Philosophical Fragments
Christian and secular news and commentary one Christian found important or entertaining this morning:
1. PRIDE COMETH BEFORE. Sometimes the greatest threat to ministerial success is…ministerial success. Chuck Swindoll on the temptations that beset the minister, especially when the minister has the favor of a growing congregation.
2. MY FATHER’S ADVICE. Yesterday I pointed to the deeply limited theological musings of Stephen Hawking. I have no qualms with Stephen Hawking. In fact, he was one of my very few heroes in childhood. But he evidently suffers from the Dawkins syndrome, where an otherwise sophisticated scientist becomes remarkably unsophisticated when it comes to religious and theological questions. Bob Kellerman has an interesting response here. (H/t Tim Challies.)
It’s something that has been on my mind. When I was about to leave for college, my father said something to me, something he probably would not remember saying, since it was an off-hand comment. But it stuck with me. You will find many intelligent people at Stanford, he said; but wisdom is a rarer and more precious thing. Seek people of wisdom, not just intelligence.
3. OBSCURITY EXPLAINED. I often took the time to explain to my students just how profoundly difficult it can be to define certain Biblical terms in their original languages – especially Hebrew terms that are only rarely found. The process is explained here, though Mounce does not really get into how difficult (and conjectural) it can be when a word is not attested in many places. There are no central theological doctrines that depend entirely on disputed translations, but there are social and ethical issues that depend in no small measure on how obscure terms are translated. This may be an inconvenient truth, but it’s a truth nonetheless.
4. PASSION IN A PITCHER. Jeremy Affeldt, a pitcher for the San Francisco Giants who blogs for Patheos (and will be featured in our soon-to-be-launched Faith and Sports Portal), is passionate about serving God and the creatures of God. Check out his latest blog posting.
5. DULL HATCHETS. I am so tired of hatchet jobs like this that warn in ominous tones that such-and-such politician (invariably a conservative) is in favor of theocracy. I have not devoted a lot of attention to Rand Paul, and I have no interest in defending him personally. But an article like this is a pathetic pastiche of vague allegations, unjustified inferences and guilt by association. The claim is this:
“Dr. Rand seems to be entrenched so deeply in the Christian conservative establishment that his platform is anything but smaller government. His apparent proposition describes the creation of a people’s government of less authority dominated by a non-democratic religious government with increased authority.
“Rand Paul is not a fresh new candidate for the expansion of personal freedom under a less obtrusive government, but the harbinger of a conservative theocracy disguised as a Libertarian. His vision is not of the future, but of a pre-civil rights amendment past, where McCarthyism meets Billy Graham, the constitution is trumped by the churches interpretation of the bible, and civil liberties are traded for religious doctrine.”
These are extreme claims, but the evidence offered in support of them is anything but extreme. Take this example. “Dr Rand” is guilty by virtue of his association with Sarah Palin, who, during her “meteoric rise” to prominence amid the 2008 Presidential campaign, “made a point of consulting with Billy Graham regarding foreign policy with Israel, Iran and Iraq. Her questions were related to Biblical ‘End-Times’ prophecy and how foreign policy should be designed and implemented accordingly.” Yet if you follow the link, you find that Palin was invited to the Graham home for a meal, during which she had a 40 minute conversation with Graham. In that conversation, according to Franklin Graham, she asked what Graham the Elder thought the Bible had to say about Israel, Iran and Iraq. On this slender reed, the author, Liam Fox, makes a whopper of a claim:
“According to the Bible, Armageddon will not happen until the Jews have full control over Jerusalem, and Jesus won’t be coming back until we get that whole ‘Armageddon-war-to-end-all-wars’ thing out of the way. So, in Sarah Palin’s conservative Christian reasoning, we have to support Israel, at all cost, and help them expand and control the area so that Jesus can come back and either kill them or convert them to Christianity.”
