An Open Letter

Dear All Southern States Like Virginia and North Carolina That Voted for Barack Obama Last November,

How’s that working out for you?

Sincerely,

Aaron O’Kelley

Pushing the Boundaries

Is anybody else out there a bit weary of medical researchers playing God?  Every few months it seems there is some story that brings us one step closer to an Orwellian nightmare.

Good Analogy

One thing I love about Douglas Wilson is that he can always come up with a fitting (and usually humorous) analogy for any situation.  This is the most recent one that caught my attention, from his post on the health care debate:

The unfunded obligations of Medicare and Medicaid are about 50 trillion dollars, give or take 5 dollars or so. The economic liars who are pushing Obamacare want you to believe their lie that the future will not go the way the past has gone, and that government mismanagement of programs like these, and Social Security, are no indicator of future performance. Things will be lots better this time around. Having floundered and almost drowned in the kiddie pool, we are now going to swim to Hawaii. If you predict unfortunate results, this is no doubt the result of you being full of spite and malice. For humanity.

Now, lest you think incorrectly, Wilson is no partisan.  He has harsh words for Republicans too, and most of the time I agree with him on that.  Read the whole thing.

Thought for the Day

I think of President Obama as a Nobel Prize winner the same way I think of Paris Hilton as a “celebrity.”  Both are famous for being famous.

How to Be a Pilgrim

I am so thankful to God for the years I spent in the youth group at First Baptist Church of Atlanta, Texas.  It was particularly when I was in the sixth grade that I first began to understand that the claims of Christ over my life are total and absolute.  Thus, my Christian faith cannot be tucked away in a private area of my life.  It must shape everything I do and think.  God knows I needed to hear that message at that particular time, and my life has never been the same.

But at the same time I was also introduced to textbook American evangelical activism.  I don’t mean that my youth group meetings were political rallies (we didn’t discuss politics).  I mean that, under the instruction of my youth minister, I dove headfirst into the “transform the world for Christ” mentality.  It has taken me years to recover from it, and I am still in process. 

Of course, a lot of good came out of that teaching.  I became more attuned to the public claims of the Christian faith.  I grew strong and bold (at least more so than I had been before) in personal evangelism.  I developed leadership abilities that have carried me through years of ministry.  I certainly don’t want to suggest that everything I learned in this regard was wrong or of no value to me.

But I also got entrenched in evangelical triumphalism.  I overestimated my own (and the church’s) ability to ”build” God’s Kingdom on earth (as though that is something any human hands could do!).  I dreamed big dreams, and more often than not I ended up with big disappointments.  I still wrestle with the ramifications of those dreams today.  And in some cases I have had to smash those dreams because they were nothing more than sugar-coated idols.   

This article by Michael Horton strikes me as one full of biblical and theological wisdom.  Please read it for insight into the relationship between the “already” dimension of the Kingdom of God, the “not yet” dimension of the Kingdom, and the church’s role in between. 

Does God expect me to go out and change the world?  Probably not.  Imagine how few people in the history of the human race can claim to have done such a thing.  We are not all, as Christians, called to be world changers.  But we are all called to be pilgrims, wayfarers on the road to glory who may not pull off a global makeover, but if we faithfully worship, pray, love, and work, day in and day out, as the New Testament calls us to do, we may just end up leaving this place a little better than we found it.  Evangelical triumphalism may not be satisfied with that idea, but if I read the New Testament correctly, it seems that God is.  And that’s so much the worse for evangelical triumphalism.

At the command of God the Father and at just the right moment, the Lord Jesus will bring the consummation of the Kingdom.  It is not yours or mine to build.  Maybe if we lowered our expectations a bit about who we are and what we are capable of doing, we might just find that there is a depth of joy and contentment to be found in living a life of simple faithfulness.  Sure, every once in a while a Paul, an Augustine, a Luther comes along and turns the world on its head, but in between those unusual moments in history, millions of faithful believers pass out of this world unnoticed by the earthly multitudes even while they are welcomed as heroes among the hosts of Heaven.  If I can be one of them, then that will be enough for me.

