Uncle Cephas

Reading Paul the Apostle

2012-01-02T07:11:00.000-08:00

One of my New Year's resolutions is to not only go through the Bible, but also to undertake a thorough study of the Apostle Paul, including coming to a fair-minded assessment of what is called the New Perspective on Paul. This New Perspective has gotten a critical reception in my own conservative Reformed circles, and I would like to know whether it is a fair criticism or not.

I gather that some of the "New Perspective" builds on the work of Krister Stendahl, a couple of whose books I've read, and on which I reached a few conclusions, which I here cast in an imagined mini-dialogue form:

Stendahl: Paul is concerned about the integration of Jews and Gentiles in the early church.
Cephas: That's obvious.
Stendahl: Too much of our reading of Paul isogetes the introspective conscience of the West into Paul.
Cephas: Hmmmm. I'm under the impression that Paul, along with the Prophets of Israel, is one of the founding fathers of "the introspective conscience of the West." I won't blame Augustine of Hippo for everything; and, indeed, I think he may well have gotten a lot right.
Stendahl: Much of our Paul scholarship rests on 19th and 20th century German scholarship's imputing Luther's spiritual struggles onto Paul.
Cephas: Well, since my own father was of "Mitteleuropisch" Jewish origins, and we have our own family folklore about life in the Old Countries, I think there are a few non-theologocial dynamics at work in the history of German scholarship. One is a tendency to ignore even the post-1519 Luther's "legalist" elements in reaction against the supposed "anti-vital legalism" of the hated Napoleonic French invader--plus reaction against the forcing of the emancipation of my own ancestors on the unwilling German states at the point of French bayonets. I believe that there are probably aspects of their own Germanic Luther that German scholarship misses.
Stendahl: We need to go to Rabbinic sources to understand Paul's mind. 19th and 20th century German scholarship read the supposed "legalism" and "ceremonialism" of the late medieval Roman Catholicism with which Luther struggled back into first century Judaism, which actually had a variety of views of the place of Gentiles in the "Olam HaBa", and an understanding of a gracious God.
Cephas: Accepted. I see the New Testament as a "Jewish book"; and in many ways Paul is a cross-cultural missionary to the Gentiles. But I also see a different direction taken in the New Testament--the Olam HaBa has come, the walls between Jews and Gentiles are down, while in the Rabbinic literature we see a multiplication of halakhic practicalities to "fence" the Torah and refine Jewish distinctives. And, having heard the Kaddish said over the dead and the Aveinu, I know there's a caricature of Judaism--even Rabbinic Judaism--going on in a fair amount of Christian [especially German] writing.
Stendahl: We need to rethink Paul's language on faith and works.
Cephas: If you mean we need to re-think the antinomian strain that I see in the 19th and 20th century advanced German scholars and in dispensational fundamentalism, I think that the classical Protestant theologians (both Lutheran and Reformed) offer an excellent corrective. But, if you mean that our works somehow "justify" us with God, rather than express our gratitude, I balk--and I also think we need to keep foremost the New Testament's insistence that the Messiah is the way to the Father.

The renewed interest in Paul is also due to his importance in my Christian walk. I grew up believing that Paul had turned Christianity from the "simple, humane, loving" teachings of the Sermon on the Mount to something spooky, overly "theological", sacerdotal, inhumane, and misogynistic. Well, in my late 'teens, I actually read the New Testament out of cultural curiosity, and found that most of the biblical passages that seem to offer the most hope for most of the human race are found in the letters of Paul. Yes, I started to understand predestination from reading Paul, too, but Paul's predestination is all premised on that the God who predestines whatsoever cometh to pass (Westminster Shorter Catechism) is the same one who came among us in Christ and offered Himself for our sins, conquered death in His resurrection, and is available to all who believe, whether Jew or Gentile (which, I came to understand, was Paul's way of saying "out of all humanity"). And, for the record, I won't contrast Paul's predestinarianism with that of Calvin, the framers of the Canons of Dordt, or the Westminster divines, for, as I've read something of those men, I think they simply got the jump on me (by a few centuries) in their reading of Paul.

In short, Paul's message was brimming with hope and love. As for the Sermon on the Mount, my reaction to it has always been that if that's the standard that gets people into Heaven, all of us are quite thoroughly damned, unless there's some kind of divine intervention. To this day, while I believe and honor Jesus' Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7), it is not a passage of Scripture that I "like", or that gives me emotional goosebumps. Rather, every time I read it it is a bit like standing before Mount Sinai with all its thunderings, and where even if a beast approaches too closely, it must be stoned to death. The Sermon on the Mount is something to make us pause, listen closely, and repent of a multitude of sins. There's nothing light, bright, airy, or especially comforting about it at all. Well, thank God, Jesus spoke of giving His life as a "ransom for many" (Mark 10:45), and Paul elaborates on that aspect of Jesus' ministry all over his writings, so there's hope for us after all.

So, considering the hope laid before us, Uncle Cephas wishes all a happy new year, filled with divine grace.

Thoughts for 2012

2011-12-31T22:04:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year's to all who read this post!
新年快乐！

Just a few thoughts before I run off to bed--

I wish I had a green dollar for every time I turned on the TV last year, and saw some show about how the Mayan calendar says that we are entering the last year of the world, or something about Nostradamus (whom I have never read). I'd be a rich man.

Well, Jesus Christ says that no man knows the day nor the hour, so Uncle Cephas confidently predicts that 2012 will NOT, I repeat NOT, mark the end of the world.

May God crown this new year with grace.

Jolly Old Saint Nicholas

2011-12-24T18:29:00.000-08:00

Now that Christmas has come to our land, and Santa Claus is on every child's mind, it might be worthwhile to review a little bit about the original Saint Nicholas--Santa Claus arising from a childish German and Dutch corruption of his name.

There actually was a bishop of the Lycian city of Myra, now in southwestern Turkey, by the name of Nicholas, who died somewhere between 345 and 352 A.D. Apparently, as a young man, he went on a pilgrimage to Egypt and Palestine, and shortly after his return became the Christian bishop of Myra. His association with the city of Bari in Italy stems from the theft of his relics from Asia Minor by a group of Italian merchants in 1087. But, to return to his actual life, he was famous for his generosity towards the poor, including providing dowries for impoverished young women. This, apparently, is the origin of the medieval tradition that associates him with gift-giving. In the medieval Roman Church, his festival was celebrated in December, so it was not difficult for it to be assimilated to Christmas, the remembrance of God's ultimate gift of His Son, Jesus the Messiah.

However, Nicholas' life took interesting turns in the early 4th century. In 302-303 A.D., Diocletian, the Emperor of the East, initiated the last major persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire. Among those arrested and tortured was Nicholas, for as a bishop, he was very prominent among the Christians. However, Diocletian's health failed while the political star of Constantine was rising,so when Constantine became emperor and declared Christianity a legal religion, Nicholas avoided becoming living lion chow and was released to go back to his prior work of winning and nurturing souls for Christ.

But things did not end happily ever after. In Alexandria, a presbyter by the name of Arius anticipated the Jehovah's Witnesses by more than fifteen hundred years by declaring that Christ, as God the Son, was not co-eternal with the Father, but the first created being. Much of the Greek-speaking Eastern Empire accepted Arian teaching, although Nicholas did not. When Constantine called an ecumenical council at Nicaea in 325, Nicholas attended, where he was such an ardent supporter of the formula that Christ is "very God of very God, being of one substance with the Father" that he punched out Arius when the two men met. Things probably did not go all that well for Nicholas in the following years, since despite the pronunciations of the bishops of Nicaea, the heirs of Constantine tended to favor the Arian or Semi-Arian (Christ is of "like substance" with the Father) positions.

However, when all is summed up, Nicholas remained a witness to the deity of Jesus Christ as taught in the Gospel and Epistles of John the Apostle, and stands as an exemplar of Christian charity. As such, he deserves to be remembered fondly by those who know and love New Testament truth.

Uncle Cephas wishes all a Merry Christmas!

Original Sin, Total Depravirty, and Modern Politics

2011-12-14T18:51:00.000-08:00

The influence of theology on politics has become a minor cottage industry in academic political science. The late Daniel Elazar wrote a multi-volume work on The Covenant Tradition in Politics, in which he argued that Reformed covenantalism played the key role in shaping the ideals of federalism and political cocmpact. While it is true that federalism and political compact sank deep roots into countries that were historically Reformed,covenantalism per se does not seem to be the most important element in shaping at least the ideal of political compact.

Elazar find most of his support in the Politics of Johannes Althusius, city syndic and Reformed church elder in the northwestern German city of Emden in the early 1600's. Althusius' argument holds that the Holy Roman Empire constitutes a federation of states and cities held together by a kind of compact, hence Emden should be allowed to stand as a Reformed city in the Lutheran Duchy of Oldenburg (East Friesland) within the still heavily Roman Catholic Empire. Elazar (a Sephardic Jew) duly notes the biblicism of early Reformed theology, its adherence to covenantal theology, and then concludes that it was the idea of covenant that gave rise to that of political compact and political federalism.

Elazar is, of course, correct in noting how the idea of covenant informs classical Reformed theology. But Elazar's excursions into the realm of classical Reformed theology are those of an outsider seriously misled by various streams of modern academic theology, which he rightly recognizes as deviations from Reformed Orthodoxy, but from whose guidance he cannot quite escape. For instance, in his volume Covenant and Commonwealth, dealing specifically with the continental Reformed and British Puritan theorists,he follows J. Wayne Baker in seeing "Calvinism" (identified as first, last, and always predestinarianism) and "Covenantaalism" as alternative Reformed "theologies" (in the plural), whose schism was averted by the Consensus Tigurinus of 1549. Unfortunately for Elazar's argument, the Consensus Tigurinus settled no debate between predestinarianism and covenantalism (which was non-existent, save in the minds of 19th century liberal theologians eager to live down their "Calvinist" past), but represents the theologians of German-speaking Switzerland accepting Calvin's doctrine of Christ's spiritual presence in the elements of the Lord's Supper as close enough to their own, and not a capitulation to the Lutheran doctrine of consubstantiation. Further, Elazar does not see how covenantalism in Reformed theology is the means whereby the eternal decree to save the elect enters into and takes effect in the time-bound world of finite human exisstence. Hence, Elazar's work requires correction.

However, from reading in a range of early Reformed political thinkers from the Huguenots on down to the Puritans, the doctrine of total depravity played a much larger role.

The number of early Reformed writers on politics is large, and virtually all (with the noteworthy exception of Thomas Erastes) oppose the state or civil magistrate impinging on the church's independence within its sphere and criticize the idea that the divine institution of government grants the monarch an unlimited power over his subjects. Rather, public law represents an agreement between rulers and people, and that if this law is broken, the lesser magistrate has both the right and duty to lead the people in rebellion against the monarch. Hence the title "monarchomach" given to the critics of royal absolutism by royalist writers of the 16th and 17th centuries.

One of the most common justifications for limited government was, as Samuel Rutherford said, that unlimited power in one that can sin is an "accursed power". Rutherford, as a devout Calvinist, saw sinfulness as the natural heritage of all descended from Adam by ordinary generation, hence its taint affects all members of the human race save Jesus Christ. However, government is a divine institution to protect mankind. Hence, there had to be compact between people, rulers, and God to prevent the rulers from having a power that might destroy rather than preserve the people.

By the same token, Calvin himself urged the best government as a mix of democracy and aristocracy in the last chapters of his Institutes of the Christian Religion. His reasoning was simply that kings could not always be trusted to do what is right. While Calvin differs from many of his disciples--Knox, Buchanan, Marnix van St. Aldegonde, Hotman, Junius Brutus, and others--in shying away from declaring a right of rebellion against a tyrant, his conclusions about the best constitution are remarkably similar to theirs.

The Reformed doctrine of total depravity grates on modern, democratic sensibilities. Yet the seed of the constitutional, limited governments that marked the North Atlantic countries were planted by something quite unlike the sunnier estimate of human nature springing from the French Enlightenment.

A Song for Obama

2011-12-14T18:09:00.000-08:00

OBAMA'S FACE (with apologies to Spike Lee)

When Obama say we're all for hope and change
And not to love Obama seems so strange
It means there's no pipeline across the Bison Range
For Red State poverty just mustn't change!

When Obama says he's full of peace and love
And unlike Bush he's a very peaceful dove.
On Yemen and Libya there rained from above
A most explosive kind of peace and love!

Are we not Progressive folk?
Yes! We are progressive folk!
And this progress is no joke!
In self-righteousness we soak!
We are SUCH progressive folk!

When Dame Hill'ry says the Ikhwan is just fine
And those who criticize them are just swine,
For the age of Newspeak she doth sigh and pine
Because Obama is our Fuehrer fine!

When our spokesmen say the Arabs have a Spring,
And for the world it's just a peachy thing,
The Mainstream Media loves to clap and sing
Forgetting that the Copts now feel the sting!

When the papers say that you're a racist pig
'Cause you won't buy Obama's lousy gig,
Just remember, Wright's positions weren't so big
And for his ravings you mustn't care a fig!

For Obama to unite us is a breeze,
Just forget about Old Blago's graft and sleaze,
And that Obie wants to punish enemies
Of whom not one is overseas!

ANOTHER SONG FOR OBAMA--revised and updated, with no apologies to Horst Wessel or the rotten movement he represented.

With Fannies high, Obama's marching minions
Go prancing down America's main drag.
It's time to pack up all your un-PeeCee opinions,
Whether in speech, on airwaves, or in mag.
It's time to pack up all your un-PeeCee opinions,
Whether in speech, on airwaves, or in mag.

The media, subservient and ga-ga,
Care not that Geitner cheats the IRS.
Chicago pol's tale has become a sacred saga,
"Messiah's come!" They loudly doth profess.
Chicago pol's tale has become a sacred saga,
"Messiah's come!" They loudly doth profess.

His entourage is full of Maoists, Truthers,
Alinsky fans, and commies like Van Jones.
No Colbert dares to stand up as a comic spoofer--
Such things are now deeply forbidden zones.
No Colbert dares to stand up as a comic spoofer--
Such things are now deeply forbidden zones.

You're in the way if you're not with the program!
It's criminal to disagree, demurr--
No matter if his plans will bankrupt the whole country,
You must roll over, play dead, wag and purr!
No matter if his plans will bankrupt the whole country,
You must roll over, play dead, wag and purr!

Next thing, our youth will join in brown battalions
To sing and chant our fearless leader's name.
And prance along like well-trained gelded stallions,
To once-free people's deep and lasting shame.
And prance along like well-trained gelded stallions,
To once-free people's deep and lasting shame.

Our fearless leader--he would never fib ya'--
Has promised no more Middle Eastern fights,
Please don't remind us that he's bombed Yemen and Libya
To let Al-Qaida followers have rights.
Please don't remind us that he's bombed Yemen and Libya
To let Al-Qaida followers have rights.

With Fannies high, Obama's marching minions
Go prancing down America's main drag.
It's time to pack up all your un-PeeCee opinions,
Whether in speech, on airwaves, or in mag.
It's time to pack up all your un-PeeCee opinions,
Whether in speech, on airwaves, or in mag.

Newt and the "Palestinians"

2011-12-11T16:21:00.001-08:00

Go, Mr. Former Speaker!

The time is long past due for the world to tell its Arabic-speaking portion that it needs to naturalize the Falastin Arab refugees and their descendants.

It ought to be a mandatory talking point for everyone in the US foreign policy community that there are roughly around 30,000 victims of an-Nakhbar and their descendants in the USA, and that these people carry US passports whenthey travel, may freely buy and sell real estate, vote in US elections, and even run for office. Yet in the whole of the Arab world from Iraq and the Gulf to Mauretania, only Jordan, the PA, and Israel itself give the Falastin Arabs real citizenship--and even the PA is thinking of denying it to those from pre-1967 Israel.

Yet the Arab states, which insit on keeping the Falastin Arabs stateless, dare to use them as an excuse to trash US embassies and demonize the USA in their government-controlled media (Egypt, the recipient of so much US aid, was notorious in this regard).

The enormity of this travesty is that Lahore-born Manmohan Singh and Delhi-born Pervez Musharaf sat down to talk about defusing Indo-Pakistani tensions, when both men were young refugees in 1948, and ended up as leaders of their countries. Further, Jews descended from the Arab countries--and there were Jews in Egypt, Iraq, and the Maghreb before there were Arabs--are now no-questions-asked Israelis. This is perhaps one of the most obscene imbalances in the Middle East.

Good for you, Mr. Speaker--and I was raised Democrat!

Two Witnesses of Revelation

2011-11-25T07:20:00.000-08:00

After a discussion on Revelation Chapter 11, I discovered that once again, I seem to have a dissident view of the book of Revelation. Others seem to believe that the Two Witnesses mentioned in the chapter are two specific individuals to appear at the end of days, but I think they are probably symbolic of the church's entire ministry of witness from the first coming of Christ to his second advent.

In the interest of avoiding lengthy quotes, the reader is invited to have a copy of the Bible at hand, and refer to the various points cited.

This chapter has numerous references and allusions to other portions of the Bible, both Old and New Testaments:

1. The man with a measuring rod (reed)—Ezek. 40:3

This continues an allusion to Ezekiel which begins in Rev. 10:9-11, in which John, like Ezekiel, is made to eat a scroll, which is sweet in his mouth and bitter in his stomach (cf. Ezk. 2:8-3:2).

2. Temple and Holy City to be trod underfoot by the Gentiles for 3.5 years--This echoes Jesus' own Olivet Discourse in Matthew 24 and 25.

3. Two witnesses – Christ sent out his disciples by twos. (Lk. 10:1).

4. Two Olive Trees—Zech 4:3-7. These stand before a golden lampstand, as if to provide it with oil. Their message is, "Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the LORD of Hosts" (Zech 4:6). This has been the witness of believers both before and since the coming of Jesus Christ.

5. Shutting Heaven—This refers to the ministry of Elijah, who may be taken as the archetype of the Old Testament prophets: I Kgs. 17:1 refers to his predicting drought on the land of Israel.

6. Killing fire—also Elijah (I Kgs. 1:1-16)

7. Smiting the Earth with plagues – cf.,, Moses, in Exodus.

8. Killing the Prophets—cf., Jesus own lament over Jerusalem (Mt. 23:37-39).

9. Egypt—House of bondage and oppression (Dt. 5:6; Ex. 20:2).

10. Sodom – City of great wickedness (Gen. 18:20,21).

11. The song of the elders in Rev. 11:16-18 refers to the coming of the day of general resurrection and judgment, as in Paul's Thessalonian letters.

I gladly note kinship with William Hendricksen, who, in More than Conquerors, his study of the book of Revelation, and with Robert L. Reymond's study of eschatology in his A New Systematic Theology of the Christian Faith. Both view the current portion as a part of the third of seven visions that make up the book of revelation.

The portion speaks of a trying, difficult time for the Christian church. This, perhaps, is why many evangelical commentators assign it to a special period called The Great Tribulation, which is supposed to occur just before Jesus' return to raise the believing dead and establish the millennial kingdom. However, the passage surely had some relevance for believers during John's own time (Irenaeus of Lyons, a former disciple of John's) tells us that the book was written when the emperor Domitian was persecuting the church. It may also refer to the time just prior to the Jewish revolt against Rome in 66-70 A.D., when the Jewish Christians left Jerusalem to avoid the siege that was about to begin.

Also, Jesus' warned his disciples that they would face the hostility of the world because they would testify against its sins and call people to repentance and faith. The Gospel has never entered any society without initially encountering hostility. Hence, it can be said that the church's witness is like prophets who "torment" their hearers with words the hearers do not wish to hear.

But God also gives his church relief, which is what is meant by the two witnesses being raised up after their enemies kill them. Someone once said that the Christian faith is an anvil that has worn out many a hammer. It has had persecutors who have come and gone, yet, somehow, it always rises again.

The verses 7-9 also speak of "the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified." This may speak of the actual city of Jerusalem. It is a warning that the place and society which God has raised up to be His witness and to exhibit faith and righteousness, may turn evil, and become "salt that has lost its savor" (cf.Mark 9:50). This is also a warning to the church (as are the seven letters which begin the book of Revelation) to maintain its witness.

So, what will our response to the witness of the "two witnesses" be? Will we love our sins, or will we repent and accept the sacrifice that Jesus made on the cross for us (Rev. 11:8), and hence participate in the resurrection of Christ, and the one to come which he promises?

Dating the New Testament

2011-11-19T17:36:00.000-08:00

When was the New Testament written?

This question arose when a group of us were studying the book of Revelation; but it led me to consider what is written elsewhere in the New Testament, not least because a number of writers find in Revelation echoes not only of the Old Testament (which, of course, had been around a long time by the timme Jesus Christ was born), but of other books in the New Testament as well.

Apart from Revelation, which, Irenaeus tells us, was written during the time when the Emperor Domitian was persecuting the church in the late 1st century, the New Testament was written prior to 70 A.D. Most was probably written even before 66 A.D. The internal evidence is what compels this conclusion.

The Gospel of Luke, which is the first half of a two-part work consisting of itself and the Book of Acts, borrows much from the Gospels of Matthew and Mark. It also gives a description of the ministry of the Apostle Paul. The Book of Acts ends with Paul in Rome, under house arrest after using his right as a Roman citizen to appeal to Caesar, awaiting his hearing.

But Eusebius and certain earlier Roman historians tell us that in 66 A.D., the Emperor Nero blamed the Christians for burning Rome, and ordered a persecution in which the Apostles Peter and Paul were both martyred. Hence, Luke-Acts (along with Matthew and Mark), must have been written prior to that time. This also means that all of Paul's letters and the two letters of Peter must predate that time. The fact that Acts ends on a fairly upbeat note, as if Paul (and Luke, his companion) was confident of acquittal, also indicates a pre-persecution date.

Further, none of the books of the New Testament take the destruction of Jerusalem as a fait accompli. While Matthew 24-35, Mark 13, and Luke Luke 21 all record Jesus' prediction of the destruction of Jerusalem,none of the New Testament books sees the event as past. This would be hard to imagine had the vindication of the founder's prophecy occurred prior to the composition of one of the New Testament books.

The Jewish Conspiracy to Take Over the World--more on Revelation

2011-11-11T20:31:00.000-08:00

Every so often, because I am a conservative, some fringe group wants to enlist my support in warning the land of a sinister Jewish conspiracy to put the whole world under a Jewish ruler. Indeed, given the Left-Islamicist alliance, it seems that such sentiments are no longer a monopoly of the loony right.

But I will add my two cents worth. There is indeed an ancient, international Jewish conspiracy to put the world under the rule of a Jewish king. It's called Christianity.

Looking at Revelation 7, I am more convinced that the Apocalypse is a densely coded picture of the Christian era.

