Month: September 2009 Page 1 of 2
Peculiar Doctrines, Public Morals, and the Political Welfare – Excerpted introduction from a biography on the life of William Wilberforce by John Piper
“If you want to understand and appreciate The Life and Labor of William Wilberforce, one of the wisest things you can do is to read his own book, A Practical View of Christianity first, and then read biographies. The book was published in 1797 when Wilberforce was 37 years old and had been a member of the British Parliament already for 16 years. The book proved incredibly popular for the time. It went through five printings in six months and was translated into five foreign languages. The book makes crystal clear what drives Wilberforce as a person and a politician. And if you don’t see it first in his book, chances are you may not find it clearly in the biographies.
What made Wilberforce tick was a profound Biblical allegiance to what he called the “peculiar doctrines” of Christianity. These, he said, give rise, in turn, to true affections – what we might call “passion” or “emotions” – for spiritual things, which, in turn, break the power of pride and greed and fear, and then lead to transformed morals which, in turn, lead to the political welfare of the nation. He said, “If . . . a principle of true Religion [i.e., true Christianity] should . . . gain ground, there is no estimating the effects on public morals, and the consequent influence on our political welfare.” [1]
“… Banks did not cause this global crisis. Governments around the world caused the crisis by forcing down the price of credit (Greenspan, Bank of Japan, and ECB on short rates: China et al on long rates, by flooding the global bond market) far too low for many years, encouraging debt. Banks were the instruments, not the cause. That is an elementary point that many people … still fail to understand.” – Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
Job’s Suffering Under a Sovereign God
In the Book of Job, Job is essentially sifted like flour at the hands of Satan, by the permission of God. Job loses just about everything except his life and his wife. He loses his children, houses, live stock, servants, everything. He even loses his health for a time.
From the very beginning of the book, in the first chapter, it is clear God is the one in charge and in control of Satan’s sifting, using it and even purposing it for His good, just and right purposes that are pure and free from evil. In fact, God initiates the conversation with Satan, the one who would perform this very sifting. He says to Satan in Job 1:8, “Have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil?” He then goes on later to give Satan permission, as well as boundaries, of what he can and cannot do to Job.
While all of this is true, God cannot be charged with evil or injustice of any kind. He is pure and holy, wise and almighty. There are no evil motives with God in this. And yet, to the difficulty of our understanding, He permits and even asks Satan to consider Job as a target for calamity. He initiates and prompts Satan to strike Job. This is hard to swallow. What is God up to? What is His goal in this?
Close to the end of the book, after all the calamity of the first two chapters Job experienced, he goes through a list of sins and trespasses to try and figure out what he has done to have received such calamity. It seems he assumes those things happened because of something wrong he had done.
The Grand Demythologizer: The Gospel and Idolatry (Video) – Tim Keller
Once again, I have to be reminded of truths I’ve forgotten. It is so easy to forget things that should constantly be flowing through your mind. One is the fact that the heart (my heart), as Martin Luther said, is an idol factory. I listened to Tim Keller’s talk on The Gospel Coalition’s website entitled The Gospel and Idolatry and was once again confronted with my idols, that is those things I’m staking my ultimate hope in besides Christ. How quickly we turn from Him to less satisfying, less glorious things and exchange Him for lesser gods that don’t deliver what we most desperately need! “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” – Romans 7:24-25
- Exclusive – Wells Fargo’s Commercial Portfolio is a ticking time bomb – BankImplode.com
“In order to sort through the disaster that is Wells Fargo’s commercial loan portfolio, the bank has hired help from outside experts to pour over the books… and they are shocked with what they are seeing. Not only do the bank’s outstanding commercial loans collectively exceed the property values to which they are attached, but derivative trades leftover from its acquisition of Wachovia are creating another set of problems for the already beleaguered San Francisco-based megabank.”
- Wells’ Commercial Real Estate “Ticking Time Bomb” And Coming CRE Woes – Naked Capitalism
“The CRE alarmists may yet be proven right, but the delayed reckoning due to CDS [credit default swap’s] accounting means it may take a while for these shoes to start dropping.”
- Facing the next real-estate collapse – New York Post
“The next wave of the credit crisis is about to hit — a collapse in com mercial real estate and potential explosion of bank failures. With its resources tapped out by the first wave, what should Washington do?
“Over the last year, the Federal Reserve doubled the size of its balance sheet, and took unprecedented action in monetizing government debt and extending credit to financial institutions. Now it must head off inflation and extricate itself from $5 trillion-plus in credit exposure from various bailouts. The Treasury, meanwhile, is issuing debt at the fastest pace in peacetime history.
“Now comes the next crisis. The same factors that caused the residential bubble — easy credit, lax lending standards and booming mortgage-backed-securities underwriting — also drove commercial real-estate overvaluation. But the commercial market lags the residential one by about a year, so this bubble is still popping.”
- A million march to US Capitol to protest ‘socialism’ – (Univ. of Illinois spacial image mapping estimated it at 1.7 million, highest estimate is 2 million)
- NY Times Buries Massive Conservative D.C. Rally, Hails Smaller Liberal Protests
- Also: 912 Project Fort Worth protests the federal government (estimated between 10,000 and 20,000)
I think this movement is just getting started. Combine the prospect (and likelihood) of more excessive taxes and government control on the unemployed and already burdened, and you get a large group of ticked off people. Are these the roots of a revolution if things don’t start reversing? I don’t know, depends on what happens in the next year or two from now with legislation, the economy and next years’ elections. If things get worse as some economists are predicting (who rightly predicted last years’ crisis), the numbers could grow significantly.
As Gerald Celente said in predicting this trend earlier this year, “When people lose everything and they have nothing to lose, they lose it.” Hopefully that will not happen. So far, it is a non-violent movement. But if people get pressed far enough, anything is possible. I’m not saying I condone such a thing if it turned to that. I would decline to participate. I’m just pointing out the possibility.
Most Republican politicians don’t seem to have the fight in them that many of these protesters do. So could a third party, a truly conservative group of honest politicians get elected? It would be nice, but as one political commentator said recently on a show I was listening to, we need to first get competent politicians elected who know how the machine of economics and politics works.
Just check out the sea of people in this video, it’s really quite amazing:
Today Show Reports Yet Another Gem – Spanking Makes Your Kid Dumb
By David Westerfield
On September 25, 2009
In Christian Culture, Commentary, Culture, Theology, worldview
Religiously convicted parents’ disciplining techniques make their kids dumber than more “enlightened,” secular parenting techniques, according to “new” analysis; that is, parenting techniques are better for your childs’ intelligence coming from a worldview and presupposition that denies the inherent wickedness of a persons’ heart, or rather, just denies the very existence of sin in general.
Okay this research didn’t say that out-right, but using deductive reasoning, one can easily fill in the blanks about where they are coming from in their broader worldview assumptions that always seems to “inform” the scientific method they employ.
Please give me another heaping dose of misinformation, NBC.
So should I go with this researchers’ “finely tuned,” humanistic, enlightened analysis of parenting? (Emphases and bracketed insertions mine)
Or should I go with the Word of God, despite the unpopularity or difficulty of doing so?
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