Bold Statement

In the context of his review of Jim Belcher’s book Deep Church, Kevin DeYoung makes this bold statement:

I don’t think there is a single insight from the emergent church that cannot be gleaned from the best of the evangelical, and specifically the Reformed, tradition. We don’t need a third way between emergent and traditional. We need a revitalized, reformed evangelical church.

If this is the case, then it would mean that the primary value of the (artist formerly known as the) emerging conversation is not what it offers to the church.  Rather, its primary value is what it reminds the church: that there is a richness in the roots of evangelicalism that we ignore (and have ignored) to our peril.  If the (artist formerly known as the) emerging conversation plays any role in sending us back to our roots, then we owe it a debt of gratitude. 

What do you, O plenteous multitude of readers, think of DeYoung’s claim?

Those Oppressive Fetuses!

UPDATE: Many thanks to Adam for pointing out this link from factcheck.org about the czars.  It turns out that the real situation is a bit more complicated than I represented in the original version of this post.  I apologize for not doing my homework on this and admit that I was relying on information I had received exclusively from right-wing commentators. 

It turns out that Cass Sunstein was confirmed by the Senate, though by a narrow margin.  So I cannot say that Obama appointed him with no restraints whatsoever, and at this point I am unsure whether Congress has any oversight with regard to Mr. Sunstein.  But nothing I have seen causes me to doubt that he is a left-wing radical with regard to the question of abortion, and this fits precisely with what I have seen from Obama to this point.  I remain convinced that we have a president who considers abortion not just a lamentable necessity, but a positive good for society. 

I have eliminated most of the original version of the post and changed the title so as to correct my previous mistakes. 

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Obama has appointed a team of czars who are fringe leftists.  This leads me to believe (though I have never really doubted it) that Obama himself is a fringe leftist who happens to portray himself as something else. 

Take Cass Sunstein, for example, the current regulatory czar.  In his 1993 book The Partial Constitution, Sunstein wrote the following about abortion:

A restriction on access to abortion turns women’s reproductive capacities into something to be used by fetuses. … Legal and social control of women’s sexual and reproductive capacities has been a principal historical source of sexual inequality.

I have argued before that the pro-life/pro-choice dichotomy is actually more like a spectrum of views.  And this is about as far left as you can go on the spectrum.  This man actually claims that any restriction on access to abortion makes women susceptible to being “used” by fetuses. 

If only we could rid the world of those oppressive fetuses who go around using women as a way of sustaining patriarchy.  Oh wait, we can!  That’s right.  Abortion is the weapon of righteousness in the hands of oppressed women who can fight off these oppressive fetuses who are only seeking to use them for their own selfish ends.  Rise up, women of the world!  May you never be deterred from the righteous cause of killing off your oppressors, those wretched fetuses!

This is a far cry from the old Democrat party line: “Abortion should be safe, legal, and rare.”  Democrats used to say that kind of thing, claiming to lament the reality of abortion while acknowledging its necessity.  But the Obama administration apparently believes otherwise.  For Obama and those in his mold, abortion is not a lamentable necessity.  It is a positive good. 

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UPDATE #2: I was just thinking last night how ironic it is that Sunstein would speak of fetuses “using” the reproductive capacities of women, as though fetuses could make a conscious choice.  Doesn’t that attribute willpower to a fetus, which in turn implies that a fetus is more than a clump of cells but actually a person?  If Sunstein is serious about this argument, then it would represent a major revision of the pro-choice position.  Until now, pro-choicers have argued that it is okay to kill fetuses because they are not persons.  Is Sunstein perhaps suggesting that fetuses are indeed persons, but it is okay to kill them in self-defense?  Ironically, Ronald Reagan once actually made this (very bad) argument, but ONLY with respect to babies that were conceived as the product of rape.  Reagan said women who had been raped could terminate their pregnancies in self-defense, since their bodies had been unwillingly invaded by another person (or persons, meaning both the rapist and his offspring).  Sunstein apparently believes that any woman, no matter what the situation of conception, has the right to defend herself against the intruder who has entered her body.

