Barack and I

         A liberal told me yesterday that I am not as good a thinker as Barack Obama.

         Perhaps that is so; perhaps it is not.

         But I know this, and Barack Obama doesn’t:

         (1) Keynesian economics is a great failure.  Massive government spending is not the engine that drives a thriving economy, and it is not the path to prosperity.  Neither is a crushing national debt.

         (2) Demand-side economics does not produce goods and services in the same lush way as does supply-side economics, which means that if you want sound policy you ought to read Arthur Laffer, not J. M. Keynes.

         (3) Amassing 16 trillion dollars in debt leads to credit downgrades, higher interest rates, and a lethargic marketplace characterized by reduced investment and higher unemployment, not to economic prosperity.

         (4) You cannot be safe if you have porous borders.  Neither can your border agents.

         (5) No nation has ever been attacked because it was too strong, but many have been attacked because they were too weak and could not mount an effective defense.  Peace comes through strength; weakness invites attack.

         (6) We have deadly enemies who cannot be appeased.  Our deadly enemies are Israel’s deadly enemies.  The US and Israel, therefore, need to stand together.

         (7) Ideas do not die simply because they have been refuted roundly, soundly, and repeatedly.  Communism is not dead and it will not die.  It simply and continually re-organizes.  Vladimir Putin and his ideological allies in China and North Korea are up to no good.  Never trust them to have your best interests at heart -- never.

         (8) A nation that cannot or will not acknowledge God inevitably thinks that government is the highest power; that self-satisfaction is the highest good; and that self-indulgence is the best path to it.

         (9) A nation that slaughters its young cannot be trusted to know the right thing or to do it.  It cannot be trusted to make the heavy sacrifices necessary to maintain freedom.  That nation falters because it has severed the connection between duty and liberty.  Without the higher calling and higher morality that only life under God brings, nothing more profound than mere orgasm rules the citizens’ actions.

         (10) Neither private virtue nor public duty has any suitable substitute.  Either you do the right thing or you slide downhill.  No other option exists.

Two Kinds of Prayer

         Prayer is like so many other things:  There’s more than one way to do it well.

         For example, you might ask God for a particular outcome, but ask it humbly because your life with Him has taught you that, whether He says yes or no, He knows best.  So you attach to your prayer the proviso added by Jesus when He prayed so ardently in the Garden that His Father find some other way to save the world than by His crucifixion and death: “Nevertheless, not my will but yours be done” (Luke 22: 42).

         You ask in this deferential fashion because you have seen for yourself how God has declined some of your requests in the past and how those refusals worked out better than getting your most fervent desire.  You’ve learned by experience that He sometimes withholds one gift in order to give you another, one that, after the fact, you can see was even better for you than the thing for which you hoped and asked.  You’ve learned what a mess your life would be if somehow you got whatever you asked for.  So, when you pray, you ask God for what you want, but you acknowledge that your request might be misguided.

         In short, (1) you praybecause you recall James saying that sometimes you lack a particular blessing because you have not prayed.  (2) You pray humbly because you recall him saying that sometimes God says no because you are asking for the wrong thing (James 4: 2, 3).  In that light, you ask, but you ask deferentially:  “Lord, if it be your will, please grant X.”  You want X, but you admit that X might not be what God wants for you, so you defer.

         Of course, you might well approach God more boldly, this time not so much in humble deference as in confident faith that you have been led by God Himself to make this particular request.  Perhaps you have been.  If so, you can approach Him with holy boldness, confident of His leading and His grace, confident that He will give you what you seek.  You approach Him confidently because you know He delights in being trusted.  You trust Him for all your needs, and especially this one, the one that is your chief concern at the moment.

         Indeed, perhaps He has led you to this request and will grant it request in exactly the way you have asked.  Prayer of this sort is not necessarily presumptuous, though it can be.  When a prayer request stems from a strong faith in God, in His leading, in His provision, and in His promises, that prayer honors God, even if, for whatever reason, you might have been wrong about it and He did not actually lead you to ask it and does not grant your request.

