Wallis and Boyd

In a friendly debate before an overflow crowd Sojourners' editor Jim Wallis and pastor/theologian Greg Boyd exchanged views on what should be the nature and extent of the involvement of Christians in politics.

Wallis argues that the church should be deeply involved in the political wars and that a Biblical politics would look a lot like contemporary liberalism. It's through political engagement that one lives out the Gospel in the world. He urges Christians to follow the examples of Dietrich Bonhoffer and Martin Luther King in working for justice in the societies in which we live:

To be a Christian means to care about social justice. Gandhi and King didn't just live the principles: They engaged the culture to fight for them.

Aside from the fact that mention of Ghandi as an example of Christian obligation seemed a little dissonant, I agree with Wallis on his general point. Christians should be politically engaged. Part of the reason that our culture is in the depauperate condition it is is because too many Christians had, throughout the 30s, 40s, and 50s, ceded much of the culture to the world and retreated to the shelter of personal piety largely disengaged from the arts, education, science, philosophy and politics. By the time this started to change in the 60s there was simply too much ground to make up, the church was too far behind, and the train of secularization and degeneration was accelerating unimpeded down the track.

On the other hand, I think Greg Boyd is correct when he insists that no political stance should be labeled Christian and that a Christian is defined by his or her imitation of "the self-sacrificial love of Christ," and not by his/her political stance. He's also on target when he says this:

Jesus never said a word about political issues .... I worry about calling some stands 'God's politics' (The title of Wallis' recent book). It invites polarizing politics into the church. Republican Christians care as much about the poor as Democratic Christians do; they just have different ways of approaching it. Good Christians can agree or disagree on war, abortion, taxes and immigrants.

There's more on their debate at the link.

More From Murray

Last Sunday I posted an article about a book titled Andrew Murray on Prayer. This book is simply packed with meat for the soul. I mentioned last week that Andrew Murray on Prayer is actually a compilation of six of his works and here's another chapter from Abide in Christ, As the Branch in the Vine.

"I am the vine, ye are the branches." - John 15:5

It was in connection with the parable of the Vine that our Lord first used the expression, "Abide in me." That parable, so simple, and yet so rich in its teaching, gives us the best and most complete illustration of the meaning of our Lord's command, and the union to which He invites us.

The parable teaches us the nature of that union. The connection between the vine and the branch is a living one. No external, temporary union will suffice; no work of man can effect it: the branch, whether an original or an engrafted one, is such only by the Creator's own work, in virtue of which the life, the sap, the fatness, and the fruitfulness of the vine communicate themselves to the branch. And just so it is with the believer too. His union with his Lord is no work of human wisdom or human will, but an act of God, by which the closest and most complete life-union is effected between the Son of God and the sinner. "God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts." The same Spirit which dwelt and still dwells in the Son, becomes the life of the believer; in the unity of that one Spirit, and the fellowship of the same life which is in Christ, he is one with Him. As between the vine and branch, it is a life-union that makes them one.

The parable teaches us the completeness of the union. So close is the union between the vine and the branch, that each is nothing without the other, that each is wholly and only for the other.

Without the vine the branch can do nothing. To the vine it owes its right of place in the vineyard, its life and its fruitfulness. And so the Lord says, "Without me ye can do nothing." The believer can each day be pleasing to God only in that which he does through the power of Christ dwelling in him. The daily inflowing of the life-sap of the Holy Spirit is his only power to bring forth fruit. He lives alone in Him and is for each moment dependent on Him alone.

Without the branch the vine can also do nothing. A vine without branches can bear no fruit. No less indispensable than the vine to the branch, is the branch to the vine. Such is the wonderful condescension of the grace of Jesus, that just as His people are dependent on Him, He has made Himself dependent on them. Without His disciples He cannot dispense His blessing to the world; He cannot offer sinners the grapes of the heavenly Canaan. Marvel not! It is His own appointment; and this is the high honour to which He has called His redeemed ones, that as indispensable as He is to them in heaven, that from Him their fruit may be found, so indispensable are they to Him on earth, that through them His fruit may be found. Believers, meditate on this, until your soul bows to worship in presence of the mystery of the perfect union between Christ and the believer.

There is more: as neither vine nor branch is anything without the other, so is neither anything except for the other.

All the vine possesses belongs to the branches. The vine does not gather from the soil its fatness and its sweetness for itself - all it has is at the disposal of the branches. As it is the parent, so it is the servant of the branches. And Jesus, to whom we owe our life, how completely does He give Himself for us and to us: "The glory Thou gavest me, I have given them"; "He that believeth in me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works shall he do." All His fullness and all His riches are for thee, O believer; for the vine does not live for itself, keeps nothing for itself, but exists only for the branches. All that Jesus is in heaven, He is for us: He has no interest there separate from ours; as our representative He stands before the Father.

And all the branch possesses belongs to the vine. The branch does not exist for itself, but to bear fruit that can proclaim the excellence of the vine: it has no reason of existence except to be of service to the vine. Glorious image of the calling of the believer, and the entireness of his consecration to the service of his Lord. As Jesus gives Himself so wholly over to him, he feels himself urged to be wholly his Lord's. Every power of his being, every moment of his life, every thought and feeling, belong to Jesus, that from Him and for Him he may bring forth fruit. As he realizes what the vine is to the branch, and what the branch is meant to be to the vine, he feels that he has but one thing to think of and to live for, and that is, the will, the glory, the work, the kingdom of his blessed Lord - the bringing forth of fruit to the glory of His name.

The parable teaches us the object of the union. The branches are for fruit and fruit alone. "Every branch that beareth not fruit He taketh away." The branch needs leaves for the maintenance of its own life, and the perfection of its fruit: the fruit itself it bears to give away to those around. As the believer enters into his calling as a branch, he sees that he has to forget himself, and to live entirely for his fellowmen. To love them, to seek for them, and to save them, Jesus came: for this every branch on the Vine has to live as much as the Vine itself. It is for fruit, much fruit, that the Father has made us one with Jesus.

Wondrous parable of the Vine - unveiling the mysteries of the Divine love, of the heavenly life, of the world of Spirit - how little have I understood thee! Jesus the living Vine in heaven, and I the living branch on earth! How little have I understood how great my need, but also how perfect my claim, to all His fullness! How little understood, how great His need, but also how perfect His claim, to my emptiness! Let me, in its beautiful light, study the wondrous union between Jesus and His people, until it becomes to me the guide into full communion with my beloved Lord. Let me listen and believe, until my whole being cries out, "Jesus is indeed to me the True Vine, bearing me, nourishing me, supplying me, using me, and filling me to the full to make me bring forth fruit abundantly." Then shall I not fear to say, "I am indeed a branch to Jesus, the True Vine, abiding in Him, resting on Him, waiting for Him, serving Him, and living only that through me, too, He may show forth the riches of His grace, and give His fruit to a perishing world."

It is when we try thus to understand the meaning of the parable, that the blessed command spoken in connection with it will come home to us in its true power. The thought of what the vine is to the branch, and Jesus to the believer, will give new force to the words, "Abide in me!" It will be as if He says, "Think, soul, how completely I belong to thee. I have joined myself inseparably to thee; all the fulness and fatness of the Vine are thine in very deed. Now thou once art in me, be assured that all I have is wholly thine. It is my interest and my honour to have thee a fruitful branch; only Abide in me. Thou art weak, but I am strong; thou art poor, but I am rich. Only abide in me; yield thyself wholly to my teaching and rule; simply trust my love, my grace, my promises. Only believe; I am wholly thine; I am the Vine, thou art the branch. Abide in me.

What sayest thou, O my soul? Shall I longer hesitate, or withhold consent? Or shall I not, instead of only thinking how hard and how difficult it is to live like a branch of the True Vine, because I thought of it as something I had to accomplish - shall I not now begin to look upon it as the most blessed and joyful thing under heaven? Shall I not believe that, now I once am in Him, He Himself will keep me and enable me to abide? On my part, abiding is nothing but the acceptance of my position, the consent to be kept there, the surrender of faith to the strong Vine still to hold the feeble branch. Yes, I will, I do abide in Thee, blessed Lord Jesus.

O Saviour, how unspeakable is Thy love! "Such knowledge is too wonderful for me: it is high, I cannot attain unto it." I can only yield myself to Thy love with the prayer that, day by day, Thou wouldest unfold to me somewhat of its precious mysteries, and so encourage and strengthen Thy loving disciple to do what his heart longs to do indeed - ever, only, wholly to abide in Thee.

While I feel all of this is truly inspiring, what really aroused my sense of conviction of falling short was the paragraph about the fruit. It is so counter to our nature of the Flesh to live for anything other than ourselves. Yet our new nature of the Spirit not only calls us to live for others but also provides the means to do so through Jesus. Robert Mulholland made the same point in The Deeper Journey as he developed the theme that "we are to live in God for the world".

The parable teaches us the object of the union. The branches are for fruit and fruit alone. "Every branch that beareth not fruit He taketh away." The branch needs leaves for the maintenance of its own life, and the perfection of its fruit: the fruit itself it bears to give away to those around. As the believer enters into his calling as a branch, he sees that he has to forget himself, and to live entirely for his fellowmen. To love them, to seek for them, and to save them, Jesus came: for this every branch on the Vine has to live as much as the Vine itself. It is for fruit, much fruit, that the Father has made us one with Jesus.