I don’t particularly like either view, but Reagan’s is a lot better.  If we lived in a country where Reagan’s view prevailed, abortion would actually be rare, which is what Democrats used to claim that they wanted.

My Take on the Joe Wilson Incident

In a nutshell, here is what I think about what Joe Wilson did and the aftermath of the incident:

(1) The propositional content of Wilson’s outburst is factually correct.  I do believe President Obama lies regularly.  With regard to this healthcare proposal, we all know what will happen if Congress fails (or, as has been the case so far, explicitly refuses) to insert language that prohibits illegal immigrants from receiving government-funded health insurance.  Government programs are like kudzu: if measures are not taken to contain them, they go all over the place.  I have difficulty believing that the President honestly believes otherwise, so all of his promises about illegals not being covered do appear to be misrepresentations of what he knows to be true.  Ergo, Joe Wilson was factually correct.

(2) Nevertheless, it is possible to be factually correct and still be in the wrong.  Joe Wilson is in the wrong.  There are times and places to criticize the President, but heckling him in the middle of a speech to Congress is unacceptable. 

(3) Wilson’s behavior since the incident offers me little encouragement about his own personal character.  On the one hand, he called the White House to apologize, but on the other hand, he is capitalizing on his new found fame as the voice of conservative anger.  He is trying to eat his cake and have it.  Mr. Wilson, a real apology entails an acknowledgement that you were in the wrong.  But if, after you have apologized to the President, you go around bowing to conservatives who are proud of your sinful incivility, then you obviously really don’t believe you were ever in the wrong.  You should either apologize or dig in your heels (and I would recommend the former).  It is a bit hypocritical to try to do both, depending on who is listening.

Teddy Was No Gipper

It didn’t take long for Democrats to seize upon the death of Senator Ted Kennedy as a political opportunity.  ABC News reports:

Democrats are hoping that the memory of Sen. Ted Kennedy will revive the Democratic Party’s flagging push for health care reform.”You’ve heard of ‘win one for the Gipper’? There is going to be an atmosphere of ‘win one for Teddy,’” Ralph G. Neas, the CEO of the liberal National Coalition on Health Care, told ABC News.

Democrats are hoping that Kennedy’s influence in death may be even stronger than it was when he was alive as they push for President Obama’s top domestic priority. Democratic officials hope that invoking Kennedy’s passion for the issue will counter slippage in support for health care reform.

I think this is simply more evidence of desperation on the part of the majority party because of their inability to sell their ideas to the American public.  Can’t win a debate on the merits?  Then try to win it on sentimentality! 

The problem is that the average American cares very little about what Ted Kennedy would have wanted.  Ted Kennedy has been out of touch with the heartland of America for decades now.  It is almost comical to think that “Win one for Teddy” could be mentioned in the same sentence with “Win one for the Gipper.”  Teddy was no Gipper, and thus the attempt to circumvent the debate over merits and push the sentimentality argument is not likely to go anywhere, even among people who are normally dragged along by their heart strings.  Outside the staunchly liberal northeast and the Beltway, Ted Kennedy really doesn’t have much of a hold on anyone’s heart strings. 

When will the Democrats learn that when you are in a hole, you should stop digging?

More Uncertainty

Adam met with his oncologist today.  Basically, the bottom line right now is that we do not know what exactly he is facing.  The oncologist is using Acute Myelogenous Leukemia (AML) as his working diagnosis, but Adam’s symptoms are not typical for this form of cancer.  More tests are underway, and we expect to know more early next week.

AML is an aggressive form of cancer that typically requires aggressive chemotherapy treatment.  I am praying that it will turn out to be something else, something that will not require such a hard fight.  But whatever the case may be, I am commending my brother to the gracious care of the Lord.  Please keep praying with me.