Category: Culture

The (Obama) administration acknowledges that its energy proposal would increase costs for consumers but argues that the vast majority of people will get tax breaks elsewhere in Obama’s budget package.

“Now, if people don’t change how they use energy, then they will face higher costs for energy,” Geithner acknowledged.

Being interpreted means …

You children had better change your energy consumption habits or we will tax the hell out of you.

Geithner said the budget reflects what Obama views as “a deep moral imperative to make our society more just.” But it’s very good economic policy, too. It will mean there is again a fairer, more equitably shared tax burden on the vast majority of Americans.”

Being interpreted means …

Through the economy we are going to social engineer a more just society and if you don’t like it you can frack off.

Could we please have a public discussion on the standard that this administration is using to adjudicate what constitutes “a more just society.” Did Obama learn his standard about what constitutes a “more just society” from Jeremiah Wright? Did Obama learn his standard about what constitutes a “more just society” from his communist mentor Frank Marshall Davis? Since we are the ones being socially engineered is it to much to ask what standard is being used to create this “more this just society.”

Finally we see social engineering in Obama’s proposal on charitable giving. Obama’s proposed budget seeks to limit the amount of money that can be given to charity in order to finance his billions for nationalized health care reform. This is social engineering because what it is proclaiming is that the government knows better how to spend your extra dollars than the average American does. It socially engineers because dollars that would have gone to churches, universities, and foundations are not going to be there to be given because they have been redirected by Obama’s wisdom to his favorite charities. It is a short step from here to just turning over to the government all the functions that charities fill along with all the money that is freely given to charities.

This stuff just makes me go wild. What makes me even go more wild is that not enough other people are making these observations.

Wake up people … this vile and wicked man isn’t kidding when he says he wants to “re-make” America.

Why is this (Obama’s intended massive government growth) significant for the vitality of religion in America? A recent study of 33 countries around the world by Anthony Gill and Erik Lundsgaarde, political scientists at the University of Washington, indicates that there is an inverse relationship between state welfare spending and religiosity. Specifically, they found that countries with larger welfare states had markedly lower levels of religious attendance, had higher rates of citizens indicating no religious affiliation whatsoever, and their people took less comfort in religion in general. In their words, “Countries with higher levels of per capita welfare have a proclivity for less religious participation and tend to have higher percentages of non-religious individuals.”

W. Bradford Wilcox
More Government, Less God: What the Obama Revolution Means for Religion in America

First, as is our custom we must point out that it is not possible for people to become “non-religious individuals.” We understand what Wilcox and the study he cites is getting at but it is unfortunate that the impression is given that people ever somehow become less religious. What happens when the state grows geometrically is that the religion of the people becomes statist (humanist).

In Scripture we find at the very least three different spheres of authority (some would posit more). Those three spheres are Civil, Familial, and Ecclesiastical. Even within those three spheres sovereignty is distributed and so is not located absolutely in any one place or person. In the Civil realm sovereignty is distributed vertically between Federal and State authorities and then is distributed horizontally between legislative, executive, and judiciary in both Federal and State arrangements. In the ecclesiastical realm when ordered according to Scripture, sovereignty is distributed between consistory, classis and synod. In the familial realm sovereignty is held by the Husband and Father but that sovereignty is necessarily informed by the wisdom of the wife that God has given to the head of the home.

God has ordered reality so that no one sphere should hold unlimited sovereignty over other spheres and he has ordered reality so that no individual sphere has a place or a person who holds absolute sovereignty.

While we should confess that God’s sovereignty is infinite and unlimited, we should try to think of temporal sovereignty as being finite and limited. Temporally speaking, there is only so much sovereignty to go around between the spheres we have mentioned. The upshot of this is that when one sphere enlarges its sovereignty it always does so at the expense of the sovereignty of some other sphere. So when Wilcox informs us that the consequence of sovereignty increasing in the state means sovereignty being diminished in the church we should not be surprised. When the state grows in sovereignty (and dimensional growth of the state is akin to its growing its sovereignty) it does so at the expense of the sovereignty of the church (and dimensional shrinkage of the church is akin to its sovereignty being diminished). Since temporal sovereignty is limited and finite, when the state grows the welfare state it can only do so by shrinking the church and the family.

In the article cited above Wilcox goes on to mention the effect on the family when the state becomes behemoth. This is a subject we’ve covered here before many times but briefly when the state grows it results in taking on responsibilities of the family. In stealing these responsibilities (sovereignty) of the family the consequence is that natural family ties are loosened. Families have no need to have reliance on one another since the state takes upon itself what families are normatively responsible for. The consequence of this is that parents no longer teach children turning them over to the state for the state to fulfill that parental responsibility. The consequence of this is that children no longer feel responsible for elderly parents since the state will take care of them. The consequence of this is that wives no longer sense a need for husbands since the state will take care of them and the children if the husband is absent. The consequence of this is that husbands no longer sense a need to protect and provide for their wives and children since they know that the state will take up those responsibilities in their absence. When the state grows its sovereignty it grows it by sucking the responsibility out of the other spheres.

Eventually what happens in such a scenario is that the state becomes the family and the church to the point that the state not only aspires to all limited and finite sovereignty but also it begins to aspire to all unlimited and infinite sovereignty. In short the state desires to usurp God. This is the story of all collectivist states. In collectivist states the state seeks to create the context that in it, its citizens live and move and have their being.

This is why the growth of the state that the Obama administration is pursuing is such an anathema of Christians. Long before Obama showed up Christians have been convinced that the Federal state was already idolatrous, and with this move by Obama to massively grow the state into a collectivist hive all right thinking Christians are (or should be) apoplectic.

The final explanation for why the church and family shrinks when the state grows is that the state becomes the defacto church and family. When the state grows the way that Obama is trying to grow the state it fills the whole horizon so that the state becomes everything. It is not as if people become less religious or less family oriented. It is only that people’s religion and family are located in the state. Family and religion haven’t diminished, they have merely been relocated into the Unitarian state.

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.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/27/AR2009022701104.html

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.”

“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.”