Revelation starts with 144,000 from the tribes of Israel and moves to a great redeemed multitude from every people, tongue and nation. This looks suspiciously like the spread of the Gospel from Jerusalem and Judaea, then to Samaria, then to the ends of the earth as commanded by Christ in the first chapter of Acts. The Christian faith was first announced to the world by the Jews Simon Bar Jonah, James and John the sons of Zebedee, and others in the very shadow of the Temple itself; and from them spread not only to the Jews, but also to the Greeks. And from the Greeks it spread to everyone else.

This leads me to identify the Great Tribulation described in Rev. 7:14 is, given what is recorded in Revelation 6, nothing but the general vicissitudes of the history of a world in which redemption is still and ongoing process.

On Revelation--The Rider on the White Horse is not Antichrist

2011-10-28T15:46:00.000-07:00

I found out that I have a dissident view of Revelation, at least in some Evangelical circles.

During a Bible study on Revelation, I found out that many resources used by others describe the rider on a white horse mentioned in Revelation 6:2 as Antichrist. I have long been under the impression that this rider is none other than Jesus Christ himself.

The text states:

And I saw, and behold a white horse: and he that sat on him had a bow, ans a crown was given unto him: and he went forth conquering, and to conquer (KJV).

Having looked up a number of online resources, I note the following reasons why this figure is associated with Antichrist:

1. He is accompanied by riders who represent war, famine, and death.

2. The passage of the seven seals speaks of the wrath of God against the earth.

Yet, against this, I note that the rider on the white horse appears again:

And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war. His eyes were as a flame of fire, and on his head were many diadems, and he hath a name written which no one knoweth but he himself. And he is arrayed in a garment sprinkled with blood, and his name is called the Word of God. And the armies which are in heaven followed him upon white horses clothed in fine linen, white and pure. And out of his mouth proceedeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations, and he shall rule them with a rod of iron, and he treadeth the winepress of the fierceness of the wrath of God, he Almighty. And he hath on his garment and on his thigh a name written, King of Kings and Lord of Lords (Rev. 19:11-16)

How this figure can be anyone other than Jesus Christ is beyond me. The slaying of the wicked by words that are weapons echoes Isaiah 11:4; smiting and ruling the nations with a rod of iron echoes Psalm 2:9. Clearly this is the fulfillment of all of Israel's Messianic hopes of defeating the oppressing nations!

As for Jesus' association with the terrors of the other horsemen of the apocalypse and the trumpets and bowls of God's wrath following Revelation 6:2, this can be understood as comforting a persecuted and pressured church by reminding them that, as Matthew's Gospel assured them, all authority in heaven and earth, including over the terrors the shatter humanity, is held by the risen Jesus (Matthew 28:18). In these disasters, the hope of wicked men perish, but all ultimately ends with the Lord vindicating his people.

The 20th century was one in which contempt for Christ and his Gospel was widespread. It was also an age of uncritical faith in man-made institutions and programs. Yet the dreams of peace unleashed by a League of Nations in 1920 and a United Nations in 1945 have been illusory. The confidence of most "thinking people" (a thundering herd of independent minds, perhaps?) in so-called "scientific socialism" proved a mockery, and a very bloody one after the political murders of over 150 millions in peacetime. These are indeed horrible things to contemplate, but could this not be a case of our Lord shattering like earthen pots the kings of the earth who have gathered themselves against him (Psalm 2)? Is this not a call for us to reconsider the claims of our Lord, as many indeed are doing even now?

Yes, it is terrifying to consider the hand of our loving God in the vicissitudes of history. This may well lead many to hate God all the more. But let us not forget the garment sprinkled in blood in which our Lord Jesus appears. It is not the blood of his enemies, but his own sacrificial blood which he shed to atone for our sins when he, the righteous one, died for the unrighteous to bring us to God (I Peter 3:18). In that is the true refuge from the coming wrath.

The "Natural Born Citizen" Issue Rides Again: Revisiting Wong Kim Ark

2011-10-28T15:18:00.000-07:00

Once again, in questions posed to candidate Rick Perry, the issue of whether or not President Barack Obama is a "natural born citizen" has surfaced. It strikes me that the birther movement, our conservative answer to the truthers, has gone out of control and has derailed many.

I have said before that to prove that President Obama is not a "natural-born citizen" would require proof that his mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, was not a US citizen with eligibility to transmit citizenship, even if, by some hook or crook, it could be proven, as Obama's grandmother claimed,that Barack Obama, Jr. was indeed born in Mombassa, Kenya. Never, to my knowledge, has the birther movement offered statutory or case law proof that "natural-born" means anything other than being born a US citizen by either jus soli or jus sanguinis.

And, this is being said by an unabashed rightist who believes that the Obama presidency is a disaster.

Perhaps the most important Supreme Court case related to the issue of who is a "natural-born citizen" was Wong Kim Ark v. US (1898).

Wong Kim Ark (the Hoisan Yue pronunciation of Huang Jinde) was born in San Francisco, Chalifornia, to Chinese parents who were not naturalized as US citizens. His return to the US after a youthful visit to China was not questioned, even after passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, due to his birth in the USA. However, in 1895, after returning from another trip to China, he was detained at San Francisco due to the fact that his parents remained subject to the Emperor of China, and were not citizens at the time of Wong's birth in the 1870's. Wong therefore sued for habeas corpus.

His case ultimately reached the US Supreme Court, which, in 1898, ruled in a 6-2 decision that Wong was indeed a US citizen. It was observed that his parents had been involved in commerce rather than official business on behalf of the emperor of China; that they were legally in the USA during the 1870's; they were subject to the jurisdiction of US law (the language of the 14th Amendment); they clearly were not connected to a hostile occupying power in wartime; and that they were clearly not of a recognized Indian tribe (then theoretically their own jurisdictions and separate "nations" rather than officially part of the USA). Wong's citizenship later became the basis for allowing three of his own sons born in China whose relationships could not be questioned to enter the US during the period of Chinese Exclusion (in those days, many Overseas Chinese maintained wives in their ancestral places in China, and only occasionally visited).

The majority (including Justice Brewer) viewed the case through the prism of US definitions of citizenship; the dissent by Harlan and Fuller involved recognition of international legal doctrine, in which citizenship definitions of foreign powers were to be recognized. At the time, renunciation of allegiance to the Chinese emperor was a capital offense in China, so the non-naturalization of Wong's parents was understandable, since their business involved occasional returns to the country of their birth, apparently. Still, the majority remained unswayed, noting that the USA, as an independent power, had the right to establish its own rules for citizenship.

The Wong case has long been understood to ensure the jus soli citizenship of children of legal immigrants or other foreign parents not in diplomatic or visiting head of state status (the children of foreign students, for example). Indeed, in view of the language of the 14th Amendment, which defines those born in the USA and under the jurisdiction thereof, it is very hard to justify the denial of citizenship to such persons.

The issue of whether the Wong decision allows the US-born children of those illegally in the USA to be counted as citizens has been disputed in legal journals. However, until now, it does not seem that the citizenship of US-born children of illegal immigrants has been challenged either by statute or case law. Given that the illegal parents might be charged with violation of immigration law if apprehended, it would be clear that such persons are indeed under the jurisdiction of the USA!

As for our president, it seems that as the US-born child of a US citizen parent (Stanley Ann Dunham), Barack Obama's citizenship cannot be questioned; and it is unlikely that anyone would be ready to deny citizenship to countless out-of-wedlock children sired by visiting foreigners (tourists, students, etc.) and born to US citizen mothers. Further, given that the requirements for jus sanguinis citizenship to children born abroad to US citizen parents (the citizen parent needs to have been resident in the USA for five years, two of which have to have been over the age of fourteen years) would have guaranteed Obama citizenship even if Stanley Ann Dunham had given birth to him on a trip to Kenya. And, can the birthers reasonably claim that anyone but the American woman Stanley Ann Dunham was Obama's birth mother?

So, Uncle Cephas urges his conservative brethren to focus on Obama's increasing the national debt, ill-advised Libyan intervention, bailouts, radical connections, having never met an abortion procedure he didn't love (such as partial birth abortion, which he defended as a state senator in Illinois), and being beholden to the whole lifestyle liberalism crowd. Please, leave the issue of Obama's citizenship alone.

However, Uncle Cephas is ready to entertain any evidence from standing American statute of case law that may define "natural-born citizen" as something other than a person born a US citizen by either jus soli or jus sanguinis.

More Thoughts on Revelation

2011-10-20T02:40:00.000-07:00

People speak of Revelation 6 as a terrifying chapter, with the angels opening seven seals to reveal what is to come. Yet the chapter may also be cause for great hope for Christians.

The first seal reveals a conqueror on a white horse. As a young Christian, I was told by many that this is the Antichrist whom Paul mentions in the Thessalonian letters. But I have come to the conclusion that this is, in fact, Jesus Christ who rides forth to conquer. This is because of the unfolding of the Apocalypse, and because in Chapter 19 the rider on the white horse appears again, and is identified as one who is called Faithful, True, and the Word of God. These titles can only be Jesus Christ.

But how can Jesus' conquest be accompanied by war, death, disease, and disaster? Are Christians being encouraged to be the carriers of these things, as Muslims are encouraged to wage violent jihad in the Qur'an? In fact, this is no exhortation to violence, but a reminder that history, with all of its vicissitudes, is guided by our loving God and Savior. This becomes all the more clear as we look at where the passage leads.

The fifth seal reveals the martyrs of Christ. The sixth reveals a great earthquake and exlipse, and terror among all men. But after this, John sees 144,000 servants of God from the twelve tribes of Israel, and after them, an innumerable multitude of the redeemed from every people, tongue, and nation. Since, as the book of Acts tells us, the Gospel started in Jerusalem, then spread to Judaea and Samaria, and thence to the ends of the earth, this is a picture of the progress of the Gospel in the earth.

Yes, the world is a frightening and scary place, and history can be terrifying. But through it all, all authority in heaven and earth has been given to Jesus, who gave his life for us and conquered death on our behalf, and he is spreading redemption among us. The hopes and ambitions of sinful men are overthrown in the vicissitudes of history, but Christ is also at work bringing many sons to glory.

Hence, the counsel of God in Revelation is not terror or despair, but faith and hope.

A Call for Commemoration

2011-10-13T15:24:00.000-07:00

Few people notice it, but December 27, 1814, will be the bicentennial of the Treaty of Ghent, which ended the War of 1812 between the USA and Britain.

It is an important anniversary because it marks the beginning of period of unbroken peace between the USA and UK, and, later, Canada. Throughout the history of the world, it is all too easy for three states with a lot in common other than a common government to adopt postures of mutual hostility that can easily turn into armed conflict. Hence, two centuries of peace, the world's longest unguarded border, and theoretical wars that never took place (the UK-US showdown for mastery of the Atlantic, for which both navies trained down to their joining as allies in World War II) are a remarkable achievement, and the generations of diplomats, statesmen, and ordinary citizens who made it possible deserve some recognition and celebration.

Congratulations, Republic of China

2011-10-10T18:23:00.000-07:00

As a former resident of Taiwan, Republic of China, Uncle Cephas wishes to congratulate that state on the hundredth anniversary of its founding.

Few Westerners realize that the issue between Mainland China and Taiwan is chiefly an unresolved and uncompleted civil war. Taiwan has not declared itself independent of China chiefly because it sees itself as the rump of a larger Chinese Republic, one founded by Dr. Sun Yixian (Sun Yatsen in Cantonese) on October 10, 2011.

Further, since back in 1992, former ROC President Lee Teng-hui declared his side's acceptance of its loss of the Mainland in the Chinese civil war, and invited peace talks on the basis of equality, Uncle Cephas would also like to express his respect for the ROC. Whether it continues to call itself the rump of Sun's Republic of China, a new Republic of Taiwan, Great Liuqiu, Dongning, or even Bob, it deserves international recognition. If we Americans could accept the separate existence of those reactionary running dogs of English imperialism in Canada, China can live with a separate Taiwan.

The Arab Spring and the end of the Dhimmi Populations in the Arab World

2011-10-10T18:17:00.000-07:00

Two news items ought to be required reading for every Western official dealing with policy towards the Middle East. one is the Italian Psychoanalyst David Gerbi's failed attempt to re-open a Synagogue in post-Qaddafi Libya; the other is the increasingly ferocious attacks on Egypt's Christian minority. Both suggest that the Arab revolts against the long-reigning strongmen of the Middle East will bring about more radically Islamicist and anti-Western regimes.

Gerbi, who is of Libyan Jewish birth, apparently believed the propaganda about the Libyan rebels representing a more open, tolerant, and democratic regime. Having been booed out of his natal country with howls for his immediate deportation, perhaps he can take comfort that these were not howls for his death. Maybe this is the moderation that the "Arab Spring" represents. Or, perhaps, along with the attacks on one of the last functioning synagogues in Tunisia a few months earlier, it proves that the Arab peoples once again face a change of thugs-in-power who will whet a deep-seated desire for more anti-Jewish and anti-Western demagoguery.

The attacks on Egypt's Christians--the last carriers of the language (in the form of liturgical Coptic) and elements of the culture of the ancient, Pharaonic Egyptians--further warns of the power of Muslim radicalism across the Arab world. The attacks of the last week are not de novo, but have a number of precedents reaching back into the waning years of the Mubarak dictatorship, when the regime was often successful in deflecting hatred of the regime towards the Coptic Christian minority. With Nasser's successful snuffing out of Egypt's millennia-old Jewish community as a precedent, Islamic radicals apparently hope that they may now make Egypt purely Islamic, by snuffing out the Copts.

This wave of Islamic radicalism bodes ill for the Middle East Peace Prospect. The very existence of states like Israel, and Christian Lebanon earlier, are an affront to Islamic doctrine, which posits perpetual Muslim supremacy over the Peoples of the Book; for these states exist on lands that have been under Muslim rule for centuries, apart from the very brief interlude of Western colonialism (which, incidentally, were the only period since the eruption of Islam from the Arabian Peninsula when a non-Muslim's word in court carried as much weight as a Muslim's). The likelihood that an Egyptian regime dominated by the Islamic Brotherhood will maintain its cold peace with Egypt is small; the likelihood that an Islamicist-dominated Egypt will throw its weight behind an increasingly Hamas-dominated Palestinian Arab entity is great. This rejectionism probably will further continue to dominate until a future Arab-Israeli War results in the Islamicists producing no more than an unbearably high number of "martyrs" killed by an Israel that will recognize that it has no alternatives but clear-cut victory or death. Should such a wave of Islamic radicalism engulf Israel, the Balkans and Spain are probably the next countries that must get very, very worried.

At present, most of the Western world is in a state of denial (not a river in Egypt, pun intended) about the danger posed by the new Arab regimes. We have convinced ourselves too long that Islam is at heart, a "tolerant" religion (ask the Armenians, extinct Mizrahi Jewish communities, the Copts of today, or Pastor Nardakhani aawaiting execution in Iran for apostasy from Islam about "Islamic tolerance"), especially since a line of cultural elites from the writers of the French enlightenment to today's so-called multi-culturalists have ever sought convenient sticks to beat the dog of the West's Christian heritage. But the handwriting is on the wall, and it is our choice to read and heed it if we will.

On Samuel Rutherford

2011-10-01T08:39:00.000-07:00

It gives modern people a shock
That Rutherford, in cleric's frock--
It's most certain fact
That of social contract,
He wrote decades before Old John Locke.

Samuel Rutherford (1600?-1661) was a theological and political spokesman for covenanting Scotland during the 1640's. He was a professor of Hebrew and Old Testament at St. Andrews University as well as a pastor of firm Presbyterian conviction. Persecuted by the disciples of Archbishop William Laud, he rose to prominence in Scotland after the Bishops' War of 1638.

He is best known for his collected letters, written from exile to former parishoners to urge them to remain steadfast, and for his Lex Rex (1644), in which he argues that government is divine in origin, but popular in mode, representing a compact between people, government, and God in which law is superior to either king or magistrate. This work justifies revolt under leadership of a lesser magistrate should the supreme ruler prove unfaithful to his part of the political compact.

Reading Revelation

2011-09-30T19:43:00.000-07:00

Our adult Sunday School class is working its way through the book of Revelation. Last week, we read the fifth chapter.

I came away from the study thinking that John's purpose is showing the Lord Jesus Christ as the proper focus for worship. The angels, living creatures, and elders before Christ's throne fall before him crying, "Worthy is the Lamb!" This is an echo of the doxology sung to the Father in Chapter 4. Jesus Christ, slain for our sins as the Lamb of God, risen and glorified, shares worship with the father, his seven horns (symbols of power) and eyes sending for the Spirit. Few other passages of Scripture underscore that Jesus Christ is God.

Jesus in Glory is not only the Son of Man figure from Daniel 7, whom we see again in Revelation 1. He is also the sacrifice for our sins. John's description of Jesus as the Lamb of God in both John 1 and Revelation 5 cannot have confused his earliest readers, who, as Jews living when the ministry of the Jerusalem Temple was still a living memory, would have known of its animal sacrifices, especially the ritual killing of the Passover lambs. The adored one who is worthy is the one whose shed blood covers the sins of his people and renders them worthy to approach and worship.

Jesus is also the one worthy to open the book with seven seals. What is this book? I take it as a symbol of the whole Scripture. This is because no other book of Scripture is as rich with reference to other portions of the Bible than Revelation. I remember Mormon missionaries during my youth who argued passionately that John's warnings in Revelation 22:18-19 referred only to John's own work. Yet this cannot possibly be true when Revelation shows a heavenly figure measuring the temple and those worshiping therein as in revelation; Jesus describing himself as beginning and end as YHWH does in Isaiah; the reminder of the covenanted community's status as kings and priests as mentioned in Exodus; worship scenes reminiscent of the building of Solomon's Temple and the Book of Psalms; strange beasts as in Daniel; and mention of the death and resurrection of Jesus as in the Gospels and Epistles of the New Testament. John knew what he was doing: he was putting the capstone on Scripture, and reading the whole through his knowledge of Jesus slain for our sins and triumphant over sin and death.

Perhaps the reason why our witness today lacks power is that our exposition of apocalyptic ignores the Gospel of Christ's finished work. Heaven sings in triumph before Jesus who shed his blood for sinners and conquered death for them. We on earth tremble and quake, as if we have no hope to share with those around us. May God forgive us.

The image reproduced above is the Ghent Altarpiece, by Jan van Eyck.

Anwar al-Awlaki's Death

2011-09-30T15:42:00.000-07:00

The news of Anwar al-Awlaki's death from an American drone strike provokes a storm of soul-searching over whether the president can order this kind of "assassination" (in ROn Paul's words) of a US citizen. While Uncle Cephas has never been a fan of Barack Obama, and probably won't vote for him in 2012, Uncle Cephas still believes that the president deserves the benefit of the doubt on this one.

What's wrong with you, American liberals? The head of the ACLU, Dean of Yale Law School, and all others uncomfortable about this action are cordially invited to go to the deserts of Yemen or mountains of Waziristan to serve the appropriate summons the next time an American-born terrorist plots an ongoing set of terrorist actions against American civilian targets--or, military ones, for that matter.

We are still in the midst of Mr. Bush's war, begun after consultations with Congress in the aftermath of 9/11/01, and it is now Mr. Obama's war. While Anwar al-Awlaki was born in the USA, and hence legally a US citizen, his actions, blogs, and statements leave the impression that he did not wish to be considered an American. Indeed, his influence on people like Nidal Hassan and other Islamic terrorists in the USA leave no doubt that he wished to inflict serious, act-of-war harm on the country where he was born.

Granted, this does not negate his legal citizenship. But there are a number of circumstances that are parallel to the Obama administration's actions. Given that immigrants to and emigrants from the USA take residence in other countries--including, as in the Awlaki case, return to countries of origin--there are doubtlessly enemy casualties from World War II, especially German and Italian, who were technically US citizens. If an American-born criminal were to enter an American school anywhere inside the territory of the USA and start shooting people, and, if an armed policeman happened to find himself in a position to gun down the shooter, would anyone condemn the officer of the law? The state exists to discourage and punish evil behavior. The declaration of Jihad by some Muslims against all Americans is a behavior against which any American administration would be required to protect the citizenry. In taking out Anwar al-Awlaki, the Obama administration simply did its duty.

Frankly, if it had been possible to serve an arrest warrant and read Miranda rights to the likes of Usama Bin Laden and Anwar al-Awlaki before leading them off in handcuffs, that would have been much better. But, once again, all the agonized consciences out there are cordially invited, the next-time an American-born terrorist joins a war against his country from a haven outside the USA (especially a failed state on the order of Yemen), to hop on a plane with the appropriate legal paperwork, carry out the arrest, carry out the extraction, and deliver the culprit to the appropriate American jurisdiction.

And you've heard it from someone who still says, "No 'Bama '012!"

Bible vs. Qur'an on Violence.