What this all has to do with Rand Paul, of course, is unclear. Electoral expediency leads many politicians to consort with people with whom they disagree on many matters. Moreover, a brief conversation in which perhaps one question was asked about the Bible and Israel, does not lead to Palin’s belief in an apocalyptic end-times which requires that we support Israel “at all cost” in order that “Jesus can come back and either kill them or convert them.” These kind of claims are so ludicrous, so conjectural, so radically out of context that any site should be ashamed to publish them.
Fox also claims that Concerned Women of America favors theocracy because they seek “to bring biblical principles into all levels of public policy.” Yet claiming that Christians should seek public policies that reflect biblical principles is both obvious and not at all problematic. Everyone seeks public policies that are in line with their principles — for Christians, those are biblical principles. That does not mean, as Fox alleges, that Christians want to trash the Constitution and put the Bible in its place. The Bible, as Christians know very well, is not a document on how to govern a nation like our own; but attempting to use biblical principles to assess public policies is the same thing that is done by any number of liberal Christian advocacy groups. Yet you don’t see Liam Fox alleging that Sojourners seeks theocracy, do you?
6. TEA TOO STRONG. Apparently the Tea Party has influence after all. At least in some places. I’m not sure Sharron Angle is a good candidate – I know next-to-nothing about her – but there’s no doubt that she got where she got because of her support from Tea Partiers. The Tea Party is certainly one of the most significant political movements of the Obama era, and I will be posting some thoughts on the Tea Party later.
7. AIDS BOMBS. Horrific and barbaric.
8. WE’RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER BOAT. The first thing I thought when I heard that BP was directing roughly half of the oil gushing from the broken Deepwater Horizon oil rig up to a ship on the surface was, “How long will there be space in that ship?” Sure enough, BP had to stop collecting the oil, because the ship could not contain any more, and another ship was en route.
How do missteps like this happen? How does a sophisticated corporation with the power and reach of BP not mobilize enough ships to recapture as much oil as possible? And how is the federal government, under the circumstances, not asking the very first question that came to mind for me, and doubtless for many others? At this point the Obama administration should be double-checking every BP calculation, second-guessing every decision, and generally managing the situation to mitigate the damage as much as possible. This is unbelievably poor management both from the company and the administration.
9. EPIC FAIL? William Galston is arguably the best essayist at The New Republic. He warns that “The U.S. is Not Too Big to Fail.” As he writes, “It is entirely possible that we are reaching an inflection point in public attitudes that will force the political system to change course.” It’s also possible that one of the most consequential things the Obama administration could do is restore confidence in government. Yet it also threatens only to worsen cynicism toward government, since the Obama campaign was built on promises of change and optimism that a transparent, accountable government could be put in place. If that turns out to have been a set of empty promises, a cynical ploy to get elected, then the generation that flocked to Obama’s campaign rallies may well decide never to trust another politician again – a promise to themselves they will never keep, but they may keep for several cycles at least.
I agree with David Kuhn that the Obama administration is at a tipping point. Whether it will learn from its mistakes and reform itself and restore confidence on government and restore a better relationship between Washington and the business world — or whether it proceed as it has, leading us further down a destructive path, will be decided, I think, in the next 6 months. It’s up to Obama. This is his test. Is he who he promised he was? Or was he just posing?
10. GO YE FORTH AND FOUND A STARTUP. A nice piece from Tom Friedman on the need for young people, coming out of college with no jobs to be found, should put their efforts into start-ups. Agreed.
11. TODAY’S TWO-SIDES. Two takes on the Obama administration and the oil spill crisis. For the Left, Terence Samuel writes that grave damage may be done to the administration even though there is very little it can do. For the Right, Dorothy Rabinowitz argues that the damage comes from the way in which the oil spill crisis has illuminated the great distance between Obama and ordinary Americans. Obama, she says, cannot sound like a leader of this people because he is not really of and for them; he is instead a leader of his ideological class.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In