Scenes of blood and cruelty are shocking to our ear and heart. What man has nerve to do, man has not nerve to hear. What brother-man and brother-Christian must suffer, cannot be told us, even in our secret chamber, it so harrows up the soul! And yet, oh my country! these things are done under the shadow of thy laws! O, Christ! thy church sees them, almost in silence!

But, of old, there was One whose suffering changed an instrument of torture, degradation and shame, into a symbol of glory, honor, and immortal life; and, where His spirit is, neither degrading stripes, nor blood, nor insults, can make the Christian’s last struggle less than glorious.

I would hope that we can all point out the obvious particulars distinguishing this vs. that. But the church needs to get comfortable with the fact that our sitting idly by amid profound atrocity is one of those big, fat similarities.

For those who need a bit more help in connecting the dots, Doug Wilson has more on our preference to close our eyes and “keep calm and carry on,” or however that obnoxious slogan of our generation concludes:

Gosnell’s problem is not with what he was doing, which countless progressives have defended with their special kind of passionate malice, but with where he was doing it. You see, he was doing it where people could see.

So Gosnell or no Gosnell, Philadelphia or no Philadelphia, why don’t we know that it is always that bad for the baby? This is not a one off situation. This very thing is happening in your city — right this minute. Maybe you drive right by it as part of your daily commute. But now, thanks to Gosnell, we know what we know. This is what pro-lifers have been saying for a generation. It was as true in the seventies as it is now, but this appears to be a moment where the point can not only be stated, but also heard. So learn the potency of the hash tag #Gosnell.

One of the reasons that public opinion has started to shift on abortion has been because of the advancements of ultrasound technology. We can see with our eyes now, and what we are starting to see is that our learned lies have been lies for all that, and the corollary occurs to us that they have all been tumbling from the mouths of damned liars. And it turns out the mouths are our own.

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For a good overview of the clinic in question and the devastating implications of abortion in general, I urge you to watch this video from the 3801 Lancaster Film Project and share it with those you know. (Warning: The video contains graphic images.)

“There is an effect of abortion on our community,” says one man in the video. “That effect has an impact on our demography. It has an impact on our survival. It has an impact on the health of our community, and certainly on the health of our families.”

To join in on the conversation and make this story known, tweet along with us using the hashtag #Gosnell or #GosnellMurders.

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First, there was a “behind the scenes” trailer, in which we learn that all those disruptive paragraph breaks are not so strategic after all. Can’t find inspiration? A third grader’s science fair note cards will suffice. Just throw in a boom box and some (extra?) monkeys.

Now, there’s a new trailer.

Notecard 1: Church is like a Passion Pit concert. Are you invited?

Notecard 2: What if the God who made the world made chicken dumplings and we’re missing everything if we fail to ask what came first? theWORLDortheDUMPLING?

Notecard 3: Fruit bats are reading Pilgrim’s Progress in a Brooklyn deli.

Notecard 4: You’ve always thought God is an Oldsmobile. But. SMART CARS.

I guess I’d go with #4, too:

I have no deep theological ponderings or critiques to offer, as the book has yet to be released and these confusing metaphors are, well, confusing enough.

Buy the book here. Or, if you have a knack for finding new meaning in old kitsch and have some particularly peculiar places to store your books (beneath the stove, perhaps?), just write your own.

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Speaking of which, Lorie Line is currently tickling the ivories across my sound system, playing some uber-”smooth,” lowest-common-denominator instrumental rendition of “Message in a Bottle.” Not as edgy or as satisfying or as revolutionary as The Police, of course, but—according to those elevator and dentist-office maestros at Muzak—soooo ideal.

It is, I’ll admit, always refreshing when someone who views wealth as wrinkly and static also views us humans as the pre-determined, ready-and-waiting chess pieces we are. Consistency, my friends.

Can we call this “Game, Set, and Match”? Or should we stick with “Marxist Materialism”? An inspiring worldview for the powerless masses, nevertheless.

Anthony Bradley looks at things a bit more closely here.

(HT: Drew Cleveland)

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Schulz highlights a variety of approaches to introspection and identity-seeking, and although she briefly mentions the Christian “method” of submitting oneself to God first and foremost, she proceeds to casually shrug it off, using scientific non-consensus as her excuse, instead favoring a “promiscuity” in our approach-taking and hypothesis-testing:

Try something. Better still, try everything—throw all the options at the occluding wall of the self and see what sticks. Meditation, marathon training, fasting, freewriting, hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, speed dating, volunteering, moving to Auckland, redecorating the living room: As long as you steer clear of self-harm and felony, you might as well do anything you can to your inner and outer ecosystems that might induce a beneficial mutation.