2011-09-24T18:44:00.000-07:00

Often, when discussing ferment in the Islamic world, people near anad dear to me say, "The Bible and Christian fundamentalists are just as bad as anything the Dar-ul-Islam can produce." It's a sentiment that grates on me, if only because it reveals a profound ignorance of both the Qur'an and the Bible. It reflects a profound, and even willfully studied, ignorance of the Biblical and Christian influences on Western legal, moral, and political thought and reflects a profound desire to find one's most dangerous enemies at hand (among fellow Americans of the Christian fundamentalist persuasion) rather than face, a long-term existential threat from abroad.
The moral equivalence game is a case of Christianity’s “cultured despisers” who since Marx and Freud have consistently declared all theisms to be equally false joining hands with those nominally Christian elements who lightly declare all theisms equally true, while ignoring the real gaps between Christianity and Islam.
Unfortunately, I have not seen many good blog postings addressing these differences. Worse, many Christians who attempt to do so often take a wrong approach and end up disparaging important parts of their own tradition and faith. Hence, Uncle Cephas takes up the gauntlet. This essay will focus on the question of violence in the scriptures of the two religions.
(I) Grace for Sinners
The first issue is the attitude which the two religions attempt (with or without success is another matter) to inculcate in their followers. Christianity values humility, Islam encourages pride.
As a Christian fundamentalist himself, Uncle Cephas readily admits that Christian fundamentalists can be as bad as any group of Muslims. But the reason for this is that it is a biblical "fundamental" of his creed that we are all conceived in sin (Psalm 51), sin from birth (Psalm 58), and that our hearts are deceitful above all things (Jeremiah 17:9). Confession of sin and repentance are part of both daily personal worship and corporate worship on all Lord's Days for most who call themselves Christians. No wonder that one of the most common objections against Christianity that I have heard is that it doesn't let us think very highly of ourselves! Our salvation is not a careful balancing so our good deeds outweigh our bad, for in such a “balancing act”, our sins would invariably outweigh our supposed merits. We confess the necessity of Christ's coming, atonement, and resurrection for our salvation--precisely because God's grace has allowed us to see the deep-seated evil of all human hearts, including our own.
In contrast, if I have heard the Da'wa people correctly, Islam denies that there is any such thing as original sin; and Adam's transgression affects only himself. The Qur'an congratulates Muslims on being "the best of peoples" (Surah 3:110--Al'-Imran). If this is indeed the self-image that Islam inculcates, a serious Christian can only see it as flippant.
The Gospel is not a code, but news: news of the saving work which God has done in Jesus Christ. Jesus himself said of his work, “the Son of Man [a Messianic title taken from Daniel 7] came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). The death of Jesus Christ is necessary for our salvation in that without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sins (Hebrews 9:22). This was why Adam and Eve covering themselves with leaves after their transgression did not suffice; and God made for them garments of skins (Gen. 3:21). This is why the laws of Moses have a detailed system of animal sacrifices described in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, to which the author of the Letter to the Hebrews refers.
Further, the blood of sinful man atones for no sin. This, not a divine decision to outlaw human sacrifice per se, lies behind the test of Abraham found in Genesis 22. The atoning blood must come from one who is sinless—namely, the Lord Jesus Christ. When John the Baptist, on seeing Jesus, declared “Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29), he was not calling Jesus a cute little animal, but calling attention to how the Messiah came to be the final sacrifice offered for sins; for the lamb was the animal most used in the Old Testament’s sacrificial system.
But the Gospel is not only about death. It is also about the victory Jesus won for us not only in bearing our sin and making atonement for us on the cross, but also in rising from the dead. If Jesus was not truly risen, writes the apostle Paul, our faith is in vain, and we are of all men the most to be pitied (I Corinthians 15:14). But Christ’s resurrection shows that he now has dominion over all things, for the sake of his people.
Yes, Christians are called to do the good works defined in the moral law. But this is not to accumulate merit; rather it is to express gratitude for what God has done.
It is in the light of this, the final revelation of God to man, that Christians read the whole of divine revelation given in the Old and New Testaments.
(I) Scriptural Violence: A wrong approach
The moral equivalence people are correct to note that both the Old Testament and the Qur'an include a plan for political and military conquest of lands. Much of the Octateuch (the biblical books from Genesis through Ruth) is taken up with a blueprint for the conquest of Canaan, including bone-chilling commands to thoroughly exterminate the Canaanites, which even John Calvin himself, that bugaboo of all liberals, theological or anti-theistic, spoke of this as a frightening decree. In these sexually liberated days, it is also popular to note that the Torah decrees death for such sexual sins such as adultery and homosexuality.
Usually, modern Christian apologists speak of a "higher morality" in the New Testament than in the Old, correctly noting that Jesus' final marching orders to his followers are to "make disciples of all nations" (Matthew 28:19-20) rather than to march through the land on an extermination campaign. This is often accompanied by an appeal to some kind of spiritual evolution between the times of Moses and those of Christ.
Yet this disparages the only Bible Jesus ever read while he “pitched his tent among us” (John 1:14) and was training his twelve disciples. In the Gospels, Jesus neither scorns nor disparages the Old Testament. The image of Jesus as a more highly evolved spirit or rebel against the Old Testament's "primitive" or "unworthy" character has nothing at all to do with what the apostles of Christ, the earliest church fathers, or Jesus himself had to say; but it does have a lot to do with a bacillus which the modern church caught from a number of often fiercely anti-Semitic German academic critics active in the 19th and early 20th centuries--and thank God that He preserved some "fundamentalists" who refused to accept the "assured findings" of such men!
The often unreflective acceptance of the New Testament as a "higher stage" than the Old in distinguishing Christian ethics and beliefs from those of Islam also serves to obscure profound differences between the Old Testament's theology, spirituality, anthropology, and ethics on the one hand and those of the Qur'an on the other.
Many portions of the Octateuch catalogue sins of the Canaanites, which the Israelites were forbidden to practice. Deuteronomy 18:9-14 lists sins of spritism, necromancy, and witchcraft; Leviticus 18 gives a list of forbidden marriages (generally defining the sin of incest), in the midst of which we also find a prohibition against burning one’s children in honor of Molech. It was for such sins that the Canaanites were to be dispossessed. Yet God, in his mercy, reserved a portion of the Canaanite nation for himself. Such, no doubt, was Melchizedek, to whom Abraham offered a tithe of the spoils of the war he waged against the kings of the east in order to rescue his nephew Lot (Gen. 14). When God promised Abraham the land of Canaan, he was told that he could not inherit it himself, “for the sins of the Amorites [also known as Canaanites] was not full (Genesis 15:16). This “filling up” of the sins of Canaan occurred some time later, shortly before the Exodus of Israel from Egypt.
Yet a surprising lack of self-righteous self-congratulation appears in Hebrew Scripture. The land was not given to the Israelites on account of their own righteousness. Deuteronomy 6-9 reminds them that they were a stiff-necked people, and that God was remembering his promise to their forefathers. Further, should the conquest tempt Israel to boast of its own prowess and might, or should Israel fall into the selfsame sins of the Canaanites, Israel itself would perish from the land (Dt. 8:19).
Indeed, Israel is repeatedly warned in Numbers and Deuteronomy that it would be punished for the sins committed by the Canaanites. The sin is a sin regardless of who commits it; and not even those chosen by God are exempt from the curses of the moral law. This should always been considered whenever the ban on Canaan is read—for, potentially, Israel may also find itself under a similar ban.
(II) A Unique Event and the Flow of Biblical History
The following Old Testament history and prophecy reveals the unfolding of Israel’s apostasy and punishment. The prophets arose as God’s prosecuting attorneys, reminding the Israelites of their sins against the covenant which God had made with them. Yet throughout the history of the Hebrew kings, there is the depressing refrain that “he walked in the all the way of Jeroboam the son of Nebat …wherewith he made Israel to sin” (I Kings 16:26).
The end of all this was that the Assyrians and Babylonians came down on Israel and Judah, destroying their kingdoms and exiling their peoples. Isaiah spoke of the invading Assyrian as the “rod of God’s anger” (Isaiah 10:5 ff.). Covenant-breaking not only destroyed the people of Canaan, but destroyed ancient Israel and Judah as well, exactly as Moses had warned.
Thus, the horrific command to exterminate the Canaanites can be understood only in the context of the whole of Old Testament history; a sacred history inspired by the Holy Spirit himself. The ban on Canaan is not an eternal instruction on how to wage war, but a warning that certain nations and men can become so hardened in sin that they must be swept out of the way. Perhaps this is a judgment to be left to the Almighty, since we do not today possess prophets (and those who claim to be such in our time sooner or later tend to prove themselves false). It is not at all a call to put aside all compassion, but it does remind us that God does execute his judgments in time and space, and that today, as then, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom (Prov. 1:7).
The ban against the Canaanites is a reminder that God is judge not only of individual souls, but over whole nations and peoples. Nor do God’s judgments spare his own people. This should remain a practical warning even to Christian peoples in the period since the coming of the Messiah Jesus. If we are careless or scoffing towards what God has revealed to us, our churches also may be destroyed, as Jesus himself warns in Revelation 1-3. Perhaps the blight of Islam over much territory that once was the cradle of Christianity, or the degeneration of once great churches in Europe in our own time may well be a more recent out-working of the same warnings which God gave to ancient Israel. The lesson is not to engage of a self-righteous love of war and punishment, but to seek God’s forgiveness and cleansing.
(III) Conlcusion
The extermination of the Canaanites was a unique event in Scripture; not the blueprint for just war in all ages. Indeed, the bulk of Scripture, Old Testament as well as New, praises the man of peace and calls us to seek it. Christians therefore are not to disparage the command to exterminate the Canaanites as “inferior” or “less evolved”, but to recognize in it the fearfulness of God’s wrath against sin, and to therefore rejoice that God chose to deal with us in mercy, through Jesus Christ, who bore the wrath and curse of the broken covenant in his own body on the tree.
Further, it is proclamation of the “good news” (evangellion in Greek), ethical example, and prayer that are the spiritual weapons which God gives his church for the subduing of nations; not sword and spear. The command to exterminate the Canaanites is to be remembered in humble recognition of divine justice; but the latest marching orders the church possesses call not for the extermination of nations, but that they may be made disciples (Matthew 28:19-20).
This is a stark contrast to the place of violence in the Qur’an. It is true that many Muslims prefer to read the command to jihad as an inner struggle to purify oneself; but no school of Islamic thought rules out aggressive, violent jihad as a means to spread the faith and the subsequent humiliation, oppression, and exploitation of the conquered.
At most, the holy war ideal in the Bible and Qur’an are only superficially similar. But underneath, they reveal a very different understanding of the relationship of God and man. The Qur’an calls for pride and self-righteousness; the Scriptures—even in their “scariest” verses, call for humility.

A Tale of Social Contract

2011-09-21T06:08:00.000-07:00

Meet George Buchanan!

George Buchanan was 16th century Scottish humanist, scholar, religious reformer, and tutor to the young King James VI of Scotland (later King James I of England). He was a pioneer of social contract theory almost a century before John Locke was born. He was also second moderator of the General Assembly of the Kirk of Scotland, the only layman to hold such a post. He knew John Knox in his later years, and was comforted toawrds the end of his long life by none less than his friend Andrew Melville--the selfsame cleric who reminded King James that the monarch was nothing but "God's silly [small] vassal."

http://www.marileecody.com/jamesvi.jpg

This site is one where you can view King James VI of Scotland (later James I of England) as a boy. He was Dr. Buchanan's student. Although Dr. Buchanan advocated rule of law and political compact (an older word for social contract), King James grew up to be a strong supporter of royal absolutism--or, the belief that kings must answer only to God.

Once, when James was around twelve years of age, he did not want to do his Latin lessons. He got saucy with Dr. Buchanan. Dr. Buchanan, in good, 16th century pedagogical style, took a birch rod to the young, royal backside.

The young King James then went complaining to his step-mother, the Countess of Mar (actually, some stepmothers in days of old, were actually kind). The COuntess of Mar was indignant, and stormed into the royal classroom.

"How dare you strike the Lord's Anoitned" The Countess cried, wagging a nobly-born finger at Dr. Buchanan.

Dr. Buchanan looked up from the book before him. "Madam," he said, "I have whipped his arse; you may kiss it if you please."

There are two morals to this story:
(1) Social contract whipped royal absolutism.
(2) Even kings have to do their homework!

James VI and I as a booy.

An Old but Important Article for 9.11

2011-09-11T05:40:00.000-07:00

For 9/11, here is an article that is some years old, but nonetheless very relevant to the crisis at hand. While it is clear that not all Muslims support a jihad against the United States, it is important that Americans remember that the 9/11 attacks were carried out as an act of jihad; and for our policy makers to recognize the importance of the doctrine of jihad to our current enemies.

http://www.ewtn.com/library/ISSUES/GUERRA.HTM

Undiplomtatic Activity in Egypt

2011-09-10T14:32:00.001-07:00

I fear that the Egyptian mob actions show that all governments are representative of their peoples, whether they intend to be or not; and that people's theologies matter.

John Adams famously said that the US Constitution was made for a moral and religious people, and would work for none other. The religiosity he understood was that bounded by the Anglican Church on the Right and his own Unitarians (still biblically oriented in his day, rather than the free-form faith we know today) on the Left, with the Reformed (Congregationalists, Presbyterians, Dutch and German Reformed) right in the middle; and a few sprinklings of Roman Catholics and Jews. Indeed, he spoke after two centuries of agitation for rule of law and checks on the balances of kings, which, in his Anglophone context, meant the politics of the more thoroughly Reformed persuasion. This stemmed from a deep humility about what human nature was after the Fall of Adam, and a corollary that, rather than have Leviathan grab all power and right to prevent the war of all against all (viz. Hobbes), no set of human hands should ever have too much political power.

In the Muslim lands, it seems that there is a choice only between strongmen and uncontrolled mobs. The strongmen, when they take power, must pander to the supremacism, hatred, and violence of the Muslim street lest they open the way for new strongmen to come and topple them. This is why Sadat was assassinated and why Mubarak prudently allowed the government-controlled media to spew venom.

Islam lacks a doctrine of original sin and holds its followers to be "the best of men". Hence, it can never conceive of Muslims truly wronging the Kufr, and when things go wrong, it causes people to ask "Who did this to us?" rather than "Where did we go wrong?" Add to this, its ethics represent a standard far below that of either Judaism or Christianity; as if fearing the charge of hypocrisy, it sanctified the lust, greed for plunder, and violence of at least the males among its members. Hence, it will sooner or later injure itself and blame another.

It is clear from this incident that the peace between Israel and Egypt, while sincere at the official level when Sadat made it, was sincerely greeted by the populace of only the Israeli side.

I also suspect that after the mob driving out the Israeli embassy, the Obama administration's use of good offices to secure the rescue and evacuation of the last Israeli diplomats will further enrage the Egyptian Muslim street. it may very well decide that it has the power to seize the US Embassy in Cairo, and precipitate a new major crisis between the USA and the Muslim world.

The apologetic tone Obama took towards the Muslim world at Cairo may thus prove repetitive of the Carter administration's stance towards the Pahlavi regime in Iran, and with the same unhappy results.

Experience, the best Teacher

2011-09-03T14:33:00.000-07:00

They often tell you that experience is the best teacher, but they never tell you why.

I'm a professional swindler--oops, public high school social studies teacher--and I know something about how people learn. If a kid comes into my class interested in learning something about the subject matter, willing to listen, and willing to open the book, I or any other fool can teach him.

But then there's Mr. Experience--his job is to teach those who neither listen to their elders nor read. Their number is legion, and they can't learn from anyone else.

A Reminder for 9/11

2011-08-28T12:06:00.001-07:00

http://images.search.yahoo.com/images/view;_ylt=A0PDoX1RkVpOkBUAYBCJzbkF;_ylu=X3oDMTBlMTQ4cGxyBHNlYwNzcgRzbGsDaW1n?back=http%3A%2F%2Fimages.search.yahoo.com%2Fsearch%2Fimages%3Fp%3Dpalestinian%2B9%2B11%2Bcelebration%26n%3D30%26ei%3Dutf-8%26y%3DSearch%26fr%3Dfreeze%26b%3D1%26tab%3Dorganic&w=430&h=500&imgurl=farm3.static.flickr.com%2F2235%2F2058671934_0f9cd965e3_z.jpg&rurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.flickr.com%2Fphotos%2Fklinquist%2F2058671934%2F&size=137.9+KB&name=+palestinian_woman_receives_free_sweets_from_a_vendor_as_a_form_of+...&p=palestinian+9+11+celebration&oid=218e730a21dc603785dfec954116b295&fr2=&fr=freeze&tt=+palestinian_woman_receives_free_sweets_from_a_vendor_as_a_form_of+...&b=0&ni=28&no=12&tab=organic&sigr=11ib8us1n&sigb=13s9n7r70&sigi=11oo36rmk&.crumb=UOdxQkpMCsD

China Insults America Again--the MLK Monument

2011-08-27T09:38:00.000-07:00

Communist China has taken a dump on American ideals and values again.

This time it is on the National Mall in a sculpture that presumes to commemorate Martin Luther King, Jr. Judging from photographs online, the statue of Martin Luther King, Jr., by Chinese sculptor Lei Yixing, looks like typical Communist propaganda: determined stance, crossed arms, severe and glowering visage, everted lips evocative not of Sub-Saharan heritage, but of surliness. Indeed, MLK has been made to look like Mao Zedong or Lei Feng with short, tightly curled hair. MLK appears not as someone with a dream about people being judged by the content of their characters rather than the color of their skin, but ready to deliver a kick to the gonads.

Most other official portraits of MLK capture an intense, yet thoughtful and hopeful person. This was a man who cast a giant shadow not by calling for the destruction of cities or the political murder of others, but by using the very Evangelical idiom honored by his enemies to shame them into repentence. Lei Yixing's sculpture captures none of this, but oozes the unrepentant Stalinism of the Beijing government from every surface, curve, and angle.

Surely the United States of America has enough gifted sculptors out there who might have done a better sculpture.

Indeed, that the monument is made of Chinese granite by a Chinese sculptor who, to my knowledge, is not a naturalized citizen or even a lawful permanent resident, is a further travesty. It insults worldwide struggles for human rights and dignity, and supports a nation whose record on minorities stinks. Had MLK confronted the kind of Han Chinese chauvinism which, despite five Autonomous regions and numerous autonomous prefectures and counties scattered around China's periphery, he would have been treated no better than the Tibetans or Uighur. Had he spoken his Christian conscience to the China of the Mao he has been made to resemble, he would have been executed as surely as Wang Zhiming, the ethnic Miao pastor from Yunnan executed in 1973 for refusal to participate in denunciatory meetings organized by the Red Guard. Worst of all, the government would have told the people for whom a Chinese MLK might have spoken that they ought to be grateful that their Han "elder brothers" had liberated them from their backwards superstitions in the name of Karl Marx's Historical Necessity, and were sending their best young people to populate their farmlands and pastures and take the best jobs in their localities.

Washington D.C. has numerous monuments to famous Americans and foreigners, some warriors, some peacemakers, some statesmen, some poets, some spiritual, some materialist. Numerous sculptors American and foreign have captured their subjects sensitively and skillfully, beautifying the nation's capital. French's Lincoln that overlooked the spot from which King delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech exudes meditation, sorrow, compassion, and depth. But this work is not alone in capturing the better side of the American spirit. Lei's Martin Luther King is simple as a carelessly placed hammer dropping on the floor.

US Government, shame on you for commissioning a sculptor steeped in an alien political culture to commemorate a great American. Lei Yixing, go home and take your disgusting Stalinist idol with you. Martin Luther King Jr. deserves a better statue.

Sobering News and Civilizational Suicide

2011-08-26T21:46:00.000-07:00

This is a link to an article on cohabiting families and their impact on children.

http://www.virtueonline.org/portal/modules/news/article.php?storyid=14787

It's sobering to note that pre-school children are 47.6 times more likely to die if in a cohabiting household than with married heterosexual parents. I have a suspicion that part of this may be that parenting requires a strong commitment to other persons,which heterosexual marriage gives, while cohabitation (and homosexual relations) are more associated with the indulgence of sexual whims. And, by the way, to the argument that allowing homosexual marriage might raise the pool of responsible parents, I note that in countries where it is legal (and criticism of it is proscribed as "hate speech"), such as Sweden, homosexual marriage is both rare and unstable.

Back in the 1960's, many in the counterculture advocated imitation of the sexual "spontaneity" of the African-American community--which then had an illegitimacy rate of roughly 23%, compared to the 75% today. A generation later, we have an increasing number of children at risk, phenomena such as the Frank Lombard case (in which a homosexual man allowed to adopt a child prostituted his five-year-old adopted son online), and an "acceptance" of alternative life-styles that truly kills. We are not in an evolving society, but one that seems determined to commit civilizational suicide

A wonderful parody

2011-08-19T17:56:00.000-07:00

Gates of Vienna, which has been unfairly tarred as a contributor to the Oslo killings by all who have ever grovelled at the feet of Stalin, Mao, or Castro, has posted this wonderful imitation of a Gilbert and Sullivan number:

http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/2011/08/i-am-true-embodiment-of-socialistic.html#more

A Thought on Science and Faith

2011-08-09T20:32:00.000-07:00

"When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and stars, which thou hast ordained; What is man that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?"
(Psalm 8:3-4)

Throughout my life, I have heard of a "warfare between science and religion". Yes, the tentative, groping, supposedly empirical findings of science often conflict with revealed doctrine. Yes, one eminent scientist, contemplating the "Big Bang", complained that he had spent years toiling up a mountain, only to find a band of theologians picnicking at the summit.

But the contemplation of God in his infinity, eternity, and unchanging character gives me a different perspective.

Since David, in Psalm 8, spoke of the work of God's fingers, imagine the magnification of a fingerprint, and suppose it it is the mark left by the index finger of God's right hand (please bear with my admittedly crude anthropomorphism). There are marks left by whorls, tents, and ridges, and blank spaces between the long, uneven marks left by the fingerprinter's ink. There is one long ridge over towards the right side of the fingerprint.

It is along that ridge that all of our science has been working from the beginning of recorded history.

Thoughts on the Prophets: Survival Strategies

2011-08-08T08:10:00.000-07:00

Recently, I've been reading Jeremiah, Lamentations, and Ezekiel. Jeremiah wrote just prior to Judah's exile to Babylon; Lamentations, a collection of five Hebrew acrostic poems, is said to be Jeremiah's lament over destroyed Jerusalem; Ezekiel's prophecies deal with both the fall of Jerusalem and exile.

Ezekiel notes the glory of the LORD leaving the temple by the east gate (10:19), symbolic of God's going into exile with his people. Jeremiah instructs the exiles to carry on with their lives and seek the peace of their cities of exile (Jer. 29:4-7).

These are important lessons for Christians following our loss of influence over the wider culture of the West. Yes, we must confront and criticize, and recognize that the apostate, morally obtuse, and willfully ignorant culture surrounding us is itself heading for judgment, and must inevitably pass away. But, in the meantime, we are to go on living as Christians, remembering the saving acts of God, and presenting our witness.

The Old Testament exiles doubtlessly thought that they had lost everything, that God had somehow let them down, that they were without hope. Yet from the perspective of 2500 years, we can see that the exile also gave something very positive to both Jews and Christians. As Ezekiel's visions show, it taught the Jews of old that God is not limited to a specific place. It taught them as well that they could survive even if it was difficult to "sing the LORD's song in a strange land" (Ps. 137:4). It also created a Jewish presence across much of the Middle Eastern and Mediterranean worlds; and from the New Testament, we learn that these communities were the seedbed from whence the proclamation of Messiah's name went out to the nations.

Perhaps, as the wider culture grows more hostile to Christ and to Christians, it is time to remember to survive, spread, and prepare for the next stage of God's plan of the ages to unfold.

Iranian Water Fights and US Policy

2011-08-06T07:08:00.000-07:00

There is now news that the Iranian authorities have become ever vigilant lest young people engage in water fights in parks during a spell of hot weather. There is fear that such incidents would be used as cover for opposition demonstrations.

While Uncle Cephas always supporsts the right of the young [and old] to cool off on a hot day, official US support for the Iranian opposition would be a lose-lose proposition for both. US policy ought to be to let Iran stew in its own political juices. Their irresponsible and foolish "thinking" class needs to be deprived of any plausible scapegoats and excuses.

