too far and say that we should never pray for prosperity, but we also know that there are cases where such prayers are proven right. I am primarily cautioning against this kind of selfish prayer since this is sometimes what seems like the only kind of prayer that people around me (and myself) engage in.

Rather, I think the point is summed up in 1 John 5:14-15, “And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him.”

Before we even ask, we have to know God’s will. Once we know that, everything we ask for according to that knowledge will always be answered. John says that that is our “confidence.” This is not some faint hope or wishful thinking, but something we can know.

Then, the question becomes, how do we know? The first answer is to learn more about God’s will as revealed in the Bible. Study of this book will get you a good deal closer to God and knowledge of His will. The second answer, ironically, is prayer itself. The more one studies his Bible and prays, the more he will know God’s will and the more fruitful will his prayers become.

Unfortunately, I’m not very good at either of these. I pray that God will help me become better and more diligent at both study and especially in prayer. Amen.

Cheers.

The most recent argument that got me into such trouble was when I recently stated that I have no problem with legislating morality. Idealistically, I believe this to be completely true. Pragmatically, the question is not so easy to answer. For example, I believe that voting for Proposition 8 in California was the correct idealistic move to define marriage according to orthodox morality. Yet, it does not really confront the spiritual issues that are at the heart of the matter. As such, Proposition 8 will probably have very little affect addressing the issue other than to make opponents angry.

What effectively took me out of the argument for that moment was my attempt to state that I believe legislating morality is an okay thing to do. The response was (my paraphrase), “The problem is that you either must assume your moral beliefs will always be in control, which is always going to be false, or that legislating other forms of morality is okay.” If I had been more forceful, I should have answered: “First, one day, I’ve been promised that my morality will be perfected and made permanent. Second, I reject the moral equivalence the latter part of your argument suggests as fallacious.” I didn’t, which is why I’m now taking the easy way out and just explaining it here for giggles.

As promised in Philippians 2:11, “at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” One day Jesus will take his place as the King of All and provide perfect administration of His government. Until then, we lived in a cursed (Genesis 3:17) and depraved (Romans 3:23) world in which no good cannot be twisted to evil, but for which every evil is ultimately turned to good (Romans 8:28). Until then, no system will work correctly and all are subject to the flaws of human nature. But as long as I have suffrage, I will struggle to decide between that which is morally right and that which is pragmatically achievable.

Cheers.

The expanded calls to now bailout the U.S. auto industry for making bad decisions in its own industry and the idea that such bailouts should come with new government mandates is an even bigger issue. This is incrementally moving us closer to communism where the central planners pick and choose how everything runs. This means we will get one-size-fits-all solutions that fit no one well. It also creates a single point of failure for decision making where mistakes made by a small core of leaders get to have massive repercussions (see the current mortgage crisis is just such an event).

I believe the U.S. Government’s current fiscal policy is ridiculous and foolish. Looking back through history, bad decisions dealing with debt on a similar scale was a major contributor to the causes of World War II and I don’t doubt that such an event may now loom on the horizon again.

A lot of folks are drawing parallels between President-elect Barack Obama and President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Many see this as a positive comparison and, given Obama’s announcement of infrastructure development plans, there certainly seems to be some similarity. Just remember, Roosevelt was a charismatic leader that presided over a 10 year slump in the economy. Some argue that his policies were a good portion of the reason for the length of that slump. His Presidency also ended in world war. I dearly hope that history does not repeat itself in this way, but things aren’t looking good for the home team.

Fortunately, while I don’t relish the thought of hardship, I know my God is sovereign and true and am not worried. There are worse things than economic hard times and war and death one can face. In the words of Jesus recorded in Luke 12:4-5, “I tell you, my friends, do not fear those who kill the body, and after that have nothing more that they can do. But I will warn you whom to fear: fear him who, after he has killed, has authority to cast into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him!”

Cheers.

I’ve got a good job at the moment and I can say without hesitation that I’m economically better off now than I was 6 months ago, a year ago, or 5 years ago, despite the losses in my 401k/403b and other investments. Of course, I can’t be sure I’ll keep any of it. And who knows what the future holds, but I’m happy anyway.

I have an adorable almost-two-year-old to entertain me. Someday he’s going to grow up into a teenager and probably cause me a large amount of grief (who doesn’t cause their parents grief as a teenager). At some point, Lord willing, he’ll have to start making his own decisions in life and he might choose to do something I find wrong and unthinkable. But, sometimes that’s how things go. A father can only do his best and then his son gets to make his own mind up on how to live.

