Muddling Toward Maturity Blog

D.A. Carson: How Can We Reconcile the Old Testament God and the New Testament God?

ht: Justin Taylor

TONIGHT! - DINESH D'SOUZA & BILL AYERS DEBATE "WHAT'S SO GREAT ABOUT AMERICA?"

 UPDATE: - Full debate available here. The debate is well worth watching for the clear perspective it affords on how leftists view America.  D'Souza's performance was stunning for its excellence.

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The debate will be live-streamed at 7:30 PM (EST)  You can watch free by clicking here.

D'Souza writes:  "Tune in tonight and join the conversation during the debate by using #AyersDSouza on Twitter. Our streaming page will pull your Twitter comments and post them for all viewers to see."

IS EASTERN EUROPE REDISCOVERING ITS CHRISTIAN ROOTS?

Eric Metaxas wrote an extraordinary Breakpoint report summarizing Filip Mazurczak's article in First Things, "Eastern Europe's Christian Reawakening."  Metaxas writes:

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If I asked you to describe the state of Christianity in Europe, you’d probably answer “not good.” And there’d be ample reason to do so. Most of us are familiar with the depressing statistics regarding church attendance in Western Europe and Scandinavia.

But there is more to Europe than Britain, France, and Sweden. And in Central and Eastern Europe, a different story is being written.

This story was the subject of a recent First Things article by Filip Mazurczak. In it, Mazurczak reveals to readers what is going on in former communist societies such as Hungary and Croatia. For instance, while the European Union notoriously omitted any mention of Europe’s Christian heritage in the preamble to its constitution, Hungary’s new constitution “ties Christianity to Hungarian nationhood.”

TED CRUZ - THE IMPERIAL PRESIDENCY OF PRESIDENT OBAMA

Senator Cruz (R- Texas) writes in today's Wall Street Journal that we are saddled with a lawless president who is opening the door for future lawlessness that threatens the liberty of every citizen:

Of all the troubling aspects of the Obama presidency, none is more dangerous than the president's persistent pattern of lawlessness, his willingness to disregard the written law and instead enforce his own policies via executive fiat. On Monday, Mr. Obama acted unilaterally to raise the minimum wage paid by federal contracts, the first of many executive actions the White House promised would be a theme of his State of the Union address Tuesday night. . .

Rule of law doesn't simply mean that society has laws; dictatorships are often characterized by an abundance of laws. Rather, rule of law means that we are a nation ruled by laws, not men. That no one—and especially not the president—is above the law. For that reason, the U.S. Constitution imposes on every president the express duty to "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed."

Yet rather than honor this duty, President Obama has openly defied it by repeatedly suspending, delaying and waiving portions of the laws he is charged to enforce. When Mr. Obama disagreed with federal immigration laws, he instructed the Justice Department to cease enforcing the laws. He did the same thing with federal welfare law, drug laws and the federal Defense of Marriage Act.

FREEDOM REVOLUTION IN THE UKRAINE

Update - Ilya Varlamov has produced extraordinary photos of which the photo below is an example.

(Original post) - A Ukrainian friend sent me this twitter address for up-to-the-minute news
feeds out of Kiev.

https://twitter.com/search?q=%23euromaidan&src=hashI

 I went to one of the articles listed - very powerful  -
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/30/opinion/love-and-hatred-in-kiev.html?hpw&rref=opinion&_r=2

The truth about gov't concession (NOT) -
https://www.facebook.com/maria.kachmar/posts/10153782412840271

Note: I checked and learned""maidan" means "square" in Ukrainian - In
this case, "Independence Square."

May the revolution succeed! 

