Friday, February 07, 2014
Behind the Olympic Glitz, Russia Is a Sad Nation
Communism is not a good thing. Nor does its various elements (godlessness, tyranny, violence against its own, irrational economic planning, corruption, repression, and an anti-life social agenda) bring anything but poison to the people controlled by it.Here's a look from Ann Morse over at the Population Research Institute that takes into account Russia's long history of poverty, hopelessness, and abortion.
Russia should be a population controller’s dream come true: it has had consistently low fertility, vast amounts of natural resources and a shrinking population—in fact, Russia has shrunk by 13 million people [in the last 20 years].
But instead of being the poster-child for the population control movement, Russia is instead a public health disaster.
* Russian women on average have 3 abortions for every 4 births, which is actually an improvement from their past; only since 2007 has the number of annual births in Russia outnumbered the number of annual abortions.
* Russia has dangerous patterns of alcohol consumption: the average Russian consumes 10-12 gallons of vodka per year (that’s a half cup of vodka per day).
* Suicide rates in Russia are 2-3 times higher than in the US or Europe: they have the second highest rate of male suicide in the world, and their female suicide rate is also among the top ten worst in the world.
* The average Russian lives only 70 years. Russian men fare even worse with an average life expectancy of a mere 64 years.
* Among countries with more than a million people, Russia has the highest divorce rate in the world.
Read the rest of Morse's article here.
Is Expository Preaching Relevant to Post-Moderns?
After hearing Last Sunday's sermon, an expository sermon covering 1 Samuel 23 that was the latest in my series on the life of David, a first-time visitor to our church told her pew companion that she was amazed and delighted that a preacher talking "straight from the Bible, even from the Old Testament" could make things so "modern" in understanding, interest, and personal application. Of course, it wasn't to the preacher's credit. It is the power of the Bible itself that makes this spiritual connection from its various texts to the hearts of people of all nations, all ages, all eras, and all walks of life.
It's why the preacher who truly desires to serve his congregation, to educate them in godliness, to stimulate lifestyles of love and good deeds, to transform the culture, and to glorify God -- needs to be a devoted student of the Word and a humble teacher of its precepts.
The true power is not in his stylish delivery, his cleverness, his hip attire and pop culture references, or his popularity ratings. It's in the text of Holy Scripture.
And this is just as true for post-modern twenty-somethings in Nebraska as it has been for anyone in history.
Here's a great primer on the subject from Mark Deever over at the theology blog, 9 Marks.
Some people today claim that expositional preaching is irrelevant for postmodern people. “People today need narrative and conversation and dialogue and drama! They don’t need expositional preaching.”
In fact, expositional preaching is particularly relevant for postmodern people:
1) Expositional preaching unfolds the multi-faceted riches of Scriptural truth in a way that corresponds to the kind of diversity that postmoderns love to celebrate. The Bible is not a set of philosophical abstractions, it’s a collection of narratives, poetry, songs, letters, history, laws, and prophesies. And the Bible is diverse not only in its literary form, but in its content: it contains bitter lament, exultant joy, romantic love, the rise and fall of empires, tragedy, deceit, oppression, rebellion, deliverance, celebration, and every imaginable facet of human life and experience.
Expositional preaching should highlight this rich literary and existential diversity, which should be particularly satisfying to postmodern sensibilities.
2) Expositional preaching demonstrates and proves that the Word of God is not merely propositional, it’s effectual (Isa. 55:10-11). Postmoderns say that even if there were such a thing as objective truth, we could never truly grasp it because we cannot see beyond our own perspectives. But expositional preaching rightly responds to these claims by asserting the clarity and applicability of Scripture to all its hearers.
Not only that, but as a preacher faithfully expounds God’s Word, God will use it to transform people’s hearts: to bring them to submit to God, to delight in his Word, to lovingly obey him, and to humbly worship him. Expositional preaching is particularly relevant to postmoderns because it proves that God’s Word not only asserts propositions, it transforms lives.