I have a wife who does wonderful things for me. She cooks and is very diligent at taking care of me. She works very hard and I’m proud of her many accomplishments. Sometimes we disagree and have petty fights and such, but as bad as things could get, I’m not anxious.

If my happiness in life were dependent upon my employment or even my health and ability to provide for my family, I could easily be let down by layoffs, illness, or injury. If my joy was in my wife or son or family or friends or church or coworkers or any other group I take part in, any of them may prove false and betray my trust or simply abandon me. If I were only happy when politics were going my way, during times of peace and prosperity, if the man I elected is doing wonderful things, I should probably despair and die. I have yet to be fully satisfied with the work of any politician I’ve ever voted for, let alone the ones that win that I voted against.

My happiness would go up and down if it depended on these or any number of other things, but I try to keep a certain blessed happiness and laughter close by always. Jesus Christ is the source of my joy. If you want to make me a grim person, you could by ruining all of the things above and work to destroy everything else I hold dear, but I would still hold at my core a fierce optimism because of my love for Jesus Christ and the knowledge that someday, sooner or later, I will be united physically and spiritually with my Lord-Creator. That’s a joy that cannot be taken away.

Cheers.

Why did I get tired of the election? It was a number of things. The primaries started way too early. I didn’t really have a candidate to root for, just candidates to root against. Most of all, though, I don’t like the tone of the discussion that occurred. In fact, there wasn’t much discussion at all.

In this election, if you didn’t agree with the candidate someone else chose, it wasn’t because you had a different ideology or potentially legitimate concern, you were just an idiot and probably a bigot. This makes debate impossible because the only way debate happens is if you look at your opponents point of view to try and find where that view is valuable, contrast it with your own viewpoint, and then determine which is better and why. Of course, no one has time to do this all the time, but it is a good exercise to be in as much as you can if you want to continue to sharpen and strengthen your own position. When you start with the assumption that your opponent has nothing of value because he’s stupid or bigoted, you’ve cheated yourself out of the ability to determine the truth of your assertion. This latter sentiment seemed to me to be more prevalent than usual in this election.

It played itself out in a rather disturbing way when it came to the running mate of John McCain. For example, there was, early on, a popular video of Matt Damon saying that the choice of Sarah Palin was like a bad Disney movie and wondered if she really believed that dinosaurs walked around on earth 6,000 years ago. The implication is that no one but an utter moron could possibly believe such a thing. Therefore, everything she believes must be utterly moronic. This sums up my perception of the tone of criticism of her and anyone who agreed with any part of her platform.

Rather than confronting her views and saying, “She’s wrong. This is why.” The response was instead, “She’s stupid. Ignore her.” Instead of trying to figure out why she believes such things, I saw people ridiculing her northern accent. Instead of refuting her positions, people were ranting about how she pronounced the word “nuclear.” Some of these concerns were espoused by people I consider very intelligent and capable thinkers in other contexts. The majority of Palin’s ideas aren’t that controversial at all. She values family and friends. She believes in a strong work ethic. The things that are most important to nearly everyone are most important to her. The positions she holds that are debated are just a different way of viewing reality, not frank stupidity. She sees the world differently.

Similarly, “refutations” of some of my suggestions of why Obama might not be a good president were phrased using words like “ridiculous” and “puhleese.” This is language designed to suggest I was just an idiot without valuable input. They weren’t an attempt at rational discussion and debate. With this kind of response, I’m not even permitted to agree to disagree. Instead, I’m a dumb bigot hater whose trying to force my ideology on others. Yet, I don’t hate anyone. Disagreeing about which human behaviors and rights and entitlements should be granted or forbidden by government does not make me a hater anymore than having a more “open” viewpoint prevents them from being a hater.

It is so easy to just point at the other side and demagogically state, “Duh! He’s stupid.” It is not easy to look carefully, consider why that viewpoint is held, and then reply, “Well, he may be right on this point, but he’s wrong for all these other reasons.” We may disagree, but at least we’ve held a discussion. I may not be the best at this myself, but I really have tried.

