I'm probably the only one on the planet who missed the news that Michael Crichton died on November 8th of this year. He died of throat cancer at age 66. I hadn't heard about his death until about a week ago.
Crichton graduated summa cum laude from Harvard College, received his MD from Harvard Medical School, and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, researching public policy with Jacob Bronowski. He taught courses in anthropology at Cambridge University and writing at MIT.
However, Crichton is best known as a writer and filmmaker. He wrote The Andromeda Strain and Jurassic Park and created the TV series ER. His 2004 novel entitled State of Fear challenged the alleged scientific consensus about global warming both in its plot line and in a non-fictional afterword and two appendicies. Crichton was concerned that science in general was losing its objectivity and was being co-opted by political interests.
I was very impressed by a speech he gave in 2003 entitled Environmentalism as Religion. I recently re-read that speech to get some quotes for a project I was working on. In the course of doing so, I learned that Crichton had died recently.
I started reading some of his other speeches and found them as insightful as the original essay that brought him to my attention. He wrote a lot about science -- both about it potential and about its misuse.
He was a gifted writer. To wet your appetite, consider this gem about a headline from a so called "scientific" study. The headline read: “How Many Species Exist? The question takes on increasing significance as plants and animals vanish before scientists can even identify them.”
Commenting on this, Crichton says, "Now, wait a minute…How could you know something vanished before you identified it? If you didn’t know it existed, you wouldn’t have any way to know it was gone. Would you? In fact, the statement is nonsense. If you were never married you’d never know if your wife left you."
If you are interested, here is a Crichton sampler:
Environmentalism as Religion -- environmentalism appeals to urban atheists but it is almost a perfect parrallel to the Judeo-Christian religion (doubly interesting becasue I think Crichton was an urban atheist)
The Case for Skepticism on Global Warming -- a good discussion of various problems with global warming orthodoxy. Includes a helpful summary of the infamous "hockey stick" graph that is featured so prominently by global warming adovcates but which has been shown by other scientists to be inaccurate.
Testimony before the United State Senate -- regarding the proper role of science in public policy making.
Aliens Cause Global Warming -- a romp through beliefs in extraterrestials, nuclear winter and other discredited psuedo-scientific pursuits and how similar they are to the global warming issue of today.
Why Speculate? -- the opening two paragraphs of this speech are priceless.
Some of these speeches are quite long but all are, in my opinion, very insightful.
Enjoy!
Monday, December 29, 2008
Consistently Pro-Life ... A Good Friend's Thoughts
My good friend Marty Martin wrote me an in-depth response to my posting about Ron Sider where I reacted to Sider's thoughts about the issue of whether evangelical Christians are consistently pro-life. Marty's musings were long enough that it seemed beyond what he could reasonably post as a comment so he sent it to me via email. I told him I would put it on my blog as a new posting -- that he could be my first "guest" blogger!
Marty has a strong military background being a graduate of the Air Force Academy (1970). But his military roots are much deeper since many of his family members and in-laws and other relatives going back for three or four generations are graduates of West Point or Annapolis and have long/career military backgrounds. Marty was raised Catholic but is currently a pastor at an Evangelical Presbyterian church. He got his theological training at Covenant Theological Seminary (1982). He also recently spent two years in Congo with Food for the Hungry and continues to be involved with that organization.
I thought it was important for you to have some background information because Marty spends quite a bit of time talking about U. S. involvement in various wars as well as about hunger and about the way Catholics have approached various "life" issues. He does so, not only as someone with a wealth of experience in all these areas, but as someone with formal theological training and with a strong commitment to Evangelicalism. He is a smart man and his friendship is a great blessing.
Having said all of these wonderful (and true) things about him and his credentials, I'll also note that I largely disagree with what he has written on this topic! I'll also not that this will not come as any surprise to Marty.
Marty and I frequently disagree about things political (and occasionally disagree about things theological). I'm working on a response to many of the issues raised in his essay but Christmas and family and other good things have intervened recently. In the meantime, I thought it would be good to give you his observations now (without comment) so that others could agree/disagree as the spirit leads. Here are Marty's comments -- enjoy:
From Marty Martin:
The Roman Catholic Church has long advocated a consistent pro-life ethic that has been described by the "seamless garment" metaphor (a "knitting together" of all sanctity of life issues into one “fabric,” into one consistent ethic). This, to me, is the best theological work that has been done on this very difficult class of issues. The Roman Catholic Church, despite sordid chapters in its history (Presbyterians, Baptists, Episcopalians, et al, have similar sordid chapters in their history), has the advantage of being worldwide and not attached to any particular nation or government (some of its worst chapters were written when it did so align itself). This does provide an element of objectivity that a partisan of one particular country or government or economic system can rarely achieve. It is too simple to say that, because war presents too difficult a set of circumstances for us to achieve consensus on, we can leave it out of our pro-life discussions and get back to the one issue (abortion) that conservative Christians agree upon.
Your argument about not applying Christian values to the body politic (e.g., pacifism, non-violence, killing of innocents in war) is exactly the argument that proponents of our current abortion policy apply to that issue. You say that there is no choosing between the lesser of two evils in the case of abortion. Declaring it to be so doesn’t necessarily make it so. The whole point of the argument from the side of the proponents of our current policy is that the “evil” of restricting a woman from determining what is going on inside her body is greater than any evil that might be attached to the aborting. I think you know that I disagree with that line of thinking and have written and spoken against our “abortion on demand” policies for more than 25 years.
Official Roman Catholic teaching and substantial Protestant thinking (e.g., Paul Ramsey and many others) has long recognized the legitimacy of the “just war.” However, this is a two-edged sword (so to speak). Augustine was one of the early framers of this doctrine that subsequently has been carefully, prayerfully developed over the centuries. It limits the circumstances under which wars may be undertaken and it limits the ways and means by which war may be conducted. It speaks to a people (the Church) who have a higher responsibility than their responsibility to their individual countries. It calls upon the church and individual Christians to do the hard work of grappling with whether their country/government is undertaking or has undertaken a “just war” and requires, from a sanctity of life standpoint, that they not participate and should oppose such wars if they do not meet the hard-to-meet restrictions the just war doctrine places on war-making. The whole point of this is that the “collateral damage” (the loss of innocent lives) in an unjust war is every bit as heinous as the aborting of innocents. When we Christians will not even acknowledge that there is a serious issue here, even though our history and some of the best Christian theology says otherwise, then what we have to say about abortion doesn’t ring true to an audience that readily recognizes our own inconsistency. Ignorance of the history and content of the just war doctrine in the Christian Church today is, to me, frightful.
One’s point of departure has a lot to do with one’s conclusions in this tough discussion. An interesting case in point is the dropping of the atom bombs in World War II. Apart from the question of whether WWII was a just war (there is largely universal consensus that it was and I certainly believe it was), not everything undertaken during that war was necessarily just. If one looks at this from the perspective of worldwide Christian missions it looks different from the picture seen by one who espouses an ethic of “the end justifies the means.” Nagasaki was the center of Christianity in Japan. The vast majority of Japan’s Christian population died in that bombing. Hundreds of years of Christian missionary efforts went up in smoke, as did thousands and thousands of totally innocent people. Just war doctrine calls for proportionality of response and discrimination between combatants and non-combatants. Here though, the decision was made to employ a tactic that greatly escalated the kind and level of violence and, by its very nature, ruled out discrimination. According to a consistent pro-life ethic that weaves all of the life issues together, could not one say that any responsibility America bears for the aborting of innocents it also bears for this?
Closer historically, it is also worth pointing out that Christian just war doctrine prohibits pre-emptive wars, especially when the other tenets of the doctrine have not been rigorously applied. Key tenets include the necessity of pursuing (not just “considering”) all other mechanisms for solving the issues before resorting to violence. Saddam was a liar and a thug, but when we accused him of having weapons of mass destruction and he denied it, we were the ones who were wrong. Though there was a mechanism in place and in process to determine whether they were there, he was declared guilty and punishment was meted out. The problem is that he wasn’t the only one who bore the pain of the punishment.
In the summer of 2003, 14,000+ people died in France during a heat wave, Paris being maximally impacted. Many of the French utility workers and healthcare community were on vacation. The temperature rose to 104 degrees f and many of those who died were elderly. At that time, the population of Baghdad was 2 to 3 times the population of Paris and the sustained temperature was 10 degrees hotter. Unlike Paris, in Baghdad the infrastructure was largely destroyed during the “shock and awe” bombing of the city and for a sustained period of time (spring through summer) there was no electricity and there was no water. Additionally, there was very little medical care available to the civilian population. It is always the most vulnerable, the very young and the very old, who are most affected. How many non-combatants do you think died in Baghdad during this period of time? I can’t tell you because no statistics were kept or available. Do you think there will ever be a rigorous attempt made to reconstruct the statistics or answer the question? Do you think these deaths would have occurred anyway? Saddam was a terrible guy, but it would take an amazing sleight of hand to hold him responsible for these deaths. If America denies responsibility for them, who is? God?
Mike, you know that I am a veteran and that I served our country proudly and honorably. I am not a pacifist, but I am an adherent of the just war doctrine and attempts to make it conform to any war a US government may decide to undertake or any action that we might take in an otherwise just war is, in my estimation, not faithful to the gospel. When we say that now the stakes are so high that we cannot afford to live by principles developed long ago from the Scriptures, we are, in an albeit subtle and sophisticated way, saying that the end justifies the means. It may be a practical ethic, but it is not a Christian ethic.
While we are on the subject of inconsistency in life issues, I am concerned that the conservative Christian community is far less concerned about the 23,000 daily deaths due to hunger related causes throughout the world than it is about the abortion issue in the US. Speech like this always seems to sound like a minimization of the abortion issue. I do not think it is. What I do think is that our constant sounding off about that issue while minimizing or dismissing other life issues as irrelevant or too difficult to conclude makes us appear as one-dimensional as I believe we are being. This does, I believe, seriously compromise our witness and brings damage to the cause of Christ.
Marty has a strong military background being a graduate of the Air Force Academy (1970). But his military roots are much deeper since many of his family members and in-laws and other relatives going back for three or four generations are graduates of West Point or Annapolis and have long/career military backgrounds. Marty was raised Catholic but is currently a pastor at an Evangelical Presbyterian church. He got his theological training at Covenant Theological Seminary (1982). He also recently spent two years in Congo with Food for the Hungry and continues to be involved with that organization.
I thought it was important for you to have some background information because Marty spends quite a bit of time talking about U. S. involvement in various wars as well as about hunger and about the way Catholics have approached various "life" issues. He does so, not only as someone with a wealth of experience in all these areas, but as someone with formal theological training and with a strong commitment to Evangelicalism. He is a smart man and his friendship is a great blessing.
Having said all of these wonderful (and true) things about him and his credentials, I'll also note that I largely disagree with what he has written on this topic! I'll also not that this will not come as any surprise to Marty.
Marty and I frequently disagree about things political (and occasionally disagree about things theological). I'm working on a response to many of the issues raised in his essay but Christmas and family and other good things have intervened recently. In the meantime, I thought it would be good to give you his observations now (without comment) so that others could agree/disagree as the spirit leads. Here are Marty's comments -- enjoy:
From Marty Martin:
The Roman Catholic Church has long advocated a consistent pro-life ethic that has been described by the "seamless garment" metaphor (a "knitting together" of all sanctity of life issues into one “fabric,” into one consistent ethic). This, to me, is the best theological work that has been done on this very difficult class of issues. The Roman Catholic Church, despite sordid chapters in its history (Presbyterians, Baptists, Episcopalians, et al, have similar sordid chapters in their history), has the advantage of being worldwide and not attached to any particular nation or government (some of its worst chapters were written when it did so align itself). This does provide an element of objectivity that a partisan of one particular country or government or economic system can rarely achieve. It is too simple to say that, because war presents too difficult a set of circumstances for us to achieve consensus on, we can leave it out of our pro-life discussions and get back to the one issue (abortion) that conservative Christians agree upon.
Your argument about not applying Christian values to the body politic (e.g., pacifism, non-violence, killing of innocents in war) is exactly the argument that proponents of our current abortion policy apply to that issue. You say that there is no choosing between the lesser of two evils in the case of abortion. Declaring it to be so doesn’t necessarily make it so. The whole point of the argument from the side of the proponents of our current policy is that the “evil” of restricting a woman from determining what is going on inside her body is greater than any evil that might be attached to the aborting. I think you know that I disagree with that line of thinking and have written and spoken against our “abortion on demand” policies for more than 25 years.
Official Roman Catholic teaching and substantial Protestant thinking (e.g., Paul Ramsey and many others) has long recognized the legitimacy of the “just war.” However, this is a two-edged sword (so to speak). Augustine was one of the early framers of this doctrine that subsequently has been carefully, prayerfully developed over the centuries. It limits the circumstances under which wars may be undertaken and it limits the ways and means by which war may be conducted. It speaks to a people (the Church) who have a higher responsibility than their responsibility to their individual countries. It calls upon the church and individual Christians to do the hard work of grappling with whether their country/government is undertaking or has undertaken a “just war” and requires, from a sanctity of life standpoint, that they not participate and should oppose such wars if they do not meet the hard-to-meet restrictions the just war doctrine places on war-making. The whole point of this is that the “collateral damage” (the loss of innocent lives) in an unjust war is every bit as heinous as the aborting of innocents. When we Christians will not even acknowledge that there is a serious issue here, even though our history and some of the best Christian theology says otherwise, then what we have to say about abortion doesn’t ring true to an audience that readily recognizes our own inconsistency. Ignorance of the history and content of the just war doctrine in the Christian Church today is, to me, frightful.
One’s point of departure has a lot to do with one’s conclusions in this tough discussion. An interesting case in point is the dropping of the atom bombs in World War II. Apart from the question of whether WWII was a just war (there is largely universal consensus that it was and I certainly believe it was), not everything undertaken during that war was necessarily just. If one looks at this from the perspective of worldwide Christian missions it looks different from the picture seen by one who espouses an ethic of “the end justifies the means.” Nagasaki was the center of Christianity in Japan. The vast majority of Japan’s Christian population died in that bombing. Hundreds of years of Christian missionary efforts went up in smoke, as did thousands and thousands of totally innocent people. Just war doctrine calls for proportionality of response and discrimination between combatants and non-combatants. Here though, the decision was made to employ a tactic that greatly escalated the kind and level of violence and, by its very nature, ruled out discrimination. According to a consistent pro-life ethic that weaves all of the life issues together, could not one say that any responsibility America bears for the aborting of innocents it also bears for this?
Closer historically, it is also worth pointing out that Christian just war doctrine prohibits pre-emptive wars, especially when the other tenets of the doctrine have not been rigorously applied. Key tenets include the necessity of pursuing (not just “considering”) all other mechanisms for solving the issues before resorting to violence. Saddam was a liar and a thug, but when we accused him of having weapons of mass destruction and he denied it, we were the ones who were wrong. Though there was a mechanism in place and in process to determine whether they were there, he was declared guilty and punishment was meted out. The problem is that he wasn’t the only one who bore the pain of the punishment.
In the summer of 2003, 14,000+ people died in France during a heat wave, Paris being maximally impacted. Many of the French utility workers and healthcare community were on vacation. The temperature rose to 104 degrees f and many of those who died were elderly. At that time, the population of Baghdad was 2 to 3 times the population of Paris and the sustained temperature was 10 degrees hotter. Unlike Paris, in Baghdad the infrastructure was largely destroyed during the “shock and awe” bombing of the city and for a sustained period of time (spring through summer) there was no electricity and there was no water. Additionally, there was very little medical care available to the civilian population. It is always the most vulnerable, the very young and the very old, who are most affected. How many non-combatants do you think died in Baghdad during this period of time? I can’t tell you because no statistics were kept or available. Do you think there will ever be a rigorous attempt made to reconstruct the statistics or answer the question? Do you think these deaths would have occurred anyway? Saddam was a terrible guy, but it would take an amazing sleight of hand to hold him responsible for these deaths. If America denies responsibility for them, who is? God?
Mike, you know that I am a veteran and that I served our country proudly and honorably. I am not a pacifist, but I am an adherent of the just war doctrine and attempts to make it conform to any war a US government may decide to undertake or any action that we might take in an otherwise just war is, in my estimation, not faithful to the gospel. When we say that now the stakes are so high that we cannot afford to live by principles developed long ago from the Scriptures, we are, in an albeit subtle and sophisticated way, saying that the end justifies the means. It may be a practical ethic, but it is not a Christian ethic.
While we are on the subject of inconsistency in life issues, I am concerned that the conservative Christian community is far less concerned about the 23,000 daily deaths due to hunger related causes throughout the world than it is about the abortion issue in the US. Speech like this always seems to sound like a minimization of the abortion issue. I do not think it is. What I do think is that our constant sounding off about that issue while minimizing or dismissing other life issues as irrelevant or too difficult to conclude makes us appear as one-dimensional as I believe we are being. This does, I believe, seriously compromise our witness and brings damage to the cause of Christ.
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Obama - the Centrist? (Part 1)
I caught a snippet of an Obama commercial late in the election cycle. He said something to the effect that his election would initiate “fundamental change” in America. I remember thinking that Obama had finally said something with which I agreed.
Since the election, I’ve been amazed at all the people who have suggested that Obama will not introduce fundamental change. Many have suggested that he will govern as a centrist and not as a leftist/liberal. I’m skeptical of this claim.
It seems very strange to claim that a man with Obama’s record will be a centrist. If Rush Limbaugh was elected president, would anyone be saying that he would govern as a centrist? Rush has a record and strong commitments to certain ideological principles and I believe the same is true of Obama.
Obama’s record is liberal. The National Journal, a non-partisan group, ranked Obama as the most liberal senator based on his votes on 99 key economic, social and foreign policy issues that came before the U. S. Senate in 2007. Obama was tied for 10th most liberal in the 2006 senate and the 16th most liberal in the 2005 senate. His past voting record is clearly on the left/liberal side of the political spectrum. (Check here if you want to know more about the methodology of this survey – the methodology has been attacked as partisan by some who do not like the results but if you read about the methodology, I think you’ll agree it is the detractors who are partisan).
Despite my skepticism, I have no choice but to wait and see what happens with Obama. As the old saying goes, actions speak louder than words so let’s see how Obama actually governs. Here are some issues to watch that may give us an early indication of the direction of his administration.
Abortion
(Note: I’m going to talk about abortion as a political issue. As a Christian, I want to be careful to divorce the political issue from the personal issue. Any of us who have been personally involved in an abortion need spiritual rather than political guidance and I believe whole-heartedly that Jesus’ grace, mercy and forgiveness reaches out to those who have aborted babies. I’m not judging anyone’s past – my own list of moral shortcomings is rather long. At the moment, though, I want to look at this issue politically.)