SINGLE PARENTING AND INCOME INEQUALITY

Harvard University -  In its latest analysis, experts insist that single parenthood is one of the largest obstacles in moving up the income ladder. "The study found the prevalence of single parents to be a much larger factor in determining social mobility than income inequality -- something President Obama and Democrats speak of ad nauseum." That also helps explain why Americans have thrown $20 trillion at the war on poverty with next to nothing to show for it. Why? Because money can't replace marriage as a lasting antidote to the poor's problems. In this instance, we do need government -- a government that won't devalue family or stand in the way of its formation. A government that is more committed to affirming the family than infirming it.     -  From the Family Research Council

ANDREW E. HARROD - LGBT AND SHARIA AGENDAS DISPLAY SURPRISINGLY SIMILAR TOTALITARIAN TENDENCIES

Andrew E. Harrod has penned a column that brilliantly and compellingly spells out the similarities between the two aggressive movements - Islamic sharia and Gay Rights.  Both censor and silence opposition.  Harrod:  (HT: VirtueOnline)

. . .  Parallels between these two movements had occurred to me before while reporting on the Family Research Council’s (FRC) Values Voter Summit (VVS).  As discussed here, Christians along with others face violence from sharia-supporting Muslims and legal demands to support phenomena such as same-sex “marriage” (SSM) or abortion.  While some Muslims destroy churches abroad, LGBT advocates along with others destroy businesses at home in a two-front war against Christian faith and morals.

A similar duality exists in the world’s democracies with respect to campaigns against “homophobia” and “Islamophobia.”  As used by their various proponents, these terms define as a phobia or irrational fear any reservation to any beliefs and behaviors of LGBT and Muslim individuals respectively.  For these ideologues only public approval, not just private autonomy, will suffice.

This demand for public approval is perhaps most manifest in the censorship of criticism.  Americans, for example, recently received a graphic display of LGBT wrath in failed attempts to pressure the firing of Duck Dynasty star Phil Robertson.  Analyzing this latest of similar homosexual power plays, various conservatives spoke of “Homosexual jihadists” and a “‘Duck Dynasty’ jihad.”

Abroad, however, individuals have also faced legal repercussions for opposition to LGBT behavior.  Canada, for example, has witnessed a host of legal actions against opposition, sometimes merely spoken, to SSM since this became law in 2005.  Letters against homosexuality in the United Kingdom, meanwhile, have brought police visits and hate speech law warnings.  Swedish Pastor Åke Green also endured a 2004 hate speech conviction due to his pulpit denouncement of homosexuality before the Swedish Supreme Court overturned his sentence in 2005.

QUICK TAKES

Obama

 Obama - The Imperial President who ignores the Constitution and jeopardizes the future of American democracy

Schindler's List producer - I never Feared My Government Until Now  (HT: Drudge)

Senator Sessions (R - Alabama) - Immigration spikes income inequality

QUICK TAKES

-- Probable cancer risk from grilled meat.

-- Judge orders hospital to remove life support for pregnant woman with 14 week old fetus (Drudge report)

-- Peggy Noonan - No One's listening to Obama now  (Drudge report)   "When the central domestic fact of your presidency was a fraud, people won't listen to you anymore."

 -- Michele Bachmann - Obama's legacy is establishment of lawlessness in the United States

 -- American Incompetence - Obama officials can't say how many Americans were killed or injured in Afghanistan in the last 12 months, nor how much we have spent in Afghanistan  (video)

 -- Jay Richards on the causes of "income equality" here and here, plus Dr.  Anne Bradley on "Five Things Christians Need to Know About Income Inequality and What You Can Do About it." 

 -- Why the much-hyped Oxfam study on global inequaity is misleading.

 -- Swedes buy insurance to skip long health lines.

SPEAKING UP FOR THE SANCTITY OF LIFE

March for Life in Washington, D.C. today - Twitter

Excellent website - How to Speak Up for Life

Abominable pro-abortion message from President Obama. 

MUST WATCH - Brit Hume commentary -

Massive pro-life march in Paris, France.