For me, it came down to this in the election. Too many people have a very narrow definition of tolerance. When many say the world “tolerance” they mean, “I will tolerate your different point of view until you tell me I’m wrong. At that point you are a stupid bigot hater. Go to hell.” This is false tolerance. True tolerance is one that states instead, “I looked over your point of view and I’m not moved by your arguments. I disagree and I will fight you for the hearts and minds of others. May the best ideal win.” That’s idealistic, but that’s the world I long for.

Cheers.

• Foreign Policy: Is America really going to do this?
• Campaign Finance: With $605 million already, Obama asks only $10 more from each of us
• Taxes: If it redistributes like a duck …
• Economics: John McCain Warned Of Mortgage Collapse In 2005
• Abortion: Obama’s Abortion Extremism
• Special Needs: Kurt In Pittsburgh, the Palins, the McCains, and a Down-Syndrome Child
• Abortion: Trig Palin’s threat to the abortion industry
• Ideology: Pinch Yourself

That’s quite enough to convince me I’m making the correct decision.

Cheers.

First, if we only check his voting record, we find that Obama has voted for every bill he could have to increase women’s rights in abortion and against every bill that might have. He did so by voting “present” rather than “nay”, but that’s just a technicality and the official voting policy of Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood rated him as 100% pro-choice. Here’s the list of things he voted against (by voting “present”):

• Voted “present” against SB 230, Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act
• Voted “present” against HB 1900, Parental Notice of Abortion Act
• Voted “present” against HB 562, Parental Notice of Abortion Act
• Voted “present” against SB 1093, Law to protect Liveborn children
• Voted “present” against SB 1094, Bill to protect children born as result of induced labor abortion
• Voted “present” against SB 1095 Bill defining “born alive” defines “born-alive infant” to include infant “born alive at any stage of development.”

But don’t take my word for it, please see Obama’s voting record on abortion. You can also check Barak Obama on Abortion at OnTheIssues.org for additional information showing how this strategy of voting “present” was the official strategy of Planned Parenthood for trying to stop these bills.

Next, if we look at what he said, we find he is pro-abortion. My “ridiculous” critic stated that Obama has said that he’s not pro-abortion. However, there are a couple problems with making that statement. First, Obama does not believe that abortion is a moral issue, but an issue of women’s rights. To Obama the ability to get an abortion is required to support women’s rights. If that’s true, then he’s for women exercising their right to get an abortion. He’s pro-abortion.

If we take the view I hold, that abortion is homicide, then his position becomes even clearer. It wouldn’t matter at all whether it harmed women’s rights or not because it becomes a moral issue. You cannot be pro-choice on a moral issue. For example, if we time traveled back to 1855 and I told you that a certain Senator did not believe in slavery, but was strongly opposed to doing anything about it and had voted several times against restrictions, would you accept my statement that he was pro-choice on slavery? What if he voted to perform additional medical research using slaves and offered to greatly expand the number of slaves available for this research? What if he even wanted to make it so that those who are completely opposed to slavery had to help finance these projects with taxes and require those morally opposed to help produce these slaves? Would you still say he was pro-choice on slavery?

This is position we find Barak Obama holding. If I replaced the words “slavery” in the previous paragraph with “abortion” and “slaves” with “embryos” we would have an accurate description of Obama’s positions. (Read the next paragraphs for the evidence supporting these assertions.) This is essentially the argument being used to push the idea the idea that he is not pro-abortion.

The second problem with the argument is that he believes abortion is essential to medical research, which is also a statement of pro-abortion. If abortion is homicide, then embryonic stem-cell research which destroys the embryos is also abortive homicide. He support embryonic stem-cell research. He goes so far as to support a bill that encourages the creation of embryos and requires the destruction of these same embryos used for research. This comes under the guise of an “anti-cloning” bill, which is actually a pro-cloning research bill that forbids allowing clones to mature. (Source: Obama’s Abortion Extremism)

While he has stated on certain occasions that he disagrees with pro-lifers, but is willing to allow that disagreement to stand, he actually supports bills that would force pro-lifers to violate their conscience to provide for and even to perform abortions. He supports repealing the Hyde Amendment, which would allow the government to pay for abortions in certain special cases when a woman is too poor to afford one on her own. If the act were repealed and the government were to pay for such abortions, those who are morally opposed would be required to pay for them. He also supports the Freedom of Choice Act, which removes the rights of pro-lifers to refuse to participate in abortions, i.e., a single-mother who works as a nurse at your local hospital could lose her job if she conscientiously objects to helping perform an abortion under FOCA.