In a July 2007 speech to the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, Obama said, “The first thing I will do, as president, is sign the Freedom of Choice Act [FOCA]. That’s the first thing I’d do.”
I believe Obama will follow through on this commitment. In a world where some of his proposals may be hard to implement due to economic constraints, this is one area where he can reward loyal supporters without having to spend any money. And there is one thing that is very clear about FOCA – it is not a centrist position on abortion.
FOCA will invalidate every restriction on abortion before the stage of viability including those restrictions previously found consistent with Roe v. Wade by the United States Supreme Court. Such restrictions include parental notification laws, waiting periods, requirements for full disclosure of the physical and emotional risks inherent in abortion and restrictions on partial birth abortion. It will repeal the Hyde amendment that prohibits the use of federal funds for abortions. It might also force religiously based hospitals to perform abortions against their will.
That FOCA will wipe out every restriction on abortion is evident if you read the proposed legislation. It was introduced by Barbara Boxer (D-CA) in 2007. It is a short law with just three key provisions spelled out in only 154 words.
FOCA mandates that “A government may not … deny or interfere with a woman's right to choose … to terminate a pregnancy prior to viability; or to terminate a pregnancy after viability where termination is necessary to protect the life or health of the woman; …” It also says that a government may not “discriminate against the exercise of the rights set forth in [the Act] in the … provision of benefits, facilities, services, or information.”
A “government” is defined as any “branch, department, agency, instrumentality, or official … of the United States, a State, or a subdivision of a State.” In other words, it covers any federal, state or local government!
“Viability” is defined as the time when there is “reasonable likelihood of the sustained survival of the fetus outside of the woman” as judged by the woman’s attending physician. Even babies at seven months gestation are unlikely to have sustained survival outside the womb without significant medical intervention. Thus, the proposed law’s definition of viability allows for very late term abortions.
The fact that FOCA is designed to erase every restriction on abortion can also be seen by the arguments made by its advocates. The proponents of FOCA argue that the law is necessary because of over 500 “restrictions” on abortion that have been passed by state and local jurisdictions. What else can they be referring to except things like parental notification, etc. as listed above?
Furthermore, the proponents claim that passage of FOCA has now become urgent due to the Supreme Court decision in Gonzales v. Carhart in April 2007 where, according to NARAL and Planned Parenthood, the court upheld “the federal ban on abortion”. Abortion rights advocates consistently use this disingenuous language of a “federal abortion ban” to describe the Gonzales decision.
In reality, of course, Gonzales did not ban abortion. Gonzales was the case where the Supreme Court upheld the Partial Birth Abortion Act of 2003. Only partial birth abortion is banned but the vague terminology of Planned Parenthood, et. al. appears to be a deliberate attempt to mislead people. Those who read their literature would mistakenly believe that the federal government has somehow banned abortion when in fact it has only banned one particularly heinous version of it.
If FOCA is passed, it will be ironic on several fronts.
First of all, some Christians who have voted Republican in the past due the abortion issue indicated that they would no longer let this issue be a driving force in their voting decision. While acknowledging that they disagreed with Obama’s position on abortion, they noted that Republican presidents have promised to overturn Roe v. Wade and have failed to deliver on that promise. They have concluded that presidents cannot do much about the abortion issue. Besides, they argue, there are other “life issues” that need to be considered (I dealt with the “consistently pro-life” debate in a previous blog). Therefore, they claimed that Obama’s abortion position should not be a deal killer in voting for him.
Obama himself argued differently during the campaign. He said that Roe v. Wade would be overturned if he were not elected president. He pointed out that the next president might appoint as many as three Supreme Court justices and the fate of Roe would hinge on whether he or McCain was the one appointing those judges. Thus, some people may have been throwing in the towel on the abortion issue on the verge of success.
But let’s ignore Roe for the moment. The passage of FOCA would also be ironic because it would show that a presidential choice can make a big difference on the abortion issue. A largely Democrat house and senate is like to pass FOCA. If they do, I believe Obama will sign it. This would not happen if McCain was occupying the White House. He would veto the legislation and there would not be enough votes to override a veto.
Thus, Obama’s election may mean that 35 years of incremental progress against abortion will be wiped out in one stroke of the pen.
There are four other issues I’d like to consider more briefly that may give us an indication of Obama’s governing philosophy but this has already gotten way too long. So, I’ll try to include those items in a “Part 2” in the near future.
Since the election, I’ve been amazed at all the people who have suggested that Obama will not introduce fundamental change. Many have suggested that he will govern as a centrist and not as a leftist/liberal. I’m skeptical of this claim.
It seems very strange to claim that a man with Obama’s record will be a centrist. If Rush Limbaugh was elected president, would anyone be saying that he would govern as a centrist? Rush has a record and strong commitments to certain ideological principles and I believe the same is true of Obama.
Obama’s record is liberal. The National Journal, a non-partisan group, ranked Obama as the most liberal senator based on his votes on 99 key economic, social and foreign policy issues that came before the U. S. Senate in 2007. Obama was tied for 10th most liberal in the 2006 senate and the 16th most liberal in the 2005 senate. His past voting record is clearly on the left/liberal side of the political spectrum. (Check here if you want to know more about the methodology of this survey – the methodology has been attacked as partisan by some who do not like the results but if you read about the methodology, I think you’ll agree it is the detractors who are partisan).
Despite my skepticism, I have no choice but to wait and see what happens with Obama. As the old saying goes, actions speak louder than words so let’s see how Obama actually governs. Here are some issues to watch that may give us an early indication of the direction of his administration.
Abortion
(Note: I’m going to talk about abortion as a political issue. As a Christian, I want to be careful to divorce the political issue from the personal issue. Any of us who have been personally involved in an abortion need spiritual rather than political guidance and I believe whole-heartedly that Jesus’ grace, mercy and forgiveness reaches out to those who have aborted babies. I’m not judging anyone’s past – my own list of moral shortcomings is rather long. At the moment, though, I want to look at this issue politically.)
In a July 2007 speech to the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, Obama said, “The first thing I will do, as president, is sign the Freedom of Choice Act [FOCA]. That’s the first thing I’d do.”
I believe Obama will follow through on this commitment. In a world where some of his proposals may be hard to implement due to economic constraints, this is one area where he can reward loyal supporters without having to spend any money. And there is one thing that is very clear about FOCA – it is not a centrist position on abortion.
FOCA will invalidate every restriction on abortion before the stage of viability including those restrictions previously found consistent with Roe v. Wade by the United States Supreme Court. Such restrictions include parental notification laws, waiting periods, requirements for full disclosure of the physical and emotional risks inherent in abortion and restrictions on partial birth abortion. It will repeal the Hyde amendment that prohibits the use of federal funds for abortions. It might also force religiously based hospitals to perform abortions against their will.
That FOCA will wipe out every restriction on abortion is evident if you read the proposed legislation. It was introduced by Barbara Boxer (D-CA) in 2007. It is a short law with just three key provisions spelled out in only 154 words.
FOCA mandates that “A government may not … deny or interfere with a woman's right to choose … to terminate a pregnancy prior to viability; or to terminate a pregnancy after viability where termination is necessary to protect the life or health of the woman; …” It also says that a government may not “discriminate against the exercise of the rights set forth in [the Act] in the … provision of benefits, facilities, services, or information.”
A “government” is defined as any “branch, department, agency, instrumentality, or official … of the United States, a State, or a subdivision of a State.” In other words, it covers any federal, state or local government!
“Viability” is defined as the time when there is “reasonable likelihood of the sustained survival of the fetus outside of the woman” as judged by the woman’s attending physician. Even babies at seven months gestation are unlikely to have sustained survival outside the womb without significant medical intervention. Thus, the proposed law’s definition of viability allows for very late term abortions.
The fact that FOCA is designed to erase every restriction on abortion can also be seen by the arguments made by its advocates. The proponents of FOCA argue that the law is necessary because of over 500 “restrictions” on abortion that have been passed by state and local jurisdictions. What else can they be referring to except things like parental notification, etc. as listed above?
Furthermore, the proponents claim that passage of FOCA has now become urgent due to the Supreme Court decision in Gonzales v. Carhart in April 2007 where, according to NARAL and Planned Parenthood, the court upheld “the federal ban on abortion”. Abortion rights advocates consistently use this disingenuous language of a “federal abortion ban” to describe the Gonzales decision.
In reality, of course, Gonzales did not ban abortion. Gonzales was the case where the Supreme Court upheld the Partial Birth Abortion Act of 2003. Only partial birth abortion is banned but the vague terminology of Planned Parenthood, et. al. appears to be a deliberate attempt to mislead people. Those who read their literature would mistakenly believe that the federal government has somehow banned abortion when in fact it has only banned one particularly heinous version of it.
If FOCA is passed, it will be ironic on several fronts.
First of all, some Christians who have voted Republican in the past due the abortion issue indicated that they would no longer let this issue be a driving force in their voting decision. While acknowledging that they disagreed with Obama’s position on abortion, they noted that Republican presidents have promised to overturn Roe v. Wade and have failed to deliver on that promise. They have concluded that presidents cannot do much about the abortion issue. Besides, they argue, there are other “life issues” that need to be considered (I dealt with the “consistently pro-life” debate in a previous blog). Therefore, they claimed that Obama’s abortion position should not be a deal killer in voting for him.
Obama himself argued differently during the campaign. He said that Roe v. Wade would be overturned if he were not elected president. He pointed out that the next president might appoint as many as three Supreme Court justices and the fate of Roe would hinge on whether he or McCain was the one appointing those judges. Thus, some people may have been throwing in the towel on the abortion issue on the verge of success.
But let’s ignore Roe for the moment. The passage of FOCA would also be ironic because it would show that a presidential choice can make a big difference on the abortion issue. A largely Democrat house and senate is like to pass FOCA. If they do, I believe Obama will sign it. This would not happen if McCain was occupying the White House. He would veto the legislation and there would not be enough votes to override a veto.
Thus, Obama’s election may mean that 35 years of incremental progress against abortion will be wiped out in one stroke of the pen.
There are four other issues I’d like to consider more briefly that may give us an indication of Obama’s governing philosophy but this has already gotten way too long. So, I’ll try to include those items in a “Part 2” in the near future.
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Getting Reacquainted with Ron Sider
I’m in a group that reads and discusses books related to faith and politics. It’s a great group with lots of political and theological diversity. Our current book is the newest offering from Ron Sider which is entitled The Scandal of Evangelical Politics: Why Are Christians Missing the Chance to Really Change the World?
The timing is interesting for me. I haven’t read any Ron Sider books since I read his provocative Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger in the early 1980s. But I recently heard Sider give several talks at Denver Seminary and I had a chance to ask him a couple of questions in an informal discussion session over lunch.
Full disclosure – I’ve never been a big Sider fan. His heart is in the right place but I’m frequently skeptical of his proposed solutions to issues of poverty and injustice and skeptical of many of the inferences he draws from Scripture.
My skepticism was not assuaged when just five pages into the first chapter I encountered this complaint about evangelical political involvement: “Consider the inconsistency with regard to the sanctity of human life … many highly visible evangelical pro-life movements focus largely on the question of abortion. But what about … the millions of adults killed annually by tobacco smoke?”
I suppose that anyone who writes and speaks as much as Sider will inevitably make some silly statements but his argument here is just drop-dead loony!
If I take Sider at face value, it seems that he does not distinguish between a choice made by an adult for himself that has a statistical chance of shortening that adult’s life versus a choice made by a third party for an in-utero baby that is guaranteed to end the child’s life in a matter of minutes.
Have I missed something? Has there been a recent revelation that adults are being strapped to gurneys and having tobacco smoke pumped into their lungs against their wills?
In fairness, I imagine that Sider believes that tobacco companies have killing millions of people by concealing the connection between smoking and cancer. If so, I can only record my belief that such an assertion is unsupportable.
The first Surgeon General’s report linking cancer with smoking appeared on January 11, 1964. The SG held a big press conference and the news was in all the papers. In fact, I’m almost sure I saw the actual live broadcast of the press conference when I was sick and stayed home from school that day.
In 1965, Congress passed the first law requiring a warning label on cigarette packages. My dad quit smoking in 1968 because he knew he might get lung cancer if he continued this habit. My sister and I were frequently embarrassed by my dad in the late 1960s when we would go to restaurants because he would strike up conversations with smokers at adjacent tables about the dangers of cigarette smoking. He was positively “evangelical” about it.
You can’t make a credible argument that adults don’t know about the dangers of smoking or that they are somehow being “killed” by smoking in the same way that babies are being killed by abortion. The only people in America over the age of ten that are unaware of the health risks of smoking are those people in a coma.
At any rate, I’ll keep you posted on my new adventures with Ron Sider. He had some interesting things to say when I heard him speak at Denver Seminary and I’d like to see where he goes with some of those ideas. Hopefully his analysis will be more enlightening than what I’ve encountered in Chapter 1.
As always, your comments are welcomed and encouraged.
The timing is interesting for me. I haven’t read any Ron Sider books since I read his provocative Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger in the early 1980s. But I recently heard Sider give several talks at Denver Seminary and I had a chance to ask him a couple of questions in an informal discussion session over lunch.
Full disclosure – I’ve never been a big Sider fan. His heart is in the right place but I’m frequently skeptical of his proposed solutions to issues of poverty and injustice and skeptical of many of the inferences he draws from Scripture.
My skepticism was not assuaged when just five pages into the first chapter I encountered this complaint about evangelical political involvement: “Consider the inconsistency with regard to the sanctity of human life … many highly visible evangelical pro-life movements focus largely on the question of abortion. But what about … the millions of adults killed annually by tobacco smoke?”
I suppose that anyone who writes and speaks as much as Sider will inevitably make some silly statements but his argument here is just drop-dead loony!
If I take Sider at face value, it seems that he does not distinguish between a choice made by an adult for himself that has a statistical chance of shortening that adult’s life versus a choice made by a third party for an in-utero baby that is guaranteed to end the child’s life in a matter of minutes.
Have I missed something? Has there been a recent revelation that adults are being strapped to gurneys and having tobacco smoke pumped into their lungs against their wills?
In fairness, I imagine that Sider believes that tobacco companies have killing millions of people by concealing the connection between smoking and cancer. If so, I can only record my belief that such an assertion is unsupportable.
The first Surgeon General’s report linking cancer with smoking appeared on January 11, 1964. The SG held a big press conference and the news was in all the papers. In fact, I’m almost sure I saw the actual live broadcast of the press conference when I was sick and stayed home from school that day.
In 1965, Congress passed the first law requiring a warning label on cigarette packages. My dad quit smoking in 1968 because he knew he might get lung cancer if he continued this habit. My sister and I were frequently embarrassed by my dad in the late 1960s when we would go to restaurants because he would strike up conversations with smokers at adjacent tables about the dangers of cigarette smoking. He was positively “evangelical” about it.
You can’t make a credible argument that adults don’t know about the dangers of smoking or that they are somehow being “killed” by smoking in the same way that babies are being killed by abortion. The only people in America over the age of ten that are unaware of the health risks of smoking are those people in a coma.
At any rate, I’ll keep you posted on my new adventures with Ron Sider. He had some interesting things to say when I heard him speak at Denver Seminary and I’d like to see where he goes with some of those ideas. Hopefully his analysis will be more enlightening than what I’ve encountered in Chapter 1.
As always, your comments are welcomed and encouraged.
Saturday, October 18, 2008
Cruise Blog #2
The best T-shirt with a message that we've seen so far:
Procrastinators of the world ... Unite!
Most perplexing thing heard so far:
"The life rafts are unsinkable." Why don't they just make the whole ship in the same way that the life rafts are made so that we would not even need life rafts?
Procrastinators of the world ... Unite!
Most perplexing thing heard so far:
"The life rafts are unsinkable." Why don't they just make the whole ship in the same way that the life rafts are made so that we would not even need life rafts?
Thursday, October 16, 2008
The Myth about Corporate Taxes
Democrats generally favor tax increases. The last time a Democrat ran for president on a platform of cutting taxes, I was spending my days dressed up as Bat Masterson and struggling to learn long-division. So that you won’t question my mental health status, please understand that the year was 1960 and I was seven!
Of course, raising taxes is never popular. So Democrats almost always resort to class envy to advance their agenda of higher taxes. They are going to cut taxes for most Americans and only raise taxes on the filthy rich (defined in this year’s political debates as those making more than $250k annually ) and on greedy corporations. Don’t worry, average, hard-working Americans, you will not be affected.
For this post, let’s look at the idea of raising taxes on corporations. Imagine that a tax increase on corporations is implemented. One or more of the following effects will occur.
First of all, a company can simply pay the tax and accept a lower profit. With a lower profit, the company is worth less and the value of the company’s stock decreases. The net result is that individual stockholders have paid the tax.
The second thing that a company could do with a tax increase is to pass it on to consumers. This is inflationary and it means that consumers pay the tax through higher prices.
The third and final option for a company hit with a tax increase is to reduce expenses. This allows them to maintain profitability without raising prices. Since the biggest expense for most companies is wages and salaries, this is a logical place to look for savings. Even if wage and salary cuts are not made directly, expense reductions in other areas ultimately translate to unemployment somewhere. A company might, for example, reduce its advertising budget and this affects employment in ad agencies and various media outlets. Thus, in this third scenario, employees ultimately pay for the tax increase through reduced or stagnant wages and/or layoffs.
Lower profits, rising prices and job losses are the inevitable result of corporate tax increases.
A call by politicians for higher corporate taxes is really a call for a declining stock market, rising prices and increased unemployment – and all three impact average, hard-working Americans.
Now Democrats claim to be concerned about declining stock market values and unemployment and high prices for food and energy. Yet they are pursing policies that will create everyone of these problems.
According to Democrats, risky lending practices in the financial sector have caused recent stock market declines and impacted the 401ks of average Americans. Democrats claim that they will protect you from this sort of thing yet higher corporate taxes will create the same effect.
When oil spiked at close to $150 a barrel, Democrats rushed forward to blame manipulative oil speculators and greedy oil companies for a callous disregard of the impact on the budgets of average Americans. But a higher corporate tax is also a cost increase to a corporation and just as likely to lead to increased prices.
Unemployment has risen to 6.1% and Democrats blame this on the policies of the Bush administration and again claim to be terribly concerned about how this impacts the everyday American worker (forget the fact for the moment that unemployment averaged 5.1% for the eight years of the Clinton administration and has average the same 5.1% during the eight years of Bush). Well, empirical studies show that increasing taxes usually lead to job losses.
It appears to me that Democrats are only concerned about stock market declines and escalating prices and loss of jobs unless they are the ones causing them!
Of course, I’m not saying that Democrats want people to be hurt by stock market declines or increases in prices and unemployment. They don’t. But the danger of Democrat style liberalism is that it wants to be judged by its good intentions rather than its actual outcomes.