HEATHER MACDONALD - THE UNIVERSITY'S ROLE IN THE COLLAPSE OF THE WEST

"The University's Role in the Collapse of the West" may not be MacDonald's title but it comports well with her alarm at what has happened to Western culture via the universities and in particular the humanities.  Her article, "The Humanities and Us," begins with this paragraph:

In 2011, the University of California at Los Angeles decimated its English major. Such a development may seem insignificant, compared with, say, the federal takeover of health care. It is not. What happened at UCLA is part of a momentous shift in our culture that bears on our relationship to the past—and to civilization itself.

Until 2011, students majoring in English at UCLA had to take one course in Chaucer, two in Shakespeare, and one in Milton—the cornerstones of English literature. Following a revolt of the junior faculty, however, during which it was announced that Shakespeare was part of the “Empire,” UCLA junked these individual author requirements and replaced them with a mandate that all English majors take a total of three courses in the following four areas: Gender, Race, Ethnicity, Disability, and Sexuality Studies; Imperial, Transnational, and Postcolonial Studies; genre studies, interdisciplinary studies, and critical theory; or creative writing. In other words, the UCLA faculty was now officially indifferent as to whether an English major had ever read a word of Chaucer, Milton, or Shakespeare, but was determined to expose students, according to the course catalog, to “alternative rubrics of gender, sexuality, race, and class.”

FATHER UPSET WITH TERMS ON SCHOOL'S SEX EDUCATION POSTER

Warning: This story contains terms that some may find offensive or inappropriate, reader and viewer discretion is recommended.

THE AMERICAN LEFT DISLIKES "LONE SURVIVOR" MOVIE

I haven't seen the movie yet but I've read reviews of both the movie and the book.  I think David French's response to leftist criticism particularly trenchant.

. . . Lone Survivor tells the story of a SEAL mission gone wrong and the resulting firefight where a small band of SEALs displayed remarkable courage under fire. But they showed more than courage. An act of humanity sealed their fate — the decision to free Afghan civilians that stumbled into their path. With their own lives on the line, they obeyed American rules of engagement, obeyed the laws of war, and conducted themselves with honor (with one SEAL posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor). 

So how do some in the left-wing press write about this movie? Here’s L.A. Weekly:

These four men were heroes. But these heroes were also men. As the film portrays them, their attitudes to the incredibly complex War on Terror, fought hillside by bloody hillside in the Afghan frontier with both U.S. and Taliban forces contributing to an unconscionably high civilian body count, were simple: Brown people bad, American people good.

Really? You say that after the film shows how Americans actually gave their lives rather than kill an innocent “brown” person? Make no mistake, this is an accusation of the most vile racism, and it slanders these SEALs. Indeed, it slanders more than the SEALs involved in that firefight. Friends of mine died in Iraq — including, and this will be a news flash to L.A. Weekly (which apparently views our forces as all-white), “brown” friends — because of their concern for and respect for the lives of local citizens. We erred on the side of saving local lives, to the point where people very dear to me paid the ultimate price.

RAVI ZACHARIAS TO SPEEK AT BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY AND THE MORMON TABERNACLE THIS WEEKEND

He speaks at BYU Friday afternoon at 2:00 PM (EST),  and at the Mormon Tabernacle Saturday evening at 8:30 (EST).  Both talks will be live-streamed.  Details here.

QUICK TAKES

  --  Kathleen Parker - To Defeat poverty, look to marriage   Negative rhetoric on marriage needs overcoming

  --  National Organization for Marriage - Stop this contempt for the constitution

  --  U.K. Guardian - Daughter of atheist parents wants to be baptized

  --  Andrew Spencer -What is the Prosperity Gospel?

  --  Denys O'Leary -  In Search of a Road to Reality  "The new cosmologies are not shedding much light, except on the sheer power of the human imagination."

IS THIS AMERICA?

The Supreme Court considers a Massachusetts law against speech outside abortion clinics.

Charles C. W. Cooke reports:

This morning, in America’s frigid and fractious capital city, a soft-spoken 77-year-old grandmother named Eleanor McCullen stood up to the machine.

