Auspundits

Name That President

It's been a long time between posts. Here's a trivia question. Which U.S. president stated the following:

There is a mighty task before us, and it welds us together. It is to make the United States a mighty Christian Nation, and to Christianize the world.

A. Abraham Lincoln
B. Woodrow Wilson
C. John F. Kennedy
D. George W. Bush

Answer in the comments after a few guesses have been made.

On a related matter, I am currently hashing out a post on the way Christians should understand the role of government being "ministers of God".

Moffatt Makes Some Intelligent Comments On Obamania

Justin Moffatt is an Australian dude, married to a Yank, preaching in New York. He has been interviewed recently by Joseph Smith of SydneyAnglicans.net. In his interview, Moffatt, commenting on Obama's victory states:

...the three big things that come to mind are: first, that more people would know that Jesus is the Messiah who gives Hope and Change, as opposed to any American President...

Moffatt's the first Christian leader that I've heard pointing out the "Obamessiah" phenomenon. I'm glad. Particularly because Moffatt is typical of most SydneyAnglicans: socially conservative but tends to be attracted more to centre-left of politics. Read the article at SydneyAnglicans.net to find out what the other two "big things" are and for some of his other (very good) analysis. From The Onion:

What Happens When The Church Begins To Love Jesus Less Than His Footprints

Altercations. Disgusting and ungodly. Rather than worship the real Jesus with lives that reflect his suffering and sacrifice, these Christians prefer to worship the ground on which he was crucified.

The Making Of Heretics

Richard Dawkins in his second debate with Prof. John Lennox at Oxford's Natural History Museum makes the following amazing statement:

A serious case could be made for a deistic God.

Former Federal Reserve Chairman, Alan Greenspan testifying before the House Committee for Oversight and Government Reform:

To exist, you need an ideology. The question is whether it is accurate or not. And what I'm saying to you is that I found a flaw - I don't know how significant or permanent it is - but I've been very distressed by that fact...I found a flaw in the model that I perceived is the critical functioning structure that defines how the world works.

I, like Tyler Cowen, am not quite sure what Greenspan conceded here. However, he leaves open the possibility of people interpreting his words as a requiem for capitalism.

The ideological champion of new atheism and the ideological champion of free markets have given the impression that they have serious reservations about their ideologies.

"The question is whether [your ideology] is accurate or not". I remain convinced that laissez-faire is the best model for economics and theism the best model for belief and life. The current financial market perturbations, pace Greenspan's comments, does not shake my belief in the former. However, Dawkins' Concession is one more (minor) data point for belief in the latter.

We are living in times where governing ideologies are coming under sustained attack. Change we can believe in?

God Speaks On Politics

Ecclesiastes 1o:2:

A wise man's heart inclines him to the right,
but a fool's heart to the left.

Hehe... :P

On The Love Of God

I just finished reading a brief, to-the-point, systematic treatment of The Difficult Doctrine of the love of God by Don Carson. Although it was brief, it was juicy.

Carson tackles some of the hardest and seemingly irreconcilable elements of God's being: his love and his sovereignty; and his love and his wrath. All of these elements of God are undeniable in the sense that the plain reading of Scripture reveals them. Carson takes it a step further, unpacking a solid theological basis for demonstrating that God's love is not irreconcilable to his sovereignty nor to the expression of his wrath.

Carson argues that God's love is expressed in five ways: the intra-Trinitarian love in the Godhead; providentially to all he made; salvifically toward fallen creation; effectively toward his elect; provisionally or conditionally to his own people. Once he sets up these categories, Carson goes on to argue that were we to remove any one of these categories, we would reduce God to something less than he is: omniscient, omnipotent, immutable, sovereign, transcendent, holy, loving, just, merciful and so on.

Notes On Desire & Joy

I have in a previous post, discussed Joy and its role in the life of a Christian. As I noted then:

God provides [David] with joy in abundance and peace when he sleeps (whilst unguarded from his enemies). Thinking on this, it is clear that I don't think I can unhesitatingly confirm David's experience. Sure there are times when this has been true. But it's patchy.

In The Weight of Glory, C.S. Lewis makes the following observation:

Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.

Similarly, in another book, The Four Loves, Lewis argues that:

It remains certainly true that all natural loves can be inordinate. Inordinate does not mean 'insufficiently cautious'. Nor does it mean 'too big'. It is not a quantitative term. It is probably impossible to love any human being simply 'too much'. We may love him too much in proportion to our love for God; but it is the smallness of our love of God, not the greatness of our love for the man, that constitutes the inordinacy.