When Democrats tell you not to worry about tax increases because they are only going to be paid by others, rich corporations in this case, they remind me of the woman in England in WWII. She said that she would not be impacted by the bread shortage because all her family ate was toast! When the bread of corporations is sucked up in higher taxes, there will be no toast of rising profits, lower prices and abundant jobs that benefit all Americans.
The United States should eliminate all corporate taxes since such taxes are ultimately borne by individuals. Calling them corporate taxes simply disguises their true nature.
Of course, raising taxes is never popular. So Democrats almost always resort to class envy to advance their agenda of higher taxes. They are going to cut taxes for most Americans and only raise taxes on the filthy rich (defined in this year’s political debates as those making more than $250k annually ) and on greedy corporations. Don’t worry, average, hard-working Americans, you will not be affected.
For this post, let’s look at the idea of raising taxes on corporations. Imagine that a tax increase on corporations is implemented. One or more of the following effects will occur.
First of all, a company can simply pay the tax and accept a lower profit. With a lower profit, the company is worth less and the value of the company’s stock decreases. The net result is that individual stockholders have paid the tax.
The second thing that a company could do with a tax increase is to pass it on to consumers. This is inflationary and it means that consumers pay the tax through higher prices.
The third and final option for a company hit with a tax increase is to reduce expenses. This allows them to maintain profitability without raising prices. Since the biggest expense for most companies is wages and salaries, this is a logical place to look for savings. Even if wage and salary cuts are not made directly, expense reductions in other areas ultimately translate to unemployment somewhere. A company might, for example, reduce its advertising budget and this affects employment in ad agencies and various media outlets. Thus, in this third scenario, employees ultimately pay for the tax increase through reduced or stagnant wages and/or layoffs.
Lower profits, rising prices and job losses are the inevitable result of corporate tax increases.
A call by politicians for higher corporate taxes is really a call for a declining stock market, rising prices and increased unemployment – and all three impact average, hard-working Americans.
Now Democrats claim to be concerned about declining stock market values and unemployment and high prices for food and energy. Yet they are pursing policies that will create everyone of these problems.
According to Democrats, risky lending practices in the financial sector have caused recent stock market declines and impacted the 401ks of average Americans. Democrats claim that they will protect you from this sort of thing yet higher corporate taxes will create the same effect.
When oil spiked at close to $150 a barrel, Democrats rushed forward to blame manipulative oil speculators and greedy oil companies for a callous disregard of the impact on the budgets of average Americans. But a higher corporate tax is also a cost increase to a corporation and just as likely to lead to increased prices.
Unemployment has risen to 6.1% and Democrats blame this on the policies of the Bush administration and again claim to be terribly concerned about how this impacts the everyday American worker (forget the fact for the moment that unemployment averaged 5.1% for the eight years of the Clinton administration and has average the same 5.1% during the eight years of Bush). Well, empirical studies show that increasing taxes usually lead to job losses.
It appears to me that Democrats are only concerned about stock market declines and escalating prices and loss of jobs unless they are the ones causing them!
Of course, I’m not saying that Democrats want people to be hurt by stock market declines or increases in prices and unemployment. They don’t. But the danger of Democrat style liberalism is that it wants to be judged by its good intentions rather than its actual outcomes.
When Democrats tell you not to worry about tax increases because they are only going to be paid by others, rich corporations in this case, they remind me of the woman in England in WWII. She said that she would not be impacted by the bread shortage because all her family ate was toast! When the bread of corporations is sucked up in higher taxes, there will be no toast of rising profits, lower prices and abundant jobs that benefit all Americans.
The United States should eliminate all corporate taxes since such taxes are ultimately borne by individuals. Calling them corporate taxes simply disguises their true nature.
Greed and Taxes
We have been hearing a lot about greed lately – especially from politicians running for office.
A few months ago, the political types were demonizing greedy oil companies. The most recent scapegoat is the housing/mortgage market. The story line is that greedy individuals seeking ever more lavish homes succumbed to greedy predatory lenders and this has created a financial crisis.
Well let’s look at some numbers.
In 2005, there was about $8.5 trillion in outstanding loans on residential property in America. This includes residential loans of all types like first mortgages, second mortgages, lines of credit, etc. Making some generous assumptions which probably overstate the payments being made, it looks like Americans forked over about $0.57 trillion in mortgage payments.
Approximately 32% of the population is renting instead of buying a home. While probably double counting in some ways, I again made assumptions that err on the high side to come up with a figure of $0.27 trillion in rent payments.
Therefore, between mortgage payments and rent payments, Americans were paying a total of $0.84 trillion to put roofs over their heads in 2005.
How much money do the same individual Americans give to the government?
Well, the adjusted gross income reported to the IRS by individuals was $7.5 trillion total in 2005 and the tax revenue collected by federal, state and local governments in that same year was $3.2 trillion.
My best estimate from a number of different sources is that corporate taxes account for about $0.5 trillion of the taxes paid to government at all levels. If you have read my previous blog, you’ll know that these corporate taxes really ended up being paid by individual Americans out of their pockets. Once again, however, I’ll be generous and ignore this for the moment.
Under these assumptions, we see that individual Americans paid $2.7 trillion in taxes out of their $7.5 trillion in income. This is a whopping 36%!
Thirty six cents out of every dollar of income earned by Americans went to the government while only 11.2 cents of every dollar ($0.84 trillion in mortgage and rent payments divided by $7.5 trillion of income) went to housing expenses!
Said differently, the government requires 321% more money from its citizens than is required by all of the Snidely Whiplashes (mortgage companies and landlords) in the entire country. Americans are spending more than three times as much money to support the government as they are spending for the places where they live!
So let me ask you this basic question: Who is greedier – the citizens or the government?
You hear politicians and media pundits talk about greedy individuals and greedy corporations all the time. But seriously, have you ever heard these people talk about “greedy government interests”? You’ve never heard them utter that phrase.
Yet greed is precisely the right word to apply to a governmental system that takes 36 cents out of every dollar earned and then still demands to take more! One of my missions in life is to get the phrase “greedy government interests” into the public domain so that more people will understand the true nature of government.
Because we are in the thick of a presidential campaign, the perennial debate about who should pay taxes and at what level is in high gear. Obama claims he will give 95% of wage earners a tax cut and he will only raise taxes on wealthy individuals (household income over $250k) and on big corporations. McCain also wants tax cuts for the majority of citizens (CNN showed that 93% of Americans get a tax cut under McCain’s plan) and he also wants to reduce taxes on corporations.
The question of who pays the tax revenue need to run the country is important. But I’m afraid that politicians use this question to distract us from asking a much more important and fundamental question – IS THERE ANY LIMIT TO THE AMOUNT OF MONEY THE GOVERNMENT SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO TAKE FROM THE CITIZENRY?
My answer is “Yes” and I think that government has already exceeded a reasonable limit.
Politicians claim that they will protect us from the greed of others. I think it is a smoke-screen to cover up their own avaricious demand for an ever increasing share of the nation’s wealth. I’m not so worried about greedy individuals or greedy corporations. What I want to know is who is going to protect us from greedy government interests?
A few months ago, the political types were demonizing greedy oil companies. The most recent scapegoat is the housing/mortgage market. The story line is that greedy individuals seeking ever more lavish homes succumbed to greedy predatory lenders and this has created a financial crisis.
Well let’s look at some numbers.
In 2005, there was about $8.5 trillion in outstanding loans on residential property in America. This includes residential loans of all types like first mortgages, second mortgages, lines of credit, etc. Making some generous assumptions which probably overstate the payments being made, it looks like Americans forked over about $0.57 trillion in mortgage payments.
Approximately 32% of the population is renting instead of buying a home. While probably double counting in some ways, I again made assumptions that err on the high side to come up with a figure of $0.27 trillion in rent payments.
Therefore, between mortgage payments and rent payments, Americans were paying a total of $0.84 trillion to put roofs over their heads in 2005.
How much money do the same individual Americans give to the government?
Well, the adjusted gross income reported to the IRS by individuals was $7.5 trillion total in 2005 and the tax revenue collected by federal, state and local governments in that same year was $3.2 trillion.
My best estimate from a number of different sources is that corporate taxes account for about $0.5 trillion of the taxes paid to government at all levels. If you have read my previous blog, you’ll know that these corporate taxes really ended up being paid by individual Americans out of their pockets. Once again, however, I’ll be generous and ignore this for the moment.
Under these assumptions, we see that individual Americans paid $2.7 trillion in taxes out of their $7.5 trillion in income. This is a whopping 36%!
Thirty six cents out of every dollar of income earned by Americans went to the government while only 11.2 cents of every dollar ($0.84 trillion in mortgage and rent payments divided by $7.5 trillion of income) went to housing expenses!
Said differently, the government requires 321% more money from its citizens than is required by all of the Snidely Whiplashes (mortgage companies and landlords) in the entire country. Americans are spending more than three times as much money to support the government as they are spending for the places where they live!
So let me ask you this basic question: Who is greedier – the citizens or the government?
You hear politicians and media pundits talk about greedy individuals and greedy corporations all the time. But seriously, have you ever heard these people talk about “greedy government interests”? You’ve never heard them utter that phrase.
Yet greed is precisely the right word to apply to a governmental system that takes 36 cents out of every dollar earned and then still demands to take more! One of my missions in life is to get the phrase “greedy government interests” into the public domain so that more people will understand the true nature of government.
Because we are in the thick of a presidential campaign, the perennial debate about who should pay taxes and at what level is in high gear. Obama claims he will give 95% of wage earners a tax cut and he will only raise taxes on wealthy individuals (household income over $250k) and on big corporations. McCain also wants tax cuts for the majority of citizens (CNN showed that 93% of Americans get a tax cut under McCain’s plan) and he also wants to reduce taxes on corporations.
The question of who pays the tax revenue need to run the country is important. But I’m afraid that politicians use this question to distract us from asking a much more important and fundamental question – IS THERE ANY LIMIT TO THE AMOUNT OF MONEY THE GOVERNMENT SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO TAKE FROM THE CITIZENRY?
My answer is “Yes” and I think that government has already exceeded a reasonable limit.
Politicians claim that they will protect us from the greed of others. I think it is a smoke-screen to cover up their own avaricious demand for an ever increasing share of the nation’s wealth. I’m not so worried about greedy individuals or greedy corporations. What I want to know is who is going to protect us from greedy government interests?
Cruise Blog #1
I experienced the sunrise Monday morning the way that 70% of the world, geographically speaking, experiences it everyday – on the ocean. Debi and I are on a cruise to celebrate our 30th anniversary and the edge of the sun was just appearing on the eastern horizon at 7:49 as I came up on deck.
From horizon to horizon and for 360 degrees, there was not a speck of land or even another ship to be seen. I asked one of the ship’s officers how far we could see on a day like Monday with unlimited visibility and he told me that edge of the world was about 25 nautical miles away (that’s just shy of 29 statute miles for you landlubbers). As I turned slowly in a circle, I was looking out on almost 2,600 square miles of water that was devoid of human civilization!
Although 3500 people share the Pride with me (the Pride is the name of the ship we are on), I was pretty much alone on the uppermost deck of the ship at that moment. My first thought was that we were a little island of life in a vast and threatening ocean. That was true since I was thinking only of Homo sapiens. A few moments later my perception changed as I thought about life more broadly – we were an island of life in a sea that teems with life of unimaginable fecundity.
Regardless of how I defined life at that moment, it turned out that my life on Monday was vastly different than “normal”. My day was filled with things I find it difficult to incorporate in my everyday life. A healthy breakfast was followed by time to read and think and dream and connect with God. Then came a workout in the gym at the bow of the ship and an unusual two mile run with exactly half of it into a 20-knot wind and the other half of it with that same wind at my back thanks to the sailing ship. Then there was more reading under a completely cloudless sky. I even did some work. Later, I watched the last rim of the sun’s disk disappear into the ocean at 7:18 pm while enjoying a cigar and a glass of bourbon. Interspersed with it all were conversations with Debi about significant matters.
And I was struck also by the things that were absent from my life on Monday. No news. No talk radio and NPR to get myself exposed to both sides of the current political debates. No glancing around the house and stewing about the projects that are left unfinished.
Overall, Monday was a day of less stress and less anxiety combined with more contentment and more connection with people and more involvement with things that really matter. The experience left me wondering if I could turn Monday’s oddity into an everyday reality.
From horizon to horizon and for 360 degrees, there was not a speck of land or even another ship to be seen. I asked one of the ship’s officers how far we could see on a day like Monday with unlimited visibility and he told me that edge of the world was about 25 nautical miles away (that’s just shy of 29 statute miles for you landlubbers). As I turned slowly in a circle, I was looking out on almost 2,600 square miles of water that was devoid of human civilization!
Although 3500 people share the Pride with me (the Pride is the name of the ship we are on), I was pretty much alone on the uppermost deck of the ship at that moment. My first thought was that we were a little island of life in a vast and threatening ocean. That was true since I was thinking only of Homo sapiens. A few moments later my perception changed as I thought about life more broadly – we were an island of life in a sea that teems with life of unimaginable fecundity.
Regardless of how I defined life at that moment, it turned out that my life on Monday was vastly different than “normal”. My day was filled with things I find it difficult to incorporate in my everyday life. A healthy breakfast was followed by time to read and think and dream and connect with God. Then came a workout in the gym at the bow of the ship and an unusual two mile run with exactly half of it into a 20-knot wind and the other half of it with that same wind at my back thanks to the sailing ship. Then there was more reading under a completely cloudless sky. I even did some work. Later, I watched the last rim of the sun’s disk disappear into the ocean at 7:18 pm while enjoying a cigar and a glass of bourbon. Interspersed with it all were conversations with Debi about significant matters.
And I was struck also by the things that were absent from my life on Monday. No news. No talk radio and NPR to get myself exposed to both sides of the current political debates. No glancing around the house and stewing about the projects that are left unfinished.
Overall, Monday was a day of less stress and less anxiety combined with more contentment and more connection with people and more involvement with things that really matter. The experience left me wondering if I could turn Monday’s oddity into an everyday reality.
Saturday, October 4, 2008
What About Bob?
Thanks for the comments some of you made publicly on my last post – the one about hearing from God about becoming like a little child.
In addition to the public comments, I got a private communication that was profoundly honest and impactful. It raises some important questions and issues and I’d like to know what you think about it.
Let’s call this person Bob – not his/her real name. I’ll give you a redacted version of his comments (with personal info removed) and tell you some thoughts that I passed on to him. Most importantly, I’d love to see if any of you have any words of wisdom for him in his current situation.
Bob’s Email:
So I have been thinking a lot about your whole hearing God talk thing. It is not working for me. I am caught in a vicious cycle and I don't know what to do about it. I feel so guilty that I am still not over the [traumatic personal situation]. I know I have a lot of things going for me but I just can't get past it. I have been praying like crazy about it. I have prayed for [the situation], that God is working in [it]. I have been asking God to please let me see this situation through his eyes. What does he know or have in store for me that I am too blind to see right now. He doesn't even have to tell me what those things are but just tell me that [He is at work].
But then I have been reading "Walking with God" and there was a chapter that talked about [how we need to be willing to hear things we don’t want to hear before God will speak to us]. The Lord knows my heart. I know that I only want to hear from him that [the situation is going to get resolved in the way I want]. But any other plan, I really don't [want to hear about that]. I say I do...but it would be both silly and pointless to hide [my true desires] from God. It is not that I don't want to feel that way. I so desperately want to be able to trust in him ...
So then I try to pray about those things. Try the honesty approach. The true things I am feeling. Maybe God has something to say about those things. Still nothing.
So there is also a story in the book [Walking with God] that talks about how you can't start out asking questions like these when you haven't had a conversational relationship with God before. You need to start out small and build up to it. So I have been trying to do that. Going back to basics. Reading from the Bible, telling God what is happening throughout my day, taking time to just say hi. And while it helps to get through the day, still no words...not working. Really the only reason that I am asking the small questions is so that I can eventually ask the big question, the one I really want to know about. And God knows that too. Just going through the motions to get to an end result that I want.
In one of [Pastor So and So’s] sermons, he talked about how people use God. How we want Jesus to be a vending machine (just pick what you want) and how we treat him like a prostitute. Use him for your current needs and then go on your merry way. I don't want to do this. But I don't know how to stop feeling like I am feeling. And I don't know how to feel the way I am feeling and make any progress. I can't lie about how I feel about [the situation] but I can't get anything accomplished while I feel this way. Cycle. Back and forth. No end in sight. My inability to see anything clearly has become like a prison.
So I was thinking, if you can hear from God, maybe you could ask him about me. Ask him what I am supposed to do. I can't do it. If I can get over this hump then maybe I can start small with him from the beginning. I feel so ashamed that I can't do it.
My Response:
I feel so badly about your situation. I know what it is like to live in pain and confusion and it is the pits. Here are some thoughts (in no particular order):
You are completely healthy spiritually because you recognize that you can’t hide your true thoughts and feelings and wishes from God. I finally figured this out two or three years ago. I realized that, while it is wrong to lie to others and unproductive to lie to myself, it is actually impossible to lie to God.
I love your honesty. I love that you are free to say that hearing from God is not working for you. I love that you are acknowledging that you’ve got desires and can’t just ignore them. I love that you refuse to pretend that you are willing to hear any answer to your dilemma when you know you are not.
I think Eldredge is wrong when he talks about the need to be willing to hear any answer before you can hear from God. We just can’t fake that. I think you are on the right track with the “honesty approach” and I would just keep on with that at the moment. The Psalms are full of people who cry out to God and demand action and intervention. They were not “neutral” and willing to hear just any old answer.
As to why you haven’t heard anything, I have several thoughts. First, you and I are new at this and it takes practice. You wouldn’t play golf like Tiger Woods if you went to a golf course. Everything takes practice – even spiritual things. For example, teaching is a spiritual gift but teachers study and get training and find their gift developing over time. With most of the things I’m asking God about, I hear only silence. Hearing from God is still a fairly rare experience for me but I’m going to keep practicing. I’m new to this whole endeavor.
Secondly, there is a massive (though unseen) spiritual battle that is swirling around us all the time. Demonic forces don’t want us to hear from God and they have a lot of power in this world. Daniel prayed and fasted for three weeks before he got an answer from God. When an angel showed up, he told Daniel that God sent him to answer Daniel’s prayer from the moment he first prayed. The three week delay was caused by rebellious, demonic forces that kept the angel from getting through right away. There is always stuff going on, both human and demonic, that we have no control over.
I also think [Pastor So and So] was at least partly wrong with the vending machine/prostitute analogy. We Christians sometimes fall into a trap of saying things that sound pious but are really just a bunch of damned nonsense when we stop to think about it a little more deeply. [Pastor So and So] does not do so very often but I think he succumbed in this case.