At stake was a Massachusetts law that makes it illegal for any citizen to “enter or remain on a public way or sidewalk” within 35 feet of the entrance or exit to an abortion clinic — unless, that is, that citizen either works in the clinic or is in agreement with what goes on inside. This has severely restricted the ability of McCullen, a regular fixture outside the Planned Parenthoods of Boston, to hand out anti-abortion literature and to offer would-be patients financial support — both of which she has been doing pro bono for decades. The state law, she contends, is flatly illegal, violating her sacred right to free speech, depriving her of equal protection under the law, and effectively establishing speech codes on public land.

Apologists for the measure claim rather anemically that the law is necessary to prevent “harassment,” and they promise that it strikes a reasonable “balance” between respect for free expression and the need to protect visitors from being hassled. McCullen and her lawyers disagree, holding that because the law’s applicability is contingent not on one’s behavior but on one’s speech per se, it is unconstitutional. They are right.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON - "THE IDOL OF EQUALITY"

Hanson's analysis of the pursuit of equality is pure gold.  He subtitles his piece, "To put equality ahead of liberty is to war against human nature."

He begins by quoting Alexis de Tocqueville:

“There is, in fact, a manly and lawful passion for equality which excites men to wish all to be powerful and honored. This passion tends to elevate the humble to the rank of the great; but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level, and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom.”

Hanson says:

If we keep Tocqueville’s advice in mind, we can appreciate why and how the present war against personal liberty in service to mandated equality may become the greatest danger of the 21st century. The theaters of battle already extend to every segment of American life; and every weapon is employed, from government coercion to the progressive media to the Orwellian effort to change the meaning of language itself.

I can't commend this article highly enough.

AMERICA'S DWINDLING ECONOMIC FREEDOM

Terry Miller reports:

World economic freedom has reached record levels, according to the 2014 Index of Economic Freedom, released Tuesday by the Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal. But after seven straight years of decline, the U.S. has dropped out of the top 10 most economically free countries. 

For 20 years, the index has measured a nation's commitment to free enterprise on a scale of 0 to 100 by evaluating 10 categories, including fiscal soundness, government size and property rights. These commitments have powerful effects:   [more . . .]

Bacteria Found in NASA Clean Rooms Likely Traveled to Mars

Dr. Faz Razale of Reasons to Believe reports this startling discovery:

Recently, two separate research teams discovered Tersicoccus phoenicis in NASA and ESA clean rooms, where engineers assemble spacecraft. This microbe’s ability to survive in the harsh clean room environments, with virtually no access to nutrients, makes raises the possibility that these microbes traveled with the Phoenix Mars lander and potentially contaminated the planet with Earth life. Of course, this surprising discovery confounds the search to discover life on the Red Planet. Many people believe if life is discovered on Mars, then the evolutionary explanation for life’s origin gains validation. This latest work suggests otherwise.

Yesterday marked the 50th anniversary of LBJ’​s announcing his “war on poverty.”

Contributors to a National Review Online symposium on the LBJ's "War on Povery" include (among others) Charles Murray, Marvin Olasky, John Stonestreet, and W. Bradford Wilcox.  [my bolding]

Charles Murray
The pair of statistics about the War on Poverty that should get the most publicity are these: In 1949, 41 percent of Americans were below the poverty line (scholars have retrospectively applied the official definition of “poverty” to the 1950 census); when LBJ announced the War on Poverty in 1964, that proportion had dropped to 19 percent. Contemplate that pair of numbers for a moment. In just the 15 years between 1949 and 1964, the American poverty rate had dropped by 22 percentage points. What had the government done to help? By the definition of the 1960s and thereafter, nothing. The federal government sponsored no education programs for the disadvantaged. No training programs. No jobs programs. No community action. No affirmative action. No Head Start. No welfare whatsoever for men, and only a stingy cash payment for unmarried mothers, hedged with restrictions. The federal government was missing in action in the real war against poverty — and yet somehow America cut poverty by more than half.

