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.
Thursday, August 28, 2008
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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