In any event, the strongest force in the Iranian opposition has long been the Mojaheddin-e-Qalq, who, I understand, always claimed to be the first "revolutionary fighters" into the "nest of spies" back in 1979. They represent a mix of Marxism and Militant Islam, about as poisonous a combination as you can get. These are the same people whose US representatives can be found buttonholing people on the National Mall in Washington to solicit signatures on petitions to free various Iranian oppositionists and scold the mullah-ocracy. Uncle Cephas' own feelings about the group is, given its history in 1979, that a self-respecting US administration would instruct its Justice Department to investigate all MEQ admitted to the USA for possible revocation of either immigration status or citizenship (whichever applies in each case), detention, and deportation. The group made it clear long ago that the only possible relationship between Iran and the USA is hostility, so the USA truly has no excuse for letting them in.

The Iranian people have a long-standing grievance with us over the 1953 ouster of their hero Mossadegh, that fierce lion over British oil interests in his country and meek, timid, crippled mouse towards Soviet oil interests and out-and-out looting of northern Iran at the end of World War II, whose policies would have led to Iran's suffering in the late 1950's and '60's the fate Afghanistan suffered in the 1980's.

Perhaps the ferment going on in the Islamic world is a good reason for the US to let that entire civilization sort out its own problems--jut as long as they confine their calls for jihad against what they all recognize as the Dar-al-Harb--House of War,or legitimate target for Islamic aggression--verbal and contained.

The USA, Religious Defamation, and Islam

2011-08-05T15:20:00.000-07:00

Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, has stated that the USA supports the efforts of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) to declare defamation of religion a violation of human rights. While this appears respectful to all religions, it is in fact a veiled bid for Islamic supremacism, and as such needs to be opposed. Fundamentally, it strikes at both traditional American free exercise of religion and freedom of speech

The OIC represents a number of countries that are egregious violators of religious freedom. Pakistan is notorious for mob action against its small Christian, Hindu, and Sikh minorities that go uninvestigated or unpunished by the courts. Especially, in recent years, there have been numerous reports of abductions, rapes, and forced conversions of Christian and Hindu girls to Islam, with the Pakistani courts recognizing the marriages of these young women to their Muslim abductors, and the force of Islamic personal law over their persons.

In Egypt, permission to build a new church requires permission of the head of state. During the Mubarak years, security organs often encouraged the deflection of anti-regime anger into anti-Christian channels. Egypt also has had a number of cases in which people have been imprisoned after conversion from Islam to Christianity, and the refusal to allow former Muslims to re-register their religious identity as Christian. Further, attacks on the ten percent of Egypt's population that identifies itself as Christians--mostly of the Coptic Orthodox Church--have been growing in frequency and intensity over the past several years, and the removal of Mubarak does not seem to have lessened intercommmunal tensions.

The OIC called for this ban on defamation of religion in Jeddah, in Saudi Arabia, where possession of a Bible is a crime, and conversion to Christianity a capital offense. Similar treatment of apostates is both legislated and enforced in Iran and Afghanistan, even after the fall of the Taliban.

The target of this "anti-defamation" campaign is a rise in both Western awareness of Islam and Western criticism of Islam since the terror attacks of September 11, 2001. While the criticism has found little resonance in Western governments, it has found a following among non-Muslim people. Many who have inquired into Islam since then have not like what they have found, especially the close link between mosque and state and the division of the world into realms of Islam and the Dar-al-Harb (Lands of War), which is seen as a real or potential target for Islamic aggressive war. Non-Muslims who have noted such things have spoken up against Islam in both America and Europe. Bloggers such as Robert Spencer have developed large followings due to their careful research into Islamic doctrine and tradition, and their exposing clear theological links between core Islamic texts and teachings and the practice of political terror. While such bloggers do not call for violence against Muslims per se, they have spawned a fierce reaction from both Muslims and the political Left (which sees Muslims as a "minority", and hence a client group needing special protection and deference).

Since 9/11, Muslims have been quick to claim victim status as targets of "hate crimes" (although statistically, proven "hate crimes" against Muslims remain many times fewer than those perpetrated against Jews). Official American endorsement of an OIC-sponsored UN resolution against "defamation of religion" could easily turn into a judicial weapon to punish all who might criticize that religion, no matter how respectfully such criticism might be couched. This would have a very negative bearing on traditional American free exercise of religion and freedom of speech and the press.

But could not the same resolution be used for the protection of Christianity (or Judaism, or Daoism, or Buddhism, or Mormonism)? Perhaps. But the biases of influential jurists against Christianity could easily cause the prosecution of defamation cases to be skewed in favor of protection of the supposed "discrete and insular minority" of Muslims, or any other that is willing to use courts to silence their critics.

The USA has already proffered the hand of friendship towards the Islamic world several times, most noteworthily during the Obama administration. Mr. Obama's address to assembled Islamic representatives at Cairo was obsequious in the extreme. His administration has also backed politicized Islam in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya, and will probably do the same in Syria. Noteworthy spokesmen from our Department of State and CIA have dubbed the Muslim Brotherhood "moderate" and "secular", most likely out of unhappy recognition that it enjoys widespread support in the Islamic world and is likely to win the current power struggles going on among Arab Muslims; certainly not because these American leaders have read anything written by Seyyid Qotb or noticed the rise in attacks on non-Muslim minorities since the much-touted "Arab Spring".

Prior actions by the current administration have not endeared the USA to the Arab and wider Islamic street, nor have such attempts at outreach uncovered the supposed reserves of "moderate" Muslim sentiment in the Islamic world. It would be far better policy for the USA to remain aloof from the OIC initiative, and reiterate its commitment to its own First Amendment.

A Favorite Sayings

2011-08-01T21:06:00.001-07:00

Spit at heaven, and you get it back in your face.

Misha: My dog is wiser than my wife.
Grisha: Why do you say that?
Misha: My dog knows not to bark at his master.

It's hard to get off when you ride a tiger.

Thoughts on Education

2011-07-30T05:36:00.000-07:00

We're always told that experience is the best teacher, but never the reason why:

Mr. Experience is that rough, tough, mean guy who has his job because he's the only teacher in the school of life who can handle that vast crowd of people who will neither read nor listen to their elders.

What is the Gospel?

2011-07-29T13:42:00.000-07:00

I have recently been reading up on Islam--what kind of thinking American hasn't in the wake of 9/11?--and actually have come to recognize a few commonalities between that religion and the kind of liberalized Christianity prevalent in the America of my childhood and youth.

One of the chief commonalities is a misconception that the "original Gospel" was a set of humanly accessible rules given by a uniquely good man named Jesus or Nazareth/ Jesus Son of Mary/ Jesus the Carpenter, etc.

But, later, I discovered the much-maligned Evangelicalism. This is the belief that salvation is applied to us by receiving the Word of God rather than the practice of a certain set of ceremonies under the direction of a specially ordained set of men (sacerdotalism), or our following a prescribed set of ethical rules which, it seems, nobody knows for sure (theological liberalism). The word "Evangelical" means "of the Gospel". Hence, it is the view that the Gospel saves.

But what is the Gospel, really?

Here is the New Testament's own answer to that question:

"Moreover brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand;
By which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain.
For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures;
And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures:
And that he was seen of Cephas [not me; the original one--UC], then of the twelve:
After that, he was seen of above five hundred brethren at once; of whom the greater part remain unto the present, but some are fallen asleep.
After that, he was seen of James; then of all the apostles.
And last of all he was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time."
(I Corinthians 15:1-8)

Paul here tells us that the Gospel is not a code, but an announcement. It is the story of the saving acts of God in Jesus Christ.

First of all, note the stress on the death of Jesus Christ for our sins. This is truly crucial (pun intended). The Gospel is not about people "cleaning up their act" by performing a checklist of do's and don't's, but of the atonement for our sins by Jesus' satisfaction of divine justice in bearing the death and curse due to all those who violate the divine law. And it is also about his triumph over death, which assures us that not only is our penalty paid; but that the sins and condemnation which he bore for us remain buried, while Jesus himself, our substitute and representative, rose body and soul from the dead. As God and man in one person, Jesus is the lens through which God now looks at us; seeing our sins paid for and accepting us as righteous in Jesus.

The words "according to the Scriptures" cast us back to the Old Testament; especially the system of sacrifices for kipporeth (atonement) described in Leviticus and passages such as Psalm 22, Hosea 6:2,and Isaiah 53. Jesus' saving work is not something that hangs in a vacuum, or stands as an abstraction, but stands in the flow of a specific history of divine acts that are recorded for us. This Gospel does not nullify the need for the previous revelation, but appeals to it, and calls us to make use of it in our worship, worldview, and ethics. How different is the Christian church from Islam, in that the first freely uses what it sees as prior revelation while the latter discourages such use!

And the Gospel is something to which God left witnesses. First there were the living apostles and five hundred to whom Paul points his original first century readers. Since then, there remain the New Testament writings.

If the Gospel were merely a set of rules about meat and drink, the proper posture for prayer, and how to wipe out which sins by the practice of certain good works of our own doing, it truly deserves to perish. But this is not what the Spirit of God has proclaimed. Rather, the Gospel is the announcement of God's saving work in Christ. May many, many more embrace this glorious news that in Jesus Christ, God has truly visited and redeemed his people.

John Stott 1921-2011

2011-07-28T20:39:00.000-07:00

For an excellent, outside view of this recently departed minister of the Gospel, see:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/30/opinion/30brooks.html

Browsing around the web, I have learned that John Stott, retired pastor of All Souls Parish in London, England, has gone to be with the Lord.

As a college student, I was active in the Inter-varsity Christian Fellowship chapter at my Midwestern Alma Mater, and it was there that I first encountered Mr. Stott's little book _Basic Christianity_, one of many volumes which he penned. Hence, in 1972, when I went to England to visit my sister, brother-in-law, nephew, and niece, I made it a point to take in a Sunday service at All Souls.

After emerging from the "chyube", I looked at street signs and maps, and probably looked like a typical, lost American tourist. But God sent two well-dressed Ugandan students who asked me where I was headed, and, when I explained my mission, they asked me to follow them to my destination. All Souls, a CofE parish, was probably the first heavily attended "Mainline" church I ever visited. Although clearly the crowd that Sunday was mostly local English people, there was a clear smattering of former colonials, like my guides, who had found there a church home away from home. On a summer Sunday, there was space only in the balcony for someone who arrived just a few minutes before the beginning of the service. I don't remember much of the service apart from the quiet dignity of "Low Church" Anglicanism, but the sermon has remained with me for almost forty years.

Mr. Stott preached on Gal 4:4-7. In clear, eloquent educated British English, he first noted the Trinitarian character of the passage. Having grown up among theological modernists and at that time new to Evangelicalism, I had heard very little doctrinal preaching before then; and after that one Sunday at All Souls, I was hooked. Mr. Stott expounded the Father's control of the flow of human history down to that "fulness of time" when Christ should come; the cooperation of the Trinity in our salvation; Christ's working salvation for us and granting us an "introduction to the Father" (a jolt, for among my new Evangelical friends, there was something of a "Unitarianism of the 2d Person" afoot); and the Spirit's application of divine grace to us, causing us once again to focus on the Father as we address hims as "Abba". How interesting that even when writing to a Gentile audience, the Apostle Paul should use his native Aramaic to express the fatherhood of God...

But that last sentence is myself. In he course of his ordinary pastoral duties, Mr. Stott showed this wet-behind-the-ears young American tourist the importance of the Trinity, how it is relevant to everything in the Christian walk, and began to make it understandable. Of course, there was not time on that one Sunday morning to review all that the Greek Fathers and Reformers had written on the subject, but never again could anyone tempt me to believe that the doctrine of God as three persons in one substance was not plainly taught in the pages of Scripture. This has informed my prayers and private worship, and when I seek a new fellowship after a move, I know what to look for.

Many of the tributes I have read this night were from people who knew Stott better than I ever could, and all noted that Stott was a humble, saintly, pious Christian prior to his being a powerful and thorough exegete and preacher. David Brooks, a secular Jew, opined that if we Evangelicals had a Pope, Stott would have been the man. Perhaps I cannot quite agree, but can understand why Brooks may have said such a thing.

Mr. Stott died at the age of ninety, after several years' retirement, "in good old age", as the Book says. But may God raise up more preachers like him.

Why Christians Cannot Recognize Muhammad as a Prophet

2011-07-26T21:02:00.000-07:00

In a recent press conference, Ambassador Turki al-Faisal, who is also a Saudi Arabian prince, made the following observation:

"We [Muslims] revere from Adam to Noah to Abraham to Moses to David, Solomon, you name it, Jesus, Jonah, Jacob. All the prophets of the Old Testament and the New Testament, we consider them to be our prophet. And we also accept that the divine revelations to these prophets, the Torah and the—(inaudible)—are our books, along with the Koran. And our question to Christians and Jews is that why don’t you reciprocate and believe in our prophet as we believe in your prophets? Why don’t you accept our Koran as your book as we accept your Bible in its entirety, whether Old Testament or New Testament?"

The Prince deserves an answer.

As a diplomat, the prince knows that peoples of different cultures, religions, and outlooks often must deal with one another. The rhetorical questions at the end of his statement above suggest that a politic recognition of Muhammad as a prophet and the Qur'an as a "Third Testament" may possibly solve a multitude of problems between Christians and Muslims. His statement that Muslims "accept" the Old Testament prophets and Jesus, along with their books, has become a commonplace in the great swindle that passes for the teaching of history in American public schools, and doubtlessly seems reasonable to many of his hearers.

With all due respect, Your Highness, your proposal does not work.

Islam does NOT accept the Old and New Testaments in their entirety. They claim that the Jews and Christians corrupted the original Tawrat, Zubar, and Injil ; hence Muslims are not encouraged to read the Bible, and, indeed, may be punished for owning one in some Muslim countries. The Prince's own country bans the Bible's import.

The New Testament makes much of Christ's death as the atonement for our sins, understands Old Testament passages such as Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53 as prophetic of the event, and understands the Old Testament sacrificial ritual described in the Torah as foreshadowing the Messiah's sacrifice. Yet the Qur'an categorically states that Jesus did not die on the cross. Further, the New Testament presents Jesus Christ as fully God and fully man in one person; the Qur'an says he was merely man. The Qur'an charges the Jews with making Ezra the son of God analogous to Jesus Christ in Christianity, but no Muslim has ever presented extra-Qur'anic corroboration of such a belief (I have discussed and argued theology and religion with many Jews, read something of Talmud and Midrash, and know of no Jewish tradition that deifies Ezra).

Further, Christians are not discouraged from reading the Old Testament. Quite the contrary, the prophets of Israel have long informed the way Christian thinkers view history; most instructed Christians are aware that Jesus' injunction to love God and neighbor come from Leviticus and Deuteronomy; the decalogue is taught in every catechism class; Christian worship is unthinkable without the Psalms; and Christian ethics draws heavily from the Pentateuch and Wisdom Literature. Christians do not dismiss the Old Testament as "falsified", but base the authority of the New Testament on that of the old, and bind the two together as one volume. Four-fifths of the Christian Bible is shared with the Jews, differing from the Jewish Tanakh chiefly in the order of the thirty-nine books.

Perhaps His Highness will pull off the mask and explain that the "original" Tawrat and Injil were corrupted, and that Islam honors the "original" ones rather than the extant ones. This is a commonplace of Islamic polemics. Yet I doubt that the Prince could come up with the "original Old and New Testaments"; nor could he explain how the Jews and Christians, who were always mutually suspicious and never cooperated, could come up with the same Old Testament that the other side recognized, while the competing Christian sects came up with the same New Testament. And as for the Jewish and Christian scribes being conniving, careless, corrupting, or some combination of the three, how could that be when both allowed witnesses against their own practices to remain in the Biblical text? The Rabbinical conservators of the Hebrew Old Testament did not change Abraham's serving both milk and meat to his mysterious visitors in Genesis 18, when it violated their own tradition; nor did theysmuggle into the biblical text the beloved tale of Abram arguing with Terah about idolatry in from the Genesis Rabbah. How could the hierarchical churches of East and West, which were long the stewards of the Greek New Testament, have allowed Philippians 1:1 to stand when it clearly mentions a plurality of bishops in one city? It seems that there is not a single Greek manuscript of the Pauline letters that "corrects" this by the clear tradition of the medieval churches. All this suggests to me that these ancient conservators of the text, both Jewish and Christian, were highly scrupulous in handling texts they saw as sacred rather than conniving and jealous of their own prerogatives and man-made traditions.

I will happily accept Muslim neighbors who wish to live in peace with me; and I'll be the first to call the police if I see a suspicious figure lurking around the mosque when I am feeling insomniac and take a late night stroll. But for some of the reasons listed above, I cannot recognize Islam as a continuance or inheritor of the biblical traditions.

Perhaps His Highness wants to say that he wants our respect for his religion; and I feel I can respect a belief that commands the allegiance of hundreds of millions, even if I disagree with it. But I cannot say I recognize the biblical Jesus Christ when I read the Qur'an. Further, reflection on the implications of the Messiah's coming, his being God in the flesh as well as the promised man of David's line, his eternally valid atonement for our sins, and his victory over death in the resurrection make it all but impossible for me to think that God has a later "word" to "correct" this.

And if Islam so respects Moses so much, how come it mandates the amputation of the thief's hand when Exodus 22 mandates that the thief pay restitution to the victim? Indeed, it is my understanding that the Prince's own country practices these hudd punishments and is proud of doing so.

Further, Christians believe that God became man and dwelt among us in Jesus Christ (John 1:1-18); that Christ obeyed the divine law on behalf of his people, offered himself as atonement for their sins, and rose to conquer death on their behalf on the third day. Paul, in First Corinthians 15, says that this is the essence of the Gospel, not some new set of rules. But with such a message, how can any Christian sanely believe that there is room for some new revelation of rules for the direction and postures to use in prayer, kinds of legitimate meat and drink, and the proper positioning to use when performing ablutions? No, it is not for nothing that the Risen and Glorified Jesus Christ warns us against adding to the biblical testimony or taking away from it at the end of Revelation, the last book of the Biblical canon. After Christ, Muhammad is frankly a let-down.

The Prince would have served us all better had he spoken of the need to accurately understand each others' beliefs and practices, and to examine our sources and evidence more thoughtfully. To say that an informed Christian can somehow accept Muhammad as a later prophet, however, demands a deep ignorance of both Bible and Qur'an.

The Norwegian Bombings: The Leftist Media has a Field Day

2011-07-26T20:48:00.000-07:00

At the outset, Uncle Cephas condemns the bombing and killings. If Norwegians don't like the Socialist Left Party of Kristin Halvorsen, they can vote it out. Among the things which conservatives ought to conserve are rule of law and government by political compact. Restraint of government power is sensible only in a context in which citizens practice a high degree of self-restraint, too.

This is what Uncle Cephas has to say about the Norwegian bomber: Mannen er en Kriminell, ren og enkel.

Google translation tells me that that's how they say "The man is a criminal, pure and simple" in Norwegian. Anyone who knows Norwegian is invited to offer correction.

Anders Behring Breivik, the man arrested for the bombing of Norwegian government buildings early this week and shooting a group of socialist youth at their summer camp, is now being cited as an example of home-grown conservative Christian terrorist. Further, since Breivik claims to have read Robert Spencer's Jihad Watch, Bat Ye'or's Eurabia, and other blogs and works critical of creeping Islamic influence in the West, AP and the New York Times have indicted there authors as being complicit in the killings. Having read Spencer's blog and some of Bat Ye'or's writings, I can only say that such finger-pointing is extremely unfair, and reflects a knee-jerk political posturing rather than real analysis. By the same token, the New York Times itself should be held accountable for the mass murders of the Chinese Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and the Cambodian democide under Saloth Sar, since in the wake of Nixon's visit to China, the Times' staff all the way up to James "Scotty" Reston himself were absolutely ga-ga over Mao.

The blog tempest that has blown up in the aftermath of the Norwegian bombings is quite revealing of our times. At first, an Islamic terror attack seemed the most likely scenario; and the Jihadi blogosphere immediately began crowing. However, things got uglier when the police arrested an indigenous Norwegian by the name of Anders Behring Breivik.

The rapidity with which the mainstream media blamed the anti-Jihadi blogger Robert Spencer for the actions of the bomber reveals much about how the world is now seen. Having followed Spencer's blog, I have never seen him or his writing staff argue for counter violence against either Muslims or the Western enablers of Islamic terrorism. But, apparently, there are many who believe that the effectiveness and importance of a piece of writing is measured by the anger and political violence it launches.

This, perhaps, is why the Left has feted Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Vladimir Lenin, Franz Fanon, Che Guevara, Malcolm X, and the young Eldridge Cleaver. No-one can deny that the readers of these authors took the writers' ideas and ran--amuck--with them. It may also be the reason why there is a Red-Green [Islamic] Alliance growing; since Islam, alone of the major religions, is unashamed of violence, and may offer the needed warrior manpower now that Socialist Europe is graying. Apparently, since Breivik cited Spencer and Bat Ye'or as influential in his thinking, editors and writers on the Left are fearing that someone on the other side is becoming "effective", too--even if Spencer is no advocate of violence.

More troubling is the picture of the reading public, especially since Uncle Cephas likes to read, and does it in English, Chinese, Ancient Greek, and sometimes Hebrew or French. Apparently, the average man who gets his hands and eyes on a piece of substantial critical writing is supposed to immediately go out and DO something because of what he has read. The ideal reader is apparently someone like one of the various criminals of the 1950's and '60's who claim they were driven to their acts by reading Salinger's _Catcher in the Rye_.

The reader is therefore supposed to respond only as a volitional and emotional being, not as a thinking one. The punditry seems to think that there is no room for reflection or interrogation of texts by the common reader. Hence, writing itself is degraded to the level of propaganda; and a responsible, reflective, reading citizenry is relegated to a quaint era of horses and buggies.

This is insulting, to say the least.

I hope that Bat Ye'or and Robert Spencer get a lot of free publicity out of this tempest. Both writers have substantial knowledge of the Arabic language, have read extensively in the field of Islamic studies, and have come away with a keen awareness of the more disturbing side of Islamic doctrine and ethics. Bat Ye'or is herself a child of the expulsion of Egypt's millennia-old Jewish community in 1957, and has first-hand experience of the dhimmi status of which she writes.

As a social studies teacher, Uncle Cephas himself is bothered by the image of Islamic "tolerance" presented in school books, when Islamic law has always mandated that the testimony of a dhimmi (tolerated non-Muslim) is worth only half that of a Muslim; when orthodox Islamic doctrine sees close proximity to a kufr as defiling; and when war and the abduction of non-Muslim women are legitimate, normative activities for Muslim men. The pressures on the Christians and Jews of Spain under the Almoravids and Almohads is as much part of the history of Andaluz as the relative tolerance of the 'Ummayad period; the destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher by the Fatimid Caliph part of the narrative of the Islamic Middle East; and the periodic massacres of subjugated non-Muslims that punctuated the histories of Muslim-ruled lands as much a part of the record as any Spanish Inquisition or Russian pogrom. These are things of which many have become more and more aware since 2001. Such awareness certainly demands neither bigotry against modern-day Muslims in the West nor political violence, but it does justify a certain watchfulness which the major media and parties of the Left have mistaken for bigotry.