QUOTE OF THE DAY

"Climate change has become what philosophers call a “non-falsifiable hypothesis.”  Everything—Hurricane Sandy, warm winters, cold winters—is said to be proof of climate change.

"Try this parlor game out at a cocktail party next time you’re clinking ice-free glasses with a warmist: ask him to specify what climate or weather phenomenon would not be consistent with the general theory of climate change.  And then step back and enjoy the fun."  - Steven Hayward at Powerline blog.  (more . . }

George Gilder - "How Do We Spur Innovation & Job Creation?"

From Wikipedia:

George F. Gilder (born November 29, 1939) is an American writer, techno-utopian intellectual, Republican Party activist, and co-founder of the Discovery Institute. His 1981 bestseller Wealth and Poverty advanced a practical and moral case for capitalism during the early months of the Reagan Administration and made him President Reagan's most quoted living author.^[1] In 2013, he wrote Knowledge and Power: The Information Theory of Capitalism and How it is Revolutionizing Our World, which reformulated economics in terms of the information theory of Alan Turing and Claude Shannon.

In the 1970s Gilder established himself as a critic of feminism and government welfare policies; he argued they eroded the "sexual constitution" that socialized men as fathers and providers. In the 1990s he became an enthusiastic evangelist of technology and the Internet through several books and his newsletter the Gilder Technology Report. . . .  [more . . .]

South Sudan: Crisis Could Open Door for Khartoum

If you're like me, you would welcome some clarification over what's going on in South Sudan.  Elizabeth Kendal of the Religious Liberty Prayer Bulletin provides the needed comprehensive update.  She writes:

Fighting erupted in Juba, the capital of South Sudan, on Sunday 15 December 2013 within the presidential guard. What followed was a rapid descent into widespread ethnic violence. This is no mere hiccup as this crisis has been brewing for some time. The violence has its roots in decades of unresolved ethnic tensions, in painful memories and wounds buried for the sake of peace. However, buried wounds do not disappear but they fester. Unless there is an immediate cessation of hostilities followed by deep and honest reflection and healing, South Sudan could disintegrate.

All through 2013 tensions were escalating in Juba between President Salva Kiir, a Dinka, and his Vice-President Riek Machar, a Nuer. Long-time a divisive and ambitious figure, Machar had been agitating for regime change in Juba all year, playing the ethnic card to rally his Nuer tribesmen behind him. In April Kiir reined in Machar, stripping him of some of his powers and limiting him to only those powers defined in the constitution.

Some of us who struggle perpetually with a cluttered desk can find encouragement in this:

OXFORD MATHEMATICIAN JOHN LENNOX AT YALE - "IS ANYTHING WORTH BELIEVING IN?"

Yale professor Greg Ganssle interviews Oxford scholar John Lennox on questions of reason, faith, and the nature of evidence at The Veritas Forum at Yale, 2013.  

 

I love listening to Dr. Lennox, Professor of Mathematics and the Philosophy of Science at the University of Oxford and a professing Christian.  Lennox has debated Princeton ethicist Dr. Peter Singer and Oxford's evolution propagandist Dr. Richard Dawkins among others.  Lennox is the author of the following books:

-  God's Undertaker: Has Science Buried God?

-  Seven Days that Divide the World: The Beginning According to Genesis and Science.  

-   God and Stephen Hawking: Whose Design is it Anyway?

-  Gunning for God: Why the New Atheists are Missing the Target.

I have blogged previously of John Lennox speaking in New Zealand on "Natural Disasters, Pain and Suffering" and at Harvard in 2012 on "Miracles: Is Belief in the Supernatural Irrational?"

The Lennox-Singer debate can be found here and his first debate with Richard Dawkins in Alabama here and a follow-up with Dawkins at the Oxford Museum of Natural History here.   