Got fruit?

The Bush Plan

Bob Casey, Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania, was asked recently what he would do differently than Rick Santorum to promote success in Iraq. He replied that the first thing would be to get rid of Don Rumsfeld. Firing a cabinet secretary, of course, is not within the power of a senator so it's not something that distinguishes Mr. Casey from Mr. Santorum. Even so, it appears that Mr. Casey has no recommendations for Iraq that differ substantially from what the Bush administration is already doing there, unless he believes we should withdraw from Iraq immediately. This, however, he does not say, so his plan appears to be essentially to do what Bush is already doing, except do it better, whatever that means.

What is the Bush policy for Iraq? Do the Bush people really have a strategy? I think they do, but for whatever reason they're not very interested in articulating it. Their plan, as best as I can tell, involves the following four elements:

1. Hold the lid on in Baghdad for the time being. Most of the violence that is occurring in Iraq is occurring in and around Baghdad. There are two reasons for this. The coalition has been effective in suppressing the insurgency in much of the rest of the country, and second, the insurgency knows that if they're going to break the will of the American people they have to strike where the American media are.

2. Gradually secure the border (would that that were part of their domestic plan as well). As long as the insurgents are able to be resupplied across the Iranian and Syrian borders destabilization efforts by those neighbors will continue. The infiltration of men and material has to be stopped, but this takes time. Once the border is secured the insurgency in Baghdad will begin to suffocate.

3. Continue to build and protect the infrastructure of the country so that the people have a sense of being better off than they were under Saddam. This means, in addition to building schools, hospitals, electrical grids, etc., supporting the government of Iraq until it is strong enough to withstand the sundry threats to its existence.

4. In the long-term Syria and Iran must be dealt with. Until they are they will continue to make the lives of the Iraqis as hellish as they possibly can.

That's what I surmise the Bush plan to be, and I think that's what they're doing. Indeed, what else could they do short of nuking the entire country? Certainly none of the Democrats have offered an alternative course of action that makes any sense. I just wish the administration had a better PR program to explain their goals to the American people, and I wish they had more troops there to help expedite #1 and #2.

If the Democrats win the House and/or Senate on Tuesday it will, of course, be very much more difficult, if not impossible, to achieve these objectives, and, if they're rendered unattainable, the only recourse will be to withdraw. Withdrawal, however, would precipitate an unmitigated human disaster. The reasons why this would be so are explained here.

Israel Will Go To War Again. Soon.

John Keegan predicts in The Telegraph U.K. that before the year is out Israel will again be at war with Hezbollah, and this time it will be for keeps.

There will soon be another war in the Middle East, this time a renewal of the conflict between the Israel Defence Force (IDF) and Hizbollah. The conflict is inevitable and unavoidable. It will come about because Israel cannot tolerate the rebuilding of Hizbollah's fortified zone in south Lebanon, from which last year it launched its missile bombardment of northern Israel.

Hizbollah has now reconstructed the fortified zone and is replenishing its stocks of missiles there. Hamas is also creating a fortified zone in the Gaza Strip and building up its stocks of missiles. Israel, therefore, faces missile attack on two fronts. When the Israel general staff decides the threat has become intolerable, it will strike.

What happened in south Lebanon earlier this year has been widely misunderstood, largely because the anti-Israel bias in the international media led to the situation being misreported as an Israeli defeat.

It was no such thing. It was certainly an Israeli setback, but the idea that the IDF had suddenly lost its historic superiority over its Arab enemies and that they had acquired military qualities that had hitherto eluded them was quite false. Hizbollah suffered heavy losses in the fighting, perhaps as many as 1,000 killed out of its strength of up to 5,000 and it is only just now recovering.

Read why Keegan thinks a return to fighting is inevitable and imminent at the link.

It Must Stop Now

Everyone has by now heard of the allegations against Ted Haggard, pastor of New Life Church and president of the National Association of Evangelicals. It appears that the charges are true although the person who made them has nevertheless failed a polygraph test.

Whatever the case, if they are found to be factually correct then Mr. Haggard has done immeasurable harm to his family, his church, and to Christians everywhere. By maintaining a secret lifestyle steeped in sleaze, perversion, and illegal behavior he has brought discredit to everyone who calls him or herself a Christian and has done irreparable harm to the cause of keeping marriage a union of one man and one woman.

Much will be written about Mr. Haggard's hypocrisy in the days ahead but at this point the most important thing to be said, in my view, is that Christian leaders need to understand that if they are living lives that are a reproach to the principles they claim to cherish they must step down from their position of authority immediately. This goes for pastors and priests, parachurch ministry leaders, anyone, in fact, whose life is disgracing the name and body of Christ.

None of us is perfect. All of us have faults, but when our faults are such as to bring derision upon the Church we claim to love and serve, when our appetites are so undisciplined that we give the gospel of Christ a kick to the solar plexus, or worse, when we are found out, we have a moral obligation to step down from our pedestals until we get ourselves straightened out whether our derelictions have been discovered or not.

The image of the Church has suffered severely from the adulteries of the Jimmy Swaggarts and Jim Bakkers, and the pederastic abuses of dozens of priests over the last couple of decades. It has to stop, there has to be zero tolerance of such behavior among our putative leaders, and those who compromise the witness of the Church by living lives of debauchery while maintaining a facade of piety need to recognize the serious harm they are doing and need to withdraw themselves as models of Christian man and womanhood. Now.

Rick Santorum, Redux

We ran the following post at the end of last month, but, with the election coming up on Tuesday, I thought it important to have it on the current page. This is an important article, and I encourage readers who agree with that assessment to link it to their friends and family.

The New York Times has a column by David Brooks that a friend passed along and which one wishes every Pennsylvanian, indeed every American, would read. The complete essay follows:

Every poll suggests that Rick Santorum will lose his race to return to the U.S. Senate. That's probably good news in Pennsylvania's bobo suburbs, where folks regard Santorum as an ideological misfit and a social blight. But it's certainly bad for poor people around the world.

For there has been at least one constant in Washington over the past 12 years: almost every time a serious piece of antipoverty legislation surfaces in Congress, Rick Santorum is there playing a leadership role.

In the mid-1990s, he was a floor manager for welfare reform, the most successful piece of domestic legislation of the past 10 years. He then helped found the Renewal Alliance to help charitable groups with funding and parents with flextime legislation.

More recently, he has pushed through a stream of legislation to help the underprivileged, often with Democratic partners. With Dick Durbin and Joe Biden, Santorum has sponsored a series of laws to fight global AIDS and offer third world debt relief. With Chuck Schumer and Harold Ford, he's pushed to offer savings accounts to children from low-income families. With John Kerry, he's proposed homeownership tax credits. With Chris Dodd, he backed legislation authorizing $860 million for autism research. With Joe Lieberman he pushed legislation to reward savings by low-income families.

In addition, he's issued a torrent of proposals, many of which have become law: efforts to fight tuberculosis; to provide assistance to orphans and vulnerable children in developing countries; to provide housing for people with AIDS; to increase funding for Social Services Block Grants and organizations like Healthy Start and the Children's Aid Society; to finance community health centers; to combat genocide in Sudan.

I could fill this column, if not this entire page, with a list of ideas, proposals and laws Santorum has poured out over the past dozen years. It's hard to think of another politician who has been so active and so productive on these issues.

Like many people who admire his output, I disagree with Santorum on key matters like immigration, abortion, gay marriage. I'm often put off by his unnecessarily slashing style and his culture war rhetoric.

But government is ultimately not about the theater or the light shows of public controversy, it's about legislation and results. And the substance of Santorum's work is impressive. Bono, who has worked closely with him over the years, got it right: "I would suggest that Rick Santorum has a kind of Tourette's disease; he will always say the most unpopular thing. But on our issues, he has been a defender of the most vulnerable."

Santorum doesn't have the jocular manner of most politicians. His colleagues' eyes can glaze over as he lectures them on the need to, say, devote a week of Senate floor time to poverty. He's not the most social member of the club. Many politicians praise family values and seem to spend as little time as possible with their own families, but Santorum is at home almost constantly. And there is sometimes a humorlessness to his missionary zeal.

But no one can doubt his rigor. Jonathan Rauch of The National Journal wrote the smartest review of Santorum's book, "It Takes a Family." Rauch noted that while Goldwaterite conservatives see the individual as the essential unit of society, Santorum sees the family as the essential unit.

Rauch observed, "Where Goldwater denounced collectivism as the enemy of the individual, Santorum denounces individualism as the enemy of the family." That belief has led Santorum in interesting and sometimes problematical directions, but the argument itself is a serious one. His discussion of the philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, for example, is as sophisticated as anything in Barack Obama's recent book. If Santorum were pro-choice, he'd be a media star and a campus hero.

The bottom line is this: If serious antipoverty work is going to be done, it's going to emerge from a coalition of liberals and religious conservatives. Without Santorum, that's less likely to happen. If senators are going to be honestly appraised, it's going to require commentators who can look beyond the theater of public controversy and at least pretend to care about actual legislation. Santorum has never gotten a fair shake from the media.