C. S. Lewis has much better insight into this issue of going to God with our needs. In the introduction to The Four Loves, he talks about how he came to conclude that our love for God cannot be divorced from our needs. He says …
"… in ordinary life no one calls a child selfish because it turns for comfort to its mother; … Every Christian would agree that a man's spiritual health is exactly proportional to his love for God. But man's love for God, from the very nature of the case, must always be very largely, and must often be entirely, a Need-love. This is obvious when we implore forgiveness for our sins or support in our tribulations. But in the long run it is perhaps even more apparent in our growing – for it ought to be growing – awareness that our whole being by its very nature is one vast need; incomplete, preparatory, empty yet cluttered, crying out for Him who can untie things that are now knotted together and tie up things that are still dangling loose … It would be a bold and silly creature that came before its Creator with the boast, 'I'm no beggar. I love you disinterestedly.' … And God will have it so. He addresses our Need-love: 'Come unto me all ye that travail and are heavy-laden,' or, in the Old Testament, 'Open your mouth wide and I will fill it.'"
Back to the demonic – the guilt and shame you feel is absolutely demonic. That is not coming from God and is a sure sign that sinister forces are at work.
I’m rambling a bit but here is another thought: I don’t think that God has some pre-set plan for [resolving your dilemma]. I think there are things about the future that even God does not know because they depend on the free choices of people and angels and demons. Even if God wants to [resolve the situation the way you want it resolved], it might not happen due to choices that others make in the matter. While this is a somewhat controversial view, there are well-respected and credible theologians who would agree with this perspective.
At any rate, it seems like a dangerous time for you right now. The enemy is always quick to use our pain and disappointments against us and against God. He is there right there with his accusations disguised as our own thoughts: “God has abandoned me.” or “God must be really angry with me.” or “This just proves that there is no God – I’ve just been engaged in wishful thinking.” Etc. So, I’ll be praying about this aspect of the issue
Of course, I will ask God about anything he might want to say to you. .
Your Thoughts:
How about you? Are there any thoughts that you’d want to pass on to Bob about his anguish or my response to it?
In addition to the public comments, I got a private communication that was profoundly honest and impactful. It raises some important questions and issues and I’d like to know what you think about it.
Let’s call this person Bob – not his/her real name. I’ll give you a redacted version of his comments (with personal info removed) and tell you some thoughts that I passed on to him. Most importantly, I’d love to see if any of you have any words of wisdom for him in his current situation.
Bob’s Email:
So I have been thinking a lot about your whole hearing God talk thing. It is not working for me. I am caught in a vicious cycle and I don't know what to do about it. I feel so guilty that I am still not over the [traumatic personal situation]. I know I have a lot of things going for me but I just can't get past it. I have been praying like crazy about it. I have prayed for [the situation], that God is working in [it]. I have been asking God to please let me see this situation through his eyes. What does he know or have in store for me that I am too blind to see right now. He doesn't even have to tell me what those things are but just tell me that [He is at work].
But then I have been reading "Walking with God" and there was a chapter that talked about [how we need to be willing to hear things we don’t want to hear before God will speak to us]. The Lord knows my heart. I know that I only want to hear from him that [the situation is going to get resolved in the way I want]. But any other plan, I really don't [want to hear about that]. I say I do...but it would be both silly and pointless to hide [my true desires] from God. It is not that I don't want to feel that way. I so desperately want to be able to trust in him ...
So then I try to pray about those things. Try the honesty approach. The true things I am feeling. Maybe God has something to say about those things. Still nothing.
So there is also a story in the book [Walking with God] that talks about how you can't start out asking questions like these when you haven't had a conversational relationship with God before. You need to start out small and build up to it. So I have been trying to do that. Going back to basics. Reading from the Bible, telling God what is happening throughout my day, taking time to just say hi. And while it helps to get through the day, still no words...not working. Really the only reason that I am asking the small questions is so that I can eventually ask the big question, the one I really want to know about. And God knows that too. Just going through the motions to get to an end result that I want.
In one of [Pastor So and So’s] sermons, he talked about how people use God. How we want Jesus to be a vending machine (just pick what you want) and how we treat him like a prostitute. Use him for your current needs and then go on your merry way. I don't want to do this. But I don't know how to stop feeling like I am feeling. And I don't know how to feel the way I am feeling and make any progress. I can't lie about how I feel about [the situation] but I can't get anything accomplished while I feel this way. Cycle. Back and forth. No end in sight. My inability to see anything clearly has become like a prison.
So I was thinking, if you can hear from God, maybe you could ask him about me. Ask him what I am supposed to do. I can't do it. If I can get over this hump then maybe I can start small with him from the beginning. I feel so ashamed that I can't do it.
My Response:
I feel so badly about your situation. I know what it is like to live in pain and confusion and it is the pits. Here are some thoughts (in no particular order):
You are completely healthy spiritually because you recognize that you can’t hide your true thoughts and feelings and wishes from God. I finally figured this out two or three years ago. I realized that, while it is wrong to lie to others and unproductive to lie to myself, it is actually impossible to lie to God.
I love your honesty. I love that you are free to say that hearing from God is not working for you. I love that you are acknowledging that you’ve got desires and can’t just ignore them. I love that you refuse to pretend that you are willing to hear any answer to your dilemma when you know you are not.
I think Eldredge is wrong when he talks about the need to be willing to hear any answer before you can hear from God. We just can’t fake that. I think you are on the right track with the “honesty approach” and I would just keep on with that at the moment. The Psalms are full of people who cry out to God and demand action and intervention. They were not “neutral” and willing to hear just any old answer.
As to why you haven’t heard anything, I have several thoughts. First, you and I are new at this and it takes practice. You wouldn’t play golf like Tiger Woods if you went to a golf course. Everything takes practice – even spiritual things. For example, teaching is a spiritual gift but teachers study and get training and find their gift developing over time. With most of the things I’m asking God about, I hear only silence. Hearing from God is still a fairly rare experience for me but I’m going to keep practicing. I’m new to this whole endeavor.
Secondly, there is a massive (though unseen) spiritual battle that is swirling around us all the time. Demonic forces don’t want us to hear from God and they have a lot of power in this world. Daniel prayed and fasted for three weeks before he got an answer from God. When an angel showed up, he told Daniel that God sent him to answer Daniel’s prayer from the moment he first prayed. The three week delay was caused by rebellious, demonic forces that kept the angel from getting through right away. There is always stuff going on, both human and demonic, that we have no control over.
I also think [Pastor So and So] was at least partly wrong with the vending machine/prostitute analogy. We Christians sometimes fall into a trap of saying things that sound pious but are really just a bunch of damned nonsense when we stop to think about it a little more deeply. [Pastor So and So] does not do so very often but I think he succumbed in this case.
C. S. Lewis has much better insight into this issue of going to God with our needs. In the introduction to The Four Loves, he talks about how he came to conclude that our love for God cannot be divorced from our needs. He says …
"… in ordinary life no one calls a child selfish because it turns for comfort to its mother; … Every Christian would agree that a man's spiritual health is exactly proportional to his love for God. But man's love for God, from the very nature of the case, must always be very largely, and must often be entirely, a Need-love. This is obvious when we implore forgiveness for our sins or support in our tribulations. But in the long run it is perhaps even more apparent in our growing – for it ought to be growing – awareness that our whole being by its very nature is one vast need; incomplete, preparatory, empty yet cluttered, crying out for Him who can untie things that are now knotted together and tie up things that are still dangling loose … It would be a bold and silly creature that came before its Creator with the boast, 'I'm no beggar. I love you disinterestedly.' … And God will have it so. He addresses our Need-love: 'Come unto me all ye that travail and are heavy-laden,' or, in the Old Testament, 'Open your mouth wide and I will fill it.'"
Back to the demonic – the guilt and shame you feel is absolutely demonic. That is not coming from God and is a sure sign that sinister forces are at work.
I’m rambling a bit but here is another thought: I don’t think that God has some pre-set plan for [resolving your dilemma]. I think there are things about the future that even God does not know because they depend on the free choices of people and angels and demons. Even if God wants to [resolve the situation the way you want it resolved], it might not happen due to choices that others make in the matter. While this is a somewhat controversial view, there are well-respected and credible theologians who would agree with this perspective.
At any rate, it seems like a dangerous time for you right now. The enemy is always quick to use our pain and disappointments against us and against God. He is there right there with his accusations disguised as our own thoughts: “God has abandoned me.” or “God must be really angry with me.” or “This just proves that there is no God – I’ve just been engaged in wishful thinking.” Etc. So, I’ll be praying about this aspect of the issue
Of course, I will ask God about anything he might want to say to you. .
Your Thoughts:
How about you? Are there any thoughts that you’d want to pass on to Bob about his anguish or my response to it?
Sunday, September 7, 2008
Another Encounter with God: Become Like a Little Child?
Here is another encounter I had with God.
I’m in a reading group with a bunch of guys. We read books and then we get together to discuss and debate them. All of us value the life of the mind and we love the intellectual interaction.
Uncharacteristically, only three of us showed up one day for our scheduled meeting. In that meeting, the topic of God’s immanence came up. One member of our group thinks that this is a neglected topic in Evangelical circles. He thinks that we have a healthy appreciation of God’s transcendence – that He is above and outside of creation and rules over it – but we are not so comfortable with the equally biblical concept of God’s nearness and closeness and presence in His creation.
This topic had been brought up before by this member of our group and, with a small turnout at this particular meeting, it seemed like a good chance to delve into it. I genuinely wanted to understand his thoughts on this topic.
It was a very heady discussion and my mind was spinning as I left the meeting. We happened to be meeting on that particular day at the church where my friend works and I had to walk down a hall where a bunch of 4-year old kids were being dropped off for pre-school. I was in the midst of wading through this sea of small humans when God said to me, “Unless you become like a little child, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.”
Whoa! Having just come from an intellectual adult discussion, this seemed pretty confrontational. Was God telling me to drop the intellectual pursuit and adopt a simpler, child-like faith?
I had to run to an appointment and could not really give this word from God any attention. But later in the day, as I was walking to cool down from a run, I decided to ask God about it.
“Okay God, what was that about this morning? Are you telling me that all of this intellectual pursuit is worthless? Are you saying it a waste of time to try to understand your immanence? You say that I should love you with all my mind and yet this comment this morning seems to be dismissing that. ”
In response, God asked me, “Well, what about your own kids?’
As in my other encounters with God, this was not an audible voice. It was an internal thought but it had an origin outside of myself. This is one of the ways that I’ve learned to recognize God’s voice – it says things that are disconnected with my line of thinking.
I was not reasoning this out. I was not saying to myself, “Let’s see. Jesus says become like a little child. Okay, what is there in my experience with my own kids that might help me understand what Jesus is saying?” I was not looking for analogies or metaphors. I was not saying to myself, “What can I compare this to?” In fact, I was asking a question and was somewhat fearful about where the conversation might go.
And here is another way I know that this question about my own kids was the voice of God. It was revelatory. Although it will take me several paragraphs to explain what God was saying to me, I knew all of it in an instant. Here was the message I received:
When my kids were little, they were often excited about what they were learning. They would come to me and say, “Dad, look what I can do. I can add two digit numbers! We learned how to do it today. And now that I know how to do that, I can add up any numbers – even big numbers in the thousands. Come on, Dad. Give me two big numbers and I’ll add them up for you.”
You know, I never said to them, “I’m not impressed. Adding numbers is so incredibly elementary. I know how to do differential equations!” (Okay, that would be a bit of a lie – I once knew how to do differential equations while I was taking the class in college but I wouldn’t have a clue where to start right now)
Of course I never reacted disdainfully when my children came to me with things that they were learning. I was excited. I gave them numbers to add together and I ohed and ahed over their marvelous talents. I loved what they were learning. More importantly, I loved that they wanted to share it with me.
And here is another thing that I knew instantly just by God asking the question: I realized that my love for my children was not dependent on their ability to learn. I love them because they are my kids.
For a couple weeks immediately after her birth, we thought that one of our daughters might have Down’s Syndrome. It was a false alarm. But if she had been afflicted with this sinister disease, she might never have learned to add two numbers together. Our love for her would not have been lessened.
I said, “Lord, are you saying that the intellectual pursuit is okay?”
And God said, “Yes. I made you this way. I love your mind. I love what you’re learning. Of course, it is all very elementary to me – it’s like adding two digit numbers. But it is good for you to learn these things and it will lead to other and deeper things. But always share what you are learning with me and process your questions with me. I love the conversations. And never think that my love for you is dependent on figuring it all out.”
As I say, it has taken me several paragraphs to explain this and it has taken you a few minutes to read it. But I knew all of these things in an instant at the very moment that God asked me about my own kids. It was a revelation.
And, it was also healing. I had never realized that there was an unhealthy element in my passion for reading and learning and understanding. Behind it was a sub-conscious thought that I had to get it all figured out to be okay with God. God dealt with this pathological distortion in what is fundamentally a healthy pursuit.
As always, your comments and questions are welcomed and encouraged. And I’d love for any of you to share your own stories of encounters with God.
And let me volunteer this one possible response to my story: Many in the Evangelical community would say that this whole episode is a complete delusion – that I’ve mistaken my own thought processes for the voice of God. They would say that Evangelicalism has become too “therapeutic” and too focused on self and too focused on a casual, chummy view of the relationship between a holy God and his fallen creatures.
At this point, just let me say that this is a common criticism that I encounter frequently in my reading. If you are thinking along these lines, you are not alone and you should feel free to express your skepticism. I will deal with that whole issue in a future blog – hopefully in my next posting.
I’m in a reading group with a bunch of guys. We read books and then we get together to discuss and debate them. All of us value the life of the mind and we love the intellectual interaction.
Uncharacteristically, only three of us showed up one day for our scheduled meeting. In that meeting, the topic of God’s immanence came up. One member of our group thinks that this is a neglected topic in Evangelical circles. He thinks that we have a healthy appreciation of God’s transcendence – that He is above and outside of creation and rules over it – but we are not so comfortable with the equally biblical concept of God’s nearness and closeness and presence in His creation.
This topic had been brought up before by this member of our group and, with a small turnout at this particular meeting, it seemed like a good chance to delve into it. I genuinely wanted to understand his thoughts on this topic.
It was a very heady discussion and my mind was spinning as I left the meeting. We happened to be meeting on that particular day at the church where my friend works and I had to walk down a hall where a bunch of 4-year old kids were being dropped off for pre-school. I was in the midst of wading through this sea of small humans when God said to me, “Unless you become like a little child, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.”
Whoa! Having just come from an intellectual adult discussion, this seemed pretty confrontational. Was God telling me to drop the intellectual pursuit and adopt a simpler, child-like faith?
I had to run to an appointment and could not really give this word from God any attention. But later in the day, as I was walking to cool down from a run, I decided to ask God about it.
“Okay God, what was that about this morning? Are you telling me that all of this intellectual pursuit is worthless? Are you saying it a waste of time to try to understand your immanence? You say that I should love you with all my mind and yet this comment this morning seems to be dismissing that. ”
In response, God asked me, “Well, what about your own kids?’
As in my other encounters with God, this was not an audible voice. It was an internal thought but it had an origin outside of myself. This is one of the ways that I’ve learned to recognize God’s voice – it says things that are disconnected with my line of thinking.
I was not reasoning this out. I was not saying to myself, “Let’s see. Jesus says become like a little child. Okay, what is there in my experience with my own kids that might help me understand what Jesus is saying?” I was not looking for analogies or metaphors. I was not saying to myself, “What can I compare this to?” In fact, I was asking a question and was somewhat fearful about where the conversation might go.
And here is another way I know that this question about my own kids was the voice of God. It was revelatory. Although it will take me several paragraphs to explain what God was saying to me, I knew all of it in an instant. Here was the message I received:
When my kids were little, they were often excited about what they were learning. They would come to me and say, “Dad, look what I can do. I can add two digit numbers! We learned how to do it today. And now that I know how to do that, I can add up any numbers – even big numbers in the thousands. Come on, Dad. Give me two big numbers and I’ll add them up for you.”
You know, I never said to them, “I’m not impressed. Adding numbers is so incredibly elementary. I know how to do differential equations!” (Okay, that would be a bit of a lie – I once knew how to do differential equations while I was taking the class in college but I wouldn’t have a clue where to start right now)
Of course I never reacted disdainfully when my children came to me with things that they were learning. I was excited. I gave them numbers to add together and I ohed and ahed over their marvelous talents. I loved what they were learning. More importantly, I loved that they wanted to share it with me.
And here is another thing that I knew instantly just by God asking the question: I realized that my love for my children was not dependent on their ability to learn. I love them because they are my kids.
For a couple weeks immediately after her birth, we thought that one of our daughters might have Down’s Syndrome. It was a false alarm. But if she had been afflicted with this sinister disease, she might never have learned to add two numbers together. Our love for her would not have been lessened.
I said, “Lord, are you saying that the intellectual pursuit is okay?”
And God said, “Yes. I made you this way. I love your mind. I love what you’re learning. Of course, it is all very elementary to me – it’s like adding two digit numbers. But it is good for you to learn these things and it will lead to other and deeper things. But always share what you are learning with me and process your questions with me. I love the conversations. And never think that my love for you is dependent on figuring it all out.”
As I say, it has taken me several paragraphs to explain this and it has taken you a few minutes to read it. But I knew all of these things in an instant at the very moment that God asked me about my own kids. It was a revelation.
And, it was also healing. I had never realized that there was an unhealthy element in my passion for reading and learning and understanding. Behind it was a sub-conscious thought that I had to get it all figured out to be okay with God. God dealt with this pathological distortion in what is fundamentally a healthy pursuit.
As always, your comments and questions are welcomed and encouraged. And I’d love for any of you to share your own stories of encounters with God.
And let me volunteer this one possible response to my story: Many in the Evangelical community would say that this whole episode is a complete delusion – that I’ve mistaken my own thought processes for the voice of God. They would say that Evangelicalism has become too “therapeutic” and too focused on self and too focused on a casual, chummy view of the relationship between a holy God and his fallen creatures.
At this point, just let me say that this is a common criticism that I encounter frequently in my reading. If you are thinking along these lines, you are not alone and you should feel free to express your skepticism. I will deal with that whole issue in a future blog – hopefully in my next posting.
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Hearing from God in a Dream
Thanks for your comments and stories on my recent blog about hearing from God. Here is one of my own encounters that occurred through a dream or, more accurately, through a nightmare.
In my dream, I was strapping a 4-year old Chinese girl into a car seat. Don’t ask me how I knew that she was 4 years old – that’s just the way dreams are.