As I go on to argue, Christians should be cautious of this type of universalism:

Christians mustn’t give way to a life of random, impulsive decision-making, whether it’s geared toward curing a personal addiction or ramping up something as innocent and well-meaning as helping those around us. Submitting to a smorgasbord of humanistic experimentation in our identity-seeking may yield “beneficial mutation” for some, but “beneficial” according to whom and at the cost of what? In the end, Schulz’s proposed path of self-realization involves diminishing the mysteries of God-empowered transformation to an exotic menu option amid a buffet of Eat-Pray-Love self-indulgence.

Regardless of whether we’re able to fully rationalize God’s transformative effects over our deepest desires, attitudes, and decisions, in humbling ourselves before the Lord of Lords and asking what he would have us do in all of our endeavors, economic or otherwise, we can have confidence that he will follow through according to his will.

This doesn’t mean the process is easy. Seasons of introspection and self-evaluation are not typically resolved with the single thump of a Bible or the first implant of that seed of self-denial. But that’s certainly where we should begin. Living a life of whole-life discipleship requires earnest dedication and preparation, and a particular path for preparation exists—namely, submitting oneself to a real God with real purposes for real people with real needs. The marketplace of humanity gets much more interesting when the market information gets that good.

“Commit your way to the Lord. Trust in him, and he will act,” writes the Psalmist. “Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him…The steps of a man are established by the Lord, when he delights in his way.”

Read the full post here.

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We lay the fears of American Arrogance before you. The first of the flock. The high, not the Lost. Now the meek and the weak, we seek to relish and embellish at your feet. Not like the carrots that Cain once cast down – fake, artificial, genetically modified — but soft as a lamb, tender and cute as I AM.

But not of the Precious-Moments cast, filled with capitalistic crass. We embrace, instead, your ancient Word. Of the ancient hills. Of an ancient world. We enter now into an eternal forest—a sanctuary of trees and stardust, tigers and badgers, bugs and bungalows.

We twinkle ever on. Illuminating. Booming with a flurry of angelic echoes. We pray that you trap the fury of this earthbound crater in the chains of its own creation.

Whisper it. Speak it. Sing a song.

Now, today, we rejoice not in some man. Some idol to our own power and self-gratification. Some President Barack Obama.

No. We pray not to the Fast Brood Nation, instead orphaning our co-dependent thumbs from the revolver of the remote control. No. We now point ourselves toward the One True Jeopardy Host.

For in this inaugural, in this “peaceful” [note: use air quotes] transfer of power from the people to the president of the United States of America, we recognize and evangelize that without the mysteries of the mountain air that once whisked Elijah and Moses through the oak and the olive tree to sip tea with your son in his hour of need—without the heaving sighs from across the hemispheres and the planetary systems—we are dirt.

Dirt. Filth. Garbage.

Yet there is holiness in the dirt. In everything.

Read the full post here.

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Over at the Acton Institute PowerBlog, I attempt to lay out a basic baseline of this approach, using Judas’ harsh response to Mary’s outpouring of expensive perfume as a starting point:

Much like Judas Iscariot, who reacted harshly to Mary’s outpouring of expensive ointment on Jesus’s feet, we are prone to react only to the material implications, ignoring altogether whether God might prefer us to do something so peculiar as “keep it for the day of [Jesus’s] burial,” as was the case for Mary.

It is for this reason that the Apostle Paul urged us to present our bodies as a “living sacrifice” — to not be “conformed to this world,” but be “transformed by the renewal of your mind.” Such a life, Paul explains, demands a transcendent perspective made up by constant “testing” of the world as we naturally see it, that we might “discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” This is a life consisting of far more than surface-level observations of the physical world, requiring us to submit our reasoning about everything from material prosperity to human happiness to the ultimate will of the Supreme Creator.

Leveraging a striking Whittaker Chambers quote, I point to some extremes that such thinking can lead us to (e.g. Soviet Communism). But as I go on to note, such a tendency is typically far more tricky to discern:

The same temptations Chambers indicates — of earthbound thinking and intellectual arrogance — can easily sneak into our personal plans for achieving God’s ends. We may, for instance, openly recognize that God has called us to meet the needs of the poor and alleviate poverty, but far too often we attempt to resolve the “God question” here, moving quickly and comfortably to our own personal plans and designs for how might get there (e.g. foreign aid, fair trade, a higher minimum wage, etc.). Rather than continuing to push toward the heart of God — toward a life full of transcendent reasoning and discernment — we look instead to the spilled ointment on the floor, frustrated and not bothering to ask, “Lord, what would you have me do?”