         For fallen hearts like ours, it is easy to think God is speaking and leading us when He is not.  It is easy to mistake our desires for His guidance.  But because you know that every good and perfect gift comes down to you from the Father of Lights, you turn to Him in confident faith (James 1: 17).  You approach Him boldly, knowing that He who spared not His own Son shall give you, along with that Son, all good things (Rom. 8: 32).  If grace of such magnitude does not inspire you to ask confidently, then perhaps nothing will.

         But either way, whether by the humble prayer or the bold one, you bring your heart’s desires to God because you are convinced that the Judge of all the world will do right (Gen. 18: 25).   

Epic Fail

         In what year, exactly, does Barack Obama become responsible for all the things that got worse since Bush left office, things like lower median income, lower household income, greater national debt, higher unemployment, a greater percentage of people on food stamps, a greater share of persons in poverty, higher food prices, higher gas prices, the failure to pass even one budget in four years, an unguarded consulate in Libya on the anniversary of 9/11, and the Middle East in flames?  When?  

         It’s funny how the new Republican governors in several states, governors who have been in office far less time than Obama, were able to turn their states around, despite having to operate in the midst of a faltering national economy made worse by Obama’s policies from Washington.  QE1 and QE2 failed, and now QE3 is following in their train.  If insanity is trying the same thing over and over again expecting a different result, then his economic policies are insane. 

         I’ve heard him say many times that it’s not his fault because he inherited a mess.  If he gets re-elected, the mess he inherits from himself will be enormously greater than the one he got from Bush.  If he failed to fix the smaller mess, he'll fail to fix the larger one simply by re-applying the same tired Keynesian nonsense.    

         The bottom line:  He promised.  He promised, for example, to cut the national debt in half.  He failed.  Instead of cutting the national debt by 5 trillion dollars, he increased it by 6 trillion.  No other politician in the history of the world has ever miscalculated by 11 trillion dollars in four years.  If he failed because he knowingly made promises he couldn’t keep, then he’s a liar.  If he failed because he made promises he didn’t know he couldn’t keep, then he’s incompetent.  Either way, liar or incompetent, he doesn’t deserve re-election.

 

Christocentric Spirituality: Jesus is not a Nose of Wax

 

        Do not be deceived.  While we must look to Christ as the model for our spirituality rather than imitating the world in reverse, it is not enough simply to look to Christ.  We must be sure that when we look at Him we actually see Him as He is.  Too often our Bible study degenerates into an exercise in narcissism.   Looking into the gospels becomes something like looking into a well:  all we see is our own mirrored image.  Jesus has become a nose of wax in our hands, and rather than conforming ourselves to his character, we conform Him to ours.  We seem to act as if, because God made us in his image, we can return the favor.

       Perhaps you have noticed how Christ is made to look like the one doing the preaching, the teaching, or the writing, at the moment.  In the hands of Thomas à Kempis, for example, Christ is reduced to little more, and little else, than a medieval monk -- as if Jesus really was a mystic, a monastic, and a nominalist.  But, of course, Jesus is not simply a glorified version of Francis of Assisi or Bernard of Clairvaux.  He's not a monk's monk.

       And He's not a Protestant.

       Not only do we make him a Protestant, but in our hands the Creator also has become an American evangelical dispensationalist from the Bible Belt, one who snatches his children from the clutches of an evil public school system because he is harassed and haunted by the bogey of secular humanism.  Naturally, non-fundamentalists are offended by such obscurantistic clap-trap.   Jesus doesn't look like that any more than He looks like the abbot of the monastery at Monte Cassino.  He's not the prototype of John Chrysostom, of Innocent III, or of Che Guevara.  That is, He's not Eastern Orthodox; He's not Roman Catholic; and He's no model for liberation theology.  And, distressing as it may be to some, He's not the Calvin before Calvin or the Arminius before Arminius.  He's the Son of God.  Regardless of how strenuously we might try to make Him one of us, we will be frustrated.  His unique combination of divinity and sinless humanity transcends easy categorization.  Trying to cram Jesus into our own ecclesiastical moulds is no simple task.  It is like stuffing ten pounds of potatoes into a five-pound bag -- either the bag bursts or something gets left out.

