Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne, Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim unknown, Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.
Author: jetbrane
I am a Pastor of a small Church in Mid-Michigan who delights in my family, my congregation and my calling.
I am postmillennial in my eschatology.
Paedo-Calvinist Covenantal in my Christianity
Reformed in my Soteriology
Presuppositional in my apologetics
Familialist in my family theology
Agrarian in my regional community social order belief
Christianity creates culture and so Christendom in my national social order belief
Mythic-Poetic / Grammatical Historical in my Hermeneutic
Pre-modern, Medieval, & Feudal before Enlightenment, modernity, & postmodern
Reconstructionist / Theonomic in my Worldview
One part paleo-conservative / one part micro Libertarian in my politics
Systematic and Biblical theology need one another but Systematics has pride of place
Some of my favorite authors,
Augustine, Turretin, Calvin, Tolkien, Chesterton, Nock, Tozer, Dabney, Bavinck, Wodehouse, Rushdoony, Bahnsen, Schaeffer, C. Van Til, H. Van Til, G. H. Clark, C. Dawson, H. Berman, R. Nash, C. G. Singer, R. Kipling, G. North, J. Edwards, S. Foote, F. Hayek, O. Guiness, J. Witte, M. Rothbard, Clyde Wilson, Mencken, Lasch, Postman, Gatto, T. Boston, Thomas Brooks, Terry Brooks, C. Hodge, J. Calhoun, Llyod-Jones, T. Sowell, A. McClaren, M. Muggeridge, C. F. H. Henry, F. Swarz, M. Henry, G. Marten, P. Schaff, T. S. Elliott, K. Van Hoozer, K. Gentry, etc.
My passion is to write in such a way that the Lord Christ might be pleased. It is my hope that people will be challenged to reconsider what are considered the givens of the current culture.
Your biggest help to me dear reader will be to often remind me that God is Sovereign and that all that is, is because it pleases him.
The Obama administration’s move to rescind broad new job protections that allowed the freedom of choice for health workers on whether or not they would contribute in providing assistance in elective health procedures, such as abortion, that they find morally objectionable triggered an immediate political storm yesterday, underscoring the difficulties the president faces in his effort to find common ground on anything related to the explosive issue of abortion.
The new policy of the Obama administration, pursued in support of a woman’s right to choose, demands that those medical workers who have religious and moral reasons against abortion are denied freedom of choice to honor their religious and moral convictions. In this reversal medical workers will be compelled by work place laws to violate their convictions.
With this decision President Obama reveals his deep commitment to the abortion cause as it is the second major decision making abortions more easily accessible in Obama’s five short weeks in office. This denial of choice to medical care workers follows an earlier administration decision to lift restrictions on federal funding of international family-planning groups that perform abortions or provide abortion information. These two decisions seems to promise an eventual pursuit, by the Obama administration, of the euphemistically labeled “Freedom Of Choice Act.”
Yesterday, in cities throughout the nation, small pockets (numbering, in the 100’s at each location) of people gathered to have tea parties in order to protest the socialist / communist policies of B. Hussein Obama and his administration. I looked at the pictures of the protests at these gatherings in Lansing Mi., Hartford Co., Nashville Tn., Austin Tx., Houston Tx., Tulsa Ok., Chicago Il., and Los Angeles Ca. and one thing that you couldn’t help notice is that how thoroughly White these protests were. There were a extraordinarily small sprinkling of minorities in attendance but by and large these protests were organized and attended by White people.
Now, I realize that this observation is hardly scientific in the way that Gallup or Roper would do a poll but I still think it says something about the way the opposition to the socializing of America is shaping up.
The Obama administration has made it clear in subtle and not so subtle ways that they are waging racial economic warfare on White people. In one of the more not so subtle ways we had civilian economic adviser, and former Clinton Labor Secretary, Robert Reich, explicitly say in testimony before Congress that the stimulus money need not go to “White construction workers.”
Approximately ten days ago we had Vice President Biden introducing alleged President Obama (alleged because we still don’t know, due to citizenship issues, if he is even qualified to be President) noting that this was going to be an economic recovery characterized by “fairness.” Now if you listen to Biden in the context of Reich, who is also clearly concerned about “fairness” you begin to wonder if “fairness” is code language for a racial transfer of wealth from White people to minorities.