The Nicolaitans--From Revelation 2 and 3.

2011-07-25T18:10:00.000-07:00

Perhaps because of the craziness around Harold Camping's predictions of the end of the world, some Christians I know are studying the Book of Revelation to see what it really says. So far, we've gotten only into the first two chapters, but already there's a lot to think about. One questions arose about the Nicolaitans, a groups condemned in the Risen Christ's admonitions to the churches of Ephesus and Pergamos.

Here's what the Scriptures themselves say about the Nicolaitans:

"Yet this you have: you hate the works of the Nicolaitans, which I [the risen, glorified Jesus Christ] also hate." (Rev. 2:6)

"But I have a few things against you: you have some there who hold the teaching of Baalam, who taught Balak to put a stumbling block before the sons of Israel, so they might eat food sacrificed to idols and practice sexual immorality. So also you have some who hold the teaching of the Nicolaitans." (Rev. 2:14-15).

The identification of these Nicolaitans and the false doctrines they taught is a difficult task, for sources on them outside the Book of Revelation are few. In the letter to Pergamos, mention of the Nicolaitans follows hard on the heels of mention of Balaam, the Moabite prophet sent out to curse Israel, but who ended up blessing them (Numbers 22, 23). The name Baalam means “master of the people” in Hebrew, while the Greek name Nicolas, from which the Nicolaitans took their name, means “overcomer of the people”. In II Peter 2:15, Balaam is one who put a “stumbling block” in the way of Israel, the Greek word for “stumbling block” being skandalon, the source of our English word “scandal”. Indeed, the participation in idols cults and sexual immorality in Pergamos, with no need to further explain who the Nicolaitans were and the sins they countenanced, may well justify linking the name of Nicolaitan with the temptation the Moabites offered the Israelites prior to the latters’ entry into Canaan.

Early Christian history is also scanty in its record of the Nicolaitans. Ireanaeus of Lyons, who lived and wrote around 180 A.D., says the following:

"The Nicolaitanes are the followers of that Nicolas who was one of the seven first ordained to the diaconate by the apostles.(1) They lead lives of unrestrained indulgence. The character of these men is very plainly pointed out in the Apocalypse of John, [when they are represented] as teaching that it is a matter of indifference to practise adultery, and to eat things sacrificed to idols. Wherefore the Word has also spoken of them thus: "But this thou hast, that thou hatest the deeds of the Nicolaitanes, which I also hate." (Ireanaeus, Against Heresies, 26:3. http://www.gnosis.org/library/advh1.htm)"

Eusebius of Caesarea, who wrote during the first quarter of the fourth century, around the time of the Council of Nicaea, has the following to say in his Ecclesiastical History:

"At this time [in the late first century] too, there existed for a short time the heresy of the Nicolaitans of which the Apocalypse of John makes mention. These claimed Nicolas, one of the deacons in the company of Stephen who were appointed by the Apostles for the service of the poor. Clement of Alexandria in the third book of the Stromata gives the following account of him: “He had, they say, a beautiful wife; but after the ascension of the Saviour he was accused of jealousy by the apostles, and brought her forwards and commanded her to be mated to anyone who wished. They say that this action was in consequence of the injunction ‘it is necessary to abuse the flesh,’ and that by following up what had been done and said with simplicity and without perversion those who follow his heresy lead a life of unrestrained license. But I have learned that Nicolas had nothing to do with any woman beside her whom he married, and that of his children the daughters reached old age as virgins, and the son remained uncorrupted. Since this is the case it is clear that the exposure of the wife of whom he was jealous in the midst of the disciples was the abandonment of passion, and that teaching the abuse of the flesh was continence from the pleasures which he had sought. For I think that according to the command of the Saviour he did not wish to serve two masters—pleasure and the Lord. They also say that this was the teaching of Matthias, to slight the flesh and abuse it, yielding nothing to it for pleasure, but to make the soul grow through faith and knowledge.” (III.29)."

Flavius Clemens, whom Eusebius quotes at length, was an important Christian teacher of Alexandria in Egypt who lived between 150-215 A.D.

These traditions are all mentioned in Eusebius' _Ecclesiastical History_. This major work was written by Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea in the days of the Emperor Constantine (after 311 A.D.). While it is more than two centuries later than the Revelation of John, it may well preserve important historical accounts, for Eusebius cites numerous earlier authors and appears to have been a careful researcher. Further, his patron Constantine, who became a Christian, wanted as much information as could be found about the origins and rise of Christianity, and Eusebius’ work seems to be in fulfillment of the Christian emperor’s desire.

Before Eusebius, Irenaeus of Lyons (active in the latter half of the 2d century) is the other key node of transmitting information about the Nicolaitans. A native of Smyrna, one of the seven churches addressed in Revelation, Irenaeus went to Lyons, in Gaul (today’s France), and seems to be one of the earliest to carry the Gospel into the West beyond Italy and northern Africa. The cited work, _Against Heresies_, sought to distinguish the Christianity bequeathed by the Apostles from various counterfeits, spending the most time refuting Gnosticism, which was the most common and most virulent heresy of his time. However, he mentions the Nicolaitans, along with the followers of Simon Magus (the man who tried to buy the Holy Spirit mentioned in Acts 7), tand the Cerinthians, who were forerunners of the Gnostics.

There is a further link to Nicolaitan history in Irenaeus’s own background. Eusebius tells us that Irenaeus, when young, heard the teaching of Polycarp, overseer of the church in Smyrna who was martyred in 155 A.D. after serving Christ for “eighty-some years” (in Polycarp’s own words). Polycarp (70?-155 A.D) is described as having been a disciple of the Apostle John, and belongs to a group of early Christian writers known as the Apostolic Fathers, meaning that they knew the apostles. Hence, Irenaeus may be seen as a spiritual “grandson” of the Apostle, living in a time when the events surrounding the writing of Revelation were as fresh as historical material as the end of World War One, Prohibition, or the May 4th Movement might be to us today. Polycarp, as overseer of the church in Smyrna, may have been the messenger of that church addressed in Revelation 2:8-11; although this is a point on which we cannot be dogmatic, since John does not name the messengers of the seven churches. In his surviving Letter to the Philippians (not to be confused with the New Testament book of the same name), which dates from the early 2d century, Polycarp notes that some of his readers may remember the example of Paul, who founded their church.

Yet the information that Eusebius gives us is mostly a quotation from Clement of Alexandria, and there are points at which the quote from Clement differs from the testimony of Irenaeus. Information available to Clement indicated the Nicolas and his immediate family were more ascetic than libertine, and Clement notes that Nicolas sought the Lord rather than his own pleasure. This suggests that Nicolas himself may not have belonged to the sect which claimed him as their founder, the association of the heretical sect with the early deacon of Antioch and Jerusalem may have been unfair, and discussion about this issue appeared very early in church history. Yet it is also worth noting that Irenaeus speaks of “these men”, meaning the Nicolaitans rather than Nicolas himself, so there is probably no real contradiction between the testimonies of Irenaeus and Clement.

In modern times, there is a tendency to identify the Nicolas who founded the Nicolaitans as the first to establish a hierarchical order of Christian clergy. This argument is based on the etymological meaning of the name “Nicolas”. This tendency goes back to at least Cyrus I. Scofield, late 19th century editor of the famous study Bible. It was continued by Watchman Nee in his book The Orthodoxy of the Church, for Nee was deeply influenced by the Plymouth Brethren, who shared a common Dispensational theology with Scofield (Scofield systematized doctrines he had learned from the Plymouth Brethren). Yet this approach should be taken with a great deal of caution. There is no earlier evidence than Scofield’s own speculation that the essence of the Nicolaitan heresy was hierarchicalism To suggest that the main thrust of the Nicolaitan heresy was to categorize Christians into classes of higher and lower is a little like suggesting that people who name their sons Peter favor idolatry, since the name “Peter” comes from the Greek word for a stone.

While it is perhaps frustrating that the identification and doctrine of the Nicolaitans remains unclear, their mention in the book of Revelation has three lessons for modern Christians: (1) the enemies of God and his anointed perish (Psalm 2:10); (2) the risen Christ would have us flee sexual immorality; and (3) idolatry remains a major sin, with which we must not compromise.

We know of a number of schisms, sects, and heresies from the first several Christian centuries, and even know something of their beliefs, due largely to the efforts of men who sought to refute them. For example, we know that in the secon century, Gnostics came stressing secret knowledge rather than Christ as the bringer of salvation. In the early fourth century, the Arians preached a Christ who was merely the first created being. But the actual message of the Nicolaitans, apart from the possibility that it had something to do with compromising with idolatry and sexual immorality, is lost.

The “sexual revolution” that besets us today is actually nothing new. In Revelation 2, Christ warns the churches against fornication, which is sexual activity outside of marriage. In Romans 1, both male and female homosexuality are listed among the unwholesome fruits of idolatry. Indeed, throughout history, unregenerate people have often indulged their sexual appetites. The Greeks and Romans of the first century were notorious for indulging in every sexual perversion. In modern America, sexual license is closely associated with the rejection of Christianity. When there is sexual sin in the household of a prominent Christian, non-Christian media report it with glee, as the coverage of Bristol Palin’s problems makes clear. In Islam, while rules for women are strict, the carnal desires of men are greatly indulged. So, perhaps, one of the major challenges facing the church in our age is to model healthy sexual relations in our marriages and families, even as we acknowledge difficulties in doing so.

Last, but not least, the God we worship is distinct from others gods, or idols. The word Eidolon in Greek means “something seen”. The little gods worshipped by those who deny Christ are many. Among the ancient Canaanites, the gods were personified powers of the natural world. For the Greeks and Romans, many gods represented the cultural powers of man. In ancient China, many heroes and great men ended up deified, Guan Gong and Yan Ping Wang being two examples. In more modern time, so-called “atheists” are really manufacturers of new gods: Karl Marx introduced us to the worship of a goddess called “historical necessity”; Carl Sagan speaks of the cosmos in terms transparently borrowed from ancient Hindu Vedas and Upanishads; deep ecologists would have us worship the earth as “Gaia”. But these are only man-made substitutes for the true God who made heaven and earth, and, who for us and our salvation, became man, dwelt among us, atoned for our sins on the cross, and conquered death in his resurrection. Before him, all these other gods are empty.

The Wonders of Holder's Department of Justice

2011-06-11T19:06:00.000-07:00

William LaJeunesse of Fox News has written the following on a recent operation by America's Department of Justice:

"...Officials at the Department of Justice are in "panic mode," according to multiple sources, as word spreads that congressional testimony next week will paint a bleak and humiliating picture of Operation Fast and Furious, the botched undercover operation that left a trail of blood from Mexico to Washington, D.C.

The operation was supposed to stem the flow of weapons from the U.S. to Mexico by allowing so-called straw buyers to purchase guns legally in the U.S. and later sell them in Mexico, usually to drug cartels.

Instead, ATF documents show that the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms knowingly and deliberately flooded Mexico with assault rifles. Their intent was to expose the entire smuggling organization, from top to bottom, but the operation spun out of control and supervisors refused pleas from field agents to stop it. "

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/06/09/justice-officials-in-panic-mode-as-new-testimony-is-expected-to-reveal-depth/#ixzz1P1S4vMYc

Granted, Fox News is supposed to be biased and unreliable, but the same issue has been reported by the Wall Street Journal as well.

The new Justice Department of Eric Holder will not look into possible voter intimidation by the New Black Panthers in Philadelphia during the 2008 elections, and now has made things dangerous for a neighboring country without a declaration of war. But perhaps, rather than catching real gun and drug smugglers, the real purpose of this operation is to encourage a hue and cry against law-abiding Americans and foreign visitors purchasing firearms in the USA, and to drive one more nail in the coffin of the Second Amendment, and move to the situation in which only outlaws have guns, and the citizenry must submit to more and more policing by the government in order to protect itself. Given the history of this sort of thing, the "protection" the citizens will receive probably won't be against criminal activity, but against political dissenters.

The Alchohol, Tobacco, and Firearms division (ATF) is now running a rather dismal track record. Under the Clinton administration, it made a name for itself by killing women and children belonging to a deluded sect in Waco, Texas, and provoking a shootout with Randy Weaver, a cranky racist survivalist in Idaho, which ended in the deaths of innocents as well. Perhaps it is a good time to abolish the ATF, which is acting more like a rogue agency than like a responsible law enforcement agency.

Uncle Cephas is neither a Branch Davidian nor a member of Covenant, Arm, and Sword of the Lord or any other sect that believes in a present-day Messiah or in the nonsensical doctrine that non-whites are subhuman. However, if Muslim imams are regularly allowed to preach that Jews are relatives of apes and pigs, or the President's former pastor may piously and gleefully call on the Almighty to damn the United States (the man's namesake did no more than announce the coming exile of Judah, after all, and wept rather than chortled over it), and the President's press secretary Anita Dunn may admire the mass-murdering Mao Zedong, then a few anxious souls may indulge in racist theologizing, too. And, given that the racist cults and modern Messiah followers are not at the levers of power, but hidden in remote corners of the land, maybe they deserve less scrutiny than they get.

Further, when men like Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, John Witherspoon, Samuel Adams, and other American founders spoke of liberty, they meant liberty from an overbearing state. At present, Americans are delivering themselves and their posterity to an increasingly intrusive and potentially destructive state, as the actions of ATF are showing. It's time to reverse this trend, and abolition of a few federal agencies may be a step in the right direction.

The Scots-Irish and Swing Voters

2011-05-28T18:57:00.000-07:00

Salena Zito has published a column at TownHall in which she notes some learned wonk's discovery that areas of "swing voters" correspond roughly to the parts of the USA settled by the Scots-Irish.

Having a drab of "Scots-Irish" heritage on my mother's father's mother's side of the family or something like that (with Jewish and Scandinavian elsewhere, and married into the Chinese), I was rather amused to see so much attention paid to a population that supposedly melted into the great WASP middle long ago. But, after doing a bit of reading and noticing a few things during my long sojourn as a Presbyterian (still going on, basically), I've come to a few conclusions.

Before the potato famine made the name "Irish" mean "Roman Catholic Irish", the so-called Scots-Irish were simply Irish Protestants from Ulster. Indeed, the early American "Ancient Order of Hibernians" and the first St. Patrick's Day parades in New York were mostly Protestant affairs.

I'm not denying that many Protestant Irish came from Scots (with a number of English and Welsh) planted in Ulster from the days of James VI and I on, but I strongly suspect that there was a considerable native Irish element among people who would become "Scots-Irish" during the 1800's.

I visited old Presbyterian cemeteries in western Pennsylvania and saw names ending in -ehan and others that looked suspiciously native Irish rather than Scots-Irish suffixes. I've read 18th century records of presbyteries that received Irish immigrant ministers and elders whose names began with "Mc-" (admittedly, something found among Scottish Gaels, too)--and don't forget the family of Jane McCrea, the daughter of a Presbyterian minister, whose murder by British-allied Mohawks turned the "Scots-Irish" (Irish Protestant?) settlers of western NY to the patriot cause. I've even read an Irish nationalist study of the history of Gaelic use that claimed that in 18th century Ulster, literacy in Irish Gaelic (as opposed to simply a spoken knowledge of the language) tended to be associated with Protestants, who were supposedly "settlers".

I propose that some of the identification of Irish Protestants as all Scots settlers and Roman Catholicism as an inseparable part of "Irish" identity may owe less to who these people actually were and who their descendants are than to the following:

1. the end of penalties against Protestant dissenters in the UK
2. Drift away from Irish separatism among Protestant Irish Presbyterians during the 19th century
3. Identification of "Irish" as poorer, less-acculturated Roman Catholic immigrants after ca. 1840 in America.
4. The search for "racial" explanations of political alignment in Europe, and the export of such ideas to the USA during the 19th century.
5. Late 19th and early 20th century exaltation of the "Anglo-Saxon" in British and American discourse.

This is neither a plea for Irish Protestants to embrace the IRA (filthy friends of Andropov and Qaddafi) nor a disparaging of historical Irish grievances against British rule, nor a call for either a cession of the Six Counties to Eire or the re-incoporation of Eire into the UK. It's just voicing a suspicion I have about how things were before that great roaring engine of 19th century social theorizing got cranked up.

RUptured Rapture III

2011-05-21T18:05:00.000-07:00

Due to the mysterious disappearance of Uncle Cephas, this blog is now in new hands.---not

...All kidding aside, there probably are people who might have taken my last two posts seriously.

Then again, when my brethren of the Dispensationalist persuasion get all excited about the imminent return of Christ every time a bomb goes off in the Middle East, other good friends of mine foul their breeches every time there are a few more tornadoes touching down this season. They believe we're all going to roast to death next year due to human-induced global warming, even though we're still a long way from being able to raise veggies and milk cattle even in the southernmost parts of Greenland (as the Norse settlers did a scant millennium ago). Other people whom I love believe that dungeons and thumbscrews in the basement of the US Capitol are just another bill away the minute the Jumboes displace the Jackasses as the slightly majority party in either house of Congress. Heck. When I waxed sarcastic and said that as a good Evangelical I was going to enjoyed live liberated lesbian stew instead of roast turkey for Thanksgiving, a learned colleague of mine actually believed me! Well, that's one I'll never try again.

The point of the matter is that apocalypticism is a good way to rally the troops and get them fired up for the next campaign, be it evangelistic or political. It's also a good way to get attention, or skew perceptions of the truth in a way you'd like.

Good job, Harold Camping! You had people talking about you from coast to coast! Now, why not study up on the person and work of Jesus Christ, and give them a little more prominence in your ministry?

After all,
That's what Paul
Would have said to steady
Us and get us ready
One the way
To that great day.

Ruptured Rapture II

2011-05-21T17:54:00.000-07:00

Well, Harold Camping's predicted date for the rapture has come and gone, proving once more that the time for the end of the world is known only to God.

Yes, there is a large group of Christians who believe that one preliminary event to the Last Judgment is God's removal of Christians just prior to the Great Tribulation. I admit to be one who believes that God puts us here to face the various tribulations that hit, and overcome them, otherwise the Book of Revelation makes no sense.

Going on to explain the idea of the "rapture" to people without a grounding in Evangelical theology or lore, let me say...

Hey! My roof and ceiling are gone! I'm leaving my chair! I'm floating in the air! My bad sense of balance is throwing my heels over my head as I am floating upwards! I'm head down as I type! What the dickens is happening? Uh-oh! It's time for the Halleluuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu

Ruptured Rapture?

2011-05-19T18:21:00.000-07:00

Atheists--otherwise known as idolators too dishonest or disingenuous to name their gods--are planning to celebrate on Saturday, when, according to a certain Mr. Camping, Jesus Christ will return and rapture his church. Fundamentalist Christian though he be, Uncle Cephas is not about to don ascension robes and wait for the trumpet to sound, but will go about his ordinary business.

For those who do not know what it is, the "raputre" is when Christ removes his church from the world at his second coming. The doctrine is derived from I Thessalonians 4:16-18:

For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven witha shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord. Wherefore comfort one another with these words.

Many today believe that this "rapture of the saints" will be a secret affair, to remove the church from earth just before the great tribulation just prior to the end of the world. With this point of view, Uncle Cephas demurs. Paul's passage is one of the loudest in the whole Bible, with shouts and trumpets. It seems to be simply God's way of handling those saints alive on the day of resurrection.

But as for Camping's prediction that Christ will rapture his church this Saturday, Jesus himself says "But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only" (Matthew 24:36). Hence, Uncle Cephas is fairly certain that the world will not come to its consummation this Saturday, nor, for that matter, any time during 2012.

One would think that we should have learned our lesson back in 1844 and 1845, when, ignoring Brother William Miller's predictions, Christ refrained from returning, despite the elaborate calculations and earnest searching of the Scriptures that preceeded that expectation. But somehow, every age seems to have its Campings, who are more than ready to earnestly and soberly give grist to the mills of those who sit in the seat of the scornful and counsel of the ungodly (Psalm 1:1)

Still, let all Christians watch and pray, and continue witnessing and doing good. After all, we will still be a day closer to the Day of Judgment, no matter what. And let all seekers be aware that the blood of Christ continues to speak better things than the blood of Abel, the latter condemning the sinner; the former being the atonement for the same (Isaiah 53, Hebrews 2), and the bride of Christ (the church) still says with the Holy Spirit "come" (Rev. 22:17).

Unrealistic Obama

2011-05-19T18:05:00.000-07:00

President Obama has come out in favor of a return to pre-1967 broders for Israel and an independent Palestinian Arab state on the West bank, as if the indefensibility of the pre-1967 borders had nothing to do with Israel's pre-emptive strike against Egypt, Syria, and Jordan in the Six-Day War. Snippets heard on WTOP suggest a wide range of misconceptions, including the belief that the upsurges in the Arab world are really democratic, and that the Hamas-PLO alliance is truly willing to recognize Israel's right to exist.

Again, the onus is placed mostly on Israel, demanding a return to indefensible borders, and criticizing its "permanent occupation" of "Palestinian" lands. But the president ignores the persistent insistence by several Arab and other Muslim states that Israel be dismantled, and the cynical use of demonstrators on the border earlier this month by both Syria and the PA. The alliance between Hamas, Hizbollah, and hard-line Iran is also ignored.

The Peace Process has been dead for quite some time. The frequent rocket attacks on Israel from the Gaza Strip, Hamas' persistent rejection of Israel's right to exist, and the alliance with Hizbollah to put simultaneous pressure on Israel's northern and southwestern borders suggests that Palestinian Arab noises about peace are less than sincere.

Certainly, the plight of the Palestinian "refugees"--resident in various Arab states without citizenship for four generations now--will also be raised. Again, a US administration absolutely refuses to ask the Arab states to naturalize their refugee populationsl when America itself has given passport-holding, voting rights citizenship to more Palesintian Arab refugees and their descendants than any ten Arabic-speaking states together, excluding Jordan, the PA, and Israel itself. At this point, where all other refugees of 1947-48 vintage have been absorbed into host societies, there is simply no excuse for the Palestinian refugee problem to exist.

All and sundry ignore that Israel itself has a slight majority descended from Jews from Muslim lands, especially the Arabic-speaking countries; and that ancient Jewish communities that pre-dated Arab settlement in Mesopotamia and North Africa were uprooted in the aftermath of an-Nakba. Yet these victims and their offspring are now no-questions-asked Israelis, when Palestinian Arabs--again, four generations removed from Yafo, Haifa, and the Judaean corridor--remain stateless.