       Nevertheless, people try.  Their attempts to make Jesus conform to their expectations (rather than shaping themselves to meet his) are a thinly veiled exercise in self-justification.  We all tend to read our own theological and ecclesiastical biases back into the Bible.  Rather than being confronted there by Something solid and resilient, Something other than ourselves, we assume the role of modern John the Baptists: we re-baptize Jesus into the modern Presbyterian, Coptic, Mormon, Baptist, or Russian Orthodox fold.  It simply won't do, of course.  The important thing in Christocentric spirituality is not what we can make of Him, but what He has made of Himself and intends to make of us.

       We must strenuously resist the temptation to rearrange the Savior.  Christ, even to Christians, seems a little too shocking.  We are forced (we think) to play the iconoclast and to knock down (or touch up) the image of the divine character He has left us.  But the true sanctity of Jesus is not often like the sanctity of those traditionally called saints.  He was holy, but He had no halo.  His purity was a blood-and-guts affair that held together, in the grip of his two strong hands, a holy God and a fallen world.  That union would not be broken, not even over his dead body.  In other words, his brow is no place for our tinsel crowns.  His head will not support the paper hats and paint-by-the-numbers halos of our misdirected and self-glorifying piety.  So much the worse for halos.  We need the real Jesus, not one of our own making.    What good is a potter shaped by clay?

Unions and Minimum Wage Laws

         When detectives investigate crimes, they look for motivation.  "Who benefits?" they ask.

         When unions push minimum wage laws, I ask the same question. 

         Answer:  the unions themselves.

         They won't admit it, of course.  That’s not the way unions talk about minimum wage laws and their support for them.

         Since the 1930s, unions have been the chief proponents of minimum wage legislation because it helps eliminate low-wage competition for jobs.  It does so through federal coercion from laws passed by union-bought-and-paid-for legislators.  By driving up the competition's wages, unions erase the chief advantage their unskilled competitors have -- the willingness to work for a lower price than their union counterparts.  After all, virtually no union worker in America works for minimum wage.  This is not about driving up union wages, but driving up the wages of the union’s competition.

         This marketplace power play is meant to create a de facto labor cartel by expelling non-union workers from the field by artificially driving up their wages, in this case, the non-union workers with the least skill, folks whom employers might be willing to hire and to train if the price for doing so were not unnaturally high.  When the price of low-wage independents is not artificially elevated, employers often prefer to hire and train them instead of higher-priced and protected unionists.  As the price of independents rises, their attractiveness to prospective employers shrinks and the attractiveness of unionists grows, which is why unions are historically the strongest advocates of minimum wage laws.  By such laws, unions drive up the price of their competition, advancing what amounts to compulsory unionism.  

         In the wake of minimum wage laws, employment in low-wage industries generally drops, which predictably injures the poor, those very persons with the least marketplace skill and experience.  In other words, when you judge them by their actual negative impact, minimum wage laws are anti-black, anti-woman, anti-immigrant, anti-elderly, and anti-young -- those who are the lowest workers on the pay scale.  They are the ones who lose the most when union-backed legislators enact a higher minimum wage.  That’s one more thing the unions won't tell you:  Unions injure the non-union poor.  Unions and their advocacy of minimum wage laws obstruct the working poor and make it more difficult for them to get the entry-level jobs by which they gain necessary marketplace skills like punctuality, team work, deference, appearance, public relations, accuracy, and dependability, skills that make getting the next job easier, skills that allow them to begin climbing the ladder of economic success -- outside of a union.

         Modern unions are the poor worker's worst enemy.  When unions push for a higher minimum wage, they're not looking out for the poor; they're looking out for themselves.