I think Robert George best summed Obama’s position up when he said, “In the end, the efforts of Obama’s apologists to depict their man as the true pro-life candidate that Catholics and Evangelicals may and even should vote for, doesn’t even amount to a nice try. Voting for the most extreme pro-abortion political candidate in American history is not the way to save unborn babies.”

If you’re opposed to abortion, you should look very carefully to Obama’s position on this topic and make your decision carefully. This is not the only issue important to me, but it’s an issue that is very important. It is also one that seems to be misunderstood by a great many that would stand with me on the issue, but seem to think Obama is somehow the best option on this issue. I don’t think you could be more wrong.

Do you believe that the right to choose is more important than the right to life? Obama is your man. If you believe abortion is murder and is not an issue that should be linked to women’s rights, McCain is the guy. Do you believe that America should expand as quickly as possible on social policies and progressive tax policies. Obama has your vote. If you believe that government is too big and taxes shouldn’t punish achievement, McCain is your pick. If you believe the news that the Iraq war is going well and needs to be pursued to completion, you want McCain. If you believe the Iraq war is a disaster and we need to pull the troops back as soon as we can, Obama is your best bet.

These are just a small samples of the issues. The scandals, on the other hand, that are being hyped regarding Obama’s relationship to Ayers or Wright or Palin’s firing of a trooper while governor or McCain’s Keating Five scandal or Biden’s plagiarism problems will come and go. Unless some allegations come out that really make a difference as to whether or not the candidate is a legitimate option, these are just superficially colorful features of the canidates that are only used to sway the shallow voters who do not vote on ideology, but purely on popularity.

As for me, I’m voting on ideology. Though, I’m not really voting for anyone. I’m voting against the person whose ideology I disagree with most since no one on this field of candidates is terribly close to my opinions across the board, but one of them is very much further away.

Cheers.

SHE PRONOUNCES IT “NUKYALAR” TOO!

Yes. That’s about as much substance as you get from that side of the aisle most of the time when referring to the Republican ticket. Pronunciation errors. Conspiracy theories. Name calling. Of course, on our side there’s “Obama-Messiah” jokes. Reuters and AP photographers really helped that particular nickname stick, though.

Now, the election is about issues to the liberals who have that reaction, I realize. They are scared that a Republican might upset the balance of judges in the Supreme Court out of favor of judicial activism, which raises the possibility that abortion (particularly partial birth abortion) stands a chance of being legislated against and not struck down. They think the folks in flyover country need to give up the guns and the religious bigotry against the gays and lesbians and blacks and women.

In the middle, we have the folks that are picking who they vote for based purely on popularity. Which do I like better? Who’s nicer? Who get’s singled out on factcheck.org less? Who is richer? Whose wife dresses nicer? Who is prettier? Those people. They mostly could care less about the issues, just about how “good” the candidate is on a purely subjective level. That’s not much different than usual, but the popularity contest is a little more charged this time since that’s what the Obama ticket rode in on during the primaries. I don’t think it’s working quite as well as it did initially.

(Btw, the popularity contest is why I loath local politics. You pretty much have to be fully involved in local politics to know anything that matters about the candidates. If you expect one side or the other to actually say anything of substance publicly, you’re insane. Most of them just give you this really vague statement about really liking Kansas and having two kids at the high school and a terrier named Butch. Name recognition is more important than anything else. Pfft!)

In the press, we have them doing what they always do: screaming at the top of their lungs, “We’re going to die!” While I would say the likelihood of that is fairly high, that still doesn’t make panicking over it an election issue.

This time around we have “new media” like never before and so what? Most of the blogs out there are also screaming the same things as the “old media”. The ones that aren’t are either screaming at the screaming blogs to stop screaming so much or screaming about how disgusted they are with the screaming blogs. This pretty much sums up American politics since around the time we put George Washington into office, so the “new media” is really just a rehash of the “old media” but at least the screaming isn’t all coming from one side anymore. Unfortunately, the side I’d like to scream rather less and hand out rope more, doesn’t very often.

On my side of aisle, we have the people (like me) trying to figure out if we even like McCain, since we never really liked him before. On the other hand, even if we don’t like a him very much, he’s a lot better than Obama on the issues that count. Placing a gun toting, Bible thumping, anti-abortionist woman with a Down’s Syndrome child, to boot, does quite a bit to help smooth over some of the worries some of us had. The fact that some folks are saying that she is a horror of horrors because she didn’t abort her special needs child has a few of us riled even. Some of us think that abortion is infanticide. We really believe that and even have medical and scientific facts to back it up, if someone cares for the morality of the issue rather than just a woman’s right to choose.