Finally, our president ignores the role of the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafists in the supposed "Arab Spring". These not only struggle against the relative liberalism of the Ba'ath regime in Syria and the former Mubarak regime in Egypt, but have unleashed further assaults against minorities and women in the lands where they have or are coming to power. In Tunisia, the last functioning synagogues in that country have been attacked. In Egypt, attacks on the Christian minority, 10% of the population, have grown in number and intensity since Mubarak stepped down (admittedly, the role of Mubarak's own security organs in creating an anti-Christian climate in Egypt was also great). Tomorrow, as the Sunnite, Muslim Brotherhood-inspired revolt grows, further pressures will certainly be exerted on Syria's dwindling Christian minority, too.

The US has few stakes in an "Arab Spring" in which anti-democratic forces masquerade as the voice of democracy. Indeed, the US will probably face a multiplication of Iranian debacles rather than see the democratization of the region. We would have been better advised to have taken a wait and see approach.

China takes Uyghurs seriously

2011-05-19T17:49:00.000-07:00

Communications from the Shanghai Cooperation Organization indicate that China has demonstrated the capacities of its Snow Leopard SWAT team in maneuvers near Kashgar earlier this month. Visitors from Central Asian states were in attendance. The scenario involved the setting up of a terrorist base near Kashgar and a bus taken hostage.

Perhaps showing this exercise to China's partners in the SCO underscores that they'd better not get any ideas about growing sympathy for another Muslim Central Asian people getting restive under a "Big Brother" who takes seriously his role as the last, best hope for 20th century totalitarianism.

Naqba day

2011-05-14T16:20:00.000-07:00

Today, May 15, is the Palestinian Arabs' day of mourning.

All I can say is, get over it. You lost a war, now work to get yourselves naturalized as citizens of Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Kuwait, Sa'udi Arabia, and the like. In an age in which, not too long ago, Delhi-born Pervez Musharaf of Pakistan and Lahore-borb Manmohan Singh of India sat down to try to defuse South Asian tensions, it is inexcusable that the member states of the Arab League have not naturalized four generations of Falastin "refugees" in their midst.

Indeed, as the Arab Street curses America as the Great Satan for the plight of the Falastin Arabs, and the Gaza Strip dances with glee over 09/11/01, it is time for America to remind the short-sighted, bigoted, self-righteous Arab world from Mauretania to Khuzistan than America has given passport-holding, voting rights (to say nothing about property-holding rights) citizenship to more offspring of An-Naqba than any ten Arabic-speaking states put together, excepting the PA, Jordan, and Israel itself.

At this point, my only criticism of Zionist policy is that they keep on harping on the Shoah as justification for the creation of modern Israel. That was an event which ended a lifetime ago. More relevant is the fact that a slight majority of Israeli Jews are Mizrahi, people from the Islamic world, who were uprooted from Middle Eastern and North African lands where Jews had been resident for centuries before the Arabic religion was even known outside the Arabian Peninsula. Iraq, the second home of Jewry, burial place of several prophets, the land of the Babylonian Talmud, and where in the 1940's one in five Baghdadis was Jewish, is now Judenrein. Egypt, where Jews have lived since centuries before the birth of Christ, also has lost a once thriving and cosmopolitan Jewish community. Yet the offspring of these flights and uprootings are now no-questions asked Israelis.

Were it not for the Leftist Western cultural death wish,the world would unite as one to condemn the Arab states for keeping the victims of an-Naqba, their children, grand-children, and now great-grandchildren as stateless refugees.

When the Arab world, which translates fewer books into Arabic per year than much-smaller Spain translates into Spanish, looks to its own moral failings towards the Falastin refugees, Uncle Cephas will listen to its argument with much more sympathy. But not before.

BTW, happy birthday, Israel. This comes from a Christian.

A great photo and caption.

2011-05-10T10:56:00.000-07:00

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Dqg9l8kpOB0/TY9Fl3oVbxI/AAAAAAAAAA0/N9loqYUTuNg/s1600/Image.jpg

After the ridiculous Libyan intervention on behalf of a mob of anti-American zealots fighting to bring down another anti-American zealot (who nonetheless has the saving grace of looking like he might be Harpo Marx's illegitimate son), the above-referenced photo matches my feelings to a tee.

Thanks to DiploMad for posting it first.

No Photos of Dead Bin Laden

2011-05-05T03:06:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm proud of the Navy Seals and their work, and of the CIA and its legwork in this operation. OBL was an evil man and deserved to die, and, as I've posted elsewhere, his death made me think of some Scriptural passages on God's just judgment of the wicked.

But I sympathize with the president's decision to refrain from publicizing photos of the corpse, even if I'm probably going to vote Republican or Libertarian in 2012; and think that release of some photographs for the historical record probably would have been in order.

It is appointed to men to die once, then after that, the judgment (Hebrews 9:27). Death is a very major thing, and the judgments of God upon those who love sin and hate truth is a frightening thing. Further, all of us must one day give account of ourselves before God's judgment seat. If we are Christians, we know we have an advocate in Jesus Christ, the God-man, Messiah, and Righteous One; but my guess is that OBL (barring some last-minute conversion) faced the judgment alone and in his sins--such as his lies, cowardice, and hypocrisy in living in luxury while telling young men to live in caves and sacrifice themselves in suicide missions.

I guess I'm proud of our government in that it didn't indulge in displays such as the one we saw in Somalia. That's what separates a responsible government from thugs in power.

Osama Bin Laden is Dead

2011-05-02T18:26:00.000-07:00

I recall 9/11, with people jumping to their deaths from 100 stories up, and NYC emergency workers covered in dust and grime until it was impossible to tell the color of their uniforms. I thought of the terror that must have gone through the minds of the passengers on the doomed airplanes as they went to their fiery deaths.

And I remember watching broadcasts of the eruptions of joy across the Islamic world, including "poor, martyred Falastin", where a fat lady in hijab and ugly glasses jigged for the cameras. Bin Laden crowed that "only Muslims" could be so brave and daring. But then, the bombs started falling on the great Mujahed's hideouts, and OBL and all his fans started wailing how 9/11 was really the work of the [**Drumroll!**]----JOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOZ! (For the record, Uncle Cephas is a Christian). Oh, how wondrous were the brave lions of jihad as soon as things got just a little bit hot for them! Not only do they blame the people they accuse of being the kin of apes and pigs (Qur'an 5:60), but, I understand, either OBL himself or one of his guards hid behind a woman when the Navy Seals burst in.

And now, the forces of Jihad are going to take vengeance! Ten-year-old Coptic girls in Egypt will be raped. Dirt-poor Christian farmers in Pakistan will be forced off their smallholdings or tenancies by the mujaheddin of the people's justice. Maybe a 150% PeeCee EmCee female aid worker or journalist in some impoverished Islamic land will also be gang-raped for being a Westerner. All this, plus the murder of a few Christian shopkeepers, the stoning of Tunisia's last synagogues, and the like will surely vindicate the honor of Islam against the "crusaders".

But, thanks, OBL. Your disciples' actions forced me and many other Americans to consider the teachings of your violent, supremacist, misogynistic, bullying, so-called religion that sanctifies every unclean lust of young males, from theft (if it's from the Kufr) to rape in detailed passages on Qur'an, Hadith, and their classical commentaries. Now I raise my middle finger to all the Western moral equivalence mongers who, without having cracked the Bible in years, whine that "the Bible is also violent!" No, you folks know all too well that Christianity gave you much of what you value from art to constitutional government, even as you mock us Christians and cringe lest you haply insult a Muslim.

To Noam Chomsky and all his Troofer crowd, to the learned doctors of Al-Azhar who are now saying that OBL's burial at sea was a sin while ignoring his mass murder, EAT CROW!

And, congratulations to our Navy Seals, intelligence workers, troops everywhere, and even to Mr. Obama, our CINC.

Finally, a Scripture for OBL and his fallen comrades:

...For their worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched, and they shall be an abhorring unto all flesh (Isaiah 66:24, echoed by Jesus Christ in Mark 9:48.)

Link to a Great Cartoon

2011-04-30T06:26:00.000-07:00

The following is a great comment on the futility of America's Afghan engagement, and our wonderful ally Hamid Karzai.

http://conservativebyte.com/2011/04/endless-afghans/

Enjoy, folks!

Thoughts on the Democratic Peace

2011-04-29T15:35:00.000-07:00

Back in the 1700's, the German philosopher Immanuel Kant wrote a book entitled _Perpetual Peace_, in which he argued that a Europe made up of free republics would be able to guarantee peace. He reasoned that few peoples would elect leaders who promised to invest their sons' lives in wars; whereas in Kant's time, war was the sport of kings.

Indeed, in America, war presidents have generally had an easy time, unless, like Lincoln, their generals racked up key victories in the nick of time or, like Franklin Roosevelt, Americans perceived themselves as recipients of an unprovoked attack and the media liked the president. Further, the democratized Europe that has existed since the end of World War II has been peaceful; while the end of the Communist bloc has further continued a long peace, save for Ulster and the disintegration of Yugoslavia.

Hence many political scientists such as Zeev Maoz, Rudolph Rummel, and others extend Kant's theory to one that posits a "democratic peace". the thesis holds that democracies generally do not fight each other, even if they do go to war with dictators.

As a former US diplomat, I would like to believe that the democratic peace thesis is true. However, part of me remains skeptical. Peace probably depends on a very complex set of political, cultural, economic, demographic, geographic, and other factors.

The democratic peace thesis won a notable convert in George W. Bush, who, in the wake of 9/11, abandoned his distaste for the failed Clintonian nation-building exercises in failed Somalia and Bosnia, and proceeded in a so-far unsuccessful attempt to democratize Iraq and Afghanistan, and support the further democratization of the rest of the Middle East. A similar American mindset continues to manifest itself with Hillary Clinton and Samantha Power pressing Pres. Obama to come out in favor of "democratic" uprisings in Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt--even when it is doubtful that such uprisings are democratic at all.

Seymour Martin Lipset has noted that for most of the 20th century, democracies have faced common enemies, a situation which is likely to place potential conflicts among themselves on the back burner. Yes, the war for the Atlantic between the US and Britain which strategic thinkers posited as "inevitable" between the early 1800's and 1930's never materialized, but perhaps the reason it never did was because the British and US navies were too busy supporting each other as allies in two world wars and the Cold War. Further, Britain and the US fought each other in 1812-15, while Britain fought the Boers of South Africa who, while nasty towards their non-white neighbors, were democratic in running their own affairs. The USA itself suffered a devastating civil war between two sections of an all but universally democratic nation. Even Switzerland had its Sonderbund War in `1848. All these examples suggest that war between democracies are possible.

Of course, a common consensus among the elites of many states in favor of Kant's proposal for international peace may also be at work in the "democratic peace" we have now. If so, long may it flourish. Yet powerful ideological counter-currents may yet overcome this. Conceivably, a democratized public may develop a taste for imperial adventure (as happened in Britain and France in the late 19th century), and which may well appear in other parts of the world. The forms these may take are perhaps unimaginable at present, but may be fully comprehensible should they appear.

Aristotle, in the 4th century B.C., noted that rule by the many is subject to corruption as soon as the majority realizes it has the political power to "constitutionally" loot the minority. The polity sees its chief enemies in its neighbors rather than in external threats, and some factions may even be tempted to align themselves with external enemies for domestic political advantage. This situation may bring social disintegration to a modern nation state as easily as it brought it to certain ancient Hellenic city-states. A disintegrating state falling into out-and-out failure is certain to attract both potential predators and well-meaning interventionists. Some of these may, conceivably, be other democracies.

Yes, I'm all for maintaining the democratic peace, and if it spreads beyond a few favored northern lands, I will applaud. But the democratic peace is not something on which I would bet the proverbial farm.

The Israel of God: is it really "Supercessionism"?--Thoughts for Passover and Easter

2011-04-20T03:39:00.000-07:00

For neither is circumcision anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creature. And as many as walk by this rule, peace be upon them, and mercy, and upon the Israel of God.
Galatians 6:15 (ASV)

Many charge Evangelical Christians with being uncritically pro-Israel, and encouraging the oppression of the Falastin Arabs. Indeed, the prevalence of dispensational theology among Evangelicals lends a ring of truth to this accusation. But others will also loudly charge that the older covenantal theology confessed by the Reformed churches is "anti-Semitic". This essay is an attempt to meet both charges, for it holds that God's grace to Gentiles via Christ does not exclude the same grace to the Jews.

Of course, if one denies that all religions and cultural expressions are equally "valid", as our current multicultural environment demands, then it is probably impossible for a serious, Bible-believing Christian to completely avoid the charges of "supremacism", "anti-Semitism", "intolerance", and the like. But at the same time, one can believe in the absolute truth of the Gospel and Jesus' unique position as the Messiah, yet still feel charitably towards those outside the faith. The Scriptures teach us that we are all sinners in need of salvation, and as one famous minister--D.T. Niles, I believe--once said, evangelism is nothing but one beggar telling another where to find bread. Further, humility is a Christian virtue (even if it is seen more in the breach than in practice), for salvation by grace means that none of us have anything about which we may boast.

A charitable attitude towards the Jews can even be found in some of the fathers of covenantal theology. Ian H. Murray, in The Puritan Hope, quotes Edward Elton’s 17th century commentary on Romans 11:

“[Romans 11:25-26] should teach us not to hate the Jews (as many do) only because they are Jews, which name is among so many so odious that they think they cannot call a man worse than to call him a Jew; but beloved, this ought not to be so, for we are bound to love and honour the Jews, as being the ancient people of God, to wish them well, and to be earnest in prayer for their conversion.”

Thus, a Christian who takes every letter of the Old and New Testaments as God-breathed needs neither modern dispensationalism, guilt feelings over the Shoah, nor general modern American neighborliness to find a divine mandate for a charitable attitude towards the Jews—or anyone else—and criticize hatred.

Of course Elton’s desire for the conversion of the Jews cuts against the modern notion that religious communities should “recognize” each others’ “validity”—as did the Missions of the 17th century Netherlands Reformed Churches in the far-flung Dutch colonial holdings and John Elliot’s mission to the Algonquin Indians. But, on reflection, simple logic refutes this modern notion in that it is impossible for Jesus to be both Messiah and non-Messiah at the same time, or for the Theravada Buddhist denial of a supreme being and God’s words to Moses’ that God is what he is (Exodus 3) to be true at the same time.

Many dispensationalist brethren will charge that being skeptical of modern Israel's place as harbinger of the Second Advent "denies Scripture". A further point of this essay will be to remind Christians that there have been other, more consistent ways to read the Bible as a whole.

The Israel of God is not necessarily a state in the Middle East and its people. The biblical meaning of the name "Israel" is far richer, being a name bestowed by divine grace rather than race, and as such belongs more properly to those gathered about the Messiah, whether Jew or Gentile, not those gathered in a particular land. This view has been labeled "supercessionism" and is charged with being the seedbed of anti-Semitism and the shocking crime of the holocaust. Yet when properly viewed it need not result in hatred for anyone. Rather, by calling us to focus on Jesus Christ rather than a land, it calls us to a deeper discipleship, including the command to love our neighbor--whether Jew or Greek, barbarian or Scythian--as ourselves.

(I) The meaning of "Israel"

The name "Israel" means "One who Wrestles with God" or "One Who is a Prince with God". It is a name that was given to the patriarch Jacob at Genesis 32:28, after he wrestles with a mysterious figure at Jabbok. This figure is one who does not reveal his own name to Jacob, at least at this time, but Jacob's reaction to his wrestling with this mysterious figure leaves no doubt about his identity:

"And Jacob called the name of the place Peniel: for said he, I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved" (Genesis 32:30, ASV).

Yes, the name "Israel" is later applied to the physical descendants of Abraham through Jacob and is used as such throughout the Old Testament. But to identify who is truly "Israel" requires finding those who grapple with God rather than identify a bloodline. Not a few Christians who have studied Scripture throughout the ages have recognized this. Prior to the work of John Nelson Darby and certain others in the 19th century, none had envisioned a restored Jewish polity in the Middle East as the focus of divine plans, nor had any envisioned a radical break between ethnic Israel and the Christian church, but had seen the church as growing from that portion of ethnic Israel that embraced the person and work of Jesus the Messiah.

This is why it is improper to call the view that the church is Israel "supercessionism". This term supposes that the way to grace is henceforth blocked to those who are Jews by descent, or that somehow the modern Jews are "Cosmically evil", as some opponents of Christianity such as Chaim Maccoby have charged. A proper understanding of Israelite identity frankly recognizes that the New Testament itself is a Jewish book, written by men who themselves identified as Jews, with the aim of bringing people of other nations to the Jewish God. To accept what the New Testament says about Israel is to recognize an eternal debt to the people and land of Judaea for giving us the Messiah, and recognize that "the door of the sheep", as Jesus called himself (John 10) remains open to both Jew and Gentile.

The career of the Apostle Paul is instructive. His letters make it absolutely clear that he saw himself as a Jewish missionary to Gentiles, proclaiming that God had brought salvation via the Jewish Messiah Jesus, and that in his name the Gentiles should turn from their idols. In writing to the Galatian church, he fought a temptation that is perhaps equal and opposite to modern dispensationalism’s position that there exists a radical separation between Old Testament Israel and the Christian church, believing that God will replace the former as the center of attention in the days prior to and during the millennium. The Galatians were tempted by an overly "continuous" identity, thinking that to be in Christ, Gentiles had to become Jews, including the adoption of the entirety of the ceremonial law (represented by circumcision). Paul argued that it is not Jewish identity, symbolized by circumcision, that unites us to God, but being in Christ, which is accomplished by faith. He argues that this is true for Jews like himself, Barnabas, and Peter (called Cephas in the letter) and for his Gentile Galatian hearers. Hence, he identifies those who walk by this rule as "the Israel of God" (Gal. 6:15).

(II) The True Zion

In the Letter to the Hebrews, an unknown member of the apostolic circle addressed Jewish believers distressed by their exclusion from the synagogues and the services of the Jerusalem Temple. As in Paul's Letter to the Galatians, the burden of the letter is on the centrality of the Messiah and his work.

The Israelites of old were given the ministrations of the tabernacle, and later the temple, as a place of sacrifice, to recognize that without the shedding of blood, sinners have no access to God. This truth underlay the sacrificial system of the Torah, from the deaths of the animals whose skins clothed the newly fallen Adam and Eve through the elaborate sacrificial ritual prescribed in the Torah, by which the death of a sacrificial animal restored fellowship--atoned--for the sinner.

In the First Century, a group of Jewish Messianists found themselves excluded from these ministrations due to their loyalty to Jesus. The letter to the Hebrews reminds these brethren that Jesus is the true priest and true atonement. The letter reminds them, and us:

"For you have not come to a mountain that may be touched and that burned with fire, and to blackness and darkness and tempest, and the sound of a trumpet and the voice of words, so that those who heard it begged that the word should not be spoken to them anymore. For they could not endure what was commanded: "and if so much as a beast touches the mountain it shall be stoned or shot with an arrow. And so terrifying was the sight that MOses said, "I am exceedingly afraid and trembling". But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the Living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are registered in heaven, to God the Judge of all, to the spirits of just men made perfect, to Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling [that of Jesus] that speaks better things than that of Abel."
(Hebrews 12:18-24, NKJV).

Here, Jesus and his work are the true Zion.

(III) The end of the Sacrificial System

Many today believe that in the end times, the temple will be rebuilt in Jerusalem and the sacrificial system re-instated. Yet this is to supercede the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

When John the Baptist identified Jesus as the "Lamb of God", he did not mean that Jesus is cute and fuzzy--indeed, a cursory perusal of the Gospels shows that there is nothing "cute and fuzzy" about Jesus. Rather, John was using the language of sacrifice:

"Behold the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world" (John 1:29).

John spoke to people who knew that the temple still stood, and still offered up the blood of bulls and goats, and every year still offered up the unblemished lambs at Passover. John's declaration identifies Jesus as the true passover lamb whose blood on our doors turns away the angel of death; and the final sacrifice who, standing in the place of sinners, opens a door whereby we may again approach and fellowship with God.

For this reason, the church observes the Lord's Supper, proclaiming Jesus' death till he come in the bread and wine shared by the congregation. This is itself a repeat of the Passover meal.

The finality and perfection of Jesus' sacrifice for us on the cross is also why the Christian church no longer sacrifices animals (or people, for that matter). As far back as God's refusal of Isaac as a sacrifice (Genesis 22), it has been plain that sinful man is not an acceptable offering to God. But Jesus, the sinless one, offered himself in the place of sinners, the just for the unjust, to bring us to God (I Peter 3:1).

This means that an animal sacrifice, whether the last such ministrations in the Jerusalem temple between 30 and 70 A.D., the Graeco-Roman pagan’s killing an ox in honor of Zeus, the Chinese Daoists sacrificing swine in their Bai Bai, or Muslims offering a sheep or goat for Eid, are no longer necessary. Sacrifice is there to open fellowship between God and man, and Jesus, through his work on the cross, has opened a final and permanent access to God. This, not anti-Semitism, is what causes non-dispensational Evangelicals to doubt that there will be any restoration of a physical temple in Jerusalem, or that even if such a thing should be done, that it will have any redemptive significance.

Since the death and resurrection of Jesus, Christians have commemorated his sacrifice in the bread and wine of the Lord’s Supper. This ordinance is also a sign of our being gathered together as one with Christ and with each other. It tells us that just as ancient Israel was gathered by the words of prophets, the ministrations of priests, and the protection of kings, so are we gathered by the Word, sacrifice, and protection of Jesus Christ, who himself bears all three anointed offices of prophet, priest, and king.

The New Testament makes it clear that this message went forth from the Jews to other nations. Rather than call it “supercessionism”, it is perhaps better to call it “additionism”. To Jews like John, James, Andrew, Simon Peter, and several Judases “not Iscariot”, the Gospel call added Gentiles such as Luke, Titus, Lydia, and many others. If the church became “Gentile”, it was only because Gentiles have always outnumbered Jews, and the success of God’s saving plan will ever mean that even in the Jewish-founded church, this will be so.

Along these lines, there was a droll story from the days after the Russian Revolution. A Hebrew Christian history student named Solomon Moisevich Mandelbaum found himself arrested by the Cheka, and sharing a cell with a former White officer and anti-Semite, Andrey Ivanovich Kursky. After coming to know each other, Andrey asks Solomon a question:

“Is it true that there is an international Jewish conspiracy to put the world under Jewish rule?”

“Indeed there is, Andrey Ivanovich. It is very ancient, and hatched even while the Temple of Solomon was still standing,” Solomon answered.

“Ah-hah! I knew these Marxes and Trotskies and others had to be part of something bigger than a bunch of mere rabble-rousers!” Andrey grunts.

