The past few days I have invested considerable time thinking about letting the Bible confront our political ideas and bias. I'm biased, I'll admit. After talking with a friend who pastors a nearby Bible-believing church, I crafted my morning sermon around an exposition of Isaiah 59.
I think verses 14-21 of Isaiah 59 give something like a two-pronged solution to a society where God's moral standards do not prevail in the public square.
For the last 10+ minutes of the sermon, I mentioned issues that I think require our attention if we are to let the Bible confront us and guide our political priorities. I also listed distractors.
My pastor friend, Greg, told me he needed to devote a good bit of his sermon to convincing believers that they should vote (I think disillusionment had set in with many). Then, Monday I had the privilege of discussing political "neutrality" with a couple of guys from a different religion. I'll confess that I flirted with pacifism in college, but the arguments for pacifism, I'm convinced, are flimsy for Bible-believing Christians. Regrettably, I did not convince those two men to go vote on Election Day (nor to drop their questionable religious convictions).
I voted today - not straight ticket.
Finally, a bit of my bias: Justin Taylor linked an article from the Wall Street Journal's site by Andrew Wilson that dispels "Five Myths About the Great Depression." Wilson tersely makes the case that free-market principles did not cause the Great Depression. I've never heard his take on the Great Depression! I was taught that Hoover was to blame and FDR was the hero.
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Monday, November 3, 2008
Dr. Wesley
Here are a few pictures of Dr. Wesley on Halloween. We went down to Main Street again and passed out bags filled with a Bible and candy. It took us about 45 minutes to pass out 300! Wesley got lots of giggles and long stares. You could tell he thought he was pretty funny in his little get-up. He did check his pages all night long, don't worry. When the stress got to be a little too much for him, he tried to hide his pager in a planter full of flowers.
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
a Wesley short
We have been enjoying the freestyle walk in short stints for better than a week now. It was time to share. And some day I will think about turning the video 90 degrees (before posting it) so that you won't hurt your neck watching it over and over.
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Cousins
Well, second cousins anyway. These are old pictures (from July), but I've been meaning to post a few pictures from our time in Tennessee hanging out with my cousin Erin and her family. They were there for her husband's youth conference, and we couldn't pass up going to see them while they were so close. I'm still hoping all of our kids will end up being as close as we were growing up, but it will be a tougher task for sure. Wesley and Libby enjoyed each other.
This first picture shows the crazy entourage of bright orange BOB strollers we took everywhere. 
Libby took good care of "Wessey."
Libby took good care of "Wessey." 
For the next picture, Wesley decided to roll over and grab Gus' face. I decided to leave that one out. :)
Sweet l'il Gus
Wesley the Builder
This is one of my favorite things to watch Wesley do lately. He can do this for half an hour at a time if he gets into it. Just yesterday he started cocking his head to the side and trying to get eye-level with his constructions to inspect his work a little closer. It's hilarious. I think his record height is 8 blocks so far.
The Punkin' Patch
Last Monday we visited our first pumpkin patch. We all enjoyed it, even though we didn't get a pumpkin. It was a free outing, which is always fun! They had a hay pit that Wesley got to crawl around in as well as a petting zoo. Wesley and the llama seemed to hit it off pretty well.
This was the pumpkin everyone got to try to guess the weight of for a prize:
This was the pumpkin everyone got to try to guess the weight of for a prize:
The llama, Oreo
Thursday, October 16, 2008
More, Final thoughts on Mao
My first post on Mao was too much, I realize. I cannot finish the detailed summary of Mao: The Unknown Story by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday. Some summary thoughts will let me put the whole idea to rest:
a. Mao was not heroic at all. His behavior in the Long March, his terrorizing tactics at the Red Base (with self-criticisms and public denunciations), his incessant practice of falsely accusing and disposing of any who resisted his will - all have been "touched up," re-worked, or even totally rewritten in official Chinese history (and what the government tells the West) to make Mao seem heroic.
b. Mao wanted to dominate the world by himself. He deprived his own people of basic necessities for years through a system of taxation that involved fraudulent and thuggish tactics in most all Chinese provinces. His basic goal was to get his people to live on slimmer resources so that more and more resources could be used to purchase and develop the trappings of a superpower nation - atomic bombs, an air force, a space program, etc.
c. When Mao's health took a sudden downturn, he insisted that his nation's nuclear developments reach their goals much quicker than projected. He wanted to see it with his eyes and have that power at his disposal. He did not care in the least about the state of the nation after his death (or about the tens of millions of Chinese citizens who died in privation as part of Mao's ambitious pursuits). A couple of months ago a news report about Kim Jong-Il's health scare and his country's redoubled efforts to perfect their nuclear capabilities - these reminded me of Mao's intense drive to obtain full nuclear capability before his own death. Of course, recent reports claim that North Korea has halted its nuclear program (good news for the whole world).
d. Mao supplied tens of thousands of troops to North Korea and covertly managed the Korean war through his top officials. The books quotes Mao expressing his hope to grind the US military out of superpower status by sheer strength of numbers. I'm not looking at the book now, but I seem to remember that the authors claim Mao was responsible for starting and drawing out the Korean War. I think the authors did not claim nearly as much about Mao's role in the Vietnam War.
If you've read all this and find it interesting, I'd recommend you read the book, but read it with a high view of human dignity and justice firmly established in your own mind. The authors relay the inhumane tactics Mao used to get to the zenith and remain there. What I was taught about the history of the 20th century seems far from complete without this book's contribution. It opened my eyes.
a. Mao was not heroic at all. His behavior in the Long March, his terrorizing tactics at the Red Base (with self-criticisms and public denunciations), his incessant practice of falsely accusing and disposing of any who resisted his will - all have been "touched up," re-worked, or even totally rewritten in official Chinese history (and what the government tells the West) to make Mao seem heroic.
b. Mao wanted to dominate the world by himself. He deprived his own people of basic necessities for years through a system of taxation that involved fraudulent and thuggish tactics in most all Chinese provinces. His basic goal was to get his people to live on slimmer resources so that more and more resources could be used to purchase and develop the trappings of a superpower nation - atomic bombs, an air force, a space program, etc.
c. When Mao's health took a sudden downturn, he insisted that his nation's nuclear developments reach their goals much quicker than projected. He wanted to see it with his eyes and have that power at his disposal. He did not care in the least about the state of the nation after his death (or about the tens of millions of Chinese citizens who died in privation as part of Mao's ambitious pursuits). A couple of months ago a news report about Kim Jong-Il's health scare and his country's redoubled efforts to perfect their nuclear capabilities - these reminded me of Mao's intense drive to obtain full nuclear capability before his own death. Of course, recent reports claim that North Korea has halted its nuclear program (good news for the whole world).
d. Mao supplied tens of thousands of troops to North Korea and covertly managed the Korean war through his top officials. The books quotes Mao expressing his hope to grind the US military out of superpower status by sheer strength of numbers. I'm not looking at the book now, but I seem to remember that the authors claim Mao was responsible for starting and drawing out the Korean War. I think the authors did not claim nearly as much about Mao's role in the Vietnam War.
If you've read all this and find it interesting, I'd recommend you read the book, but read it with a high view of human dignity and justice firmly established in your own mind. The authors relay the inhumane tactics Mao used to get to the zenith and remain there. What I was taught about the history of the 20th century seems far from complete without this book's contribution. It opened my eyes.
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