And so after Election Day, the underprivileged will probably have lost one of their least cuddly but most effective champions.

Santorum is a wonderful example of "compassionate conservatism". He embodies so much of what voters claim they want their politicians to be, but he's about to fall victim to an adversary media and an uninformed public. The media doesn't seem to care about qualifications or accomplishments. They care about only three things: Party label, the candidate's stance on abortion, and his stance on the war.

Thus Santorum has three strikes against him and, short of a surge in Republican turnout, he will be replaced next week by a man, Bob Casey, whose only qualifications for the office seem to be that he has the right party affiliation, the right stance on getting out of Iraq, and his daddy was a popular governor. Santorum will lose the election, if he does, largely because the public simply hasn't taken the trouble to compare him with his opponent.

It's the sort of thing that sours people on American politics.

Mr. Compassionate Conservatism

OpinionJournal has a nice feature piece on former Bush speechwriter David Gerson who talks about his vision of compassionate conservatism, national polarization, foreign policy and other matters. It's an interesting article.

Here he is, for instance, on freedom and democracy:

Must there be a "democratic culture" before one can have a democracy? Mr. Gerson says that democracy took hold despite Confucianism in Asia, Catholicism in southern Europe and Orthodoxy in Eastern Europe. "All of these," Mr. Gerson notes, "were regarded as cultural impediments to democratic progress. In fact our ideals, the ideals of freedom, turned out to be more appealing than we thought." Mr. Gerson is confident that the same will prove true in Iraq and Afghanistan. "I have a deep belief that liberty improves human life. . . . People eventually find that to be true, but that doesn't mean they immediately find it to be true."

Mr. Gerson looks back on the last few years of trying to spread freedom as "a time of exhausting international engagement on a variety of fronts." And he doesn't see it ending any time soon. But if the war on terror is really going to occupy our focus for the foreseeable future, why should Republicans run on improving education and ending poverty? Did 9/11 spell the end of compassionate conservatism?

Mr. Gerson believes the answer is no; the administration's foreign policy, he says, represents an expansion of the philosophy of compassionate conservatism. Bringing freedom and democracy to other parts of the globe has required military action, but Mr. Gerson is annoyed by Mr. Bush's critics on the left who say the president only uses force to solve global problems. "The administration's increases in foreign assistance have percentage-wise been the largest since the Marshall Plan," he notes.

Read the rest of the column at the link.

The Boatman Is Closing In

Strategy Page discusses the implications of the recent strike on a terrorist training facility in Pakistan that killed over 80 Taliban.

Bill Roggio at The Fourth Rail also has several posts up on the strike (Go here and scroll down for other posts).

It appears that the sand is just about through the hour glass for al Qaeda's #2 guy Ayman al-Zawahiri. He's been spotted twice now and barely escaped both times. The intelligence on him must be pretty good, and like Abu al-Zarqawi, who managed to elude capture or death several times before being sent to his 72 virgins by a laser guided munition last summer, al-Zawahiri must realize that the boatman waiting to ferry his blood-drenched soul across the river Styx is breathing heavily down his neck.

Winning Through Racial Bigotry

News comes that black Democratic senator Barack Obama was derided this week by a conservative journal as a "lawn jockey". This is the sort of racist bilge we've come to expect of conservatives, I suppose. They can't defeat black candidates by engaging their ideas so they resort to racial epithets to disparage and dehumanize them.

What? You say you hadn't heard anything about this? You say that if it were true it'd be all over the media and all the anti-racist talking heads would be pontificating about how this kind of reprehensible talk has no place in our shared culture?

Well, maybe the media silence about the story has something to do with the fact that I apparently got the details confused. It wasn't a conservative journal that employed the insult, it was the very liberal Esquire magazine, and it wasn't the Democrat Barack Obama who was the object of the aspersion it was Republican senatorial candidate Michael Steele of Maryland. Steele is the black Lieutenant governor of Maryland who has suffered racist contumely from Democrats throughout his campaign for the Senate.

It's not just Steele, of course, who gets subjected to racial affronts by the "liberal" Left. Any black conservative can point to numerous instances of humiliations suffered at the hands of those who tout themselves as champions of racial comity and harmony. Clarence Thomas, Condaleeza Rice, Ken Blackwell, Alan Keyes, J.C. Watts, LaShawn Barber, Shelby Steele, Ward Connerly, Stephen Carter, and many others have all had to bear the slings and arrows of outrageous bigotry from the "anti-racist" Left.

It's past time that the media called them on their hypocrisy and their bigotry. See Michelle for more on the story.

Teaching Values at U of Pennsylvania

A lot of people wonder about the sense and sanity of our elite university administrators. They just don't seem to be living in the real world, some say. They're much too Politically Correct others aver. We think this is all a bunch of overwrought hooey, actually. We believe our university administrators are the best and brightest among us, dedicated to teaching our young to value those things which conduce to strong character like, say, peace and the intrinsic worth of human life.

Take Amy Gutmann, for example. She's the president of the University of Pennsylvania and demands high standards of deportment at Penn. She's the fairy queen on the right in the photo below. The picture was taken at a campus Halloween event, and she's shown in the company of an Islamic student dressed as a, uh, homicide bomber. Not that Ms Gutmann condones such things, you understand. You can tell by the stern expression on her face that she feels the Halloween jihadi is exhibiting very bad taste and insensitivity. You can tell by her angry look that she has no tolerance for those who appear to be glorifying murder. You can tell that she's outraged to be photographed with someone posing as a killer of women, children and American soldiers.

At least you can tell these things if you have a very good imagination. Otherwise, you might mistakenly think she's rather enjoying the company of this moral nitwit.

See Michelle for details.

Endorsing the Democrats

It's hard to believe that this article is not a spoof, but if it's indeed genuine, and it evidently is, it at the very least constitutes an endorsement the Democrats would undoubtedly rather not have. The article is the product of a number of interviews with various Palestinian terrorist leaders by Aaron Klein of World Net Daily. In the interviews these jihadists urge Americans to vote for Democrats next week. They as much as say that a victory for the Democrats will be a victory for jihad:

Everybody has an opinion about next Tuesday's midterm congressional election in the U.S. - including senior terrorist leaders interviewed by WND who say they hope Americans sweep the Democrats into power because of the party's position on withdrawing from Iraq, a move, as they see it, that ensures victory for the worldwide Islamic resistance.

The terrorists told WorldNetDaily an electoral win for the Democrats would prove to them Americans are "tired."

They rejected statements from some prominent Democrats in the U.S. that a withdrawal from Iraq would end the insurgency, explaining an evacuation would prove resistance works and would compel jihadists to continue fighting until America is destroyed.

They said a withdrawal would also embolden their own terror groups to enhance "resistance" against Israel.

"Of course Americans should vote Democrat," Jihad Jaara, a senior member of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades terror group and the infamous leader of the 2002 siege of Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity, told WND.

"This is why American Muslims will support the Democrats, because there is an atmosphere in America that encourages those who want to withdraw from Iraq. It is time that the American people support those who want to take them out of this Iraqi mud," said Jaara, speaking to WND from exile in Ireland, where he was sent as part of an internationally brokered deal that ended the church siege.

It gets better (or worse, depending upon your point of view). Read the rest of the article at the link.

Here's what the Islamic terrorists' reaction was to Nancy Pelosi's suggestion that we can end the insurgency in Iraq by pulling out:

WND read Pelosi's remarks to the terror leaders, who unanimously rejected her contention an American withdrawal would end the insurgency.

Islamic Jihad's Saadi, laughing, stated, "There is no chance that the resistance will stop."

He said an American withdrawal from Iraq would "prove the resistance is the most important tool and that this tool works. The victory of the Iraqi revolution will mark an important step in the history of the region and in the attitude regarding the United States."

Jihad Jaara said an American withdrawal would "mark the beginning of the collapse of this tyrant empire (America)."

"Therefore, a victory in Iraq would be a greater defeat for America than in Vietnam."

Jaara said vacating Iraq would also "reinforce Palestinian resistance organizations, especially from the moral point of view. But we also learn from these (insurgency) movements militarily. We look and learn from them."

Hamas' Abu Abdullah argued a withdrawal from Iraq would "convince those among the Palestinians who still have doubts in the efficiency of the resistance."

"The victory of the resistance in Iraq would prove once more that when the will and the faith are applied victory is not only a slogan. We saw that in Lebanon (during Israel's confrontation against Hezbollah there in July and August); we saw it in Gaza (after Israel withdrew from the territory last summer) and we will see it everywhere there is occupation," Abdullah said.

It is disturbing to think that if the Democrats win 15 House seats next Tuesday Nancy Pelosi will be Speaker of the House and third in line for the Presidency.

I wonder if the Republican ad companies are not right now turning this news report into television ads to run this weekend. If they're not they sure should be.