“Nonsense, Andrey Ivanovich. You mention only moderns, and who is Trotsky compared to Lenin and Stalin? I mentioned a very ancient conspiracy.”

“Ah-hah! You must mean the freemasons, who tell me that Solomon himself launched the craft!”

Again, Solomon shook his head. “Andrey Ivanovich, if we ever get out of here, I will not tell the Reverend Father that you have dabbled in freemasonry,” for Solomon knew that Andrey regarded himself as a good Eastern Orthodox Christian.

Andrey, like many others, was indeed guilty of such a flirtation, which was frowned on by his church, and blushed. “But what is it, then?”

“Why, it’s Christianity itself,” said Solomon. “It was proclaimed in the shadow of the Temple back in 30 A.D. by the Jews Peter, James, and John themselves, and has been growing ever since.”

Perhaps it is so that God will restore the Jewish nation to its historical patrimony. Such a belief was indeed common among the 17th century Puritans and their heirs, based on their reading of Romans 11:25-26. But these post- rather than pre-millennial Puritans also supposed that the place of this restored Jewish nation would ultimately be as one Christianized nation among many. Their view of the true “Israel” was that it included all, Jew as well as Gentile, gathered at the feet of the Messiah.

More on Jonah--Chapter IV: God's Surprising Grace

2011-04-18T21:27:00.000-07:00

Jonah 4:1-11

But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was very angry.
And he prayed unto the LORD, and said, I pray thee, O LORD, was not this my saying, when I was yet in my own country? Therefore I fled before unto Tarshish: for I knew that thou art a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repentest thee of evil.
Therefore now, O LORD, take, I beseech thee, my life from me; for it is better for me to die than to live.
This saith the LORD, Doest thou well to be angry?
So Jonah went out of the city, and sat on the east side of the city, and there made him a booth, and he sat under it in the shadow, till he might see what would become of the city.
And the LORD God prepared a gourd and made it to come up over Jonah, that it might be a shadow over his head, to deliver him from his grief. So Jonah was exceeding glad of the gourd.
But God prepared a worm when the morning rose the next day, and it smote the gourd that it withered.
And it came to pass, when the sun did arise, that God prepared a vehement east wind; and the sun beat upon the head of Jonah, that he fainted, and wished in himself to die, and said, it is better for me to die than to live.
And God said to Jonah, Doest thou well to be angry for the gourd? And he said, I do well to be angry, even unto death.
Then said the LORD, Thou hast had pity on the gourd, for the which thou hast not laboured, neither madest it grow; which came up in a night, and perished in a night:
And should not I spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than sixscore thousand persons that cannot discern their right hand and their left hand; and also much cattle?

When I studied theology, our homiletics teacher, the wise and saintly Dr. Robert Rayburn, now with the Lord, used to tell us never to end a sermon with a question. Some of the class wags would then tease him and suggest that he would correct God's own homily to the prophet Jonah. Dr. Rayburn took it all in good grace, for whatever the disagreements I might have had with him, he respected and honored the Bible; and his purpose was that we would learn to preach Christ.

The last chapter of Jonah is one in which the mind of the Messiah was indeed opened up to those who lived before his coming. It is perhaps no wonder that Jesus took Jonah as a type of himself in Luke 11:29-32. Here, Jesus says the following, according to the New King James Version:

This is an evil generation. It seeks a sign, and no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah the prophet.
For as Jonah became a sign to the Ninevites, so also the Son of Man [Jesus Christ himself]
will be a sign to this generation.
The queen of the South will rise up in judgment against this generation and condemn them, for she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and indeed, a greater than Solomon is here.
The men of Nineveh will rise up in the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and indeed a greater than Jonah is here.

Let us look closely at the repentance of the Ninevites. It should be clear to the reader of the text from Jonah reproduced at the beginning of this posting that God is pleased with the repentance of the Ninevites, while Jonah was not. Of course God is in the right in sparing the repentant Assyrians and Jonah in the wrong as he parks himself outside the city to await the destruction of Nineveh. But perhaps all this is to tell us that God has a gracious purpose even in the darkest eras of our history.

FIRST: In today's world, there is probably no nation that is completely reprobate.

Jonah's bitterness comes from his patriotism. He first appears as a patriotic prophet in II Kings 14:25, who foretold the restoration of the Northern Kingdom's borders. Then he appears again in the book that bears his name to bring a message of judgment to Assyria, the bitter foe of Israel. Doubtless his flight to the far west (Assyria is to the northeast of Israel), to Tarshish, stemss fromm his fear of the ruthlessness of the Assyrian war machine, for the archaeological remains of left by the Assyrian kingdom boast of impaling its enemies, sacking their cities, and enslaving the portion of enemy populations not subjected to massacre. Hence Jonah's misgivings about the recipients of his prophecy are justified.

Yet Jonah has a surprise ending, in which the Ninevites repent, and are spared. God has touched the hearts of his own people's implaccable enemies.

And what a tragic contrast this is to Israel herself in those ancient times! The books of the Kings show an Israel divided due to the harshness of Solomon's son Rehoboam, and a northern kingdom that follows the first king Jeroboam into idolatry. It becomes the land where King Ahab may murder guiltless Naboth to steal his ancestral vineyard, and where "he walked in the way of Jeroboam the son of Nebat who made Israel to sin" echoes like a mournful refrain. Jonah, who had been blessed to foresee the brief restoration of Israel's borders, is later called to preach a word of judgment to Israel's mortal foe that turns into a word of mercy.

But this mercy to the Ninevites turns out to be from the heart of God himself.

Modern Christians should take note. We are quick to see foreign enemies of our own lands as the mortal enemies of God and truth. We are quick, in our domestic politics, to demonize our neighbors. James Cone, the mentor of President Obama's former pastor Jeremiah Wright, declared that his people will have nothing to do with a God who does not help them against their white enemy. The Aryan Nations and Ku Klux Klan, while claiming to be Christian, will have nothing to do with a God who does not dehumanize non-whites. We are quick to demonize all currently on the side of apostate culture, forgetting that God can call a Ms. Covey, the Roe of Roe v. Wade, to saving grace. We are certain that the Muslim nations are beyond the pale of saving grace following the 9/11 attacks and cry for vengeance, even as there is a quiet movement of former Muslims into Christian churches worldwide. Would we not be wiser to plead for grace to our enemies as well as ourselves?

Jonah was sent to God's enemies, who responded to his message of impending doom precisely as men should to such a message: with repentance and faith. When we are similarly challenged for our lesser sins, may we show a similar posture before the Lord.

SECOND: Even the best of men may be morally blind

Jonah was a prophet, blessed with a gift that few are given. He was allowed an immediate message from the Almighty. Yet he shows himself a bitter and vengeful man. Hence, God gives him the object lesson of the gourd plant, which grows to shade him. When I lived in Taiwan, I often saw gourd vines growing over trellises and fences, creating a thick, dark green shade against the tropical sun. Householders might harvest the fruit for a tasty vegetable dish served with the next meal while enjoying the cool shade of the plant. Hence, I find it easy to picture Jonah's booth of branches and poles with a luxuriant leafy growth spreading over it. If Mesopotamia was as hot then as it is now, he had reason to be grateful for it, and to be pained when the worm killed it.

Here, God revealed to Jonah his own selfishness, as Jonah's own preaching had revealed to the Assyrians, from King to Commoner, their own bloodthirstiness and the peril their souls faced. God, who is compassionate to the ignorant and spiritually blind Assyrians, reminds his prophet that those people are, no less than Israelites, the works of his holy and gracious hands despite their many sins.

It is no small thing to harbor sin. Sin is destructive. God was not fooling when he sent Jonah to preach the upcoming destruction of Nineveh. But had the Ninevites not repented and their city overthrown, it should have been no cause for gloating on Jonah's or any Israelite's part. Rather, the surprise ending, with the repentance of the Ninevites, should have been the welcome news.

Today, the church of Christ is beset by many enemies; faithless persons both inside and out. When _South Park_ may show Jesus Christ as a farcical figure, yet tiptoe around Muhammad due to the producers fears of possible violent repercussions, it may indeed be part of a wide enmity towards Christ on the part of the media industry that is not so much a brave criticism of traditional icons but a cowardly picking on "safe" targets. The lawyers, judges, and politicians who would condemn us for "hate speech" for calling homosexuality a sin or for declaring that there is no salvation outside of Jesus Christ are indeed our enemies, and of them we must be wary. Yet we do not know what God has in store for such persons tomorrow, or five years from now. It could be that God may call such people to repentance and faith, as he did the Ninevites of old. Hence, while we are right to expose their evil thoughts and deeds, our victory is not in their destruction, but in their repentance.

THIRD: us be open to God's surprising works of grace.

Jonah was not prepared for what God would do with his preaching. Yet God is never surprised by the true repentance of men. Grace is grace because it is the unearned favor of God given freely to the undeserving. If Muhammad in the Qur'an flatters his followers that they are "the best of men", the true prophet Moses reminds his hearers in Deuteronomy that they are a stiff-necked people, and nearing the end of a lifetime of remarkable holiness and usefulness, the true apostle Paul still declared himself to be the chief of sinners. The posture of moral humility rather than moral superiority is that which God would have us take--and if we are honest, it is not an easy one to take.

The Gospel--especially since the perfection of Jesus Christ has been revealed--turns God's enemies into his friends. A vengeful and vindictive spirit is the easy way in any conflict, but Jonah shows us that God himself prefers the salvation of his enemies.

Perhaps we live in an ungracious era not because the enemies of God and Christ have stolen the limelight, but because Christians have abandoned it. The limelight in which we are to stand should be the work of reconciliation of sinners to God through the work of Jesus Christ. But this cannot be done if we surrender to the spirit of bitterness.

But, thankfully, God can give us the object lessons we need. Let's pray that they aren't too hard!

It should be our prayer in these dangerous times to be allowed to see surprises such as the one shown to Jonah.

Thoughts on Jonah--Back on Track

2011-04-18T21:23:00.001-07:00

And the word of the LORD came unto Jonah the second time, saying, Arise, go unto Nineveh, that great city, and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee. So Jonah arose, and went unto Nineveh, according to the word of the LORD. Now Nineveh was an exceeding great city of three days' journey. And Jonah began to enter into the city a day's journey, and he cried, and said, Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.
(Jonah 3:1-4).

As a teacher, I often tell my students that the reason why experience is the best teacher is that it is Mr. Experience's job to teach those who will neither listen to their elders or read a book. If a student walks into a class interested in learning, any fool with more knowledge of a subject than the student has will be able to help the student learn, but if a student is going to be stubborn and unwilling to listen, he'll learn only from the school of hard knocks--perhaps the instruction of the stocks of which Proverbs speaks?

Jonah has proven a learner from his experience on the sea and in the great fish. He heads for Nineveh, and proclaims the message which God commissioned him to proclaim.

Jonah's message is what once was called fire-and-brimstone; a warning of terrible temporal and eternal judgments to come. The genre has become very unpopular in modern times, and is generally held up for ridicule by people who consider themselves enlightened and taken as a handy excuse to ignore the teachings of Scripture.

Yet it is hard to escape the conclusion that the human condition, whether today's or that of the ancient Assyrians, is a dangerous one. The casualties of war occupy the headlines and television news, yet traffic accidents claim many times the number of young American lives that distant battlefields do. Those who went to work in the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 did so unaware that thousands of them would die or be seriously injured as their ordinary working day began. All of us work hard and try to save, but a combination of imprudence and expediency may well lead a government to adopt policies which might wipe out our economic security in a matter of months. And, to fortify ourselves against the dangers of life, we adopt a number of comforting lies, such as that a group of people no better than ourselves will, if given sufficient power, guarantee secure lives for all. We do this in order to ignore the uncomfortable truth that life is a bit like being a fiddler on the roof--he needs to make beautiful music without falling down and breaking his neck. At least fire-and-brimstone is a reminder of the fact that life is lived on a dangerous precipice.

It also reminds us that there is a terrible significance to life. While Jonah does not speak of the world to come, the warnings given by Jesus Christ and others about the coming day of judgment is a reminder that, unlike the Zen koan that speaks of man entering the water and leaving no ripple, our lives leave ripples that go on forever. Are our lives the sort that honor God; or are they such that they provoke a righteous God to not only snuff them out, but also sweep away the society that they have helped shape, and then cast us and all around us on that great burning rubbish heap of history called Gehenna?

Perhaps the citizens of ancient Nineveh, on the day Jonah came to town, figured that their powerful monarch who had begun the systematic conquest and looting of neighboring tribes and nations would ensure that sufficient booty would flow into Nineveh to keep it the most prosperous of cities for eternity. Perhaps the Ninevites believed that their craftsmen, merchants, and farmers would be able to eternally keep up a flow of trade with those with whom they were not at war as well. Yet to them, Jonah announces that their world is to be overthrown in forty days.

The task of prophecy is not to stroke the ego and soothe consciences that ought not to be soothed. Jonah has accepted and followed that calling. It remains to be seen what his prophecy brings about.

houghts on Jonah--Jonah's Prayer

2011-04-18T21:22:00.000-07:00

Now the LORD had prepared a greta fish to swallow up JOnah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights. Then Jonah prayed unto the LORD his God out of the fish's belly, and said,
I cried by reason of mine affliction unto the LORD,
And he heard me;
Out of the belly of hell cried I,
And thou heardest my voice.
For thous hast cast me into the deep,
In the midst of the seas;
And the floods compassed me about:
All thy billows and thy waves passed over me.
Then I said, I am cast out of thy sight;
Yet will I look again towards thy holy tmeple.
The waters compassed me about, even to the soul;
And the depth closed me round about,
The weeds were wrapped about my head.
I went down to the bottoms of the mountains;
The earth with her bars was about me for ever:
Yet hast thou brought up my life from corruption,
O LORD my God.
When my soul fainted within me I remembered the LORD:
And my prayer came in unto thee,
Into thine holy temple.
They that observe lying vanities forsake their own mercy,
But I will sacrifice unto thee with the voice of thanksgiving;
I will pay that which I have vowed.
Salvation is of the LORD.

And the LORD spake unto the fish, and it vomited out Jonah upon the dry land.
(Jonah 1:17-2:10)

In the Gospel (Matthew 12:40), Jesus speaks of how an evil and adulterous generation seeks a sign, but no sign would be given save the sign of Jonah: as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the fish, so would the Messiah be in the earth three days--in short, Jesus promised the sign of his death and burial.

In the last posting, we observed how Jonah accepted his responsibility for the storm and subsequent loss of property that overtook the ship on which he was sailing along with its crew. Jesus, however, did not lay down his life as a penalty for his own sin, but on behalf of sinners.

This typology is all the more interesting in liht of Jonah's prayer from the belly of the fish. Jonah gives vent to his despair and fear of death; yet in so doing, he also expresses hope. Was this because Jonah thought he would die in the sea for his disobedience in seeking to go to Tarshish rather than Nineveh? Certainly our disobedience to divine commands--even if we do not have the prophetic gift enjoyed (or thrust upon?) Jonah--renders us worthy of death. If so, Jonah's prayer can be seen as expressing the hope of resurrection.

Indeed, God was merciful to Jonah in having the fish vomit him out onto the dry land. But it is also a reminder of how God is generally merciful to us. We may scoff at those who suddenly "get religion" when they are in danger; or note that whereas there are no atheists in foxholes, many seem to be made when soldiers discharged from their service. Yet Jacques Ellul once observed that in both this chapter and the preceding one, we see how God takes the fears, anxieties, and terrors faced by his elect with the utmost seriousness.

But our passage also speaks of a stubborn faith that does not give up even in the most hopeless of situations (such as being eaten alive by some great sea creature). "Hope maketh not ashamed", Paul wrote to the Roman Christians (Rom. 5:5). Indeed, because of the resurrection of Christ which Jonah's rescue typifies, we know that there is one more powerful even than death itself, and we are invited to put our trust in him.

Thoughts on Jonah--Things Fall Apart

2011-04-18T21:20:00.000-07:00

But the LORD sent out a great wind into the sea, and there was a mighty tempest in the sea, so that the ship was like to be broken. Then the mariners were afraid, and cried every man unto his god, and cast forth the wares that were in the ship into the sea, to lighten it of them. But Jonah was gone down into the sides of the ship; and he lay, and was fast asleep. So his shipmaster came to him, and said unto him, What meanest thou, O sleeper? arise, call uon thy God, if so that God will think upon us, that we perish not. (Jonah 1:4-6)

Jonah has gone way off course. God wanted him to go east, but the prophet has chosen to go west. In doing this, he causes great loss to himself and to those with whom he travels. But in this, the Holy Spirit teaches us that trouble is often God's way of waking us from our carelessness and slumbers. In Jonah's case, "slumbers" can be taken in both the idiomatic and literal sense!

We are taught that God is sovereign. Here, this is shown by his control of the winds and waves. "Who is this, whom even winds and waves obey?" asked the apostles of Christ when they saw Jesus still the storm on the sea of Galilee. But here, we see God raising rather than stilling the storm when his prophet disobeys.

But not only Jonah needs to be awakened from his pre-dogmatic slumbers!

The sailors appear to be either heathens, who have long been accustomed to worship false gods, or Israelites seduced away from the divine covenant. Their reaction to danger is to call on their various gods to save them, even as they cast their cargo overboard to lighten the ship.

This is instructive. Probably, the sailors were Phoenicians, those intrepid traders and explorers of the ancient Mediterraneans; and the Old Testament gives little indication of the Israelites having seafaring proclivities. Indeed, it seesm that Solomon's ships of Ophir were manned by crews provided by his ally Hiram of Tyre, a Phoenician ruler. The Phoenicians were a folk eager for gain, and no port from the Levant to the southwestern corner of Britain--where tin was to be had--was ignorant of them. One Phoenician mariner, Hanno, was even the first to circumnavigate Africa. Yet these famed traders are willing to sacrifice their material wealth in the form of their trade goods in danger, even while they cling to their gods.

Nothing else so clearly reveals man as a a worshiping creature. This is evident even today, in those who claim to be "free" of religious taint. None have been so fanatically purposive in the pursuit of pleasing their gods as those who call themselves "athesits"--meaning that they disbelieve in the Christian God. Communists have made great sacrifices in the service of what Arnold Toynbee once called the goddess Historical Necessity. Others, in the name of the goddes Liberty, have made themselves into the worst of tyrants. Nietsche drove himself insane (perhaps aided by syphilis) in his search for a Godless intellectual integrity.
This has been the case with man since Jonah's Phoenician shipmates cast their costly goods into the sea down to the present day. It is no wonder then that many a Christian theologian has concluded that the worshiping impulse is one great evidence of man being created after the image of God.

Yet, oddly enough, while his shipmates worship their gods and sacrifice their livelihoods, Jonah is asleep. "It is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the bread of sorrows; for so he giveth his beloved sleep," says Psalm 127:2. Perhaps Jonah is an odd perversion of this great truth, for he sleeps as he flees God's mission and his companions are in danger. Perhaps nothing better illustrates the sinful complacency and silence of the church in too many ages! People perish without hope of salvation, yet we remain asleep. It takes the heathen captain's intervention to rouse God's prophet from his slumber.

The military chaplains say that there are no atheists in foxholes. The behavior of Jonah's shipmates is instructive. In crisis, man seeks God. But will those who have the truth be there to help them?

Thoughts on Jonah--the Runaway Prophet

2011-04-18T21:18:00.001-07:00

ow the word of the LORD came unto JOnah the son of Amittai, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it; for their wickedness is come up before me. But Jonah rose up to flee unto Tarshish from the presence of the LORD, and went down to Joppa; and he found a ship going to Tarshish: so he paid the far thereof, and went down into it, to go with them unto Tarshish, from the presence of the LORD.
(Jonah 1:1-3)

The book of Jonah is a short portion of Scripture, but extremely rich. The village atheists of the naive, innocent early 20th century era loved to attack it for its great "fish story", only to be answered by a barrage of "answers" from our side about how known fish or whales of various species were indeed capable of holding a man inside them. But the book is far deeper and more wonderful as a tale of divine grace meeting the recalcitrance and folly of man--especially in its reminder that the purposes of God are far larger than human sin; and not changed or derailed because we refuse to cooperate.

Apart from the book that bears his name, Jonah is mentioned only in a few citations in the New Testament and II Kings 14:26. In II Kings, he is said to have prophesied that the borders of Israel would be restored, which happens under Jeroboam ben Joash (not to be confused with Jeroboam ben Nebat).

Jonah thus received the blessing to know that God was prepared to preserve and aid his people even in a dark, sinful, and thoroughly unworthy time. Jeroboam ben Joash, it is said, "departed not from the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin"--specifically, an idolatry repeating the infamous episode of the golden calf (Exodus 32:1-20; I Kings 12:28-30), as if the people and their leaders learned no lessons from the past. Yet in those days, God was nonetheless willing to rescue and restore part of Israel's patrimony by an unworthy instrument. And, in those days, a prophet who recognized the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob arose to foretell such an event--Jonah the son of Amittai.

In the book of Jonah, Jonah receives a second call from God:

Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it, for their wickedness is come up before me. (Jonah 1:2).

Yet Jonah, instead of heading northeast towards Nineveh, flees to the coast and takes a ship to Tarshish--lands at the Western end of the Mediterranean--in exactly the opposite direction from that which God ordered.

It is easy to be hard on Jonah at this point. How many of us think in our hearts that, had we been in Jonah's sandals, we would have gladly heeded the divine call! We glibly envision ourselves striding boldly out the gates of some Israelite city, Scripture under one arm and staff in hand, ready to speak mightily against a sinful heathen city in northern Mesopotamia!

But let us pause. The Assyrians, the people whose capital Nineveh was, were a fierce and dangerous people. One author has described them as the storm troopers of antiquity. Archaeology has uncovered their monuments and literature, in which they boast of impaling men alive and smashing in the heads of children after conquering an enemy city. After conquering most of Mesopotamia and Aram (today's Syria), could they be expected to heed the rantings of a wandering Israelite? Could Jonah, accustomed to being the patriotic prophet of restoration, welcome the mission to speak to a people whom his own people hated and feared?

In 1940, the Japanese Christian Toyohiko Kagawa went to prison for openly expressing remorse and apologies for his country's invasion and occupation of much of the Republic of China--at a time when China was still fighting. On his release, he went to the United States in an ultimately futile attempt to short-circuit the path towards war on which both Japan and the USA were already travelling. Certain American pastors went to Japan for the same purpose, and similarly failed. But Kagawa and his American counterparts in 1940 are exceptional cases, and remembered as giants for their determined pursuit of peace. They are remarkable for how few of their kind arose in those perilous times.