At any rate, I knew also that this was not a car seat. It was actually an electric chair and I was strapping the little girl in because the authorities had ordered her execution. Like many of my dreams where I’m trying to accomplish some task, I could not quite get it done. I’d fasten one latch and discover that there were two more that needed my attention. I’d work on those only to find that another one had come undone. Then, I’d decide that I needed to take the whole seat out of the car and start over. This went on interminably.
But my state of mind in this dream was much more importantly than this Sisyphusian task I was trying to accomplish. The whole time that I was trying to get this girl strapped into the seat, I was massively conflicted and anxious. I kept telling myself that I had to stop this. I kept saying to myself, “This little girl could not possibly have done anything that makes her worthy of death. She does not deserve to die.” I kept repeating this over and over, “She does not deserve to die.”
After a long struggle, both physically to get my task done and emotionally to deal with the trauma of what was happening, I woke up. My heart was racing and I was sweating and I experienced that relief that it was only a dream. But as the relief of “it’s only a dream” started to calm me down, God said, “Mike, millions of people are dying around the world each year that don’t deserve to die.”
There are two important things to know about this. First, when I say that God spoke to me, I do not mean that I heard an audible voice. This was a thought in my mind but I somehow recognized it as having an origin outside of myself. I want to say that it was an “implanted” thought. It was disconnected with anything I was thinking. I was not thinking about the dream or analyzing it or asking myself what it was about.
The second thing about this statement is that it was said to me in a matter-of-fact way. It did not come with any sense of judgment or condemnation – it was not as if God was saying, “millions of innocents are dying and you don’t give a rat’s ass about it”. It wasn’t angry. It wasn’t even sad which seems very strange to me but I’m just trying to be accurate in my reporting. It was simply a statement about reality.
Perhaps because it did not come with any shame or guilt or anger, it did not throw up any barriers in me. So I said, “Lord, what do you want me to do?” God said, “Give $x per month to Opportunity International.
Opportunity International is an organization that I’ve known about for many years and a group Debi and I have supported in the past. They are involved in microfinance as a way to alleviate poverty and hunger and oppression in the developing world. I love their model because money they raised is used repeatedly – it is loaned and repaid and loaned again. I also love it because it is more of a “teach a person to fish instead of give a person a fish” approach.
The “x” dollars per month was not some massive, sacrificial amount. It did not require taking out a 2nd mortgage on the house or telling the kids that they needed to drop out of college. I probably spend more than “x” dollars each month on fast food.
I want you to know that I’m a lousy giver. I am so far from being any kind of role model in this area. If I was a presidential candidate and was asked about my greatest moral failure (as in the recent Rick Warren forum with McCain and Obama), money/financial/giving issues would have to be in my top ten list. But this particular giving has a whole different feel. I enjoy it as much as I do spending money on some consumer product.
And this incident has become more than just an encounter with God. It has become a paradigm for me of a relationship-based, experiential approach to knowing God instead of just a principles-based approach to faith. I learn from the Bible that giving is a good thing. There are many biblical principles related to giving. But no matter how many principles I learn, the Bible can never tell me what to give and where to give. After all, there is massive need. I regularly run into people who are raising money for good and noble causes. What do I do with all these requests? I’ve decided that all I can do is walk with the God in an intimate and personal and conversational relationship and get involved in those things that he calls me to.
If you’ve had these types of encounters with God, I’m interested in hearing about them. Share your stories with us.
In my dream, I was strapping a 4-year old Chinese girl into a car seat. Don’t ask me how I knew that she was 4 years old – that’s just the way dreams are.
At any rate, I knew also that this was not a car seat. It was actually an electric chair and I was strapping the little girl in because the authorities had ordered her execution. Like many of my dreams where I’m trying to accomplish some task, I could not quite get it done. I’d fasten one latch and discover that there were two more that needed my attention. I’d work on those only to find that another one had come undone. Then, I’d decide that I needed to take the whole seat out of the car and start over. This went on interminably.
But my state of mind in this dream was much more importantly than this Sisyphusian task I was trying to accomplish. The whole time that I was trying to get this girl strapped into the seat, I was massively conflicted and anxious. I kept telling myself that I had to stop this. I kept saying to myself, “This little girl could not possibly have done anything that makes her worthy of death. She does not deserve to die.” I kept repeating this over and over, “She does not deserve to die.”
After a long struggle, both physically to get my task done and emotionally to deal with the trauma of what was happening, I woke up. My heart was racing and I was sweating and I experienced that relief that it was only a dream. But as the relief of “it’s only a dream” started to calm me down, God said, “Mike, millions of people are dying around the world each year that don’t deserve to die.”
There are two important things to know about this. First, when I say that God spoke to me, I do not mean that I heard an audible voice. This was a thought in my mind but I somehow recognized it as having an origin outside of myself. I want to say that it was an “implanted” thought. It was disconnected with anything I was thinking. I was not thinking about the dream or analyzing it or asking myself what it was about.
The second thing about this statement is that it was said to me in a matter-of-fact way. It did not come with any sense of judgment or condemnation – it was not as if God was saying, “millions of innocents are dying and you don’t give a rat’s ass about it”. It wasn’t angry. It wasn’t even sad which seems very strange to me but I’m just trying to be accurate in my reporting. It was simply a statement about reality.
Perhaps because it did not come with any shame or guilt or anger, it did not throw up any barriers in me. So I said, “Lord, what do you want me to do?” God said, “Give $x per month to Opportunity International.
Opportunity International is an organization that I’ve known about for many years and a group Debi and I have supported in the past. They are involved in microfinance as a way to alleviate poverty and hunger and oppression in the developing world. I love their model because money they raised is used repeatedly – it is loaned and repaid and loaned again. I also love it because it is more of a “teach a person to fish instead of give a person a fish” approach.
The “x” dollars per month was not some massive, sacrificial amount. It did not require taking out a 2nd mortgage on the house or telling the kids that they needed to drop out of college. I probably spend more than “x” dollars each month on fast food.
I want you to know that I’m a lousy giver. I am so far from being any kind of role model in this area. If I was a presidential candidate and was asked about my greatest moral failure (as in the recent Rick Warren forum with McCain and Obama), money/financial/giving issues would have to be in my top ten list. But this particular giving has a whole different feel. I enjoy it as much as I do spending money on some consumer product.
And this incident has become more than just an encounter with God. It has become a paradigm for me of a relationship-based, experiential approach to knowing God instead of just a principles-based approach to faith. I learn from the Bible that giving is a good thing. There are many biblical principles related to giving. But no matter how many principles I learn, the Bible can never tell me what to give and where to give. After all, there is massive need. I regularly run into people who are raising money for good and noble causes. What do I do with all these requests? I’ve decided that all I can do is walk with the God in an intimate and personal and conversational relationship and get involved in those things that he calls me to.
If you’ve had these types of encounters with God, I’m interested in hearing about them. Share your stories with us.
Monday, August 18, 2008
Hearing from God
Lily Tomlin makes an interesting observation when she says, “Why is it when we talk to God we are said to be praying, and when God talks to us we're said to be schizophrenic?”
Does God speak to you? Of course, most Christians would say that God speaks to them through the Bible. God reveals things about himself through his written word.
But that is not what I’m talking about. I’m asking if you experience the kinds of personal encounters with God that are described in the Bible. God tells Samuel to appoint David as king. God tells Joseph to take the infant Jesus to Egypt because powerful people are out to kill him. God tells Ananias to deliver a message to Saul about the acute case of blindness that befell him a few days earlier.
My own thinking about this matter has been shifting in recent years. Here is a bit of my own journey related to this issue.
I became a Christian in the early 1970s in an environment that valued loving God with your mind. Good theology and right doctrine were emphasized and rightly so. As C. S. Lewis said, “Theology means the ‘science of God’ and I think any man who wants to think about God at all would like to have the clearest and most accurate ideas about Him which are available.” (Chapter 1 of Book 4 of Mere Christianity)
On the other hand, this tradition in which I became a believer tended to distrust any claim of a personal encounter with God. My mentors explained to me that God did not speak to people anymore outside of illuminating them to understand his written word. Prior to the Bible being completed, God had to communicate with people directly. Now that the Bible was complete, they argued, this type of communication was no longer needed.
Similar logic was used to argue that speaking in tongues and miraculous healings and prophetic utterances had also passed away with the completion of God’s written revelation. These things were only needed to give credibility to the original apostles and those who were first preaching the message of Christ. Those of you with theological training will recognize the standard “Cessationist” position I was being taught.
This outlook was just fine with me. People who claimed to experience God were weird. They were slick televangelists who were obvious charlatans or super emotional people who babbled incoherently and claimed it was speaking in tongues. The Cessastionist position seemed reasonable.
In the last few years however, I’ve been rethinking this. While there are a lot of differences between the Old and New Testaments, one consistent pattern is that God engages people in a personal and intimate conversation about their lives and the circumstances in which they find themselves.
God spoke to Adam, Eve, Cain, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Aaron, Joshua, Gideon and on and on and on throughout the Old Testament.
This pattern continues into the New Testament:
Simeon is told that he will not die until he has seen the Messiah.
God spoke to the magi and to Joseph about Herod’s evil intent.
God spoke to Paul on the Damascus Road.
God gave Ananias a message to give to Paul.
God spoke to Paul about going to Asia Minor.
God spoke to the Antioch church about sending Paul and Barnabas on a mission trip.
God spoke to Peter about Cornelius and the gentiles.
God spoke to Phillip about chatting with the Ethiopian eunuch.
The phrases "the word of the Lord", "the Lord spoke", "the Lord said", "God spoke" and "God said” occur almost 700 times in the Bible. In some cases, the references are clearly to the written word of God. However, the vast majority of these passages record encounters with God where God “speaks” personally with individuals or groups outside of his written word. It is also interesting to note the way in which God speaks in these personal encounters. Occasionally the means are overtly supernatural like the appearance of an angel or an audible voice. I think this confused me for quite a long time. I did not experience such dramatic encounters.
But more recently I began to notice that the vast majority of God’s encounters with human beings related in the Bible leave the means of God’s communication unspecified or attribute it to something “natural” like a dream. A good example of God speaking by unspecified means is Judges 7:2-11 where God communicates with Gideon about the upcoming battle with Midian. Another example is I Samuel 23 where David “inquired of the Lord” whether he should go to battle against the Philistines and “the Lord answered him and said …” These examples are the norm rather than the exception.Thus, a straight forward reading of this biblical evidence makes it easy to believe that: (1) It is NORMAL for God to speak to his people on a REGULAR basis through personal encounters and private revelations and (2) Most of these encounters do not involve overtly supernatural means like an audible voice or the appearance of an angel but involve natural phenomenon like dreams or an inner voice.
With this biblical basis for believing that God still speaks today, I began to seek out credible examples of this supernatural and personal encounter with the living God.
A friend told me to visit Lookout Mountain Community Church. Within their church, they have a group of trained, lay ministers with prophetic gifts. These people will meet with you and pray for you and tell you things that God is revealing to them about you – things that God wants you to know about what he is doing in your life.
I met with three of these people one evening and it was very profound. They told me things about myself that God was revealing to them – things that were completely true about me and things they had no way of knowing since I was a total stranger to them. They were telling me these things within two minutes of meeting me and knowing nothing about me other than my first name. Furthermore, I’ve had friends that have had similar, credible experiences with these prophetically gifted people at LMCC.
The next step on this journey was getting reintroduced to Jack Deere. Jack was peripherally involved in my becoming a Christian in the 1970s. He was attending Dallas Seminary at the time and was widely recognized as a bright light and a rising star in Evangelical circles. Dallas Seminary was a stronghold of Cessationist thinking and Jack fit right in. When he graduated, he was asked to stay on as a professor and he did just that.
In the mid 1980s however, Jack began to have some encounters with overtly supernatural phenomenon. A man he greatly admired came to a church Jack was leading and conducted a healing service where people Jack knew were healed of chronic aliments. God gave revelations to people that resulted in the resolution of long-standing emotional wounds. Demonic activity became manifested and the demons were driven out. Despite his theology that said that such things no longer happened, Jack could not deny that they were happening right in the midst of his own church.
Over a two year period, Deere came to realize that his theology on this matter had been wrong. His change of theology led to his dismissal from Dallas Seminary. Jack wrote two books on his journey entitled Surprised by the Holy Spirit and Surprised by the Voice of God. They were enormously helpful to me for a number of reasons: (1) I knew Jack personally, (2) He had impeccable theological credentials, (3) He had been a skeptic of the overtly supernatural.
Two other authors have been very helpful. Dallas Willard’s book entitled Hearing God was insightful. And several books by John Eldredge have given me helpful guidance.
In coming posts on this blog, I’ll share some of the encounters that have come from this shift in my thinking on this matter.
But, for the moment, I’m very interested in your own stories. Has God spoken to you about the details and circumstances of your own life? Can you share them with us? Are you willing to be labeled as a schizophrenic?!
Does God speak to you? Of course, most Christians would say that God speaks to them through the Bible. God reveals things about himself through his written word.
But that is not what I’m talking about. I’m asking if you experience the kinds of personal encounters with God that are described in the Bible. God tells Samuel to appoint David as king. God tells Joseph to take the infant Jesus to Egypt because powerful people are out to kill him. God tells Ananias to deliver a message to Saul about the acute case of blindness that befell him a few days earlier.
My own thinking about this matter has been shifting in recent years. Here is a bit of my own journey related to this issue.
I became a Christian in the early 1970s in an environment that valued loving God with your mind. Good theology and right doctrine were emphasized and rightly so. As C. S. Lewis said, “Theology means the ‘science of God’ and I think any man who wants to think about God at all would like to have the clearest and most accurate ideas about Him which are available.” (Chapter 1 of Book 4 of Mere Christianity)
On the other hand, this tradition in which I became a believer tended to distrust any claim of a personal encounter with God. My mentors explained to me that God did not speak to people anymore outside of illuminating them to understand his written word. Prior to the Bible being completed, God had to communicate with people directly. Now that the Bible was complete, they argued, this type of communication was no longer needed.
Similar logic was used to argue that speaking in tongues and miraculous healings and prophetic utterances had also passed away with the completion of God’s written revelation. These things were only needed to give credibility to the original apostles and those who were first preaching the message of Christ. Those of you with theological training will recognize the standard “Cessationist” position I was being taught.
This outlook was just fine with me. People who claimed to experience God were weird. They were slick televangelists who were obvious charlatans or super emotional people who babbled incoherently and claimed it was speaking in tongues. The Cessastionist position seemed reasonable.
In the last few years however, I’ve been rethinking this. While there are a lot of differences between the Old and New Testaments, one consistent pattern is that God engages people in a personal and intimate conversation about their lives and the circumstances in which they find themselves.
God spoke to Adam, Eve, Cain, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Aaron, Joshua, Gideon and on and on and on throughout the Old Testament.
This pattern continues into the New Testament:
Simeon is told that he will not die until he has seen the Messiah.
God spoke to the magi and to Joseph about Herod’s evil intent.
God spoke to Paul on the Damascus Road.
God gave Ananias a message to give to Paul.
God spoke to Paul about going to Asia Minor.
God spoke to the Antioch church about sending Paul and Barnabas on a mission trip.
God spoke to Peter about Cornelius and the gentiles.
God spoke to Phillip about chatting with the Ethiopian eunuch.
The phrases "the word of the Lord", "the Lord spoke", "the Lord said", "God spoke" and "God said” occur almost 700 times in the Bible. In some cases, the references are clearly to the written word of God. However, the vast majority of these passages record encounters with God where God “speaks” personally with individuals or groups outside of his written word. It is also interesting to note the way in which God speaks in these personal encounters. Occasionally the means are overtly supernatural like the appearance of an angel or an audible voice. I think this confused me for quite a long time. I did not experience such dramatic encounters.
But more recently I began to notice that the vast majority of God’s encounters with human beings related in the Bible leave the means of God’s communication unspecified or attribute it to something “natural” like a dream. A good example of God speaking by unspecified means is Judges 7:2-11 where God communicates with Gideon about the upcoming battle with Midian. Another example is I Samuel 23 where David “inquired of the Lord” whether he should go to battle against the Philistines and “the Lord answered him and said …” These examples are the norm rather than the exception.Thus, a straight forward reading of this biblical evidence makes it easy to believe that: (1) It is NORMAL for God to speak to his people on a REGULAR basis through personal encounters and private revelations and (2) Most of these encounters do not involve overtly supernatural means like an audible voice or the appearance of an angel but involve natural phenomenon like dreams or an inner voice.
With this biblical basis for believing that God still speaks today, I began to seek out credible examples of this supernatural and personal encounter with the living God.
A friend told me to visit Lookout Mountain Community Church. Within their church, they have a group of trained, lay ministers with prophetic gifts. These people will meet with you and pray for you and tell you things that God is revealing to them about you – things that God wants you to know about what he is doing in your life.
I met with three of these people one evening and it was very profound. They told me things about myself that God was revealing to them – things that were completely true about me and things they had no way of knowing since I was a total stranger to them. They were telling me these things within two minutes of meeting me and knowing nothing about me other than my first name. Furthermore, I’ve had friends that have had similar, credible experiences with these prophetically gifted people at LMCC.
The next step on this journey was getting reintroduced to Jack Deere. Jack was peripherally involved in my becoming a Christian in the 1970s. He was attending Dallas Seminary at the time and was widely recognized as a bright light and a rising star in Evangelical circles. Dallas Seminary was a stronghold of Cessationist thinking and Jack fit right in. When he graduated, he was asked to stay on as a professor and he did just that.
In the mid 1980s however, Jack began to have some encounters with overtly supernatural phenomenon. A man he greatly admired came to a church Jack was leading and conducted a healing service where people Jack knew were healed of chronic aliments. God gave revelations to people that resulted in the resolution of long-standing emotional wounds. Demonic activity became manifested and the demons were driven out. Despite his theology that said that such things no longer happened, Jack could not deny that they were happening right in the midst of his own church.
Over a two year period, Deere came to realize that his theology on this matter had been wrong. His change of theology led to his dismissal from Dallas Seminary. Jack wrote two books on his journey entitled Surprised by the Holy Spirit and Surprised by the Voice of God. They were enormously helpful to me for a number of reasons: (1) I knew Jack personally, (2) He had impeccable theological credentials, (3) He had been a skeptic of the overtly supernatural.
Two other authors have been very helpful. Dallas Willard’s book entitled Hearing God was insightful. And several books by John Eldredge have given me helpful guidance.
In coming posts on this blog, I’ll share some of the encounters that have come from this shift in my thinking on this matter.
But, for the moment, I’m very interested in your own stories. Has God spoken to you about the details and circumstances of your own life? Can you share them with us? Are you willing to be labeled as a schizophrenic?!