Hazleton's Attempt to Save Itself

How many American towns will follow the example of Hazleton, PA in passing laws which make it difficult for illegal aliens to live there? I suspect that if the courts uphold the Hazleton regulations a lot of other towns across the nation will follow suit. This is unfortunate for legal immigrants whose livelihoods depend upon a growing ethnic community, but if these towns are going to save themselves from ruin, both financial and cultural, measures like those taken in Hazleton really are necessary.

Some may disagree with this assessment, of course, but I urge anyone who does disagree to read not only the above-linked article but, more importantly, to also read Pat Buchanan's excellent book State of Emergency.

Five Crucial Differences

On Tuesday voters across the country will pull levers and poke computer screens to determine what sort of future we wish for our children. There's much at stake, and sometimes the clashing ads and unctuous voices make it difficult to know who the best person is to send to Washington to represent our views and concerns. One thing that's helpful in clearing up the confusion is that despite many loud laments to the contrary, the differences between the parties is perhaps more stark today than it has ever been. There are important matters at issue whose outcome will be very different depending upon whether it is Democrats or Republicans which control the congress.

The following is an outline of how I see the differences between the two parties on five of the most important of those issues:

War on Terror: The Democrats wish to abolish or weaken the Patriot act and the various terrorist surveillance programs initiated by the Bush administration. They want to treat terrorism as a police, rather than as a military, matter. They want to give terrorist detainees the same rights American citizens get in a court of law, including the provision of a lawyer, at taxpayer expense, to each suspected enemy combatant.

Republicans tend to believe that we must do everything legal to make it impossible for terrorists to strike us again here at home, and that terrorists should not have the same legal rights as foreign soldiers, much less American citizens.

War in Iraq: To the extent that the Democrats have a coherent policy on Iraq it is to get out immediately, if not sooner. Republicans see an early pullout as opening the sluice gates to disaster.

Taxes: Democrats are eager to raise taxes by rescinding the Bush tax cuts of the last few years. Republicans believe that people should be allowed to keep as much of what they earn as possible. They believe that the more money we have the more we'll spend, the more we spend the more jobs that will be created and the more total tax revenue that will ultimately flow back to the government. The Bush tax cuts are seen by Republicans as the reason why unemployment is currently down to near record lows and the stock market is up to record highs.

Illegal Immigration: The differences on this issue aren't quite as clear, but generally Democrats tend to favor open borders with Mexico and amnesty for illegals. Republicans tend to favor stopping the flow of illegals by increasing border patrols, technology and by building a fence. Even so, there are some Republicans who also favor open borders and some Democrats who oppose them. Both of these are minorities in their parties, however.

Life Issues/Supreme Court: Democrats almost universally favor abortion rights and will block the nomination of federal judges and Supreme Court justices they deem likely to be unsympathetic to the pro-choice cause. They tend to take a very flexible view of the constitution, interpreting it to mean whatever they think it should mean. Republicans believe that judges and justices should rule according to what the constitution actually says, and they don't think the constitution contains anywhere in it a right to abortion or a right to gay marriage.

Ten Reasons For Keeping Them in Office

NewsMax offers ten reasons for keeping the Republicans in Washington:

Reason #1. The economy is kicking butt. It is robust, vibrant, strong and growing. In the 36 months since the Bush tax cuts ended the recession that began under President Clinton, the economy has experienced astonishing growth. Over the first half of this year, our economy grew at a strong 4.1 percent annual rate, faster than any other major industrialized nation. This strong economic activity has generated historic revenue growth that has shrunk the deficit. A continued commitment to spending restraint has also contributed to deficit reduction.

Reason #2. Unemployment is almost nil for a major economy, and is verging on full employment. Recently, jobless claims fell to the lowest level in 10 weeks. Employment increased in 48 states over the past 12 months ending in August. Our economy has now added jobs for 37 straight months.

Reason #3. The Dow is hitting record highs. In the past few days, the Dow climbed above 12,000 for the first time in the history of the stock market, thus increasing the value of countless pension and 401(k) that funds many Americans rely on for their retirement years.

Reason #4. Wages have risen dramatically. According to the Washington Post, demand for labor helped drive workers' average hourly wages, not including those of most managers, up to $16.84 last month -- a 4 percent increase from September 2005, the fastest wage growth in more than five years. Nominal wage growth has been 4.1 percent so far this year. This is better or comparable to its 1990s peaks. Over the first half of 2006, employee compensation per hour grew at a 6.3 percent annual rate adjusted for inflation. Real after-tax income has risen a whopping 15 percent since January 2001. Real after-tax income per person has risen by 9 percent since January 2001.

Reason #5. Gas prices have plunged. According to the Associated Press, the price of gasoline has fallen to its lowest level in more than 10 months. The federal Energy Information Administration said Monday that U.S. motorists paid $2.21 a gallon on average for regular grade last week, a decrease of 1.8 cents from the previous week. Pump prices are now 40 cents lower than a year ago and have plummeted by more than 80 cents a gallon since the start of August. The previous 2006 low for gasoline was set in the first week of January, when pump prices averaged $2.238. In the week ending Dec. 5, 2005, prices averaged $2.19. Today, gasoline can be found for less than $2 a gallon in many parts of the country.

Reason #6. Since 9/11, no terrorist attacks have occurred on U.S. soil. Since 9/11 the U.S. has not been attacked by terrorists thanks to such programs as the administration's monitoring of communications between al-Qaida operatives overseas and their agents in the U.S. and the monitoring of the international movement of terrorist funds -- both measure bitterly opposed by Democrats.

Reason #7. Productivity is surging and has grown by a strong 2.5 percent over the past four quarters, well ahead of the average productivity growth in the last 30 years. Strong productivity growth helps lead to the growth of the Gross Domestic Product, higher real wages, and stronger corporate profits.

Reason #8. The Prescription Drug Program is working. Despite dire predictions that most seniors would refrain from signing up to the new Medicare prescription benefits program, fully 75 percent of all those on Medicare have enrolled, and the overwhelming majority say they are happy with the program.

Reason #9. Bush has kept his promise of naming conservative judges. He has named two conservative justices to the Supreme Court, Chief Justice John G. Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito. In addition, he has named conservative justices who are devoted to the Constitution as it is written and not as activist liberal judges think it means. The strong likelihood that one or more justices will retire from the Supreme Court makes it mandatory for the Republicans to hold the Senate and have a chance to name new conservative justices.

Reason #10. The deficit has been cut in half three years ahead of the president's 2009 goal, with the 2006 fiscal year budget deficit down to $248 billion. The tax cuts have stimulated the economy and are working.

In contrast to this stunning record of real achievement, the Democrats seem reluctant to offer any clear plan for how they would improve the state of the nation or make us safer. Their campaign strategy has essentially been one of rope-a-dope -- bobbing and weaving on the issues with every now and then a wild roundhouse swing at Republicans based on Mark Foley's salacious e-mails to House pages.

For some unfathomable reason, however, the polls show that a lot of Americans appear to have bought the Dems' speak-no-ideas strategy and are intending to vote for Democratic candidates on November 7th.

Why?

Five Reasons For Optimism

Time reporter Mike Allen lists five reasons why Republican leaders are optimistic about Tuesday even though the polls tell them they shouldn't be:

1) No Republican is being taken by surprise, unlike many Democrats in 1994. Shortly after Bush's reelection, White House and Republican National Committee officials began working to convince House members that the formidable reelection record for incumbents (since 1996, 97.5 percent) was not something they could take for granted. "What we attempted to do last year," said one of these officials, "was to go out of our way to say to people: 'You face a potential of a race. In order to win as an incumbent, you better have a plan,' " including an intensive focus on voter registration, a message plan that would unfold in phases, and a ground organization that was operating in a measurable, quantifiable way. One official involved in the process said Republican officials deliberately "scared" lawmakers, telling them: "You face a very tough road. You better be ready."

2) Absentee ballot requests and returns, closely tracked by the party, are meeting or exceeding past levels for Republicans in key states and districts. Republican officials say White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove and party operatives are scrutinizing this data with the same intensity that they followed metrics like voter registration earlier in the cycle. For at least 68 races, they have been getting reports once a week on the number of voters registered, phone calls completed and doors knocked on. Now, they're getting a second report on the number of absentee ballots requested, absentee ballots returned and early votes cast. "We can look at that data flow and make an assumption about what's going on and plotting it out," a Republican official said.

3) When the national parties, national campaign committees, state "victory" committee accounts and competitive campaigns are added up, Republicans maintained a substantial financial advantage over Democrats at the last filing period. "We didn't look on it as one pot," said one official involved in the process. "We looked upon it as four pots, with synergy available through all four."

4) Republicans say the district-by-district playing field favors them in several structural ways not reflected in national polls. Here is their thinking, starting with statistics from the President's 2004 race against John F. Kerry: "There are 41 districts held by a Democrat that Bush carried, and 14 seats held by Republican that Kerry carried, so we're fighting on better turf. You see it in the open seats, where Bush carried 18 of the Republican open seats and Kerry carried two. So we're fighting on better turf."

5) The get-out-the-vote machine designed by Rove and now-Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman in 2001 was dubbed the "72-hour" program, but officials say that's quite a misnomer and that it's really a 17-week or even two-year program. "In Ohio, we are making more phone calls this year than we made two years ago," said an official involved in the process. "Now, that's not the case necessarily in Virginia, which was not a battleground state. You have to build that. In other places, we built that and built it early."

