Follow Up To Heavens Declare

I came across this passage earlier this week and thought it dovetailed nicely with brother Dick's earlier post The Heavens Declare.

Theologians typically summarize the general works of God in three broad categories: creation, providence, and miracles.

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Providence
Christ is the ruler and preserver of creation. This is the work of providence. The Westminster Larger Catechism offers a succinct definition of God's works of providence: "God's works of providence are his most holy, wise, and powerful preserving and governing all his creatures; ordering them, and all their actions, to his own glory" (question 18). The key words are preserving and governing. Providence is the necessary corollary to creation. Because God is the creator, He owns creation and has the authority to rule it and keep it according to His own purpose. Let us be careful here not to equate a belief in divine providence with a "whatever happens happens" theology. That is fatalism and fatalism is paganism. There is a world of difference between believing in an uncontrollable operation of blind fate and believing that all things are working together toward a prescribed and purposeful end by One who is infinitely wise, infinitely good, and infinitely powerful so that His purpose cannot be threatened, frustrated or jeopardized. It ought to be most comforting for believers to know and rest in the constant truth that they are part of God's unfailing purpose.

The same two New Testament texts that declare Christ as the Creator also prove that the Lord Jesus is engaged in the ongoing work of providence. Creation and providence are inseparable truths. In Colossians 1:17 Paul says about the pre-eminent Christ, "He is before all things, and by him all things consist." The word "consist" means "to cohere or stand together." It is by Christ that the created world stands or sticks together. Hebrews 1:3 tells us exactly how Christ not only makes things stick together but moves them along to their prescribed end. The apostle says that He upholds all things by the word of His power. The word "uphold" means literally "to bear or carry along." The word "word" refers to an individual spoken word. The word "power" speaks of ability. As the Lord spoke the world into existence, so his spoken word ably and successfully keeps and directs the world. An interpretative translation of this text, then, would sound like this: "By speaking an irresistible and unfrustratable word, He carries everything along."

Beginning At Moses - A Guide to Finding Christ in the Old Testament
By Michael P.V. Barrett
pp.66-68

What I find truly amazing about all of this is that such a Being could care so much for you and me that He took human form as a man and became the ultimate sacrifice to God for the sins of man and in so doing makes reconciliation with God possible for those who believe.

Economic Justice

Here's an interesting illustration of the law of unintended consequences, a law that seems to attach like velcro to liberal legislation:

At the time, it was common for Aborigines...to work in the Australian cattle industry as cowboys etc. They were however viewed as unreliable employees (principally because of their custom of "going walkabout" (decamping) at unpredictable and inconvenient times) and were paid less than white employees. It was however one of the few employment avenues open to many of them because of their low levels of education etc.

Subsequently, empoyers were forced by law to pay Aborigines at the same rate as white employees -- thus bringing to an almost total end Aboriginal employment in the cattle industry. They are now heavily dependant on welfare payments from the Federal government.

What makes this piece of social engineering especially pernicious is that the judges who handed down the equal pay ruling said at the time that they knew that the Aborigines were less valued employees and that the ruling would throw most of them out of work.

Nevertheless, they chose to consign the Aborigines to abject penury in order to save them from the "injustice" of an unequal wage scale. Classic. In order to satisfy the liberal hunger for socio-economic egalitarianism they made a bone-headed ruling that they knew was going to harm the poor and help them not at all. This is a fine example of piling malevolence on top of stupidity in the name of ideological principle.

Becoming As Gods

According to this NPR All Things Considered report some very reputable physicists are toying with the notion of actually building their own universe in the laboratory. Here are some excerpts:

Is this a joke? No, say a bunch of physicists. One day, it may be possible for a person to create a universe!

This is not going to happen tomorrow. Not even close. But according to Columbia University physics professor Brian Greene, it is theoretically not impossible (which is his way of saying the possibilities are not zero) that one day, a person could build a universe.

The very idea is so startling it's hard to know what this means. Think about it this way: One day (far off, no doubt), it may be possible to go into a laboratory on Earth, create a "seed" -- a device that could grow into a universe -- and then there would have to be a way to get that seed, on command, to safely expand into a separate, infinite, unexplorable but very real alternate universe.

In the July 8, 2006 issue, New Scientist writer Zeeya Merali put that question to Stanford cosmologist Andre Linde. "I sat down and really thought about why we should even care about creating a universe in the laboratory, " he told New Scientist, "We don't seem to be able to communicate with it at all."

Once it's formed, the inventor couldn't meet its inhabitants, mine its minerals, collect souvenirs or judge his or her success. The biblical god who many believe created our universe inspected us on the first through sixth day and decided that what He'd done "was good."

That's not an option for the human scientist who creates. So why do it? Well, Greene says given the chance to make a universe of his own, "I might have a little trouble resisting this possibility. Just because it's so curious, this idea that because of your volitional act, you are creating a universe that could give rise, perhaps, to things we see around us."

Linde seconded that in his New Scientist interview. "Just imagine if it's true and there's even a small chance it really could work," he said. "In this perspective, each of us can become a god."

Yikes! Isn't that what they were saying back when they were building the Tower of Babel?

We'll Miss Her

Cynthia McKinney is an embarassment to politicians everywhere and to Democrats in particular. Other than those who have been amused by her antics, few will lament that she'll be gone from Congress in January. As if to confirm the wisdom of the voters who elected her opponent in the Democratic primary, she has introduced, as her parting shot, a bill calling for the impeachment of President Bush.

This is the same woman who accused President Bush of knowing ahead of time of the terrorist attack on 9/11 but keeping quiet so that his rich friends would somehow profit from the destruction. This is the woman who introduced a bill to create a collection at the National Archive for the art of rapper Tupac Shakur, who called for a federal investigation into his murder, who punched a Capitol policeman who insisted she pass through the security apparatus at the Capitol building like everyone else, and who accuses everyone who disagrees with her and/or who thinks she's minus a few million synapses of being a racist.

Her bill has no chance of ever even coming to a vote which is a fitting epitaph to her congressional legacy.