Is "Gimme Shelter" Too Simple? (A Guest Post from Dr. Ralph Kramper)
Indeed, Greg Schleppenbach's recent article in the Catholic Voice exposes the lie that abortion helps women. He persuasively explains what I've long known from my practice; namely, that abortion hurts women physically, emotionally, and spiritually.
I now understand that God has called me from birth (January 22,1945) to get this message out to the best of my ability. I must admit, I have been at times a reluctant soldier. But it comforts me to know the most basic pro-life lesson: God is in charge of success. We are in charge of faithfulness.
Over these past 43 years of involvement. I have waited and hoped for something that might be a breakthrough — a turning point in the battle for life -- even as I invest my humble efforts to change one heart at a time. Perhaps one of those larger breakthroughs is the movie "Gimme Shelter" which was released in selected theaters a couple of weeks ago. The film tells the true story of Apple, a homeless pregnant teen rejected by an abusive mom and a birth father who doesn't want her to interfere with his Wall Street career. In fact, she is brought by her step-mom to an abortion chamber from which she escapes. By God's grace, Apple is brought by a caring priest to a real-life shelter for homeless pregnant women.
Not surprisingly, the movie review in the Omaha World Herald described the plot as "too simple." (That might be an explanation for my ability to understand the plot without one of my adult kids there to explain it!) However, as I viewed the film, it was evident that the plot was indeed simple, but beautifully so. What the reviewer saw as a weakness, I saw as a great strength. For God's unbounded love is simply stated in the gospel and it is simply, practically demonstrated every day...if we only seek His help. And His profound yet uncomplicated grace is sufficient even to bring us through great disasters in life.
It also is a great affirmation of God's grace to see real-life efforts that Christians are making to share that simple love. For instance, the efforts demonstrated in the film occur on a daily basis here in Omaha too, including the ministries of Essential Pregnancy Services, Bethlehem House, and many other pro-life, pro-woman, pro-family ministries. They are living demonstrations of our love from God transmitted to others -- simple but powerful and glorious.
The truth about the scourge of abortion is surfacing more and more. By God's will, it cannot be suppressed. And one breakthrough example is the film "Gimme Shelter." See the movie yourself. You too will be blessed by the true story it tells and by the God Who is the Author of life and truth.
(Ralph J Kramper, M.D.)
Young Evangelicals Are AWOL in the Culture Wars
Chelsen Vicari had a provocative and challenging article published by the Christian Post a few days ago that you should definitely check out. It's entitled, "Are Young Evangelicals Kissing the Culture Wars Goodbye?"The sad answer, as you may already know, is “Yes, they are.”
Here are a few excerpted paragraphs from her report.
...Evidence pointing to a fast-growing spiritual and moral decline cannot be ignored. Baptists are America's largest Evangelical bloc. Yet, many young Baptists are abandoning their traditional values, largely admitting that they no longer see church as a relevant part of their lives. During his remarks to the 2001 SBC Executive Committee, SBC Vice President at the time, T. C. Pinckney, made an astonishing admission. He stated that research revealed approximately 70 percent of teens involved in a Baptist youth group were leaving the church within their first two years of college.
Even at this past annual March for Life, the disparity between young Evangelicals and young Catholics was obvious. Do not misunderstand me. Tens of thousands of culture warriors avidly marched down the national mall amid frigid temperatures and with numb fingers and toes in protest of abortion. But the high school and college faces were predominately Catholics.
The reason for this Evangelical spiritual decline is not solely due to the influence of a Leftist sitting President or moral-less reality TV culture, as several analysts would say. The problem is not just politics. Nor is it merely secular society. No, I am sorry to say that the causation of the Evangelical identity problem is unraveling within the walls of our own sanctuaries.