Polls can give a skewed picture, to be sure, because they really can't measure how many voters will turn out to vote. If one party leads another in the polls but winds up on election day trailing in voter turnout, the poll figure affords little consolation. The Republican hope is that people who will pull the lever for Republicans will turn out in massive numbers on November 7th. If they do, then all those discouraging poll results showing a Democratic sweep of Congress will not have meant a thing.

Stuck in Iraq

Senator Kerry's infelicitous remark on Monday implying that American troops are the intellectual dregs of our society who wind up "stuck in Iraq" elicited this reply from some of the guys to whom he referred:

Rick Santorum

The New York Times has a column by David Brooks that a friend passed along and which one wishes every Pennsylvanian, indeed every American, would read. The complete essay follows:

Every poll suggests that Rick Santorum will lose his race to return to the U.S. Senate. That's probably good news in Pennsylvania's bobo suburbs, where folks regard Santorum as an ideological misfit and a social blight. But it's certainly bad for poor people around the world.

For there has been at least one constant in Washington over the past 12 years: almost every time a serious piece of antipoverty legislation surfaces in Congress, Rick Santorum is there playing a leadership role.

In the mid-1990s, he was a floor manager for welfare reform, the most successful piece of domestic legislation of the past 10 years. He then helped found the Renewal Alliance to help charitable groups with funding and parents with flextime legislation.

More recently, he has pushed through a stream of legislation to help the underprivileged, often with Democratic partners. With Dick Durbin and Joe Biden, Santorum has sponsored a series of laws to fight global AIDS and offer third world debt relief. With Chuck Schumer and Harold Ford, he's pushed to offer savings accounts to children from low-income families. With John Kerry, he's proposed homeownership tax credits. With Chris Dodd, he backed legislation authorizing $860 million for autism research. With Joe Lieberman he pushed legislation to reward savings by low-income families.

In addition, he's issued a torrent of proposals, many of which have become law: efforts to fight tuberculosis; to provide assistance to orphans and vulnerable children in developing countries; to provide housing for people with AIDS; to increase funding for Social Services Block Grants and organizations like Healthy Start and the Children's Aid Society; to finance community health centers; to combat genocide in Sudan.

I could fill this column, if not this entire page, with a list of ideas, proposals and laws Santorum has poured out over the past dozen years. It's hard to think of another politician who has been so active and so productive on these issues.

Like many people who admire his output, I disagree with Santorum on key matters like immigration, abortion, gay marriage. I'm often put off by his unnecessarily slashing style and his culture war rhetoric.

But government is ultimately not about the theater or the light shows of public controversy, it's about legislation and results. And the substance of Santorum's work is impressive. Bono, who has worked closely with him over the years, got it right: "I would suggest that Rick Santorum has a kind of Tourette's disease; he will always say the most unpopular thing. But on our issues, he has been a defender of the most vulnerable."

Santorum doesn't have the jocular manner of most politicians. His colleagues' eyes can glaze over as he lectures them on the need to, say, devote a week of Senate floor time to poverty. He's not the most social member of the club. Many politicians praise family values and seem to spend as little time as possible with their own families, but Santorum is at home almost constantly. And there is sometimes a humorlessness to his missionary zeal.

But no one can doubt his rigor. Jonathan Rauch of The National Journal wrote the smartest review of Santorum's book, "It Takes a Family." Rauch noted that while Goldwaterite conservatives see the individual as the essential unit of society, Santorum sees the family as the essential unit.

Rauch observed, "Where Goldwater denounced collectivism as the enemy of the individual, Santorum denounces individualism as the enemy of the family." That belief has led Santorum in interesting and sometimes problematical directions, but the argument itself is a serious one. His discussion of the philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, for example, is as sophisticated as anything in Barack Obama's recent book. If Santorum were pro-choice, he'd be a media star and a campus hero.

The bottom line is this: If serious antipoverty work is going to be done, it's going to emerge from a coalition of liberals and religious conservatives. Without Santorum, that's less likely to happen. If senators are going to be honestly appraised, it's going to require commentators who can look beyond the theater of public controversy and at least pretend to care about actual legislation. Santorum has never gotten a fair shake from the media.

And so after Election Day, the underprivileged will probably have lost one of their least cuddly but most effective champions.

Santorum is a wonderful example of "compassionate conservatism". He embodies so much of what voters claim they want their politicians to be, but he's about to fall victim to an adversary media and an uninformed public. The media doesn't care about qualifications or accomplishments but cares only about three things: Party label, the candidate's stance on abortion, and his stance on the war.

Thus Santorum has three strikes against him and, short of a surge in Republican turnout, he will be replaced next week by a man, Bob Casey, whose only qualifications for the office seem to be that he has the right party affiliation, the right stance on getting out of Iraq, and his daddy was a popular governor. Santorum will lose the election, if he does, largely because the public simply hasn't taken the trouble to compare him with his opponent. It's the sort of thing that sours people on American politics.

The Milk of Human Kindness

Mike Adams reports on an abortive confrontation with uber-Darwinian P.Z. Myers at TownHall.com. Myers is widely known for his kind, gentle and irenic demeanor evidenced by this excerpt from his blog the day before Adams' lecture at Myers' university:

"Mike S. Adams, columnist for TownHall, Horowitzian shill, anti-feminist, creationist clown, homophobic bigot, warrior for free speech, professional racist, gun kook, academic-by-accident, beauty contest judge, and just generally contemptible far, far right-wing nutcase."

"I'm very disappointed in our students. We're far off the beaten track and we don't get that many speakers passing through our area, and they had to go exhibit the poor taste to invite this sorry sack of rethuglican excreta to our campus. Couldn't they have at least tried to find an intelligent conservative to bring out here? Why'd they have to scrape the bottom of the barrel for this guy? At least we're seeing our rather dismal right-wing campus rag's fading credibility implode with their sponsorship of such a low-wattage guest speaker."

Well, okay, maybe he's not exactly kind, but such qualities are relative among the victims of arrested development who travel in Prof. Myers' political circles. I mean it could have been worse. He could have called him a "Bush-lover".

Read how the confrontation between the two antagonists ended up at the link. Thanks to Uncommon Descent for the tip.

Feedback

A number of thoughtful responses to recent posts grace our Feedback page. Check them out.

Do They Want Us to Win?

Byron takes us to task on the Feedback page for oversimplifying a complex issue in Yes or No. In that post I wondered why people like Letterman seem unwilling to give a straight answer to the question of whether they want the U.S. to win in Iraq. Winning in Iraq means, of course, accomplishing our stated goals (What else could it mean?), and these from the beginning have been to establish a free nation based on democratic principles, human and civil rights, and a stable government free from the threat of terrorism.

I don't think the question is nearly as complicated as Byron does, but you can be the judge.

Naturalism is Intellectual Suicide

At a recent book signing for his new anti-religion rant The God Delusion (see here and here for our thoughts on the book), Richard Dawkins was asked by American Enterprise Institute's Joe Manzari how he could square his naturalism with taking credit for his book and blaming those who believe in religion for their choice to believe. After all, Manzari pointed out, if materialism is true then everything is subject to a machine-like, inescapable determinacy which renders praise and blame meaningless and inappropriate:

Manzari: Dr. Dawkins thank you for your comments. The thing I have appreciated most about your comments is your consistency in the things I've seen you've written. One of the areas that I wanted to ask you about, and the place where I think there is an inconsistency, and I hoped you would clarify, is that in what I've read you seem to take a position of a strong determinist who says that what we see around us is the product of physical laws playing themselves out; but on the other hand it would seem that you would do things like taking credit for writing this book and things like that. But it would seem, and this isn't to be funny, that the consistent position would be that necessarily the authoring of this book, from the initial conditions of the big bang, it was set that this would be the product of what we see today. I would take it that that would be the consistent position but I wanted to know what you thought about that.

Dawkins: The philosophical question of determinism is a very difficult question. It's not one I discuss in this book, indeed in any other book that I've ever talked about. Now an extreme determinist, as the questioner says, might say that everything we do, everything we think, everything that we write has been determined from the beginning of time in which case the very idea of taking credit for anything doesn't seem to make any sense. Now I don't actually know what I actually think about that, I haven't taken up a position about that, it's not part of my remit to talk about the philosophical issue of determinism. What I do know is that what it feels like to me, and I think to all of us, we don't feel determined. We feel like blaming people for what they do or giving people the credit for what they do. We feel like admiring people for what they do. None of us ever actually as a matter of fact says, "Oh well he couldn't help doing it, he was determined by his molecules." Maybe we should... I sometimes... Um... You probably remember many of you would have seen Fawlty Towers. The episode where Basil where his car won't start and he gives it fair warning, counts up to three, and then gets out of the car and picks up a tree branch and thrashes it within an edge of his life. Maybe that's what we all ought to... Maybe the way we laugh at Basil Fawlty, we ought to laugh in the same way at people who blame humans. I mean when we punish people for doing the most horrible murders, maybe the attitude we should take is "Oh they were just determined by their molecules." It's stupid to punish them. What we should do is say "This unit has a faulty motherboard which needs to be replaced." I can't bring myself to do that. I actually do respond in an emotional way and I blame people, I give people credit, or I might be more charitable and say this individual who has committed murders or child abuse of whatever it is was really abused in his own childhood. And so again I might take a ...