But lets not stop there. We have yet to mention Obama’s Attorney General Eric Holder stating that,
“Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been and I believe continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RtzGraUV9c
Now, while we won’t spend any time refuting Holder’s asinine statement where he seeks to foster white guilt while inciting a sense of Black entitlement, does any body with half a brain believe that Attorney General Holder believes that Black people are cowards when it comes to things racial? I think not. It is my decided opinion that Holder has White people in his sites with this kind of statement. It is White people who are cowards when it comes to things racial.
But we are not finished with this verbal racial onslaught of the Obama administration against white people — a verbal onslaught that is now getting translated to economic racial socialism. Consider the Benediction that was given by Rev. Joseph Lowery at the Obama inauguration.
Lowry intoned a benediction based upon a song titled, “Black, Brown and White”
“We ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to give back, when brown can stick around, when yellow will be mellow, when the red man can get ahead, man, and when white will embrace what is right.”
Now, take all of this that has been provided and remember Michelle’s comments during the campaign season that revealed that during Barack’s campaign Michelle, for the first time in her life, was proud to be an American. Was it perceived racial oppression that took Michelle’s pride to be an American from her?
Take all of this that has been provided and remember B. Hussein’s comments during the campaign about people in small towns in Pennsylvania (hardly a bastion of Black demographics) that,
“It’s not surprising then they (small town Pennsylvanians) get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”
Take all of this that has been provided and now add the specter of B. Hussein Obama’s Spiritual mentor for twenty years — Rev. Jeremiah Wright — easily one of the most White hating people to hit the public spotlight for quite some time.
Add all this together and it is not difficult to see why minorities are not showing up at protests against the Obama’s proposed socialism agenda. Minorities rightly believe that this transfer of wealth is going to go from White people to minorities. Now, there is little sense trying to convince people that in the end this racial socialism won’t lift the impoverished minorities but will merely eliminate the producing class that the welfare class so desperately depends upon.
In closing I am perfectly aware that there are minorities out there that exist that are as disgusted as any White person is concerning Obama’s racial socialism. These minorities understand that in the long run this kind of program reduces their people to slaves to the state and so are radically opposed to it. These people are to be applauded, but we must admit that their numbers in comparison to those minorities who support this racial socialism (as seen in voting patterns) is scant. Secondly, I’m perfectly aware that there are White people who are for Obama’s racial socialism. White people, on one end of the wealth spectrum, have always had their ‘poor white trash’ they have had to deal with, while on the other end of the wealth spectrum, White people have always had ‘rich white trash’ who would sell out their people if by doing so they could enrich themselves. All this to say that I realize that one can not speak in absolute racial universals on this subject, but instead only in predominant racial tendencies.
We might as well admit it that much of the Obama administration has a racial chip on their shoulder and that they are seeking to implement not just socialism but racial socialism.
What is humorous about a post like this is that people will insist that my noticing objective patterns of behavior by the Obama administration proves that I am the racist. It will be contested by some that all because I perceive how they are waging war on White people that therefore I am the racist.
The introductory line may be the best thought of a 8 minute segment that is chock full of good thoughts.
“Schooling is a form of adoption. You give your child away at his or her most plastic years to a group of strangers. You accept a promise, sometimes stated, but more often implied, that the state, through its agents, know better how to raise your children and educate them than you, your neighbors, your parents, your community, your local traditions and that your child will be better off so adopted. By the time the child returns to the family or has the option of doing that very few want to. Their parents are some form of friendly stranger to them. And why not — in the key hours of growing up strangers have raised the child.”
Government schooling is a classic example of ritual being maintained long after it made any sense to begin with. Christians continue to send their children to government schools even though if they would only take a step back and try to look at the ritual with fresh eyes they would have to see how ridiculous the whole ritual is.
I mean would any sane person ever reason in such a way as to suggest that it is a great idea to put 200 15-18 year olds together in a building in the middle of their raging puberty years with scant supervision. Only habit and ritual keeps this insane practice going.
Would any sane person, ever reason that it is an acceptable idea for a parent to put their five year old on a bus with one driver and 70 other germ infested five year olds in order to ship them to educational concentration camps? We only think this normal because we have done it by habit for such a long time.
Would any sane person turn their children over to be raised and instructed by complete strangers for 8-10 hours a day? And yet we do that year by year and decade by decade only because that is the way we’ve been doing it year by year and decade by decade.