Out of fear of being falsely dubbed "intolerant" or "uncompassionate," many young Christians are buying into the theological falsehoods from popular liberal Evangelical writers and preachers. However, their "feel-good" theology sidesteps all Biblical principles that are exclusive or constricting. In order to market their distorted version of Christianity to the masses, liberal Christian elites stress the importance of salvation from poverty, inequality, and oppression rather than forgiveness of sins through Christ...
Read the article in full right here.
Yes, The New York Times Once Called Abortion "The Evil of the Age."
Give up? The answer is the New York Times.
No, you haven’t missed anything: the expose ran in the paper’s August 23, 1871 edition.
The story, which is recounted in Cait Murphy’s book about New York in the Gilded Age, “Scoundrels in Law,” is, to use the old sixties phrase, mind-blowing.
As Murphy tells us, while all abortions had been illegal in New York since 1869, not only were both abortifacients and surgical abortions readily available, abortionists openly advertised their services.
One notorious abortionist, an English immigrant who went by the name of “Madame Restell,” made so much money that she built a mansion on Fifth Avenue! And not just any mansion, but one of the grandest of them all: even the servants’ quarters were “lined with mahogany” and furnished with imported carpets.
Not everyone was impressed: street urchins would yell at her, “Your house is built on babies’ skulls!” as she passed in her carriage.
It wasn’t only street urchins who disapproved of the abortion trade. Anti-abortion activists, who “included most doctors and women’s groups, were disappointed at the ineffectiveness of the [1869] law.”
And that is when the New York Times sprang into action. It made stamping out the abortion trade a “crusade.” It ran “a regular series of editorials and reports on the subject,” culminating in “The Evil of the Age.”
Read the rest of Eric Metaxas’ enlightening BreakPoint commentary right here. And on Monday, I'll tell you quite a bit more about the Madame Restell referred to in the article.
Thursday, February 06, 2014
Thursday's Reading Review
Today's schedule is a full one, with things beginning at 6 this morning as I scraped my car windows at -8 degrees, and continuing with a Panera's meeting, quite a bit of correspondence, "When Swing Was King" business, a luncheon meeting, errands, having cards printed, planning for next week's L'Abri conference in Minnesota, and work on the new website.Which is to say, I'm not blogging today -- except to list a few articles that make for Thursday's most important dispatches from the culture wars. Here they are:
* “No Singing About God: Hollywood withdraws an Oscar nomination” (Mark Tooley, American Spectator)
* “IRS planned secret new rules to justify targeting tea party groups two years ago, reveals bombshell email” (David Martosko, Daily Mail)
* “Obama's IRS Confusion: New evidence undercuts White House claims about IRS motivation” (Editorial in the Wall Street Journal)
* “Staff Did Abortions, Anesthesia With No Medical Training, ‘We Had No Idea What We Were Doing’” (Chris Rostenberg, LifeNews.com)
* “Specter of welfare state jolts Democrats; CBO hits election pitches for jobs” (Dave Boyer, Washington Times)
* “Anti-Establishment Ben Sasse Surges to Virtual Tie in Nebraska GOP Senate Primary” (Tony Lee, Breitbart)
* “Watch Out for Obamacare's Subsidy Cliff: Earn $1 More in Wages, and You Could Pay $20,000 More for Insurance” (John McCormack, Weekly Standard)
* “Wendy Davis Now Supports Open Carry” (Charles C. W. Cooke, NRO)
* “CVS Stops Cigarette Sales to Protect Customers’ Health, Still Sells Abortion-Causing Plan B Drug” (Steven Ertelt, LifeNews.com)
Tuesday, February 04, 2014
All Stops Are Out (As Are the Facts) for ObamaCare Ad Campaign
And ObamaCare presents even greater disasters in the future.
We all know this -- at least all of us who can do the math, read the news (even the mainstream media can't help but cover ObamaCare's stunning failures), or listen to the ever-increasing list of horror stories from friends and family.