Manzari: But do you personally see that as an inconsistency in your views?

Dawkins: I sort of do. Yes. But it is an inconsistency that we sort of have to live with otherwise life would be intolerable. But it has nothing to do with my views on religion it is an entirely separate issue.

Nothing to do with his views on religion? It has everything to do with them. If determinism is true then his views on religion are based on what he has been caused to believe by the environmental and genetic factors that have shaped all of his beliefs since he was conceived. The truth of determinism is perhaps a factor in that belief, but it is only one factor among many, and his decision to oppose religion was not freely chosen by him but rather a decision which he could not escape.

This is the great dilemma of naturalism. If it is true it entails determinism, as Dawkins affirms, but if determinism is true it destroys intellectual and moral life. Someday perhaps naturalists like Dawkins will see the absolutely suicidal nature of their embrace of atheism.

Yes or No

Why do people on the Left have a hard time giving a straight yes or no answer to the question whether they want the U.S. to actually win in Iraq? Is it that they really don't know whether they do or not?

Do They Know What They're Getting?

My friend Byron promises me that I will enjoy this article by Andrew Ferguson at the Weekly Standard about James Webb. Webb is the unlikely Democratic challenger contesting Republican George Allen's Virginia senate seat in November. Byron is right about Ferguson having written a good article, and he does a nice job of showing how the Democrats in Virginia are swallowing an awful lot of principle in order to support Webb who is about as far right as a politician gets these days. Webb's only attraction for the Democrats is that although he is a hawk and a decorated Vietnam war hero he has been against the Iraq war from the beginning. Such a stance, in the eyes of Democrats, evidently covers a host of other sins which are conveniently papered over by the media.

But there's more to Webb than even Ferguson's piece brings to light. It all works together to make this Virginia race especially fun to watch. As I wrote to Byron:

Webb certainly is an anomaly, and it's amusing to watch the liberal networks try to dance around the problems he poses for the Democrat party. Not only are there problems such as were outlined in the WS article, but just when the media was blasting his opponent, George Allen, for displaying a Confederate flag in his office, it was discovered that Webb named his son after Robert E. Lee. Just when the media was delighting in Allen's use of the epithet macaca, it was revealed that Webb used to drive with his teenage buddies through Watts during the riot years yelling "nigger" at blacks and aiming toy guns at them to scare them witless. Just when the media were soaring in the throes of ecstasy recounting James Foley's disgusting e-correspondence with boys, they find out that Webb's novels are laced with disgusting allusions to pederastic sex and other forms of socially unacceptable sexual expression.

Even so, he's not a Republican, and so lots of people will vote for him despite the fact that they strongly disagree with him on almost everything he stands for except the Iraq war, ignoring the fact that he's probably a bigger hawk than anyone in the current administration.

Recommended Reading

If you happen to be looking for something to read for a spiritual shot in the arm, check out anything by Andrew Murray (1828-1917). If you're not, check it out anyway. Some background can be found here.

Murray was a prolific writer. I saw over 45 titles on a web site and I would suggest that any serious Christian's library is incomplete without at least one of them.

Recently a dear friend lent me Andrew Murray on Prayer which is actually a collection of six of his books. The first book in Andrew Murray on Prayer is titled Abide In Christ. It's divided into 31 chapters each one being like a mini-sermon, intended to be read one for each day of the month as a devotional. Here's chapter 3 of Abide in Christ, Trusting Him to Keep You.

"I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which I also am apprehended of Christ Jesus." - Phil. 3:12

More than one admits that it is a sacred duty and a blessed privilege to abide in Christ, but shrinks back continually before the question: Is it possible, a life of unbroken fellowship with the Saviour? Eminent Christians, to whom special opportunities of cultivating this grace have been granted, may attain to it; for the large majority of disciples, whose life, by a divine appointment, is so fully occupied with the affairs of this life, it can scarce be expected. The more they hear of this life, the deeper their sense of its glory and blessedness, and there is nothing they would not sacrifice to be made partakers of it. But they are too weak, too unfaithful - they never can attain to it.

Dear souls! how little they know that the abiding in Christ is just meant for the weak, and so beautifully suited to their feebleness. It is not the doing of some great thing, and does not demand that we first lead a very holy and devoted life. No, it is simply weakness entrusting itself to a Mighty One to be kept - the unfaithful one casting self on One who is altogether trustworthy and true. Abiding in Him is not a work that we have to do as the condition for enjoying His salvation, but a consenting to let Him do all for us, and in us, and through us. It is a work He does for us - the fruit and the power of His redeeming love. Our part is simply to yield, to trust, and to wait for what He has engaged to perform.

It is this quiet expectation and confidence, resting on the word of Christ that in Him there is an abiding place prepared, which is so sadly wanting among Christians. They scarce take the time or the trouble to realize that when He says "Abide IN ME," He offers Himself, the Keeper of Israel that slumbers not nor sleeps, with all His power and love, as the living home of the soul, where the mighty influences of His grace will be stronger to keep than all their feebleness to lead astray. The idea they have of grace is this - that their conversion and pardon are God's work, but that now, in gratitude to God, it is their work to live as Christians, and follow Jesus. There is always the thought of a work that has to be done, and even though they pray for help, still the work is theirs. They fail continually, and become hopeless; and the despondency only increases the helplessness. No, wandering one; as it was Jesus who drew you when He spake "Come," so it is Jesus who keeps you when He says "Abide." The grace to come and the grace to abide are alike from Him alone. That word Come, heard, meditated on, accepted, was the cord of love that drew you nigh; that word Abide is even so the band with which He holds you fast and binds you to Himself. Let the soul but take time to listen to the voice of Jesus. "In me," He says, "is thy place - in my almighty arms. It is I who love thee so, who speak Abide in me; surely thou canst trust me." The voice of Jesus entering and dwelling in the soul cannot but call for the response: "Yes, Saviour, in Thee I can, I will abide."

Abide in me: These words are no law of Moses, demanding from the sinful what they cannot perform. They are the command of love, which is ever only a promise in a different shape. Think of this until all feeling of burden and fear and despair pass away, and the first thought that comes as you hear of abiding in Jesus be one of bright and joyous hope: it is for me, I know I shall enjoy it. You are not under the law, with its inexorable Do, but under grace, with its blessed Believe what Christ will do for you. And if the question be asked, "But surely there is something for us to do?" the answer is, "Our doing and working are but the fruit of Christ's work in us." It is when the soul becomes utterly passive, looking and resting on what Christ is to do, that its energies are stirred to their highest activity, and that we work most effectually because we know that He works in us. It is as we see in that word IN ME the mighty energies of love reaching out after us to have us and to hold us, that all the strength of our will is roused to abide in Him.

This connection between Christ's work and our work is beautifully expressed in the words of Paul: "I follow after, if that I may apprehend that whereunto I also am apprehended of Christ Jesus." It was because he knew that the mighty and the faithful One had grasped him with the glorious purpose of making him one with Himself, that he did his utmost to grasp the glorious prize. The faith, the experience, the full assurance, "Christ hath apprehended me," gave him the courage and the strength to press on and apprehend that whereunto he was apprehended. Each new insight of the great end for which Christ had apprehended and was holding him, roused him afresh to aim at nothing less.

Paul's expression, and its application to the Christian life, can be best understood if we think of a father helping his child to mount the side of some steep precipice. The father stands above, and has taken the son by the hand to help him on. He points him to the spot on which he will help him to plant his feet, as he leaps upward. The leap would be too high and dangerous for the child alone; but the father's hand is his trust, and he leaps to get hold of the point for which his father has taken hold of him. It is the father's strength that secures him and lifts him up, and so urges him to use his utmost strength.

Such is the relation between Christ and you, O weak and trembling believer! Fix first your eyes on the whereunto for which He has apprehended you. It is nothing less than a life of abiding, unbroken fellowship with Himself to which He is seeking to lift you up. All that you have already received - pardon and peace, the Spirit and His grace - are but preliminary to this. And all that you see promised to you in the future - holiness and fruitfulness and glory everlasting - are but its natural outcome. Union with Himself, and so with the Father, is His highest object. Fix your eye on this, and gaze until it stand out before you clear and unmistakeable: Christ's aim is to have me abiding in Him.

And then let the second thought enter your heart: Unto this 1 am apprehended of Christ. His almighty power hath laid hold on me, and offers now to lift me up to where He would have me. Fix your eyes on Christ. Gaze on the love that beams in those eyes, and that asks whether you cannot trust Him, who sought and found and brought you nigh, now to keep you. Gaze on that arm of power, and say whether you have reason to be assured that He is indeed able to keep you abiding in Him.

And as you think of the spot whither He points - the blessed whereunto for which He apprehended you - and keep your gaze fixed on Himself, holding you and waiting to lift you up, O say, could you not this very day take the upward step, and rise to enter upon this blessed life of abiding in Christ? Yes, begin at once, and say, "O my Jesus, if Thou biddest me, and if Thou engagest to lift and keep me there, I will venture. Trembling, but trusting, I will say: Jesus, I do abide in Thee."