         An analogy will serve:  Imagine that, in an effort to aid portions of our lagging auto industry, we propped up the profits of our weakest carmaker (let us say, fictionally, Ford) with laws mandating a minimum price of $50,000 per vehicle sold.  That law would dramatically increase the profits Ford enjoyed from every sale.  But, despite that good intention, indeed because of it, Ford goes out of business because no matter how much we might want to “buy American,” very few folks can or will pay that much money for cars comparable to those available elsewhere at half the government-mandated price.  Ford dies.  Just like unions now do to their competitors, the people at competing automakers would love to pass laws requiring a minimum price for all Fords.  It won’t be good for Ford; it will be good for Ford’s competitors.

         By the same token, when that which is being sold is not a car but an unskilled worker’s work, a higher minimum wage helps that worker’s competition.  That’s why unions support this manipulative legislation, which makes it illegal for entry-level workers to sell their work at a lower price, no matter how badly they might need or want a job.   

         With minimum wages laws in force, the choice is often not a choice between the mandated wage and some other wage, but between the mandated wage and none at all.  Tragically, the latter option becomes increasingly attractive and commonplace.  A minimum wage helps only those with jobs; it cannot provide jobs or preserve jobs.  But it does hinder those without jobs from getting them, just as it hinders those with jobs from keeping them.

         If you have little or no skill and experience, but the government requires you to sell your services at inflated rates, you'll find no one willing to purchase them because, in order to pay for your services, your employer must raise his own selling price, which means his or her business is more likely to fail.  If it does, all the current employees, who are more skilled, more experienced, and more worth the money they earn, lose their jobs too because companies wise enough not to hire you at the government-mandated price can produce the same product your company does, but at a lower cost both to themselves and their customers.

         Here’s the bottom line:  Minimum wage laws create unemployment outside the union, which is precisely their intention.  When unions back minimum wage laws, it’s not about helping the poor; it’s about helping themselves.

Chopping Down the Family Tree

          My family comes from Switzerland.  On one visit there, I was shown a family tree that traced my ancestors back to Melchior Baumann in 1536.  As my father’s cousin spread that enormous genealogical sheet out before me, it fell off all four sides of two adjoining tables.  Between Melchior and me were more than 20 generations.  Each generation across those nearly 500 years spread out wider and wider as child after child had more and more children.  Had his mother aborted Melchior, not one of them could ever have been born.  None of them could ever have seen even one moment of life.  One abortion would have deleted every subsequent life for half a millennium.  As the years and centuries pass, and as the generations grow, the number of persons denied life expands ceaselessly.

         If your mother aborts you, she does not abort just you.  She denies life to you and to your children.  If she aborts you, she denies life to you, to your children, to your children’s children, and to all their descendants, every one.  She denies life to generation after generation of your descendants across the ensuing decades, even the ensuing centuries.

         By aborting you, she denies life to an entire family tree, roots and branches.  Because she denied you life, not one of those persons will ever see life, not one.

         If you throw a rock in a pond, the ripple goes out in ever-expanding circles.  When you abort a child, when you deny him or her life, the circle of human deletion goes on and on, for generation upon generation, for years uncountable.

         Now multiply that by 50 million, which is the number of abortions we’ve had in American alone since Roe v. Wade, and you’ll just begin to understand the legacy of death, deprivation, and human deletion that America’s deadbeat mothers have scrawled across the pages of subsequent history from now until the end of time.

         If your mother aborts you, she does not abort just you.

Abortion: It's Not Just a Woman's Issue

         "Yet there is one thing that seems to link together all men who face the long-term effects of abortion: a horrific sense of loss.  Deep within the soul of every man who's been involved in abortion, a truth repeats itself:  the life of my child, the fruit of my own body, has been lost.  And that is not the only thing.  In the aftershock of this terrible event, a man soon comes to realize:  The life I could have had -- the husband, the father, the man I could have been -- is lost."

Guy Condon and David Hazard, Fatherhood Aborted  (p. 9)