On the other side of my side of the aisle, we have the blue bloods of the party who think McCain is the best thing since sliced bread. Of course, they are stuttering and dumb-founded by the pick of Palin, but they’ll probably shrug that off while sipping martinis at the country club. Some of us can’t stand that wing of the party and lump them together with all the rich white guys over in the democratic party.

Who will win? Who knows? Ask the polls today and most say Obama, some McCain, but then again, the polls have proven to be wrong in the past, often. As Disraeli/Twain said, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” Given that pollsters try to guess what “likely voter means” and shift the numbers to fit that guess, who knows?

And who cares? The fact is that if you’re putting your life’s hopes and dreams into the man that sits as CEO over the most powerful monopolistic organization in the known universe, “you are a sad, strange little man and you have my pity.” All in all, it doesn’t matter very much and in all likelihood, the winner will make some things a little better and some things a little worse. If now is a time in history where massive change happens (probably for the worse since things are truly excellent today if you compare modern America with any other culture or time in history), it will probably happen regardless of who is in charge, but if not, who would be able to predict it now anyway?

There will be upheaval in your life, there will be serene times, there will be sickness, times where the budget is tight, and times when you have a surplus, and sooner or later, you’ll die. Some time after that, no one will even care because everyone that did will also be dead. I find the reassurance at the end of Ecclesiastes (a book about these very morbid things) a good salve when I am frustrated with the insanity of all this, “The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil.”

Cheers.

Fundamental Christianity finds it’s core in unswerving belief in the Bible as the sole unbiased source of truth. This belief finds it’s roots in early church policy as well as in the beliefs of the Reformers. There are many, many ways to deviate from these fundamentals and all of them find their source in a desire to compromise belief in the Bible as the source of truth with another source. In both cases I examine here, I refer to the compromise as “liberalism” (this is theological liberalism, not to be confused with the political term).

Compromise with Science

This is one of the places fundamentalism is most frequently left behind by otherwise fundamental Christians. For the most part, Christianity and science do not intersect. The Bible says very little about physics, astronomy, biology, meteorology, geology, or anything else scientific. The Bible makes no claim on being a scientific text, particularly since science in it’s modern form did not exist when any part of it was written. On most scientific subjects a fundamentalist and liberal will agree because there’s really no reason not to agree. The Earth revolves around the Sun and rainbows are caused when light is refracted through a prism. What is there to disagree about? These are certainly props in the Bible, but they are not explained formally as being this way or that way. They just are.

However, there is a significant difference between the fundamentalist and the liberal when it comes to a couple key points: creation and the flood. I’ll focus just on creation. The Bible states that the universe was created in a period of six days (not seven!). Light and dark were created on the first, then water and clouds on the second, land and plants on the third, the sun and moon and stars on the fourth, the fish and birds on the fifth day, and finally land animals and humans on the sixth day. (Genesis 1) The fundamentalist accepts the Bible’s statement at face value. There’s no need to dispute what the Bible says.

Now, the liberal has a problem. If the creation story is true, why does science say otherwise? The liberal desire is to harmonize popular theories with the statement of Scripture. He must first understand the universe in the context of modern science and then interpret scripture within that framework. This compromises Scripture by forcing upon it a point of view rather than trying to understand the world from its point of view.

As far as the fundamentalist is concerned, this is a completely foolish way of trying to understand the universe. Modern science is based upon a non-Christian philosophy that either rejects God or ignores Him. There’s nothing to harmonize since these are contradictory points of view. Therefore, any attempt to Christianize evolution or uniformitarianism or other theories and frameworks built within this paradigm don’t make sense to the fundamentalist (nor to the scientist, for that matter).

This is not to say that the fundamentalist is not interested in understanding origins of the universe on a formal level, but that he does not find the observed facts of earth and the universe in contradiction with Scripture. He works to understand these observations within the context of Scripture rather than the other way around. For example, stars are billions of light years away, so how can we see them if the earth is not billions of years old? The fundamentalist may propose the “hypothesis” that God brought the light here at creation or that the speed of light hasn’t always been constant. Such “hypotheses” aren’t unscientific to suppose, at least not when compared to the alternative. The common scientific “hypothesis” is that the speed of light has remained mostly constant for the past few billion years, but how do you propose to test that? You cannot. It is an assumption, which is not really a hypothesis (which is why I put “hypothesis” in quotes here), but scientists rarely admit to making these kinds of dogmatic assumptions.