My beloved fellow-believer, go, and take time alone with Jesus, and say this to Him. I dare not speak to you about abiding in Him for the mere sake of calling forth a pleasing religious sentiment. God's truth must at once be acted on. O yield yourself this very day to the blessed Saviour in the surrender of the one thing He asks of you: give up yourself to abide in Him. He Himself will work it in you. You can trust Him to keep you trusting and abiding.

And if ever doubts again arise, or the bitter experience of failure tempt you to despair, just remember where Paul found His strength: "I am apprehended of Jesus Christ." In that assurance you have a fountain of strength. From that you can look up to the whereunto on which He has set His heart, and set yours there too. From that you gather confidence that the good work He bath begun He will also perform. And in that confidence you will gather courage, day by day, afresh to say, " 'I follow on, that I may also apprehend that for which I am apprehended of Christ Jesus.' It is because Jesus has taken hold of me, and because Jesus keeps me, that I dare to say: Saviour, I abide in Thee."

I believe our friends at Hearts and Minds can help you out if you'd like to read more from Mr. Murray.

He Wants Our Vote

Cartoonist Glenn McCoy reads Osama's mind:

Red-Letter Christians

Mark D. Tooley writes a mostly straightforward and informative piece on "Red-Letter Christians" for Front Page Mag. The term Red-Letter Christians refers to the fact that in many Bibles the words of Jesus are printed in red and, Tooley informs us, "these new 'red-letter' communicators and activists want to steer Christians away from concerns about marriage and abortion and towards anti-war activism and environmental causes":

Red-Letter evangelist Tony Campolo, in a column for Beliefnet.com, explained earlier this year what this new activist group is all about:

"We are evangelicals who are troubled by what is happening to poor people in America; who are disturbed over environmental policies that are contributing to global warming; who are dismayed over the increasing arrogance of power shown in our country's militarism; who are outraged because government funding is being reduced for schools where students, often from impoverished and dysfunctional homes, are testing poorly; who are upset with the fact that of the 22 industrialized nations America is next to last in the proportion of its national budget (less than two-tenths of 1 percent) that is designated to help the poor of third-world countries; and who are broken-hearted over discrimination against women, people of color, and those who suffer because of their sexual orientation."

Campolo insists that his fellow Red-Letters are not Republicans or Democrats but are simply people of faith who want to "jump-start a religious movement that will transcend partisan politics."

Toward the end of his essay, Tooley expresses his own concerns about the movement:

In short, Red Letter Christians want to demote the issues to which the Bible speaks directly in favor of other issues dear to the secular Left that rely on a grossly expansionist interpretation of the Bible. For the Red Letter crowd, Jesus' concern about the poor means a larger federal welfare state. The Bible's story of God's creation of the earth must mean that the U.S. has to endorse the Kyoto Accord. Messianic prophecies about world peace are interpreted to demand disarmament and abrogation of U.S. sovereignty.

In reality, the Bible and Christian tradition outline the plan of salvation and a code for decent living. They offer broad principles for ordering human life; they do not, as the Red Letter crowd wants to claim, offer specific legislative policy demands that conform conveniently with the platform of the Democratic Party.

In other words, the Bible commands us to do justice and care for the poor. It doesn't instruct us on what, in our particular socio-historical circumstance, is the most effective or just way to carry out that mandate. Good people can disagree on whether tax cuts for the better off are, or are not, an effective way to deal with poverty. The Red-Letter folk, however, seem to impose their liberalism on Scripture, interpreting it as demanding of us pretty much what modern liberals want to see enacted into law. They sometimes seem genuinely puzzled by the fact, for example, that other Christians don't see in the Bible a mandate for the modern social welfare state or for pacifism.

The irony of this is that Leftist Christians often complain that Republicans identify conservative ideology with the will of God which, they rightly say, is a form of idolatry. But then they turn around and write books like God's Politics in which they argue that if God were president he'd run the country pretty much the way Ted Kennedy would.

I think this is a problem people like Jim Wallis and others who claim to be offering a political third way create for themselves. Their ideological alternative, when articulated, sounds very much like a Nancy Pelosi speech and, as such, causes some to wonder whether their third way follows from a faithful rendering of Scripture or whether Scripture is being interpreted to conform to their political convictions.

<i>The God Delusion</i>

A review of Richard Dawkins' new book The God Delusion by atheist Kenan Malik in the UK Telegraph is as revealing about Malik in particular and atheism in general as it is about Dawkins' book. Malik, who, like most reviewers, doesn't care for the book, nevertheless thinks that Dawkins offers devastating arguments against belief in God:

Dawkins is Britain's most famous atheist and in The God Delusion he gives eloquent vent to his uncompromising views. He begins by demolishing the two major arguments in favour of religion. For many people it is impossible to imagine how the complexity and intricate design of the natural world could have arisen by chance. Hence the need for a conscious designer - God.

It is true, Dawkins responds, that the probability of life having arisen by chance is as vanishingly small as the likelihood of a Jumbo Jet having being constructed by a hurricane sweeping through a scrap yard. But how much more improbable is the idea of an intelligent designer capable of taking all that scrap and turning it into a 747? After all, that intelligent designer, a far more complex entity than a Jumbo Jet, had himself somehow to be created. Evolution, Dawkins suggests, provides the only coherent alternative to both blind chance and 'intelligent design' because it creates complexity through innumerable small steps, each of which is 'slightly improbable, but not prohibitively so.'

There is so much askew with this analysis that I despair of being able to fit it all in one post. Nevertheless, I'll try:

1. How does one assign a probablitity to the scenario of a designer turning scrap into a jet? How do Dawkins and Malik know that such a feat by a cosmic designer is improbable? Clearly, they don't. They apparently assume that God doesn't exist and then conclude from that fact that it's therefore highly improbable that a designer created the universe. In other words they employ as a premise the very conclusion they want the reader to accept. This is called begging the question.

2. Why does Dawkins say, and Malik tacitly agree, that the designer has to have been created? Why do they assume that the designer could not have necessary existence? That is, why assume that the designer is not a being which does not depend upon anything else for its existence? It is certainly possible that such a being exist and that it is ontologically responsible for the design of our world.

3. Even if it is granted that the designer might require a cause how does that help the atheist? Dawkins is in the position of demanding that someone be able to say who designed the computer before he is permitted to claim that the computer is designed. The demand appears for all the world like an instance of changing the subject rather than having to meet the evidence for design head on.

We have good reason to believe that the universe requires a cause (i.e. it has contingent existence), and it may be that the cause of the universe is itself also caused, but so what? Once Dawkins grants that the universe has a cause beyond itself, a transcendent creator, he's pretty much forfeited the argument to the Intelligent Design people. What the ID theorists want to assert is simply that the universe is designed by an intelligent agent. Dawkins replies: "Okay, but what designed the intelligent agent?" - not seeing that the question comes too late to salvage his argument. The obvious answer that the IDer can give to the question is that he has no idea who or what designed the designer, nor does it matter. All he's arguing for is the proposition that the universe is intentionally designed. More than that he neither does, nor can, say.

4. Dawkins and Malik seem to misunderstand the nature of probablities. Probabilities are not additive, they are multiplicative. An innumerable number of very small probabilities does not add up to a large probability. It yields, rather, an impossibly tiny probability. In other words, the probablity of three events occuring together, if the probability of each event is 50%, is not 150%, it's .5 x .5 x .5 = .125 or 12.5 %. Increasing the number of highly improbable events does not make them more probable, it makes them less so. Surely Dawkins and Malik understand this.

The second major argument for God is that He is a necessary source of moral values. 'If God is dead, everything is permitted,' as Dostoevsky put it. In fact research shows that the moral sentiments of believers and atheists are not that distinct.

Malik misses the point here. The problem is not that believers and atheists hold different moral values, it is that if atheism is true there is no significant meaning to the concept of moral right and wrong. Atheists in their personal lives can certainly adopt the same values as believers, but the decision to do so is purely arbitrary. They could as easily adopt the opposite values and there would have been nothing wrong with doing so, because right and wrong are purely subjective in a Godless world.

Take, for example, the value of not hurting others. Why should someone adopt this rule of conduct? Why is it wrong to hurt people? Some might say it's wrong because we don't want people to hurt us, and that is certainly true, but that's not a reason to refrain from hurting others. There's no reason why I shouldn't hurt someone if I want to and if I can get away with it. It's certainly not wrong to do so, unless there's a moral authority which transcends human autonomy which forbids us from treating others unjustly.

Morality flows out of God's nature like light flows out of the sun. Were the sun not to exist neither would sunlight. Were God not to exist neither would moral value. Nothing, as Dostoyevsky noted, would be "wrong" in a moral sense.

In any case, Dawkins points out, moral values are not fixed but have changed over time. Where once slavery was justified through Biblical invocation, today most Christians believe that the practice is contrary to God's will. It is not that God has changed his mind but rather that, as social beliefs have progressed, so Christians have begun interpreting God's word differently. But if we can make up our own minds as to what is right and wrong, Dawkins asks, why do we need God in the first place?

