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?
Thursday, October 16, 2008
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.
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