Monday, August 4, 2008
Obama, Oil and DWUI
Senator Barak Obama commented recently on Exxon-Mobile’s 2nd quarter profits of $12 billion by noting that, “No U. S. corporation ever made that much in a single quarter”. In a statement on his web site, the senator called these profits “outrageous ... while Americans are paying record prices at the pump.”
This kind of populist demagoguery against oil companies in particular and private enterprise in general may be effective in securing votes but it is intellectually dishonest and enormously harmful to our society.
Senator Obama is seeking to become the chief executive officer of a country that is asking its citizens to contribute $3 trillion over the next 12 months to keep it operating. Just as no corporation in history has made more profit than Exxon, we can truthfully observe that no country in history has ever expected its citizens to pay so much money to support a record high budget! Does the Senator find this as outrageous as Exxon-Mobile behavior? And, at a time when Americans are paying record amounts of money to keep the country operating, is Obama's call for higher taxes not equally outrageous?
Perhaps Senator Obama is unaware that the federal government that he seeks to lead will take in about $6.7 billion in gasoline taxes for the gas consumed by Americans during the 2nd quarter of this year? When state and local gas taxes are added to the federal burden, governments at all levels will rake in $16.1 billion in gas tax profits. Shouldn't the senator find this to be equally outrageous?
Obama is concerned about the record high gas prices being paid by Americans and he is advocating new taxes on oil company profits which he would return to private citizens through a tax rebate. If there is some moral obligation for oil companies to share their record high profits, should the federal government be subject to a similar obligation to share the windfall profit they are receiving from record high gas tax revenues?
In a related note, Obama suggested recently that we can save as much oil as we would get from drilling for more oil by just keeping our tires inflated and keeping our cars tuned up. This could be dismissed as one of those misstatements that anyone campaigning for public office is going to make from time to time but Obama has continued to defend his remark.
In a country where people find it difficult to maintain discipline with a diet or exercise routine for more than 27 nanoseconds, do we really believe that people will be diligent in keeping their tires inflated? We should, in fact, keep our tires properly inflated but this cannot be considered a serious public policy proposal.
Perhaps Obama will propose some legislation to penalize people who don’t comply. I can see it now. On those three-day holiday weekends, we’ll add tire inflation checkpoints to our sobriety checkpoints. A guy who is stone-cold sober may make it through the drunk driving check only to find that he is still cited for DWUI – Driving While Under Inflated. We’ll cuff him and haul him off to jail and take away his license and get him to perform community service for his failure to help the country out of this energy crisis.
This country can solve its energy problem and it can do it in short order with a few wise decisions. A commitment to more drilling here and now would make an immediate impact. I also like the proposal put forward by a coalition of national security experts and environmentalists that would involve converting automobiles to methanol over the next few years (See more here at http://www.setamericafree.org/ and specifically here at: http://www.setamericafree.org/blueprint.pdf ) . I’m also in favor of conservation.
This seems like an issue that is ready made for the bi-partisan approach that people claim to want. The one thing that will not work is the demonization of private industry that Senator Obama is utilizing in pandering for votes. Regrettably, Senator McCain is not much better. He too is running ads that tout his courage in taking on the big, bad oil companies.
As I have observed before, I'm much more afraid of a monopolistic government that can take money from me by force than I am of a private business that risks enormous amounts of capital and still has to compete for the chance to take money out of my pocket.
This kind of populist demagoguery against oil companies in particular and private enterprise in general may be effective in securing votes but it is intellectually dishonest and enormously harmful to our society.
Senator Obama is seeking to become the chief executive officer of a country that is asking its citizens to contribute $3 trillion over the next 12 months to keep it operating. Just as no corporation in history has made more profit than Exxon, we can truthfully observe that no country in history has ever expected its citizens to pay so much money to support a record high budget! Does the Senator find this as outrageous as Exxon-Mobile behavior? And, at a time when Americans are paying record amounts of money to keep the country operating, is Obama's call for higher taxes not equally outrageous?
Perhaps Senator Obama is unaware that the federal government that he seeks to lead will take in about $6.7 billion in gasoline taxes for the gas consumed by Americans during the 2nd quarter of this year? When state and local gas taxes are added to the federal burden, governments at all levels will rake in $16.1 billion in gas tax profits. Shouldn't the senator find this to be equally outrageous?
Obama is concerned about the record high gas prices being paid by Americans and he is advocating new taxes on oil company profits which he would return to private citizens through a tax rebate. If there is some moral obligation for oil companies to share their record high profits, should the federal government be subject to a similar obligation to share the windfall profit they are receiving from record high gas tax revenues?
In a related note, Obama suggested recently that we can save as much oil as we would get from drilling for more oil by just keeping our tires inflated and keeping our cars tuned up. This could be dismissed as one of those misstatements that anyone campaigning for public office is going to make from time to time but Obama has continued to defend his remark.
In a country where people find it difficult to maintain discipline with a diet or exercise routine for more than 27 nanoseconds, do we really believe that people will be diligent in keeping their tires inflated? We should, in fact, keep our tires properly inflated but this cannot be considered a serious public policy proposal.
Perhaps Obama will propose some legislation to penalize people who don’t comply. I can see it now. On those three-day holiday weekends, we’ll add tire inflation checkpoints to our sobriety checkpoints. A guy who is stone-cold sober may make it through the drunk driving check only to find that he is still cited for DWUI – Driving While Under Inflated. We’ll cuff him and haul him off to jail and take away his license and get him to perform community service for his failure to help the country out of this energy crisis.
This country can solve its energy problem and it can do it in short order with a few wise decisions. A commitment to more drilling here and now would make an immediate impact. I also like the proposal put forward by a coalition of national security experts and environmentalists that would involve converting automobiles to methanol over the next few years (See more here at http://www.setamericafree.org/ and specifically here at: http://www.setamericafree.org/blueprint.pdf ) . I’m also in favor of conservation.
This seems like an issue that is ready made for the bi-partisan approach that people claim to want. The one thing that will not work is the demonization of private industry that Senator Obama is utilizing in pandering for votes. Regrettably, Senator McCain is not much better. He too is running ads that tout his courage in taking on the big, bad oil companies.
As I have observed before, I'm much more afraid of a monopolistic government that can take money from me by force than I am of a private business that risks enormous amounts of capital and still has to compete for the chance to take money out of my pocket.
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Evangelical Bait and Switch
A friend sent me a document recently entitled An Evangelical Manifesto. It was composed by some well-known Evangelicals leaders like author Os Guinness and Richard Mouw, President of Fuller Seminary.
The manifesto is addressed both to fellow believers and to the wider world. It's purpose is to clarify what it means to be an Evangelical and to clear up misconceptions about the role of Evangelicals in public life.
Early on, the authors of the manifesto outline seven traits that should characterize the Evangelical community. The fifth trait really caught my eye.
Now, is it just me, or do these two aspects of the manifesto seem completely at odds with one another?
On the one hand, the authors want people, especially those outside of the Evangelical community, to know that we Evangelicals are a positive bunch who proclaim the good news of grace and forgiveness and liberation. On the other hand, if you are part of our community, they want you to know that you are guilty of a long list of failures and shortcomings and they will be only too happy to point them out to you both loudly and frequently.
It seems like a sort of bait and switch. "Come join us. We believe in grace and forgiveness and the fulfillment of human aspirations", they say. But, "Now that you have joined up, may we speak frankly with you about what a total screw up you are?"
Some might say these two thoughts are NOT incompatible at all. Forgiveness, it can be argued, presupposes recognition of our wrong doing along with confession and repentance.
But the attitude betrayed by the laundry list of sins approach employed by the authors of the manifesto seems so contrary to the Jesus I see in the gospels. It seems unlike the way Jesus deals with the woman at the well and the woman caught in adultery and the man with a legion of demons. A man born blind, a sure sign of some serious sin in Jesus' day, is not castigated but healed.
In fact, the only time Jesus seems to react as harshly to moral failures as the authors of the manifesto do is when he is dealing with people who are like the authors -- with the Pharisees and Sadducees and Scribes who were the authors and professional clergy and seminary presidents of his day. Their pious attitudes are really a cover for self-righteousness. Jesus sees through it and nails them.
And this brings me to the aspect of this whole issue that bugs me. I find it hard to believe that the authors of the manifesto feel that they themselves are guilty of any of the long list of sins which they identify. They are not remorseful over their own sins; they are upset with the sins of others.
C. S. Lewis observed this phenomenon in his day in a slightly different context and wrote about it in an essay entitle The Dangers of National Repentance. He points out that many Christians in the post-WWII era were calling on England to repent of her sins related to the recently concluded war.
The idea of national repentance, Lewis says, seems like an edifying contrast to the national self-righteousness which England is said to have exercised in entering WWII. He notes that young Christians, especially recent college graduates and first year seminary students, were attracted to this idea in large numbers. They were willing to believe that England bore some guilt for the events that led to the war and were ready to admit their share in that guilt.
But Lewis finds it difficult to determine what their share of the guilt might be. Most of the young advocates of national repentance were children when England made decisions that led to the war. What exactly are they repenting of?
Lewis points out that England is not a natural agent but a civil society. To speak of England's actions is to speak of the actions of those who ran the British Government. To repent of England's actions is to repent of the actions of other individuals -- people like a Foreign Secretary or a Cabinet member.
Lewis concludes that "The first and fatal charm of national repentance is, therefore, the encouragement it gives us to turn form the bitter task of repenting our own sins to the congenial one of bewailing -- but, first, of denouncing -- the conduct of others."
If these young advocates of national repentance realized this and applied the law of charity (Jesus admonition about the speck in your neighbor's eye versus the log in your own eye), all would be well. But the young national penitent calls the government not "they" but "we". They will say, "Let us repent of our national sins." but what they really mean is "Let us attribute to our neighbor in the Cabinet, whenever we disagree with him, every abominable motive that Satan can suggest to our fancy."
This escape from personal repentance into the pleasure of condemning others is attractive to all of us. It is doubly attractive, Lewis says, to the young British intellectual of post-WWII Britain.
He points out that a typical working class Englishman over 40 was raised to love his country and repenting of England's sins for such a person would truly by costly and difficult. But the young British intellectual has been raised to distrust his country. All of the arts, literature and politics he has read have encouraged him to be angry and resentful of his own country.
So, when they say that "we British people" should repent, they are not mortifying, but actually indulging, their ruling passion. And they are ignoring the communal sins that are rampant in their own community -- their contempt for the uneducated, their readiness to suspect evil in others, their self-righteousness, their breaches of the Fifth Commandment.
What Lewis points out about the dangers of national repentance applies equally to the corporate repentance that is being urged by the authors of the manifesto. I find it so hard to believe that they see themselves as guilty of this laundry list of sins. As I scan down the list of contributors, they mostly seem to be highly educated elites who have spent their careers writing and speaking about their vision of Evangelicalism -- a vision that sees Evangelicalism as consistently misguided and in need of the reforms that they urge upon us.
And yet, I find myself conflicted. I've read books by a lot of the authors of the manifesto and have found them helpful. Dallas Willard in particular has been very insightful at times. I don't want to castigate them and treat them in the same way that they seem to be treating others.
But I guess I'd like them to read the C. S. Lewis essay on the dangers of national/corporate repentance and see if they think it has any application to themselves. I'd like to urge them to read the New Testament and see if any of their own attitudes are similar the the Pharisees of Jesus day.
And, if the authors of the manifesto truly feel that they themselves have been guilty of the sins they identify, it would be more helpful if they would repent of them personally. It would be especially helpful if they would do this quietly and privately and only let us know about it by starting their own church or community that reflects the attitudes and actions that they feel should characterize a truly Evangelical group. Show us its goodness and holiness and invite us into this positive, affirming, welcoming message of grace and forgiveness. They would then be living up to their own "fifth trait" of Evangelicalism.
For others, I heartily recommend the C. S. Lewis essay discussed above. I tried to find it online so I could give you a link to it. I could not find the text of the essay online but you can find it in the book entitled God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics. Read The Dangers of National Repentance along with the 47 other Lewis essays in that volume. I think your spiritual life will be much more enriched than it ever would be by reading and following the advice of the manifesto.
As always, your comments, especially those in disagreement with my reflections on the manifesto, are welcomed and encouraged.
The manifesto is addressed both to fellow believers and to the wider world. It's purpose is to clarify what it means to be an Evangelical and to clear up misconceptions about the role of Evangelicals in public life.
Early on, the authors of the manifesto outline seven traits that should characterize the Evangelical community. The fifth trait really caught my eye.
The fifth trait is that "... the Evangelical message ... is overwhelmingly positive ..." While acknowledging that Evangelicals must sometimes make strong judgments about things that are false or unjust or evil, the authors believe that "... first and foremost we Evangelicals are for Someone and for something rather than against anyone or anything.
They continue, "The Gospel of Jesus is the Good News of welcome, forgiveness, grace, and liberation from law and legalism. It is a colossal Yes to life and human aspirations and an emphatic No only to what contradicts our true destiny as human beings made in the image of God."
Sign me up! That sounds really good. After all, the authors are trying, in part, to address the public perceptions of Evangelicals and that perception, rightly or wrongly, is that we are grumpy, self-righteous killjoys. Anything that calls Evangelicalism to proclaim a positive message is welcome.
But my warm feelings toward the manifesto did not last. Just three pages later, the authors begin an all out assault on their fellow Evangelicals. In twelve lengthy paragraphs that begin with the phrase, "All too often we have ________ ", they outline a seemingly endless list of moral failures and misguided agendas that have characterized the Evangelical community in the Western world. According to the authors, Evangelicals have:
- Replaced Biblical truths with therapeutic techniques.
- Turned worship into entertainment.
- Substituted growth in human potential for Christian discipleship.
- Measured success by growth in numbers instead of growth in character.
- Practiced a "vapid" (dull, insipid) spirituality.
- Catered to felt needs instead of real needs.
- Preached a feel-good gospel of health and wealth and human potential instead of a gospel of sacrifice and suffering.
- Claimed to govern our lives by Biblical standards but we live lives that are shaped more by our sinful preferences.
- Used worldly techniques and methods to grow our churches.
- Failed to demonstrate the unity of the Body of Christ by ever increasing splits into denominations and factions that end up at war with each other.
- Denied the supernatural in our everyday lives and lived more like secularists and atheists and rarely claim to have encountered or experienced God.
- Attacked the evils and injustices committed by others (like abortion) but condoned our own sins like materialism and consumerism.
- Failed to see how the doctrine of creation requires us to be good stewards of the environment and the earth.
- Valued individualism rather than a sense of community.
- Become anti-intellectual and given the world the impression that there is a conflict between faith and science [this seems to be directed against those Evangelicals who are anti-evolution and/or 6-Day Creationists or Intelligent Design advocates].
- Practiced defacto racism by having churches that are largely segregated.
- Catered to the rich and powerful and failed to take care of the poor and marginalized.
- Been more concerned with being relevant than in proclaiming the truth.
Now, is it just me, or do these two aspects of the manifesto seem completely at odds with one another?
On the one hand, the authors want people, especially those outside of the Evangelical community, to know that we Evangelicals are a positive bunch who proclaim the good news of grace and forgiveness and liberation. On the other hand, if you are part of our community, they want you to know that you are guilty of a long list of failures and shortcomings and they will be only too happy to point them out to you both loudly and frequently.
It seems like a sort of bait and switch. "Come join us. We believe in grace and forgiveness and the fulfillment of human aspirations", they say. But, "Now that you have joined up, may we speak frankly with you about what a total screw up you are?"
Some might say these two thoughts are NOT incompatible at all. Forgiveness, it can be argued, presupposes recognition of our wrong doing along with confession and repentance.
But the attitude betrayed by the laundry list of sins approach employed by the authors of the manifesto seems so contrary to the Jesus I see in the gospels. It seems unlike the way Jesus deals with the woman at the well and the woman caught in adultery and the man with a legion of demons. A man born blind, a sure sign of some serious sin in Jesus' day, is not castigated but healed.
In fact, the only time Jesus seems to react as harshly to moral failures as the authors of the manifesto do is when he is dealing with people who are like the authors -- with the Pharisees and Sadducees and Scribes who were the authors and professional clergy and seminary presidents of his day. Their pious attitudes are really a cover for self-righteousness. Jesus sees through it and nails them.
And this brings me to the aspect of this whole issue that bugs me. I find it hard to believe that the authors of the manifesto feel that they themselves are guilty of any of the long list of sins which they identify. They are not remorseful over their own sins; they are upset with the sins of others.
C. S. Lewis observed this phenomenon in his day in a slightly different context and wrote about it in an essay entitle The Dangers of National Repentance. He points out that many Christians in the post-WWII era were calling on England to repent of her sins related to the recently concluded war.
The idea of national repentance, Lewis says, seems like an edifying contrast to the national self-righteousness which England is said to have exercised in entering WWII. He notes that young Christians, especially recent college graduates and first year seminary students, were attracted to this idea in large numbers. They were willing to believe that England bore some guilt for the events that led to the war and were ready to admit their share in that guilt.
But Lewis finds it difficult to determine what their share of the guilt might be. Most of the young advocates of national repentance were children when England made decisions that led to the war. What exactly are they repenting of?
Lewis points out that England is not a natural agent but a civil society. To speak of England's actions is to speak of the actions of those who ran the British Government. To repent of England's actions is to repent of the actions of other individuals -- people like a Foreign Secretary or a Cabinet member.
Lewis concludes that "The first and fatal charm of national repentance is, therefore, the encouragement it gives us to turn form the bitter task of repenting our own sins to the congenial one of bewailing -- but, first, of denouncing -- the conduct of others."
If these young advocates of national repentance realized this and applied the law of charity (Jesus admonition about the speck in your neighbor's eye versus the log in your own eye), all would be well. But the young national penitent calls the government not "they" but "we". They will say, "Let us repent of our national sins." but what they really mean is "Let us attribute to our neighbor in the Cabinet, whenever we disagree with him, every abominable motive that Satan can suggest to our fancy."
This escape from personal repentance into the pleasure of condemning others is attractive to all of us. It is doubly attractive, Lewis says, to the young British intellectual of post-WWII Britain.
He points out that a typical working class Englishman over 40 was raised to love his country and repenting of England's sins for such a person would truly by costly and difficult. But the young British intellectual has been raised to distrust his country. All of the arts, literature and politics he has read have encouraged him to be angry and resentful of his own country.
So, when they say that "we British people" should repent, they are not mortifying, but actually indulging, their ruling passion. And they are ignoring the communal sins that are rampant in their own community -- their contempt for the uneducated, their readiness to suspect evil in others, their self-righteousness, their breaches of the Fifth Commandment.
What Lewis points out about the dangers of national repentance applies equally to the corporate repentance that is being urged by the authors of the manifesto. I find it so hard to believe that they see themselves as guilty of this laundry list of sins. As I scan down the list of contributors, they mostly seem to be highly educated elites who have spent their careers writing and speaking about their vision of Evangelicalism -- a vision that sees Evangelicalism as consistently misguided and in need of the reforms that they urge upon us.