Would any sane person believe that their children are going to be genuinely educated in these holding tanks when the evidence for decades now has been screaming at us that government education is sub standard at best?
When a person takes a step back and looks at this whole American ritual and tries to see it again with fresh eyes they can only conclude that this is not something we would do if we were to think of good ways to educate our children.
“Is an embryo a human life? I think of a stored embryo as the product of a scientific process. Once received and nurtured in a woman’s womb, it becomes a human life. The embryo is a significant component, but there is no human life apart from the womb’s significant contribution.
And isn’t the use of embryos to find cures for other diseases and disabling conditions also a “God thing”? Jesus was very much concerned with the restoration of the sick. I have a friend who is wheelchair-bound. He is active, employed, and has a family. Wouldn’t it be a “God thing” and an affirmation of the sanctity of human life if through the results of embryonic stem cell research he would be restored physically?”
—Rev. Jochem Vugteveen Grand Rapids, Mich.
1.) Something can be the result of a “scientific process” can still be a human life. In point of fact one could easily say that a fertilized egg arising from a man and a woman having intercourse is a “scientific process” though to say such probably wouldn’t earn you the “Romantic of the year award.”
2.) Rev. Vugteveen will have to supply us the hard data that time in the womb is what makes a fertilized egg human. What will the good Reverend say when technology arises where a fertilized egg can come to full gestation apart from time in the womb? Would a human nurtured in a artificial womb not be a human because they weren’t in a human womb? Finally, on this point, why should I take Rev. Vugteveen assertions as being authoritative? By what standard is Rev. Vugteveen asserting that a human isn’t human until it has spent time in the womb?
3.) If the scientific process gives us a fertilized egg why do we euphemistically refer to that fertilized egg as a “product of scientific process.” The cynic might observe that the depersonalization of that which is human (fertilized egg) serves an agenda of those who desire to use the human as spare body parts.
4.) I wonder if Rev. Vugteveen has really thought through the implications of using human life as spare body parts. What happens to the value of life when men become disposable? What happens when we begin to cannibalize our children in order to heal our aged? If man can create man for the sake of man then what keeps man from destroying man for the sake of man whenever he determines that is convenient? Jochem needs to spend a weekend reading and reflecting on the book Frankenstein.
5.) Rev. Vugteveen needs to read the research surrounding embryonic stem cell research. While human stem cell research has shown promise, embryonic stem cell research shows little promise.
6.) The price we pay for healing the sick at the cost of taking the life of the unborn is to great a cost to bear. To be blunt it strikes me as the height of generational selfishness to want to cannibalize the future for the sake of the present.
“To assert that “an embryo is not a potential human life—it is a human life with potential” is comparable to asserting that an acorn is an oak tree or that an egg is a chicken. This assertion makes the already difficult conversations about embryos virtually impossible and loads unwarranted guilt on those who lovingly make informed choices that result in the destruction of defective or healthy embryos.”
—George Vander Weit Rochester, Mich.
George, it just this simple. We don’t know when life begins. We don’t know. Now, since we don’t know, we are, by necessity, in a position where we need to err on the side of being conservative. If we err with acorns, chicken eggs, or tulip bulbs, nobody is going to lose any sleep. However, if we err with nascent human beings and are destructive with those that God does count as human life, well then that is another story all together. Ignorance on this vital and important of a matter should be very patient in awaiting for enlightenment. Fools, however rush in where ignorant but wise people fear to tread.
I do agree however that caution does make the already difficult conversation about embryos virtually impossible. It makes it virtually impossible because it challenges the presuppositions of ignorance that are masquerading as knowledge. It makes it difficult because suddenly we now are in the position of having to consider the possibility that those conceived people already are stamped with the Imago Dei. If we consider that it is possible that conceived people already have the Imago Dei stamped on them suddenly we are no longer in a position to harvest them for vaccines, or skin cream, or replacement parts for when we get old and decrepit.
You say that you fear that people are going to be loaded with unwarranted guilt. But, again, George, you don’t know absolutely if that guilt is unwarranted. This is a presumption on your part. It may be the case that the guilt is quite warranted. Since we don’t know when life begins I think it is unwarranted of you to suggest that guilt in the destruction of healthy or defective embryos is unwarranted.
One of the mottoes for Doctors has been for centuries, “First, do no harm.” I think George, that motto might serve us pretty well on this issue. Since we don’t know when life begins, we should “First, do no harm.”