This is rather surprising coming from someone of Dawkins' eminence. That opinions of what constitutes right and wrong behavior change is no argument against the assertion that God is a necessary condition for moral value. At most it suggests only that God's existence is not a sufficient condition for a proper apprehension of what is right and what is wrong. Moreover, there are certain moral principles that do not evolve over time, like the principles of doing justice and showing compassion. These are timeless although the way we implement them in any given age may change with circumstances.

The important point, however, is that if God does not exist there is nothing wrong with being unjust or uncompassionate. Others may not like that you choose injustice over justice, but what they like or dislike is not morally binding upon you.

Take, for instance, Dawkins's claim that religion is a form of child abuse. He believes with the psychologist Nicholas Humphrey that children 'have a human right not to have their minds crippled by exposure to other people's bad ideas' and that 'we should no more allow parents to teach their children to believe in the literal truth of the Bible than we should allow parents to knock their children's teeth out'.

If parents are going to be prevented by law from teaching their children bad ideas we might start with the idea that we have emerged by sheer happenstance out of the cosmic goop and that as finely tuned as the universe is, and as living things are, it's all just a colossal accident. We may also, if we're going to ban bad ideas, forbid parents from teaching their children that right and wrong, meaning and purpose, justice and injustice, human rights and dignity can all exist even if there is no God. That's more than just a bad idea, it elevates an impossibility to the status of a conviction.

Malik closes with this:

The moral of the story is that if you want an understanding of evolution or an argument for atheism, there are few better guides than Richard Dawkins.

If Dawkins is the expert who instructs us in how to demolish theism the theist certainly has little to fear. The explosives he employs as instruments of demolition are more dud than dynamite.

The Real Story

Talk radio host Glenn Beck narrates this short video which presents what he calls the real story of Iraq. What the video tells us is important, but it should be kept in mind that there's much more good news about Iraq that the MSM isn't telling us than what Beck can fit into this clip.

The Democratic Lineup

The coming November elections are enormously important for the future of this country which is why it is so distressing that the Democrats seem poised to take over the House of Representatives and perhaps the Senate as well. It's not so much that the Democrats are simply not prepared nor qualified to lead the nation in times such as these, but that the campaign they have waged in this election cycle has been so empty of substantive ideas. They have not sought to offer a competing vision of what our nation should be so much as they have simply offered themselves as the "un-Bush".

The fact that the Democrats are touting Barack Obama as presidential timber for 2008 shows the thinness of their talent. With few qualified candidates they must rely on Hillary Clinton, currently a freshman senator from New York, and Obama, who has completed just two years in the Senate and has accomplished next to nothing in that position so far.

The Democrats are a party bereft of ideas. Listening to their candidates in debates and in interviews is frustrating because they rarely give a direct or relevant answer to a question. Sometimes they say nothing in very attractive fashion as Barack Obama does, but it's still nothing. They seem to be counting not on the power of their ideas to sweep them into office but rather on the power of their media allies to convince the public that it's time for a change.

Bob Casey campaigns against Rick Santorum almost solely on the basis of Santorum's record of voting with George Bush 98% of the time. That, and the fact that Santorum maintains a residence near D.C. He refuses to answer simple questions in interviews about what he would do differently than Santorum and how he would do it. Reading his non-answer to questions put to him by a Philadelphia Inquirer interviewer induces in one the uneasy feeling that this potential U.S. senator is little more than an empty suit running on his father's reputation. Worse, in order to achieve that lofty perch he will have to unseat one of the best qualified, best informed, and most effective legislators in the Senate in Rick Santorum. Watch Tim Russert's interview of these two men, compare Casey's answers to those of Santorum, and you'll get a sense of the vast distance between the two.

Another Democratic senatorial candidate, Harold Ford of Tennessee, first denied and then admitted he was at a Playboy Super Bowl party last January. There may have been nothing wrong with being at the party, but if so, why did he deny being there? It's bad enough that politicians lie about the big stuff, but it's crazy that they lie about things they apparently feel they have no reason to feel guilty about. "I like football and I like girls," Ford informs us by way of exculpation, but this just makes him sound Clintonesque and that's not a reassuring quality.

Democrat John Murtha, one of the leading anti-war voices in their party, has been revealed on a never-before-released FBI videotape negotiating a bribe in 1980 about which he has been lying for the past twenty five years. He thinks he's talking to a representative of a rich Saudi, but it's in fact an FBI agent. The serious conversations start at about the twenty minute mark on the tape. Murtha was on the House Ethics committee at the time and intends to run for House majority leader if the Democrats win in November. One supposes that he'll be able to negotiate a lot of bribes from that office. Watch the tape. It'll turn your stomach. And this is the guy passing moral judgment on Bush's policy in Iraq.

Alcee Hastings, who was once impeached by a Democratic Congress for bribery and malfeasance, is in line to chair the House Intelligence Committee should the Democrats succeed in gaining control of the House.

The fact that these two miscreants, Hastings and Murtha, are in line for such important positions if the Democrats prevail on November 7th confirms Republican charges that Democrats don't take national security seriously and certainly can't be trusted with it.

Possible Cancer Cure

Here's good news concerning the ongoing search for cures for cancer:

South Korean [scientists] have said they have developed a new genetically altered strain of virus which is highly efficient in targeting and killing cancer cells. The new therapy developed by the team from Yonsei University uses a genetically-engineered form of the adenovirus, which normally causes colds. When injected into cancerous tumors, the virus quickly multiplies in the cancer cells and kills them, the team said.

The new adenovirus can target only cancer cells and does not harm normal cells. Following three rounds of injections, more than 90 percent of cancer cells in the brains, liver, lungs and womb of mice disappeared within 60 days.

There are still many more tests to be done and treatment for humans is probably several years away, but this certainly sounds on the face of it like a wonderful breakthrough.

Happy Quds Day

Even Germany at its nadir in the late 1930s and early 40s never had a celebration as grotesque, as moronic, or as evil as that which Steven Stalinsky reports on in this piece for The New York Sun:

It is disturbing when the entire leadership of one nation, along with hundreds of thousands of its citizens, comes out with celebrations and parades every year that call for the annihilation of another country.

It is more twisted that no world leaders or international bodies, including the United Nations, have denounced the activities surrounding Quds Day, an Iranian holiday introduced by Ayatollah Khomeini that is marked on the last Friday of Ramadan.

Most of the Western press outlets that reported on the popular holiday simply downplayed it as just another "anti-Israel" day. However, this year's revelries focused both on calling for the annihilation of America and embracing Iran's nuclear program.

Among the notable scenes captured were children in Condoleezza Rice costumes; effigies of President Bush, Prime Minister Olmert, and Prime Minister Blair being lit on fire and dragged through the streets; the burning of American and Israeli flags; and hundreds of posters of Sheik Hassan Nasrallah featuring the caption "I swear to Allah that Israel is weaker than [a] spider house." The posters called for a boycott of such "Israeli" goods as McDonald's, Kit Kat bars, Intel, L'Oreal, Nestl�, Disney, and Marlboro.

"The president of America is like us. That is, he too is inspired ... but [his] inspiration is of the satanic kind. Satan gives inspiration to the president of America."

Mr. Ahmadinejad delivered his Quds Day speech under a banner that read, "Israel must be wiped off the face of the world." He described the holiday as "a day for confrontation between the Islamic faith with the global arrogance."

In another speech, he said Israel was "doomed" and promised that the Israeli "regime will be gone, definitely."

The words "the Zionist regime is a cancerous gland that needs to be uprooted" were written in a communiqu� from the Iranian Foreign Ministry in honor of the holiday. Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki held a meeting for other Islamic countries' ambassadors to Iran and told them that Israel's existence would be shattered and that death bells were tolling for the Zionists.

A who's who of the Iranian leadership marched in the main Quds Day parade before crowds chanting "death to Israel" and "death to America."

The chief of the judiciary, Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi...."The world arrogance and Zionism today are shivering from Muslim vigilance and are on the threshold of annihilation," he added.

Mr. Rafsanjani also led Quds Day prayers on December 14, 2001. Then, he warned of a coming confrontation between the "pious and martyrdom-seeking forces" and the "highest forces of colonialism," which "might inflame a third World War."

Sadly, Mr. Rafsanjani is considered one of Iran's more moderate leaders.

Sure, these people are buffoons, but buffoons over-flowing with hatred and armed with nuclear weapons are frightfully dangerous buffoons.

Try, if you can, to imagine Americans, or any Western people, celebrating a holiday in such a fashion, and you catch a glimpse of the vast moral and civilizational gulf that exists between the West and the world of Iranian Islam.

Shepherd of the Flock

Jordan Hylden attends a public lecture given by Bishop Gene Robinson, the prelate, you'll remember, who left his wife to live with his boyfriend, and who, perhaps due to his boldness in being willing to sacrifice his family and renounce his marriage vows in order to better accommodate his sexual orientation, subsequently qualified for ordination as a bishop in the Episcopal church.

Mr. Hylden came away from the address somewhat confused by all that he heard there and writes about his puzzlements at First Things. It's at once both a sad and amusing tale.