QUICK TAKES

--  New Egyptian constitution gives greater freedom to Christians  (Ht: Mere Comments)

New Egyptian constitution gives greater freedom to Christians - See more at: http://touchstonemag.com/merecomments/#sthash.TAMyecCs.dpuf

New Egyptian constitution gives greater freedom to Christians - See more at: http://touchstonemag.com/merecomments/#sthash.TAMyecCs.dpuf

--  Biblical Archaeology's Top Ten Discoveries of 2013

--  Iran Steps Up Its Campaign Against Christians (Current!)

-- Interesting statistics of Bible verses shared over the internet  (You'll find this infographic interesting!)

--  Israeli soldiers warned against contact with Messianic Jews  (Appeasing the ultra-Orthodox)

-- China's navy and air power rapidly rising to  eventually control Western Pacific  (Very sobering analysis of U.S. decline)

- - World Magazine's Top 25 articles for 2013 (Articles that generated the most reader traffic on World's website - really interesting!)

PRINCE OF WALES - "SAY A PRAYER FOR CHRISTIANS IN THE MIDDLE EAST"

For  any who missed it, before Christmas Prince Charles drew the world's attention to the persecution of Christians in the Middle East.

I have for some time now been deeply troubled by the growing difficulties faced by Christian communities in various parts of the Middle East. It seems to me that we cannot ignore the fact that they are, increasingly, being deliberately targeted by fundamentalist Islamist militants. Christianity was, literally, born in that part of the world and we must not forget our Middle Eastern brothers and sisters in Christ. Their church communities link us straight back to the early Church, as I was reminded by hearing Aramaic, Our Lord’s own language, spoken and sung in visits to churches earlier this week.

Yet, today, the Middle East and North Africa has the lowest concentration of Christians in the world – just 4 per cent of the population. It is clear that the number has dropped dramatically over the last century, and is falling still further. 

2013 IN REVIEW - A DISASTROUS YEAR FOR THE REPUBLIC

Senator  Tom Coburn (R - Oklahoma) wrote a cogent summary titled,  "The Year Washington Fled Reality."  [my bolding]

. . . In both the executive branch and Congress, Americans witnessed an unwinding of the country's founding principles and of their government's most basic responsibilities. The rule of law gave way to the rule of rulers.  . .  Taking unilateral, extralegal action—like delaying the employer mandate for a year when Mr. Obama realized the trouble it would cause for businesses—is part of a pattern for this administration. Immigration and border-security laws that might displease certain constituencies if enforced? Ignore the laws. Unhappy that a deep-water drilling moratorium was struck down in court? Reimpose it anyway. Internal Revenue Service agents using the power of the state to harass political enemies? Deny and then stonewall. Unhappy with the pace of Senate confirmations for nominees? Ignore the Constitution and appoint people anyway and claim that the Senate is not in session. . . .

To speed the approval of executive appointments and judicial nominations, Sen. Reid resorted to raw political power, forcing a vote (52-48) that allows the Senate majority to change the rules whenever it wants. In a republic, if majorities can change laws or rules however they please, you're on the road to life with no rules and no laws. . . .  The supermajority safeguard that prevented senators from destroying the institution in which they serve is now largely gone. Gone also are members of the majority who understood the need to protect minority rights. . . .  Instead, we have a majority leader who has appointed himself a Rules Committee of one. Referring to the right of the minority to offer changes to bills under consideration, Mr. Reid said: "The amendment days are over." Like President Obama, Mr. Reid is great at message discipline but weak on the rule of law and reality

How the nation's leaders perform in Washington is a reflection of the country, and culture, they represent. Moral relativism and postmodern disregard of truth has been promoted by academia for decades; sometimes it seems that the best students of that thinking can be found in Washington. We live in a time when laws and rules are defined however the holders of power decree, and "messaging" is paramount, regardless how far the message is from reality. [Read more . . .]