Nevertheless, Team Obama can't help but double down on their expensive and distorted ad campaign to push this "fundamental transformation of American society."
Here are just a few of the examples from the last few days:
* “White House wrote pro-Obamacare tweets for NFL players to parrot” (Daily Caller)
* “New Obamacare Ads Hope to Attract Young Women by Featuring Pets” (Breitbart)
* “Former NBA stars 'Magic' Johnson and Alonzo Mourning pitching Obamacare to young Americans” (Syracuse.com)
* “Obamacare's Dot-Com Ad Campaign” (Charlie Kirk column)
* “California spends $1.37M on ObamaCare web stream featuring Richard Simmons” (Fox News)
* “Obamacare ads to hit the Olympic slopes” (Politico)
Cheating Scandal in Philly Schools
Nearly 140 teachers and administrators in Philadelphia public schools have been implicated in one of the nation's largest cheating scandals, according to district officials who also said Wednesday that they expected to discipline or terminate several school-based employees over the next few weeks in connection with the allegations.The Pennsylvania attorney general's office also is conducting a criminal investigation into the allegations, according to a person familiar with the matter…
While the superintendent downplays the scandal (hey, “only a fraction” of teachers and administrators are cheaters) and while union leaders blame the accountability measures themselves for creating "a need to cheat," I suggest it’s just another reason to take your kids out of the government school system and into a place where they can learn more efficiently, be more secure, and have their moral values protected.
I mean, haven’t you had enough of the liberal political correctness, the lousy academic standards, the negative peer pressure, the anti-religious propaganda, the physical endangerment, the historical revisionism, the salacious sex education, and all the rest that the increasingly expensive, top-heavy "public" schools offer?
Think carefully before you answer.
By the way, here’s the rest of the news report from Stephanie Banchero at the Wall Street Journal.
Talk About Wasteful, Irresponsible, and Unfair Government Spending!
Indeed, I've just learned that taxpayers are paying millions of dollars every year to a gang of government employees who are actually spending their time working for their union!
That's right. They receive government checks but they're working for union interests -- which generally means that they're working against yours.
And to make matters even more infuriating, hardly anyone in Washington gives the smallest squawk about it.
Check out this remarkable story and video clip from Mark Flatten at Washington Examiner.
Monday, February 03, 2014
The Key to a Nation's Freedoms & Culture of Life -- Protestant Missionaries?
Yes, you heard that right, and you can read all about it in a fascinating and important cover story in the latest issue of Christianity Today. It describes the painstaking work of Robert Woodberry, whose work on the global spread of democracy has turned scholarship on its head. [Actually, you can’t read the CT article without subscribing.]
Woodberry discovered that you can trace a direct link between the presence of 19th-century Protestant missionaries and a country’s economic and social development.
Why, for instance, does a seminary in the West African nation of Togo have almost no books for its students, while in neighboring Ghana the schools are full of reading material, including much that is written locally? As summarized by CT author Andrea Palpant Dilley, “British missionaries in Ghana had established a whole system of schools and printing presses. But France, the colonial power in Togo, severely restricted missionaries.”
This contrast is replicated across the world, from Botswana to India. Woodberry’s conclusion is sweeping: “Areas where Protestant missionaries had a significant presence in the past are on average more economically developed today, with comparatively better health, lower infant mortality, lower corruption, greater literacy, higher educational attainment (especially for women), and more robust membership in nongovernmental associations.”
And these aren’t just any missionaries, but the ones labeled as “conversionist”—that is, those who call others to faith in Jesus Christ—in other words, the very ones who have been decried for so long as cultural imperialists. Loving Jesus and the people to whom they were sent, they fought injustice, stood with the local people, planted seeds of political freedom and economic growth around the world...
From John Stonestreet’s illuminating article over at BreakPoint, “The Truth about Missionaries: Bearers of Freedom.” Read the whole thing here.