This is the most basic question, and we must ask it with sincerity and a heart of sacrifice. It is crucial that we observe the physical world, and it is necessary for us to ask sincere questions about why and how resources are used, but these questions need to be asked in conversation with our Creator, not in humanistic isolation.

God meets us in the here and now. He cares about the earthbound needs of the sparrow and human alike, and his eternal purposes are already in motion to meet those needs. But if our hearts and minds are not ultimately attached to an overarching concern for the Gospel and an earnest elevation of God’s purposes for our day-to-day lives, we will continue to be frustrated in our attempts to sync up our own debased scheming with his eternal designs.

Read the full post here.

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What did you read? What were some of your favorites?

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Happy New Year!

10. The Great Despotic Rot: Obamacare, the Supreme Court Ruling, and Spurious Claims to Deity

My fear is that the bait of materialistic security is looking mighty tasty to a country that has thus far stood apart on divine deference. The hook of debased humanistic reasoning is beginning to catch, and if we don’t swim away soon, it won’t be long till our gums are being yanked ever closer to the feet of some pathetic idol to comfort and quick-fixery. Once we’re there, we’ll continue to squiggle and squirm, gasping for air as we continue to search for meaning, hope, peace, and justice in a shallow political promise with insides as earthy as dirt and a scepter that stings.

9. Christian Values Are the Problem: Sacred Truth vs. Cultural Moralism

Focusing on sacred truths — or, in [Al] Mohler’s case, salvation through Christ — is the best approach not just for retaining belief in God, but for achieving a moral and virtuous society filled with individuals of strong character…The rise of “values”-speak not only indicates a rise in spiritual vacancy, but also (and thus) an erosion of the very moral foundations the various “values” crowds seek to emulate or amend. As Mohler concludes: “We should not pray for Christian morality to disappear or for Christian values to evaporate. But a culture marked even by Christian values is in desperate need of evangelism, and that evangelism requires the knowledge that Christian values and the gospel of Jesus Christ are not the same thing.”

8. The Moral Case for a Free Economy: An Interview with Father Robert Sirico

In order to rectify the problems caused by economic man, we must remember that economics is not man’s final purpose in life. At the end of the day, what matters most is that we do the Will of God. For those who realize that life on this earth is very short and that there is a life after this one, economics is not “the meaning of life.” It is a tool to be used for our material betterment, so that all people can live lives befitting our human dignity and so that humans may express their creativity as those who bear the imago Dei…Economic freedom is the most effective and moral way I know of to increase wealth, so that more and more people may live in relative abundance and be free to focus on what is really important in life: realizing our relationship to our God and Creator.

7. You Didn’t Build That: The Logical Ends of Collectivist Idolatry

Although the President’s “you didn’t build that” line is the center of attention, such a response is only logical for those who believe that enduring excessive tax hikes is an ideal way to “give something back.” When from the government all blessings flow, then to the government all things must go…

…When we contort the vocabulary of generosity, we should expect contorted sacrifice. When we promote a disordered view of individual obligations and responsibilities, we should expect disordered relationships. When we push our definitions of the “good” ever closer to those of the State, we should expect the good to dilute accordingly. And when we pretend that government is Supreme Creator, we should expect it to say things like, “You didn’t build that.”

6. When Our Journey Is God’s Journey: Paul Ryan, Individualism, and the American Dream

The American Dream as [Paul] Ryan defines it—the ability to follow our own path and our own journey—can only be justified to the extent to which our lives are consecrated to Christ and dedicated to pursuing his will…For Christians, then, the American Dream is not so much about the pursuit of self as it is about being free to pursue the one who owns that self. What Paul Ryan is promoting, then, becomes much more than individualism over collectivism, happiness over misery, and good decision-making over bad. A properly ordered, free society is really about the Love of God over the Love of Man, and that’s a dream I can get behind.

5. Honey, You Didn’t Build That: How to Destroy Individualism in Your Children (and Society)

Any successful entrepreneur knows precisely what social, cultural, and economic networks have led to his triumph, and he’ll be the first to thank his investors, suppliers, and customers. Heck, he might even thank government if it actually did what it’s supposed to do. Successful entrepreneurs also know a little something about sacrifice and hard work, and they know it without the President of the United States rubbing a bloated government agenda down their throats under the guise of “giving something back.”