Compromise with the Position of Women

This is the second great compromise of our age. There has been a great deal of effort to level the playing field between men and women. Some of this work has been good and positive, some of it has not. Interestingly, I make that statement and I am confident that both fundamentalists and liberals will agree with it. Yet each will disagree with the other on which aspects of this work have been good versus which have not been good.

Fundamental Christianity reads passages on relations between men and women and accept them at face value. For example, the Bible states, “Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.” (Ephesians 5:22-24) This passage continues in verses 25-28, “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.”

This position, however, is strongly rejected by many non-Christians. This rejection is not a modern belief. In fact, the first book of the Bible mentions this very rejection in Genesis 3:16, “You desire shall be [against] your husband, and he shall rule over you.” Women have long desired the overlordship of men and men have long abused the overlordship they hold simply by being physically stronger. The modern western reaction to this is to either seek to place women in authority over men or an attempt to toss away the authority altogether. The latter is probably the more popular view, but militant feminism certainly strains toward the former.

In any case, the liberal does not like to apply the word “submission” to women under any circumstances. Therefore, a liberal tries to find any way possible to make it so that this scripture can be ignored or explained away. The most common mechanism among liberals in my experience is to explain scriptures they don’t agree with by saying such things were only meant in a First Century culture, which wasn’t as enlightened as we are today. But whatever the tool, the result is the same. The liberal must somehow compromise Christianity with the popular views to be comfortable.

In the meantime, the fundamentalist Christian is simply baffled. If one has all the graces of Christ, what need have we to compromise the plain wording of the Bible? A fundamentalist understands that submission does not imply diminishing a person, that submission is commanded of each Christian to other Christians. He understands that loving as Christ loves the church is a loaded command. Does Christ beat anyone into submission? Does Christ force anyone to do anything? Nope. This kind of headship is not that stupid and does not imply that those who are led are somehow powerless or less equal as humans.

Fundamental Christians, both men and women, read these passages and understand them at face value. Men have a role as the head of the marriage and family. That role involves straining toward perfection and helping his wife do the same. A wife is to strain towards perfection as well and help her husband. There’s nothing here that asserts that men are more equal than women, just that men and women both have a certain, God-given place in a well-ordered Christian family.

Trying to compromise that position doesn’t make sense in a Biblical context or to that of any secular person. You end up with a Christianity that contradicts itself and holds to no firm standard but which way the winds of doctrine blow today.

The Point

It is my belief that the only kind of Christianity that makes sense is fundamentalism. If you want to believe science over Christianity, then do so. If you simply want to be agnostic and uncommitted, fine. If you want to believe in Zen Buddhism or something else, I won’t attempt to stop you. The Bible fully supports your right to choose whatever way to hell you want. I’m not offended if you reject God, I did so for years myself. I have family, friends, colleagues, and coworkers that reject God and I feel no more or less general affection for them than the same folks that love Jesus Christ. They remain my family, friends, colleagues, and coworkers and I love them even if I cannot relate to them as brothers and sisters in Christ.

However, if you want to be a Christian or claim the title, but you don’t want all of it. You want to pick and choose to throw out parts just because you can’t stomach what it says about men and women, science, homosexuality, adultery, idolatry, money, government, war, family, infanticide, or anything else, I have a problem with you. You are choosing a position for which I am frequently annoyed.

If you have been converted and saved by Christ, you are choosing to lead a childish Christianity that is impossible to justify and you will be tossed back and forth by every wind of false doctrine. (Ephesians 4:14) Maturity in Christ is defined by how much you cling to the fundamentals of Christ and his Word understood through his Spirit.

If you are not saved or are not sure of your salvation, you have chosen a gray path that might lead to Christ, but probably doesn’t. Like the parable of the seeds that fall among thorns, your belief is being crushed by an unbelieving world. (Matthew 13:22) You have taken a kernel of truth, but how can you know if it has planted and grown? Compromising your beliefs with the ways of those that don’t believe is no way to be assured that you believe anything for certain.

Cheers.