A Select Few
Here are a select few not-to-be-missed articles:* “Betrayed by the President and ObamaCare” (Emilie Lamb, New York Post)
* “Democrats Can Run From ObamaCare Vote, but They Can’t Hide” (John Thune, Breitbart)
* “A Beat-up, Exhausted, and Terrified Republican Establishment” (Victor Davis Hanson, PJ Media)
* “C’mon, Obama, Join the Energy Boom” (Amy Payne, The Heritage Foundation)
* “When It Comes to Repeal, Ben Sasse Is the Real Deal” (Jeffrey H. Anderson, Weekly Standard)
Education's Mindless Campaign Against Western Civilization
Such defenestrations have happened elsewhere, of course, and long before 2011. But the UCLA coup was particularly significant because the school’s English department was one of the last champions of the historically informed study of great literature, uncorrupted by an ideological overlay. Precisely for that reason, it was the most popular English major in the country, enrolling a whopping 1,400 undergraduates…
The UCLA coup represents the characteristic academic traits of our time: narcissism, an obsession with victimhood, and a relentless determination to reduce the stunning complexity of the past to the shallow categories of identity and class politics. Sitting atop an entire civilization of aesthetic wonders, the contemporary academic wants only to study oppression, preferably his own, defined reductively according to gonads and melanin...
Today’s professoriate claims to be interested in “difference,” or, to use an even more up-to-date term, “alterity.” But this is a fraud. The contemporary academic seeks only to confirm his own worldview and the political imperatives of the moment in whatever he studies. The 2014 Modern Language Association conference, for example, the annual gathering of America’s literature (not social work) faculty, will address “embodiment, poverty, climate, activism, reparation, and the condition of being unequally governed . . . to expose key sites of vulnerability and assess possibilities for change.”
(Heather MacDonald, “The Humanities and Us.”)
Heather MacDonald has written a most enlightening, provocative (and alarming) essay here for City Journal. It’s long but rich. And if you care about the wicked deconstruction of Western civilization, you’ll find it of immense value.
Who is Reimbursing the Insurance Companies for ObamaCare Losses? You Are.
Moody's rating agency has lowered the outlook for health insurers fromstable to negative, blaming ObamaCare.Few Americans will shed tears for insurance companies. But the Moody's announcement is a warning sign to taxpayers. They'll be getting clobbered.
Section 1342 of the Affordable Care Act forces taxpayers to make insurers whole for most of the losses incurred selling ObamaCare exchange plans through 2016. The bailout is designed to conceal the failure of the president's signature health law until he is out of office…
Ah, how freely government bureaucrats spend other people's money.
Read the rest of “A Few More Reasons To Repeal ObamaCare” by former lieutenant governor of New York, Betsy McCaughey. It’s here at Investor's Business Daily.
Friday, January 31, 2014
The Week in Review
We did.
Claire finished sending out the 2013 tax receipts this week along with a big bunch of personal notes, thank-you cards, and other things. She worked on several other Vital Signs business matters too including the selection of a template and server for a brand new Vital Signs Ministries website. She must then transfer the material from our existing site (most of it, anyhow) onto the new one. There will be a lot of new material too, some of which I'm working on even now.
In addition, of course, Claire manages the house, the meals...and me.
After preaching Sunday morning, my week has been busy too -- Vital Signs Blog, the two morning meetings at Panera's, a meeting with a local pastor in which we talked about pro-life matters, preparing (and then delivering) talks to a couple of groups of AWANA kids, planning for Hleb Yermakou's visit to Omaha, working on the next "When Swing Was King" presentation, selecting and editing another 300 or so photographs for use in WSWK shows, creating a new promotional poster for WSWK and sending it out to the 11 facilities we now go to every month, selecting the Top Ten posts from Vital Signs Blog and sending them out, and working on the Christmas project.
What's next? Well, tomorrow, if the snow doesn't get too heavy, we will be joining friends to pray in front of the Planned Parenthood abortion mill after which I'll be working on Sunday's sermon.