And yet, I find myself conflicted. I've read books by a lot of the authors of the manifesto and have found them helpful. Dallas Willard in particular has been very insightful at times. I don't want to castigate them and treat them in the same way that they seem to be treating others.
But I guess I'd like them to read the C. S. Lewis essay on the dangers of national/corporate repentance and see if they think it has any application to themselves. I'd like to urge them to read the New Testament and see if any of their own attitudes are similar the the Pharisees of Jesus day.
And, if the authors of the manifesto truly feel that they themselves have been guilty of the sins they identify, it would be more helpful if they would repent of them personally. It would be especially helpful if they would do this quietly and privately and only let us know about it by starting their own church or community that reflects the attitudes and actions that they feel should characterize a truly Evangelical group. Show us its goodness and holiness and invite us into this positive, affirming, welcoming message of grace and forgiveness. They would then be living up to their own "fifth trait" of Evangelicalism.
For others, I heartily recommend the C. S. Lewis essay discussed above. I tried to find it online so I could give you a link to it. I could not find the text of the essay online but you can find it in the book entitled God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics. Read The Dangers of National Repentance along with the 47 other Lewis essays in that volume. I think your spiritual life will be much more enriched than it ever would be by reading and following the advice of the manifesto.
As always, your comments, especially those in disagreement with my reflections on the manifesto, are welcomed and encouraged.
Sunday, May 4, 2008
Greedy Government Interests
It’s an election year and we are being treated to the Democrats solutions to all problems – higher taxes.
Of course, raising taxes is never popular but the Democrats are trotting out their favorite ruse. We need to raise taxes, they claim, but we are only going to raise the taxes on the rich and on greedy corporations.
Let’s look at the idea of collecting more income tax revenue from wealthy individuals. We’ll deal with greedy corporations in a future post.
According to Democrats, rich people do not pay their fair share of the tax burden. The evil George W. Bush cut taxes for his wealthy friends. This, according to their view of the world, has caused a whole host of societal ills like higher budget deficits, fewer jobs, global warming, rising gasoline prices and Miley Cyrus going berserk and exposing her bare back to Vanity Fair photographers.
If we are going to raise taxes on the wealthy to a “fair” level, then it seems to me that we need to answer four questions: (1) What level of income makes one rich? (2) How much of the tax burden do these rich people currently pay? (3) What share of the taxes should the wealthy pay? (4) What system of values or ethics or morality is used to determine the “fair” tax burden to impose on these individuals?
Let’s assume that we define the wealthy as those who are in the top 10% of wage earners in the country. Let’s raise their taxes. These fortunate individuals can afford to pay more. We would only be raising taxes on 1 in every 10 Americans.
Regarding Question No. 1 then, exactly how much money do you have to earn each year to be in the top 10%? What is your guess? Is it $250,000 a year? Or, is it $500,000? Perhaps it takes a cool million to be in the top ten percent. Please stop reading right now and make your guess.
Thinking …
Thinking …
Guessing …
Okay, time’s up. Here is the answer: In 2005 (latest year for which we have data), anyone with a household income in excess $103,912 was in the top 10% of wage earners.
Please understand that this figure is HOUSEHOLD income! The majority of households in this top 10% are two income households. So, a school teacher married to civil engineer probably has income in excess of this level as does a policeman with a significant other who is a mid-level employee at a small business.
Are these people “rich”? If you are a college student, an income slightly over $100k per year probably sounds like a boat load of money. But if you are a married couple with two kids, you probably wonder how you’ll make ends meet on this amount. You probably do not think of yourself as rich and yet suddenly you find yourself being demonized as a rich American who is not paying enough in taxes.
Let’s take a look at Question No. 2. How much of the current income tax burden is paid by this “wealthy” minority?
In 2005, the IRS collected $935 billion in personal income taxes and the top 10% of household wage earners paid $657 billion of this amount. That’s right. The top ten percent paid 70.3% of all the personal income taxes collected by the federal government!
Just for the record, let’s look at some different income brackets and the amount of income tax paid by these brackets:
The top 1% ($365k or more household income) pay 39.4% of all income taxes
The top 5% ($145k or more household income) pay 59.7% of all income taxes
The top 10% ($104 or more household income) pay 70.3% of all income taxes
The top 25% ($62k or more household income) pay 86.0% of all income taxes
(Note: In case you are wondering, you are in the bottom 50% of wage earners if your household income is less that $31,000 per year. This group paid only 3.1% of all the personal incomes taxes collected in 2005.)
In essence, the United States federal government operates on the 80/20 rule. You’re familiar with the 80/20 rule, aren’t you? In churches, 80% of the giving is done by 20% of the people. In a business, 80% of the sales are made by 20% of the sales force.
It looks like the United States is pretty much run on the same principle. About 20% of the households in the country are paying 80% of the personal income taxes. Apparently, the left in this country does not think that this is enough.
This leads us directly to Questions No 3 and 4. If these rich American households are not paying enough, how much should they be paying? And what is the basis for deciding the “fair” amount? I’ve never heard a Democrat answer these questions.
The current Democrat candidates for president are quite vague on all these questions. Their web sites speak in generalities. Both candidates are in favor of lower taxes for low and middle income Americans and both agree that the wealthiest Americans need to pay more. Predictably, they do not define these income categories. They are intentionally vague.
There are so many more aspects of this issue to be explored but you don’t have unlimited reading time and I don’t have unlimited writing time. So let’s just look at one more facet to the tax question (but someone remind me someday to explain why Warren Buffet’s claim that his secretary pays a higher tax rate than he does is totally misleading and brazenly disingenuous).
More important than the question of how the tax burden is distributed, is the larger question of the overall tax burden itself and the danger imposed on society by the government that collects it.
Total tax revenue collected in 2005 by federal, state and local governments was $3.25 trillion. The GDP was only $12.4 trillion in 2005 and this means the tax burden was around 26% of GDP. This is alarming.
Even more alarming is the comparison of taxes paid by individuals verses the income available for the payment of those taxes. From the $3.25 trillion in taxes collected in 2005, subtract about $0.25 trillion that was collected from corporations. A small portion of the remaining $3.0 trillion was property tax paid by corporations. I can’t tell you the exact amount, but the total property tax burden nationwide in 2005 for all properties was only $0.3 trillion – let’s guess that half of this amount was derived from residential property owned by individuals. This means that $2.85 trillion in taxes were paid by individuals in 2005.
Total personal income in 2005 was only $7.5 trillion. A whopping 38% of every dollar earned by individuals in this country goes to pay some kind of tax.
And – governments want more! This is the truly instructive and frightening reality in the whole tax debate.
Think about this with me for a minute. Can you think of any individual or family or business or church or non-profit organization or school that does not need more money? All of these entities have things that they are not doing because of their limited supply of money. They cannot print money and they cannot demand that their employers and patrons pay them more. As a result, they budget and prioritize.
But the government is unique. It alone can legally take money by force. And one of its tactics for doing so is to make you afraid of all the other entities mentioned above who cannot force you to give them money.
Politicians, especially those on the left side of the political spectrum, frequently demonize the rich. They have spoken so frequently about “greedy corporate interests” that the phrase now seems redundant to many people. But Oprah and Exxon cannot take away my money at the point of a gun the way the government can.
Do not let populist politicians entice you with their invitations to envy and fear and hatred. Rather, be on guard against greedy government interests run by manipulative politicians that suck up $4 out of every $10 earned by hard working Americans and then tell you that they need more money so that they can solve every problem – providing you with a utopian world of universal health care, cheap gas and a fully clothed Miley Cyrus.
Of course, raising taxes is never popular but the Democrats are trotting out their favorite ruse. We need to raise taxes, they claim, but we are only going to raise the taxes on the rich and on greedy corporations.
Let’s look at the idea of collecting more income tax revenue from wealthy individuals. We’ll deal with greedy corporations in a future post.
According to Democrats, rich people do not pay their fair share of the tax burden. The evil George W. Bush cut taxes for his wealthy friends. This, according to their view of the world, has caused a whole host of societal ills like higher budget deficits, fewer jobs, global warming, rising gasoline prices and Miley Cyrus going berserk and exposing her bare back to Vanity Fair photographers.
If we are going to raise taxes on the wealthy to a “fair” level, then it seems to me that we need to answer four questions: (1) What level of income makes one rich? (2) How much of the tax burden do these rich people currently pay? (3) What share of the taxes should the wealthy pay? (4) What system of values or ethics or morality is used to determine the “fair” tax burden to impose on these individuals?
Let’s assume that we define the wealthy as those who are in the top 10% of wage earners in the country. Let’s raise their taxes. These fortunate individuals can afford to pay more. We would only be raising taxes on 1 in every 10 Americans.
Regarding Question No. 1 then, exactly how much money do you have to earn each year to be in the top 10%? What is your guess? Is it $250,000 a year? Or, is it $500,000? Perhaps it takes a cool million to be in the top ten percent. Please stop reading right now and make your guess.
Thinking …
Thinking …
Guessing …
Okay, time’s up. Here is the answer: In 2005 (latest year for which we have data), anyone with a household income in excess $103,912 was in the top 10% of wage earners.
Please understand that this figure is HOUSEHOLD income! The majority of households in this top 10% are two income households. So, a school teacher married to civil engineer probably has income in excess of this level as does a policeman with a significant other who is a mid-level employee at a small business.
Are these people “rich”? If you are a college student, an income slightly over $100k per year probably sounds like a boat load of money. But if you are a married couple with two kids, you probably wonder how you’ll make ends meet on this amount. You probably do not think of yourself as rich and yet suddenly you find yourself being demonized as a rich American who is not paying enough in taxes.
Let’s take a look at Question No. 2. How much of the current income tax burden is paid by this “wealthy” minority?
In 2005, the IRS collected $935 billion in personal income taxes and the top 10% of household wage earners paid $657 billion of this amount. That’s right. The top ten percent paid 70.3% of all the personal income taxes collected by the federal government!
Just for the record, let’s look at some different income brackets and the amount of income tax paid by these brackets:
The top 1% ($365k or more household income) pay 39.4% of all income taxes
The top 5% ($145k or more household income) pay 59.7% of all income taxes
The top 10% ($104 or more household income) pay 70.3% of all income taxes
The top 25% ($62k or more household income) pay 86.0% of all income taxes
(Note: In case you are wondering, you are in the bottom 50% of wage earners if your household income is less that $31,000 per year. This group paid only 3.1% of all the personal incomes taxes collected in 2005.)
In essence, the United States federal government operates on the 80/20 rule. You’re familiar with the 80/20 rule, aren’t you? In churches, 80% of the giving is done by 20% of the people. In a business, 80% of the sales are made by 20% of the sales force.
It looks like the United States is pretty much run on the same principle. About 20% of the households in the country are paying 80% of the personal income taxes. Apparently, the left in this country does not think that this is enough.
This leads us directly to Questions No 3 and 4. If these rich American households are not paying enough, how much should they be paying? And what is the basis for deciding the “fair” amount? I’ve never heard a Democrat answer these questions.
The current Democrat candidates for president are quite vague on all these questions. Their web sites speak in generalities. Both candidates are in favor of lower taxes for low and middle income Americans and both agree that the wealthiest Americans need to pay more. Predictably, they do not define these income categories. They are intentionally vague.
There are so many more aspects of this issue to be explored but you don’t have unlimited reading time and I don’t have unlimited writing time. So let’s just look at one more facet to the tax question (but someone remind me someday to explain why Warren Buffet’s claim that his secretary pays a higher tax rate than he does is totally misleading and brazenly disingenuous).
More important than the question of how the tax burden is distributed, is the larger question of the overall tax burden itself and the danger imposed on society by the government that collects it.
Total tax revenue collected in 2005 by federal, state and local governments was $3.25 trillion. The GDP was only $12.4 trillion in 2005 and this means the tax burden was around 26% of GDP. This is alarming.
Even more alarming is the comparison of taxes paid by individuals verses the income available for the payment of those taxes. From the $3.25 trillion in taxes collected in 2005, subtract about $0.25 trillion that was collected from corporations. A small portion of the remaining $3.0 trillion was property tax paid by corporations. I can’t tell you the exact amount, but the total property tax burden nationwide in 2005 for all properties was only $0.3 trillion – let’s guess that half of this amount was derived from residential property owned by individuals. This means that $2.85 trillion in taxes were paid by individuals in 2005.
Total personal income in 2005 was only $7.5 trillion. A whopping 38% of every dollar earned by individuals in this country goes to pay some kind of tax.
And – governments want more! This is the truly instructive and frightening reality in the whole tax debate.
Think about this with me for a minute. Can you think of any individual or family or business or church or non-profit organization or school that does not need more money? All of these entities have things that they are not doing because of their limited supply of money. They cannot print money and they cannot demand that their employers and patrons pay them more. As a result, they budget and prioritize.
But the government is unique. It alone can legally take money by force. And one of its tactics for doing so is to make you afraid of all the other entities mentioned above who cannot force you to give them money.
Politicians, especially those on the left side of the political spectrum, frequently demonize the rich. They have spoken so frequently about “greedy corporate interests” that the phrase now seems redundant to many people. But Oprah and Exxon cannot take away my money at the point of a gun the way the government can.
Do not let populist politicians entice you with their invitations to envy and fear and hatred. Rather, be on guard against greedy government interests run by manipulative politicians that suck up $4 out of every $10 earned by hard working Americans and then tell you that they need more money so that they can solve every problem – providing you with a utopian world of universal health care, cheap gas and a fully clothed Miley Cyrus.
Sunday, March 9, 2008
Nuremberg-Style Tribunals for Global Warming Deniers
In a recent post, I speculated that the global warming advocates would not mind me calling them "kool-aid drinkers" since they use the emotionally charged term of "global warming deniers" to castigate their opponents.
Well it turns out that some of the global warming alarmists are a lot more serious about their association of global warming denial with the Holocaust than I am in my association of global warming advocacy with the kool-aid drinking fanaticism of a Jim Jones follower.
Margo Kingston writes, "Perhaps there is a case for making climate change denial an offence -- it is a crime against humanity of sorts."
Mark Lynas is more adamant when he writes, "I wonder what sentences judges might hand down at future international criminal tribunals on those [climate change deniers] who will be partially but directly responsible for millions of deaths from starvation, famine and disease in decades ahead. I put this in a similar moral category to Holocaust denial ..."
David Roberts is pretty worked up about this too when he says, "When we've finally gotten serious about global warming, when the impacts are really hitting us and we're in a full worldwide scramble to minimize the damage, we should have war crimes trials for these bastards [the climate change deniers] -- some sort of climate Nuremberg."
Whoa! These people are more fanatical than I thought. Let's back away from the gallows in the Nuremberg courtyard for a moment and think about this. When we do, I think we'll find their comments illogical, ironic and instructive.
Well it turns out that some of the global warming alarmists are a lot more serious about their association of global warming denial with the Holocaust than I am in my association of global warming advocacy with the kool-aid drinking fanaticism of a Jim Jones follower.
Margo Kingston writes, "Perhaps there is a case for making climate change denial an offence -- it is a crime against humanity of sorts."
Mark Lynas is more adamant when he writes, "I wonder what sentences judges might hand down at future international criminal tribunals on those [climate change deniers] who will be partially but directly responsible for millions of deaths from starvation, famine and disease in decades ahead. I put this in a similar moral category to Holocaust denial ..."
David Roberts is pretty worked up about this too when he says, "When we've finally gotten serious about global warming, when the impacts are really hitting us and we're in a full worldwide scramble to minimize the damage, we should have war crimes trials for these bastards [the climate change deniers] -- some sort of climate Nuremberg."
Whoa! These people are more fanatical than I thought. Let's back away from the gallows in the Nuremberg courtyard for a moment and think about this. When we do, I think we'll find their comments illogical, ironic and instructive.
First of all, has anyone noticed that the comparison of global warming denial with Holocaust denial is logically flawed? As I recall, we did NOT have Nuremberg trials for Holocaust deniers -- we had them for Holocaust perpetrators! It was Nazis, not Holocaust deniers, who killed six million Jews. To be accurate, shouldn't Lynas say that he puts climate change denial in the same moral category as the Holocaust itself instead of in the same moral category as Holocaust denial?
Perhaps I am taking him and his friends too literally. In their debauch of emotions, the global warming crowd has probably just gotten a little carried away with their rhetoric. After all, I do understand that they actually believe that global warming denial is going to lead to millions of deaths.
But even at this level, I'm a little perplexed by their analogy. Do they really think that global warming deniers intend to kill millions of people in the same way that Nazis intended to kill their victims? For the comparison to have any logical validity, they would have to believe this.
In addition to this logical fallacy, I find the comments of Margo, Mark and David to be more than a tad ironic. If the subject of witch burning came up, I'm sure all three of them would condemn religious institutions for this barbaric practice.
They may have forgotten that many "witches" were executed for their alleged role in bringing about climate change. Europe and North America suffered through a period known as "The Little Ice Age" from 1650 to 1850 and the resulting crop failures and increased deaths from starvation and cold were blamed on witches in many cases.
Now, however, the shoe is on the other foot (or the torch is in the other hand). The climate change crime du jour is not murderous cold brought on by humans cooperating with evil spiritual forces but life-destroying heat brought about by humans cooperating with evil business interests. The witch-hunting is carried out, not by religious zealots, but by scientific fanatics. The Global Warming Inquisition must hunt down those who deviate from orthodoxy and Margo, Mark and David seem quite eager to serve as Torquemada.
I'm not suggesting that the belief that certain immoral women were cooperating with demonic powers to cool the planet is on the same factual level as the belief that carbon dioxide is acting to warm it. However, neither is on the same factual level as the belief that people will die if you herd them into an unventilated room and pump it full of cyanide gas. Only the latter act has enough certainty between cause and effect to raise it to the level of a crime against humanity that demands a Nuremberg-style tribunal.
The sentiments of Margo, Mark and David are not only illogical and ironic; they are also instructive. They reinforce a point I made in my previous post where I asserted that intolerance and unquestioning faith are not limited to religious viewpoints but that these traits are common failings that infect all human endeavors -- even science.
So I'm rethinking my global warming "kool-aid drinker" label. When I first used it, I thought it was hyperbole. Now, however, I'm thinking it is a pretty accurate description of the fanaticism of some of the true believers in the global warming theory.
Monday, February 25, 2008
Global Warming and the Gay, Vegetarian College Professor from Denmark
Global warming “denier” – this is the emotionally laden term that the global warming kool-aid drinkers have decided to use in their propaganda war against dissenters from global warming orthodoxy (I’m sure they will not mind me calling them “kool-aid drinkers” since they have chosen to engage in inflammatory rhetoric themselves in characterizing their opponents).