4. A Lack of Self-Denial: In Sex, Economics, and Everything Else

I have no issues with the Golden Rule properly applied, but I resent that it’s come to be used not as an imperative for disinterested compassion, but as a bludgeoning tool for legitimizing particular behaviors and supporting an anything-goes moral outlook. At a fundamental level, such a view of “equal treatment” requires us to rid words of meaning and rip truth out of justice, should that particular truth be so awful as to offend so-and-so’s individual choices.

Through this understanding, the President’s refrain goes something like this: “Want to change the definition of an age-old institution? Well, if I wanted to do that, I would certainly want to be appeased.” And there’s the biggie: I. I. I.

3. Is “Christian Libertarian” an Oxymoron?

Some people think individuals and/or governments should let people destroy themselves, period, and that the Christian obligation here will only and always play out through some kind of utopian voluntaryism. This view plays out in plenty of complex and disguised ways, but on the whole, I’ve found self-described Christian libertarians who are open to such obligations and some who, fundamentally, are not. Those who are not—who are outright opposed to any obligations or submission—seem to be alive and well, yet I also think the other kind exists, though I’m not sure how “libertarian” they actually are. With the latter, there can certainly be a more successful synthesis.

2. Chick-fil-A Supporters Are Not the One’s “Shoving It in People’s Faces”

If coming out and eating a sandwich in solidarity is seen as an act of undue aggression and an uncharitable response to our eroding society’s persistent attempts to damage and disregard promoters of the truth, we’re going to be in pretty deep doo-doo when the real, substantive arguments and actions come to the table. If eating fast food is seen as crossing the line in public discourse, petty though such an act may be in the grander scheme of things, how will people react when we’re pressed to put down the fatty, breaded chicken and proclaim with boldness, “what you’re promoting is evil”?

1. For Unto Whom Much is Given, Less Shall Be Required

The irony is that the society in which an equality of outcomes is an overarching policy aim is the society in which the people “to whom much is given” start dropping like flies…When the moralistic bureaucrats on top of the hill try to determine how much has been given to whom and how much is too much, God is quickly reduced from being our ultimate source and guide to a mere excuse for government meddling. When leaders like Obama pretend that Jesus was/is encouraging us to blindly submit our resources to a massive inefficient bureaucracy, being a bond slave of Christ becomes no different than being a robot for Uncle Sam.

For Obama to use Jesus’ call effectively, then, he needs to rephrase it a bit: “For unto whom much is given, less shall be required.”

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Over at the Acton Institute’s PowerBlog, I take things a bit further, noting that our work, in its very essence, puts us in the service of others. To make the point, I rely heavily on Lester DeKoster’s Work: The Meaning of Your Life, in which he argues that “work is the form in which we make ourselves useful to others.”

As DeKoster explains:

Our working puts us in the service of others; the civilization that work creates puts others in the service of ourselves. Thus, work restores the broken family of humankind… Through work that serves others, we also serve God, and he in exchange weaves the work of others into a culture that makes our work easier and more rewarding…As seed multiplies into a harvest under the wings of the Holy Spirit, so work multiplies into a civilization under the intricate hand of the same Spirit.

If we change our thinking on this, orienting our work first toward God and then toward neighbor, we will experience not only a transformation of our basic spiritual commitments but of civilization at large—social, economic, and spiritual.

Today, we are seeing this truth play out in bold and mysterious ways. If globalization has demonstrated anything, it’s the transformational power of expansive human collaboration and cooperation—the transcendent, liberating experience of diverse and interdependent human service. The more freedom and opportunity people have been given to orient their work toward God and neighbor, the more we have seen them rise from poverty in all its forms.

Yet amid such a vivid display, there is still plenty of room for growth. As the winning rhetoric of the recent election demonstrates, our discussions on everything from farm subsidies to auto bailouts to union insulationism to company off-shoring are still plagued by a protectionist ethos that seeks to distort the very essence of work for the mere purposes of personal comfort and self-satisfaction. Instead of asking how we might elevate our work to more accurately and comprehensively meet real and existing human needs, we continue to glorify work as an idol to ourselves.

As Keller and DeKoster remind us, we must fight this temptation with diligence, praying for God to redeem our work toward His purposes. When we do, we can expect the seeds we plant to “multiply under the wings of the Holy Spirit,” as DeKoster puts it, building culture and civilization as God uses us to “restore the broken family of humankind.”

To read the full post, click here.

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