It's been a good week. Productive, engaging, stimulating...and healthy!
Jewish Group Files Legal Brief Against ObamaCare
They did not do so because they necessarily oppose other parts of ObamaCare. Nor does the Orthodox Union necessarily agree with Catholic (and enlightened evangelicals) that so-called birth control drugs and devices are actually abortifacient.
No, the Orthodox Union signed on against ObamaCare’s mandates because of religious freedom -- pure and simple.
Here is part of what Nathan J. Diament, the Executive Director for Public Policy of the Orthodox Union, included in the official statement.
Today, the Orthodox Union joined with other religious groups and filed a legal brief essentially siding with the religious objectors. We did not do so to undermine the health care reform law in general nor women’s access to health services they may uniquely need.
We did so because in the cases in question, forcing business owners to subsidize activity that violates their religious beliefs is unnecessary. There are many other means by which the government could ensure women’s access to contraceptives and related care without involving their employers at all, which the OU may support. (Imagine that a woman could take her prescription to CVS, have it filled, and the government would reimburse CVS directly.)
We take this stance because we, particularly as a religious minority in the United States, must stand in solidarity with people of all faiths in demanding the broadest protections for rights of conscience in the face of government (and socio-cultural) coercion to the contrary…
All people of faith should understand and actively support the right of religious (and other forms of conscientious) dissent from the popular and majority view. Today, in America, Catholic objections to women’s use of contraceptives may be broadly unpopular; tomorrow, it may be circumcision or kosher slaughter that are looked at askance in America, as they are today in Europe.
But this argument is not solely about where a slippery slope may lead; it involves a fundamental question about America’s civic-constitutional view of religious faith. In Europe today, religion has been relegated to something only to be exercised in private. What you do in your home and in your church is your business, but society expects you to leave your religion behind when you come into the public sphere—be it the workplace, school, or house of government. Thus, a believer is not entitled to an accommodation or an exemption from any demands society at large wishes to make, like banning public wearing of headscarves or kippot. This has not been the American view.
While our First Amendment’s establishment clause demands no legal endorsement of religion, there is a longstanding tradition of welcoming faith into the public arena and—most relevant here—including exemptions and accommodations for religious dissent in a wide array of laws so that, as much as possible, people of faith are not forced to choose between their conscience and compliance with other laws. To do otherwise is to relegate religious belief and action to second class status among our civil rights—something Jews, and all people of faith and conscience, must resist...
Important Weekend Reading
* “Obama’s Middle East Cowardice Confirmed” (Benjamin Weinthal, NRO)
* “Obama Dooms Seniors to Ravages of Aging” (Betsy McCaughey, Accuracy in Media)
* “New York Abortion Bill OKs Shooting Babies Through the Heart With Poison to Kill Them” (Dave Andrusko, LifeNews.com)
* “Government shuts down 11-year-old’s cupcake business” (Breanna Deutsch, Daily Caller)
* “President ignores ObamaCare horror stories as human, financial costs pile up” (L. Brent Bozell III, Fox News)
* “Davis, Democrats Sneak Past Inconvenient Realities of Abortion” (Jonah Goldberg column)
* “IRS rules change seen as limiting free speech for nonprofit organizations” (Seth McLaughlin, Washington Times)
* “Hundreds of career prosecutors revolt against Eric Holder” (Paul Mirengoff, PowerLine)
Wednesday, January 29, 2014
Obama's State of the Union vs Reality
But here are a few takes on the speech you will find of interest and value.
* "A Small, Incoherent State of the Union Address" (Stephen F. Hayes, The Weekly Standard)
* “The State of Our Union Is Depressing” (Veronique de Rugy, NRO)
* “The State of Liberalism” (John Yoo, NRO)
* “Snore of the Union” (The editors of the New York Post)
* “Does anybody really know what time it is?” (Scott Johnson, PowerLine)
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