The stereotypical global warming denier might be a K Street lobbyist who knows darn well that the planet is suffering from a man-induced warming crisis but who is not going to let a little thing like the facts get in the way of his lucrative contracts to represent big oil and other powerful and corrupt business interests.
Bjørn Lomborg does not fit that stereotype. He is Danish. He has a PhD in Political Science from the University of Copenhagen. He is a college professor. He is openly gay. He’s a vegetarian. I wouldn’t be surprised if all the light fixtures in his house were filled with those funny, curly-shaped bulbs that hum and give off a dim, yellowish light.
As an urbane, educated, European working in academia and unafraid to adopt a non-traditional lifestyle, you would think that Lomborg is the kind of person who would be on board with the global warming agenda.
He is not.
He has had the temerity to question environmental alarmism in general and global warming orthodoxy in particular and this has landed him in a big vat of hot water.
Bjørn Lomborg’s story is both interesting and instructive.
After earning his PhD in 1994, Lomborg went to work teaching statistics in the Political Science Department of the University of Aarhus in Denmark. He was aware of what he now calls “The Litany” – that long list of looming environmental disasters that gives us an all pervasive sense that the planet is in bad shape. Lomborg writes:
“We are all familiar with the Litany: the environment is in poor shape here on Earth. Our resources are running out. The population is ever growing, leaving less and less to eat. The air and water are becoming ever more polluted. The planet’s species are becoming extinct … The forests are disappearing, fish stocks are collapsing and coral reefs are dying. We are defiling our Earth, the fertile topsoil is disappearing, we are paving over nature, destroying the wilderness, decimating the biosphere, and will end up killing ourselves in the process. The world’s ecosystem is breaking down …”
In short, he was familiar with the secular environmentalist version of Armageddon – all of the death and destruction but lacking the last minute happy ending of a rescue from the supernatural world.
So Dr Lomborg got his students working on a project to document the extent of these impending environmental catastrophes. He wanted to use statistics to back up the anecdotal stories that were used to illustrate the dire conditions that mankind was creating on our precious planet. And this is where his problems began.
It turned out that the statistical look at these issues did not back up the gloomy outlook of the Litany. Whenever he consulted the statistics, Lomborg discovered that things were getting better instead of worse. This led him to write a book entitled The Skeptical Environmentalist – Measuring the Real State of the World.
The book is a tome. If any mafia hit men are reading this and have run out of cement blocks to weigh down their victims in a nearby river, they can stop by the local Borders and pick up this book as a substitute. It is over 500 pages of very small type although, in fairness, I should note that this includes the 2,930 footnotes and a bibliography that runs to 71 pages.
What was the response to the book? It didn’t take long for the feces to hit the rotating air circulation device.
Several environmental scientists filed a complaint with the Danish Committees on Scientific Dishonesty (DCSD). This Orwellian sounding organization formally investigated charges that Lomborg deliberately used flawed data, cherry picked his studies and came to completely false conclusions.
After it investigations, the DCSC concurred with the complaints and noted that Lomborg’s book was “deemed to fall within the category of scientific dishonesty” and noted that it was “clearly contrary to the standards of good scientific practice.”
Lomborg fought back. He appealed the decision to the MSTI – the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation – an agency with oversight over the DCSD.
The MSTI reversed the decision of the DCSD. It did so partly on the narrow procedural grounds that the DCSD had not shown that The Skeptical Environmentalist was a scientific work that fell within the DCSD’s regulatory authority. However, most of the MSTI’s decision was based on substance. It noted that the DCSC’s ruling “was completely void of argumentation” as to why Lomborg’s book was scientifically deficient.
As a result of this incident, a group of about 300 Danish scientists signed a petition requesting that the DCSD be disbanded. According to this group, the obviously biased treatment of Lomborg was evidence that the DCSD served no useful function. But a competing group of anti-Lomborg activists got almost 600 Danish scientists to sign a petition in support of the DCSD and its action in the Lomborg case.
Scientific American joined the fray with a lengthy and scathing review of The Skeptical Environmentalist. Lomborg published a rejoinder. So as to not misrepresent the journal’s position, he quoted each of their allegations at length and then explained why each criticism was unfounded or misguided.
The response? Initially, Scientific American threatened Lomborg with a lawsuit for copyright infringement if he did not retract his paper – they were upset because he quoted the Scientific American article without permission! Ah – how nice to see an organization which is ostensibly dedicated to the free, open and dispassionate pursuit of scientific inquiry respond with such substance and grace.
I asserted earlier that Lomborg’s story is instructive and this is where it begins to be so.
We have all been told the story of poor Galileo. The scientific community has told the story (actually, they have largely mis-told the story) with great relish. This, they say, show what happens when sincere and honest truth-seeking scientists run afoul of people who let faith rather than reason dictate their view of the world.
But the Lomborg incident gives us a different and a better perspective. The Galileo case is not one of science against religion or faith against reason. It shows us what happens frequently when someone challenges the cherished beliefs of those in authority in any community be it religious, philosophical, scientific, political, cultural or national.
In this case, we have a reigning scientific paradigm about the environment that is being challenged and the ruling authorities in that scientific community do not like it one bit. The Lomborg story shows us that bias and an unreasonably strong commitment to certain points of view and the desire to punish those who deviate from orthodoxy are not particularly religious phenomena but are common human failings that infect all types of human endeavors.
And there is another and even more important lesson to be learned from the Lomborg incident.
Strictly speaking, Lomborg is not a global warming “denier”. He believes that global warming is occurring and that it is caused, at least in part, by the activities of man. However, he believes that the results of global warming will not be catastrophic, that some of the effects will be positive and that most of the proposed cures will be worse than the disease.
Lomborg has started a project called The Copenhagen Consensus. He brought economists together in 2004 to perform a cost/benefit analysis on a variety of proposals to mitigate human suffering and improve the environment. An expanded group met again in 2006 and it will meet yet again in 2008. Their mission is to determine which projects can do the most good for the greatest number of people at a given cost. Global warming projects tend to rate very poorly in this kind of evaluation – requiring a lot of dollars for marginal benefits.
Lomborg points out that the only resource that is always in short supply is money and that we need to focus on spending money wisely. If we choose our projects poorly, we end up doing less good than we could otherwise have achieved and we may even make matters worse.
Lomborg argues that we live in a world that is full of “inconvenient truths”. Over 15 million people die each year from preventable diseases like malaria and cholera and HIV. Half of the people in the world are malnourished. A billion people do not have clean drinking water and almost as many lack basic education. The UN, according to Lomborg, claims that $75 billion a year over the next century would largely solve these problems.
In contrast, he claims that the Kyoto Protocol will cost $150 billion annually if fully implemented and it will only delay, not eliminate, our warming trend. According to Lomborg, the temperature we will reach in the year 2100 without any action on climate change is the same temperature we will reach in the year 2106 with a fully implemented Kyoto agreement! Lomborg’s rhetoric is forceful:
“… Gore argues that future generations will chastise us for not having committed ourselves to the Kyoto Protocol. More likely, they will wonder why, in a world overflowing with ‘inconvenient truths’, Gore focused on the one where we could achieve the least good for the highest cost.”
Again, this is one of those aspects of his story that makes it even more instructive. Lomborg agrees that global warming is occurring. He is only dissenting from the public policy prescriptions that grow out of the global warming phenomenon and this causes the wrath of the kool-aid drinkers to descend on him.
This suggests strongly to me that it is the public policy prescriptions that are more important to the global warming crowd than the issue of global warming itself. Global warming gives them an excuse to pursue public policies like higher taxes and more government regulation – policies that they have supported long before global warming was on anyone’s radar screen. In fact, I’m pretty sure that Al Gore’s political leanings are no different in 2006 than they were in 1976 when one of the nation’s popular news magazines warned us the earth was cooling and that we were threatened with a new ice age.
In other words, a warming world is no good to global warming advocates if it does not allow them to seize the kind of control and power that they desire. Why else would they react with such vitriol and vehemence against such a non-stereotypical global warming skeptic as Lomborg?
All of this becomes terribly important since we have an upcoming election. Global warming will be one issue. Many voters, especially younger ones, are increasingly concerned about social justice and want the United States to do more in this area. Their hearts are in the right place and I'm sure that their minds are capable of evaluating complex issues. Regretably, few have the time or take the time to become informed? On this particular issue, who has the time to read a 500-page book or to digest the recommendations of The Copenhagen Consensus?
As a result, decisions get made on the superficial coverage that floats around in the main-stream media and this may end up being disastrous. To slightly modify a well-known and oft quoted phrase: All that is needed for evil to triumph is for well-intentioned people to make misinformed decisions. Good intentions will not prevent the bad consequences that arise from poor choices.
And, as I said, I fear that decisions on this issue will get made based on the lopsided coverage of the issue by the main-stream media. They report only the message of the global warming advocates and this message is simple: Sit down. Shut up. The debate is over. Anyone who disagrees is stupid or dishonest or co-opted by a special interest.
Kool-aid, anyone?
Suggested Reading:
At a minimum, go here for a brief article by Lomborg that summarizes his critic of global warming orthodoxy. It is very short and succinct.
The Skeptical Environmentalist – Measuring the Real State of the World. Most people will not have time to read this lengthy book but go to your library or book store and read Chapter 1. That chapter alone will give you a different look at the environment than you are getting through popular media sources.
Lomborg’s newest book is entitled Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global Warming. I haven’t had a chance to read it yet but I’m looking forward to it.
The stereotypical global warming denier might be a K Street lobbyist who knows darn well that the planet is suffering from a man-induced warming crisis but who is not going to let a little thing like the facts get in the way of his lucrative contracts to represent big oil and other powerful and corrupt business interests.
Bjørn Lomborg does not fit that stereotype. He is Danish. He has a PhD in Political Science from the University of Copenhagen. He is a college professor. He is openly gay. He’s a vegetarian. I wouldn’t be surprised if all the light fixtures in his house were filled with those funny, curly-shaped bulbs that hum and give off a dim, yellowish light.
As an urbane, educated, European working in academia and unafraid to adopt a non-traditional lifestyle, you would think that Lomborg is the kind of person who would be on board with the global warming agenda.
He is not.
He has had the temerity to question environmental alarmism in general and global warming orthodoxy in particular and this has landed him in a big vat of hot water.
Bjørn Lomborg’s story is both interesting and instructive.
After earning his PhD in 1994, Lomborg went to work teaching statistics in the Political Science Department of the University of Aarhus in Denmark. He was aware of what he now calls “The Litany” – that long list of looming environmental disasters that gives us an all pervasive sense that the planet is in bad shape. Lomborg writes:
“We are all familiar with the Litany: the environment is in poor shape here on Earth. Our resources are running out. The population is ever growing, leaving less and less to eat. The air and water are becoming ever more polluted. The planet’s species are becoming extinct … The forests are disappearing, fish stocks are collapsing and coral reefs are dying. We are defiling our Earth, the fertile topsoil is disappearing, we are paving over nature, destroying the wilderness, decimating the biosphere, and will end up killing ourselves in the process. The world’s ecosystem is breaking down …”
In short, he was familiar with the secular environmentalist version of Armageddon – all of the death and destruction but lacking the last minute happy ending of a rescue from the supernatural world.
So Dr Lomborg got his students working on a project to document the extent of these impending environmental catastrophes. He wanted to use statistics to back up the anecdotal stories that were used to illustrate the dire conditions that mankind was creating on our precious planet. And this is where his problems began.
It turned out that the statistical look at these issues did not back up the gloomy outlook of the Litany. Whenever he consulted the statistics, Lomborg discovered that things were getting better instead of worse. This led him to write a book entitled The Skeptical Environmentalist – Measuring the Real State of the World.
The book is a tome. If any mafia hit men are reading this and have run out of cement blocks to weigh down their victims in a nearby river, they can stop by the local Borders and pick up this book as a substitute. It is over 500 pages of very small type although, in fairness, I should note that this includes the 2,930 footnotes and a bibliography that runs to 71 pages.
What was the response to the book? It didn’t take long for the feces to hit the rotating air circulation device.
Several environmental scientists filed a complaint with the Danish Committees on Scientific Dishonesty (DCSD). This Orwellian sounding organization formally investigated charges that Lomborg deliberately used flawed data, cherry picked his studies and came to completely false conclusions.
After it investigations, the DCSC concurred with the complaints and noted that Lomborg’s book was “deemed to fall within the category of scientific dishonesty” and noted that it was “clearly contrary to the standards of good scientific practice.”
Lomborg fought back. He appealed the decision to the MSTI – the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation – an agency with oversight over the DCSD.
The MSTI reversed the decision of the DCSD. It did so partly on the narrow procedural grounds that the DCSD had not shown that The Skeptical Environmentalist was a scientific work that fell within the DCSD’s regulatory authority. However, most of the MSTI’s decision was based on substance. It noted that the DCSC’s ruling “was completely void of argumentation” as to why Lomborg’s book was scientifically deficient.
As a result of this incident, a group of about 300 Danish scientists signed a petition requesting that the DCSD be disbanded. According to this group, the obviously biased treatment of Lomborg was evidence that the DCSD served no useful function. But a competing group of anti-Lomborg activists got almost 600 Danish scientists to sign a petition in support of the DCSD and its action in the Lomborg case.
Scientific American joined the fray with a lengthy and scathing review of The Skeptical Environmentalist. Lomborg published a rejoinder. So as to not misrepresent the journal’s position, he quoted each of their allegations at length and then explained why each criticism was unfounded or misguided.
The response? Initially, Scientific American threatened Lomborg with a lawsuit for copyright infringement if he did not retract his paper – they were upset because he quoted the Scientific American article without permission! Ah – how nice to see an organization which is ostensibly dedicated to the free, open and dispassionate pursuit of scientific inquiry respond with such substance and grace.
I asserted earlier that Lomborg’s story is instructive and this is where it begins to be so.
We have all been told the story of poor Galileo. The scientific community has told the story (actually, they have largely mis-told the story) with great relish. This, they say, show what happens when sincere and honest truth-seeking scientists run afoul of people who let faith rather than reason dictate their view of the world.
But the Lomborg incident gives us a different and a better perspective. The Galileo case is not one of science against religion or faith against reason. It shows us what happens frequently when someone challenges the cherished beliefs of those in authority in any community be it religious, philosophical, scientific, political, cultural or national.
In this case, we have a reigning scientific paradigm about the environment that is being challenged and the ruling authorities in that scientific community do not like it one bit. The Lomborg story shows us that bias and an unreasonably strong commitment to certain points of view and the desire to punish those who deviate from orthodoxy are not particularly religious phenomena but are common human failings that infect all types of human endeavors.
And there is another and even more important lesson to be learned from the Lomborg incident.
Strictly speaking, Lomborg is not a global warming “denier”. He believes that global warming is occurring and that it is caused, at least in part, by the activities of man. However, he believes that the results of global warming will not be catastrophic, that some of the effects will be positive and that most of the proposed cures will be worse than the disease.
Lomborg has started a project called The Copenhagen Consensus. He brought economists together in 2004 to perform a cost/benefit analysis on a variety of proposals to mitigate human suffering and improve the environment. An expanded group met again in 2006 and it will meet yet again in 2008. Their mission is to determine which projects can do the most good for the greatest number of people at a given cost. Global warming projects tend to rate very poorly in this kind of evaluation – requiring a lot of dollars for marginal benefits.
Lomborg points out that the only resource that is always in short supply is money and that we need to focus on spending money wisely. If we choose our projects poorly, we end up doing less good than we could otherwise have achieved and we may even make matters worse.
Lomborg argues that we live in a world that is full of “inconvenient truths”. Over 15 million people die each year from preventable diseases like malaria and cholera and HIV. Half of the people in the world are malnourished. A billion people do not have clean drinking water and almost as many lack basic education. The UN, according to Lomborg, claims that $75 billion a year over the next century would largely solve these problems.
In contrast, he claims that the Kyoto Protocol will cost $150 billion annually if fully implemented and it will only delay, not eliminate, our warming trend. According to Lomborg, the temperature we will reach in the year 2100 without any action on climate change is the same temperature we will reach in the year 2106 with a fully implemented Kyoto agreement! Lomborg’s rhetoric is forceful:
“… Gore argues that future generations will chastise us for not having committed ourselves to the Kyoto Protocol. More likely, they will wonder why, in a world overflowing with ‘inconvenient truths’, Gore focused on the one where we could achieve the least good for the highest cost.”
Again, this is one of those aspects of his story that makes it even more instructive. Lomborg agrees that global warming is occurring. He is only dissenting from the public policy prescriptions that grow out of the global warming phenomenon and this causes the wrath of the kool-aid drinkers to descend on him.
This suggests strongly to me that it is the public policy prescriptions that are more important to the global warming crowd than the issue of global warming itself. Global warming gives them an excuse to pursue public policies like higher taxes and more government regulation – policies that they have supported long before global warming was on anyone’s radar screen. In fact, I’m pretty sure that Al Gore’s political leanings are no different in 2006 than they were in 1976 when one of the nation’s popular news magazines warned us the earth was cooling and that we were threatened with a new ice age.
In other words, a warming world is no good to global warming advocates if it does not allow them to seize the kind of control and power that they desire. Why else would they react with such vitriol and vehemence against such a non-stereotypical global warming skeptic as Lomborg?
All of this becomes terribly important since we have an upcoming election. Global warming will be one issue. Many voters, especially younger ones, are increasingly concerned about social justice and want the United States to do more in this area. Their hearts are in the right place and I'm sure that their minds are capable of evaluating complex issues. Regretably, few have the time or take the time to become informed? On this particular issue, who has the time to read a 500-page book or to digest the recommendations of The Copenhagen Consensus?
As a result, decisions get made on the superficial coverage that floats around in the main-stream media and this may end up being disastrous. To slightly modify a well-known and oft quoted phrase: All that is needed for evil to triumph is for well-intentioned people to make misinformed decisions. Good intentions will not prevent the bad consequences that arise from poor choices.
And, as I said, I fear that decisions on this issue will get made based on the lopsided coverage of the issue by the main-stream media. They report only the message of the global warming advocates and this message is simple: Sit down. Shut up. The debate is over. Anyone who disagrees is stupid or dishonest or co-opted by a special interest.
Kool-aid, anyone?
Suggested Reading:
At a minimum, go here for a brief article by Lomborg that summarizes his critic of global warming orthodoxy. It is very short and succinct.
The Skeptical Environmentalist – Measuring the Real State of the World. Most people will not have time to read this lengthy book but go to your library or book store and read Chapter 1. That chapter alone will give you a different look at the environment than you are getting through popular media sources.
Lomborg’s newest book is entitled Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global Warming. I haven’t had a chance to read it yet but I’m looking forward to it.
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