Namely, it is not the greatness of our love or pleasures in things this world offers - they are gifts God gives - but the inadequacy of our love of God - the one that gives - that stifles fulfilment and joy. As Christians, our life should be dedicated to seeking God's kingdom and his righteousness, turning to that bloodied yet vacant Cross grateful for Jesus' sacrifice and redemptive work, and praising God for the things he gives us - the good and the bad.

It is the because of the smallness of our love of God, that his Joy beams in our hearts so obliquely (or at all). Un-godly hedonism is, as Mark Driscoll puts it in On Who is God:

...sin and worship of someone/something other than God [which] is fun for a while, [but] eventually pleasure boomerangs into pain and life becomes dark.

Godly (or Christian) hedonism's (When I don't Desire God: How to fight for joy, John Piper) guiding principle is:

God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.

The Church & Environmentalism

Here's a (paraphrased) quote from a book I'm reading:

The embattled Church, which had, in common with almost everyone else at the time, embraced Environmentalism, felt itself unable to allow any serious challenge to the IPCC although there were the beginnings of rumblings (particularly among blogging parishioners) that the Bible itself did not always support IPCC.

Replace "Environmentalism" with "Aristotelianism", "IPCC" with "Aristotle" and replace "blogging parishioners" with "the Jesuits".

This quote comes from Dr. John Lennox's book God's Undertaker: Has science buried God?. This commentary is made with regards to the Galileo affair where the Church apparently persecuted Galileo for his theological heterodoxy. In fact, Galileo's crime was upsetting secular Aristotelian by upending the a priori Aristotelian scientific method with a more open minded evidence-based approach. It was in fact the Church's adoption of Aristotelian scientific methods that got him into a spot of bother. Not theology. So says history.

And once again, the Church adopts a philosophical worldview masquerading as science (no debate wanted, reason rejected and what should be public information is privatised). And once again, it is running off with abandon, condemning objectors to the fiery pits of hell if not the stake. The Church has failed to learn from its past mistakes. And as a result is doomed to repeat its failures. Rather than strengthen the Church's social appeal, it will, ultimately, bring upon itself another long period of isolation and animosity.

Dear Friends Missing

Just finished reading the Chronicles of Narnia series. And what a brilliant series they were! Full of wonder and enchantment anchored in our own reality. Lewis was a man of great literary gifts. However, one things stung me a bit toward the end of the book. And it wasn't something that Lewis wrote. It was something he didn't.

SPOILER ALERT

At the end of the story, three of the four Pevensee kids (Peter, Edmund and Lucy) are rushing toward Aslan's mountain. As they meet Aslan, they appear dejected because in the past, at the end of a story, Aslan sends the kids "home". However, this time Aslan surprises them: they won't be going "home". You see at the beginning of The Last Battle, the kids are sent into Narnia while they were on a train. Throughout the book, they are wondering how on earth they were brought into Narnia so spontaneously without being called or beckoned. Aslan reveals, that they had died in a train crash. Some of the kids felt a bang as they entered Narnia, but none guessed what really happened:

"There was a real railway accident," said Aslan softly. "Your father and mother [who were in the train that collided with the kids' train] and all of you are - as you used to call it in the Shadowlands - dead.

Except not all of them were dead. Susan remained. She lived on and missed out. As Peter, her older brother said earlier in the story, she was no longer a friend of Narnia. Eustace explained that:

...whenever you've tried to get her to come and talk about Narnia or do anything about Narnia, she says, 'What wonderful memories you have! Fancy your still thinking about all those funny games we used to play when we were children.'

It stung me, because I have dear friends, that are almost like Susans to me. And I want more than anything else, for them to join me in the Real "real Narnia" enjoying all the wonders the Real Aslan will prepare for us.

Someone's Sure To Object

From C.S. Lewis' The Four Loves:

But man's love for God, from the very nature of the case, must always be very largely, and must often be entirely, a Need-love. This is obvious when we implore forgiveness for our sins or support in our tribulations. But in the long run it is perhaps even more apparent in our growing - for it ought to be growing - awareness that our whole being by its very nature is one vast need; incomplete, preparatory, empty yet cluttered, crying out for Him who can untie things that are now knotted together and tie up things that are still dangling loose...'The highest...does not stand without the lowest.' It would be a bold and silly creature that came before its Creator with the boast 'I'm no beggar. I love you disinterestedly.'