Similarly, we remember the Dietrich Bonhoffers, the Wang Mingdao's, the Aleksandr Solzhenitsyns who bravely stood up in Christ's name against the horrors of 20th century totalitarianism. But again, if faced with a similar situation, would not most of us prefer to acquiesce, to go along and get along?

The refrain of these first verses of the book are that Jonah went away "from the presence of the LORD". This warns us that we must guard against self-righteousness and complacence. As we walk before God, we must adopt a posture of humility; as we deal with our fellow humans, we must cultivate both humility and charity--difficult gifts when we deal with many whom we are predisposed to see as enemies. If one who enjoyed the prophetic gift could flee from the presence of the LORD, how much more can the rest of us?

Thoughts on Jonah

2011-04-18T21:16:00.000-07:00

For the next several postings, I will return to my earlier work on Jonah. I apologize for the bits and pieces of meditation that appeared scattered among other musings, and will repost the earlier work to allow readers an easier time following the thoughts I have had on this small but momentous book.

Also, while the political season has begun, this Christian rightist will back off a bit--not least because Jonah has provided some important lessons. True, I probably won't support Mr. Obama's re-election. True, I remain critical of what the current administration has been doing. And I remain an unreconstructed partisan on one side of the culture wars now going on. But there are some more important things to consider.

America's Spineless Leadership in Government and Media

2011-04-05T06:20:00.000-07:00

In answering Afghan rioting over the burning of a Qur'an in Florida, America's leadership has shown itself inept, foolish, and ambivalent towards the Constitution its officers are supposedly sworn to uphold.

President Karzai of Afghanistan has loudly demanded an official apology for Pastor Terry Jones' burning of the Qur'an, and apparently welcomes the rioting of his people in Kandahar and Mazar-e-Sherif. He also seems to think that the killing of UN personnel in the latter place is somehow excusable. Our own executive branch officers from President Obama to Secretary of State Clinton to General Petraeus all believe that Mr. Jones' action is somehow responsible for the reactions in Afghanistan. Even honorable members of the House of Representatives aand Senate have jumped on the "get Jones" bandwagon.

Uncle Cephas is too much a child of Milton's _Aereopagitica_ to condone the burning of any book, even Hitler's _Mein Kampf_ and _Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong_. But, for once, ire directed at the hitherto obscure Terry Jones, the revered leader of a group of perhaps fifty or sixty people in an obscure corner of Florida, should be directed elsewhere. Further, the US government needs to seize an important "teaching moment".

All officers of the US government are required to swear an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States, including the First Amendment, which guarantees freedom of speech, the press, and the free exercise of religion. It should be more than clear that Mr. Jones in no way represents the position of the US Government, for churches, synagogues, mosques, and temples are independent entities under US law.
Further, the same Free Speech rights which Mr. Jones exercised in burning the Qur'an also protect Muslim imams who call the Jews relatives of apes and pigs; Roger Baldwin when he hoped for the day when the last senator would be strangled with the guts of the last preacher; Mr. Obama's beloved Saul Alinsky when he encouraged the poor of the land to put intolerable demands on "the system"; Mr. Obama's friend Bill Ayres; and his Troofer friend Van Jones who propagates the lie that former President Bush's own administration was behind the fall of the Twin Towers and Pentagon attack. It permits calls for the abolition of the establishment clause of the same Amendment when Muslims in the USA call for the adoption of Sharia. The Obama administration needs to remind the world and itself that an obscure Pentecostal preacher is protected by the First Amendment no less than the American Nazis marching in Skokie, Malcolm X, the Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye, and all other "discrete and insular minorities".

The US Government might also do well to remind Muslim mobs worldwide that the backlash represented by Mr. Jones would never have happened had noteworthy imams and 'Ulema condended the 9/11 attacks as mass-murder and found themselves mightily echoed by their followers in the streets rather than crowing about American comeuppance on 9/11. dancing in the streets, and passing out candy--only to turn around and whimper how it was all the fault of the JOOOOOOZ as soon as its "strong horse" Osama Bin Laden had to start ducking cutter bombs. Indeed, had the Islamic world shown an inkling of responsible thought and behavior, Mr. Jones' actions against Islam probably would not have gone beyond the usual verbal polemics.

Further, the Islamic world is in absolutely no position to lecture the USA about how to treat a minority religion. In Pakistan, Christian girls are regularly abducted, raped, forcibly converted to Islam, and married to their assailants. The Copts of Egypt and Assyirans of Iraq, the true indigenous populations of those lands, are being squeezed out of their homelands. Within living memory Iraq--the burial place of several biblical prophets, the land of the Babylonian Talmud, and Judaism's second homeland, where prayers in Hebrew were heard a full millennium before the Arabic azzan was heard anywhere--has been rendered jundenrein. Turkey rid itself of indigenous Christian minorities in the 1920's, has all but rid itself of its last Jews, and dares to be dismayed when a small Evangelical Christian population of former Muslims appears in its midst. In Indonesia, Christian schoolgirls have been beheaded in Sulawesi, while areas of Sumatra attempt to make all public expression of Christianity illegal. Syria teeters on the brink of civil war between Sunni and Alawi; has rid itself of an ancient Jewish community, and continues to squeeze its shrinking Christian population. In Karzai's own Afghanistan, apostasy from Islam is still a capital crime.

Worse, the major US media, beneficiaries of the First Amendment, condemn Jones' action without a single thought for the disproportionate rage of the Muslim street. Could it be because Mr. Jones is probably of the wrong political persuasion, or, more likely, our media moghuls really play it safe in choosing their targets? All around, official reaction to Jones' action had been utterly disgraceful.

Call Mr. Jones a yokel. Call him a crackpot. Call him deluded. But don't blame him for the disproportionate reactions of foreign Muslim streets to his actions. The responsibility for such extremism lies completely in the hands of the people of those streets and their own leaders.

The Foreign Policy Keystone Cops

2011-04-01T13:05:00.000-07:00

Two issues irk me about the current administration's foreign policy, both of which underscore the Administration's ability to consider American interest.

One, of course, is the Libyan intervention. Uncle Cephas does not believe that any vital American interest is at stake, not even oil. And, if the Europeans are more dependend on Libyan oil, it would be no skin off their teeth to simply wait for the dust to settle and deal with whoever ends up in power, whether some rebel coalition or a triumphant Qaddafi.

And did not Candidate Obama fiercely criticize Dubya Bush for a reckless foreign policy? Is there no apology in the offing?

The humanitarian argument doesn't wash at all. Our sophisticated, humanitarian European allies who are all weepy over a bunch of rag-tag Qaida sympathizers from eastern Libya may have slapped a few sanctions on Mainland China after 1989, but went back to business as usual with that very effective tyranny after a decent interval. As for the rebels themselves, they pin a Magen David on Qaddafi's image before torching it, suggesting that they are no more evolved in their view of the rest of the world than Qaddafi himself. Will Qaddaffi unleash a bloodbath if he wins? Of course. But Uncle Cephas is pretty certain that the rebels have their own little list, probably headed by the people who waved the Cross of St. Andrew to welcome home the Lockerbie bomber--but these folks will get killed not for supporting terror, but for openly displaying a Christian symbol.

But there is something worse.

A Florida yokel preacher by the name of Jones wanted to burn a Qur'an in protest against the manifold sins of Islam. Indeed, the whole Christian world has a gripe against the world of Islam for a string of anti-Christian crimes ranging from usurpation of holy sites in the Middle Ages to the murder of Christian Pakistani cabinet ministers who voice concerns over unfair applications of Pakistan's blasphemy laws (usually against impoverished Christian farmers in Panjab who object to the rape of their daughters or theft of land by Muslim squatters). When Mr. Jones first broached the possibility of this act, the whole force of Washington's political elite came down on him, warning him of the drastic repercussions such an act would have. Jones simply waited a few months, and went on with his plan.

Well, Uncle Cephas is too much an heir of Milton's _Aereopagita_ to condone book-burning, and doesn't even burn books by Marx, Mao, or Hitler, whom Uncle Cephas sees as monstrous criminals. But that is not the main point.

Our government let slip an enormous teaching opportunity. Every elected or appointed official of the US Government is expected to swear an oath to uphold the US Constitution. That document included the First Amendment, which recognizes rights of free exercise of religion and free speech. It protects the publishers of the hate-blinded Malcolm X's autobiography. It protects second-hand bookstores that sell ratty copies of Eldridge Cleaver's _Soul on Ice_ or the screeds of Saul Alinsky. it protects Muslim imams who tells their flocks that Jews are the kin of apes and pigs, and that violent jihad is the duty of every Muslim (as long as nobody acts on the latter). It also protects Mr. Jones' right to burn a copy of the Qur'an.

Since this action, Afghanistan's Muhammad Karzai has demanded that Jones be "brought to justice" for such blasphemy, as if Sharia was part of the US Constitution. Muslim mobs in various parts of the Islamic world have attacked targets identified as "Christian", whether the long-suffering indigenous Dhimmi populations of Iraq and Egypt or UN compounds in Mazar-e-Sharif, Afghanistan. Yet where is a single administration spokesperson who had spoken up to remind the world that the US enshrines free speech in its Constitution?

The Obama administration has gone from exaggerated deference to European and Muslim sensibilities to thoughtless and potentially coslty intervention too quickly. Now, however, it adds to its stumblings a lost opportunity to remind the world of some of the things for which the US stands.

The Smart Folks who are unfit to either govern or inform America

2011-03-22T13:35:00.000-07:00

Today, while driving home, I listened to Washington's oracle of record, WTOP news, the radio avatar of the _Washington Post_. Commentator Mark Plotkin, a respected political pundit, expected me to laugh when he spoke of Sarah Palin's "gaffe" of being able to see Russia from her window.

Well, the usually intelligent-sounding Mr. Plotkin made himself, and by extension his employers, look pretty dang THTOOOOOOOOPID.

My mother and uncle were from Norse--oops, North-- Dakota, and would speak of Canadians as "neighbors", even though a good few miles of American wheatfields separated their old homestead from Line Forty-Nine. Given that Big and Little Diomede Islands in the Bering Sea are scarcely five miles apart, the USA and Russia do indeed share a border, albeit a maritime rather than land one. Hence, Mrs. Palin's saying she can see Russia from her window is a perfectly understandable figure of speech when coming from an Alaskan. Far more dangerous would be an Alaskan politician seeking national limelight while thinking that Russia is "far away". After all, the Alaskan indigenous Yupik and Aleut peoples also live in Russian territory, while before and after Vitus Bering, Aleuts were trading with Ainu people living in the southern Kuril islands. At least give Mrs. Palin credit for knowing her own state.

Plotkin's expectation that people who listen to WTOP news or read the _Washington Post_ should titter at Mrs. Palin's supposed ignorance of world affairs reveals something shockingly dangerous about supposedly "internationally sophisticated" Washingtonians: they look out from their windows and see only one of the two Oceans washing their country's shores, and probably understand only the safe zones of Western Europe when they venture abroad. While such a class of people were adequate leaders for the era from the Civil War to Woodrow Wilson, when Alaska could be written off as "Seward's Folly" and Siberia a mere icebox into which successive Russian regimes dumped criminals and dissidents, they are today a liability in a world in which no place is more than 24 hours away.

Please, Mr. Plotkin, stop making us Washington-area folks look provincial and ignorant.

Oh, No! Now we've done it

2011-03-20T08:10:00.001-07:00

Now we've done it. To save the Libyan "populace", we have taken out Moammar Qaddafi's air defenses, and now our anti-war President Obama has gotten us into a third war in the Islamic world, and not to help any proven or trustworthy ally. We are involved, and, win or lose, we will take the blame for whatever outcome happens. If ever there were conflicts which called for dusting off traditions of neutrality, they are the internal conflicts of the Dar-ul Islam.

Among the towns controlled by the Libyan rebels is Darna, which some time back was identified as a favorite Qaeda recruiting ground. So, we are now investing young American lives in saving mothers whose self-professed greatest joy was to have their sons blow themselves up in order to kill Americans. Indeed, as far as Uncle Cephas can tell, both sides in the Libyan conflict are self-professed haters of America and all that the USA stands for.

Obama has been criticized for being a "do-nothing" president in international affairs and for surrendering the American lead. Even the Statist and Democratic Socialist-leaning Washington Post has printed columns accusing him of being a "muddled puddle" on the "looming humanitarian catastrophe" in Libya (Richard Cohen comes to mind). Yet, perhaps, this WAS a point where Obama may have been wiser; and one one which he sacrificed a possibly sound intuition (rather than inaction due to muddle-headedness about foreign affairs?) for the sake of a dubious image as a president who supposedly exemplifies decisiveness and toughness as well as compassion.

Unlike the younger Bush, who had to respond to the worst attack on the USA since Pearl Harbor, Obama can point to no important national interest in joining the fight to depose Qaddafi--who, clownish though he may have been, seemed capable of learning a lesson or two following Reagan's air attacks in retaliation for the 1983 airline bombings; and who scrapped the development of nuclear weapons following the younger Bush's toppling of Sadam Hussein. As for oil, whoever might have won the Libyan civil war prior to the engagement of France and its allies would have known that the only thing Libya can do with its oil is sell it. As for the tranquility of Mediterranean shipping lanes, Libya has not been a pirate haven for some time.

Do not count on the gratitude of the Libyan rebels should they win with American and other allied help. Both Bosniaks and Kosovars have exported their national pathologies. Both have contributed to making Malmo, Sweden in to the rape capital of Europe. The Somali immigrant community--planted in response to the failure of the Somali state after the death of Said Barry, have given headaches from refusing cab service to people with seeing-eye dogs to demands for employers to respect times of Islamic prayer to open witch-hunting for homosexuals. Bosnia-Herzegovina has also become a back-door conduit for Islamicist militancy in Europe.

The US had no dog in the Libyan fight. It now has chosen to back the champion rabid flea-breeder against the mangy, rabid cur.

Hands off Libya

2011-03-10T18:34:00.000-08:00

Uncle Cephas has no great regard for Moammar Qaddafi. He was always a bloody minded dictator, sponsor of terrorism, a first class SOB, and, back in the Cold War days, the Soviet Bloc's SOB. However, the USA would be well-advised to refrain from following France's lead in recognizing the interim rebel government. It would be best to remember John Adams' advice to be well-wisher to liberty everywhere, but champion only of our own.

There seems to be little public information on who the rebels are, who leads them, and the nature of the new Libya they hope to produce. Talk of the "democratic" nature of the recent revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt neglect to note how the revolutionary forces were quick to attack Jewish targets in Tunisia and Christian ones in Egypt--very much in character with mass movements in the Islamic world during the past couple of centuries, if not more. A few things already indicate that Islamic supremacism informs Qaddafi's foes in Libya as well (not to say that Qaddafi has much respect for any expressions of non-Islamic belief in Libya), in that they've already burned the dictator in effigy--with a Magen David attached.

Attempts to foster democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan have made things worse for the Christian and Mandaean minorities in the former and have changed nothing for the clandestine religious minorities in the latter. The latter is especially rife with corruption since the ouster of the Taliban, and America's Afghan allies seem little inclined to find and bring in Osama Bin Laden or Mullah Omar. And intervention in Libya would probably uncover an equally unpromising morass. Further, the Islamic world tends to grow more anti-American in direct proportion to American support for regimes or movements in that area.

Let events in Libya play out as the powers in place in that country determine. We do not have a horse in that race.

Evangelicals and Orthodox

2011-03-07T14:58:00.002-08:00

A commenter recently noted that the Russian Orthodox Church is fiercely anti- Evangelical. This might be a time when Uncle Cephas might way in on why this is so.

The Christian world tends to divide along the lines of Evangelical vs. Sacerdotal. The Evangelical camp emerged into plain view during the 16th century, following the Reformations led respectively by Martin Luther and Huldreich Zwingli in Saxony and Switzerland. Before that time, certain Evangelical movements arose from time to time in the Christian West, only to fade into obscurity through persecution by those churches centered on either Rome or Constantiople; although such groups as the Waldensians in the Alps, Lollards in Britain, and Hussites in the Western Slavic lands of Europe managed to survive long enough to fall into the orbit of the Lutheran and Reformed churches of the Reformation. Hence, the polemic of both Rome and the Faner against Evangelicalism centers on the historical continuity of the Roman and Faneriot communions, as well as the supposed power their institutional clergy have over the sacraments as means of grace.

The understanding of the sacraments and the power of a priesthood lie at the center of the sacerdotalist-Evangelical controversy. The sacerdotal churches believe that the seven sacraments of baptism, the eucharist (Lord's Supper), confirmation, confession and absolution, marriage, ordination, and extreme unction were given as means by which the grace of Christ is infused into the believer via the work of an ordained priesthood who, in an unbroken line descending back to the Apostles of Christ themselves, are the sole means where by the Holy Spirit is diffused to the church. As stewards of the sacraments, the clergy are able to give or withold divine grace.

The rediscovery of Scripture in Europe between the time of Wycliffe in 14th century England and the Reformation of the 16th and 17th centuries opened the eyes of many to serious conflicts between the Scriptures and the official line of the established churches. People read the words of Paul in First Corinthians 15:

"Moreover brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand; by which ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain. For I delivered unto you first of all that chich I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures; And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the Scriptures: and that he was een of Cephas (Peter), then of the twelve: After that he was seen of above five hundred brethren at once; of whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep. After that, he was een of James; then of all the apostles. And last of all he was seen of me also..."

They read as well in the words of the Apostle Peter:

"[you all] Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of uncorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever,
For all flesh is as grass,
and all the glory of man as the flower of grass.
The grass withereth, and the flower thereof fadeth away:
But the word of the Lord endureth for ever [Isaiah 40:6]
And this is the word which by the Gospel is preached unto you" (I Peter 1:24-25).

In such text, they see that the power of salvation is mediated to man not by an institution or ceremony, but by the Word of God. Hence, the Evangelical movement, especially that portion that traces its development through men like Zwingli, Knox, and Calvin, became Bible- rather than church-centered in their way of thinking. While the church remained an important institution, it could be challenged and reformed by Scriptural teaching.

To this, the sacerdotal churches replied that God is known through the traditions of the church as well as by Scripture. But the Evangelicals were quick to counter that the traditions of the church caused divisions over how monks and clergy wore their hair or beards, the use of leavened or unleavened bread in the eucharist, vestments, and many other issues over which Scripture is silent. Calvin noted how while the Greek churches criticized the Roman for worshipping carved statues, no other communion indulged in the veneration of pictures (icons) as much as the Greek.

Following Scriptural teaching, the Reformed churches saw only Baptism and the Lord's Supper (the eucharist) as instituted by Christ as means of distinguishing Christians, challenged all use of images in worship, and established a variant system of doctrine of which more will be said at other times.

Essentially, the question dividing the evangelical and sacerdotal churches is this: who saves sinners? Christ, or the church? The latter says that the church and its ministrations saves; the latter that Christ alone saves.

The Modern Mind

2011-02-14T02:29:00.000-08:00

We cannot sin.
We count and quantify,
And know for sure
That we are free from such a quaint superstition.
In the fin du siecle
Our clear-headed science banished obscurantism.
Look! Six million of our neighbors are murdered!
We are horrified
Because someone else, mired in the guilt-ridden past,
Was the adult And admitted guilt.
We are surely off the hook!

We cannot be superstitious,
Even if we once believed
In phlogiston,
In homonunculi, and suchlike.
It's just as we taught you when you were in school,
That an atom is a tidy little solar system
Of electrons orbiting a nucleus of protons and neutrons.
That is truth for the ages, that will never change.

And we cannot perjure.
Again, a quaint impractical notion.
Why must we be bound by our word,
When situations change,
And there is the need to be practical?
How dare you lie to us!
This is why you must trust us.

We cannot be ignorant.
We have banished the ghosts of the past!
We are a bundle of sense-perceptions,
And know we are reality-based!
Hence we are forever excused
From asking an important question.

We are what Hooper thinks
When Ryder revisits Brideshead.
What goes on in that unkempt head,
Self-satisfied and careless,
Bewildered that someone,
Is more modern than he?

Lang Lang and Hu Jintao dis the USA

2011-01-28T16:06:00.001-08:00

China has just made plain its contempt and hatred for the United States; and certainly has shown its contempt for President Obama.

During the state dinner at the White House, Hu Jintao and his entourage, including the pianist Lang Lang, made it clear that they have no respect for either the USA or its current president. Among Lang's pieces played for the entertainment of the Chinese and American presidents was "Wode Zu Guo" (My Motherland), a piece from a 1950's propaganda film extolling the killing of Americans during the Korean War. After the non-mainstream media broke the story, Lang professed innocence of the origin of the song. I frankly think he's lying through his teeth.

The Chinese Communist government is very careful about the image it projects, yet still likes to prod for weaknesses in its interlocutors. It is why Hu made the right noises about China having "a long way to go" in implementing human rights and the rule of law while making no commitments. But under the smooth exterior, is the head of a ruthless oligarchy that understands its historical mission as being the last, best hope of 20th century totalitarianism. Had Hu wished to simply have a smooth, both-sides-satisfied summit, he would not have allowed such a piece to be played (would the Germans play "Die Wacht am Rhein" when having diplomatic negotiations with the French?). It seems that the Chinese government was betting on general American ignorance of modern Chinese culture, and pulled the stunt to show the folks back home that it is humiliating and insulting America at the heart of American power.

The fact that Lang chose a piece from a post-Korean War propaganda film may also signal that any Chinese noises that it may accept the disappearance of the Communist Kim Dynasty in Pyongyang is probably a subtle trap designed to lull the USA into a new confrontation in northeastern Asia in order to test the prowess of China's rapidly modernizing forces. It should therefore be a signal to any alert officials in the US Government that China is not a friend, but an enemy whose contempt for the USA--accompanied by an underestimation of American strengths and sensibilities--could very well lead to a general conflict in the Western Pacific.

The fact that official US responses to this plain insult are muted is no proof of the patience, forbearance, and wisdom of our leadership, but of their ability to be taken off guard by people who sincerely and deeply hope to catch them off-guard. It seems that nothing has changed since the Chinese General Staff caught former President Clinton off-guard by asking if the US would tolerate a nuclear blast over Los Angeles as retaliation for supporting Taiwan in the face of a Mainland Chinese assault. It would be far better for Obama and Mrs. Clinton, as Secretary of State, to clearly state that the US government feels that Lang Lang's repertoire at the state dinner was in poor taste, suggests that official China has no respect for the USA, and may even hint that Beijing's long-term view of Washington is hostile.

Immigration Reform

2011-01-23T11:35:00.000-08:00

As a former consular officer, I have some thoughts about immigration reform. They center on (a) judicious discrimination and (b) enforcing laws and policies already on the books.

Carefully considered, intelligently targeted, and, hopefully temporary discriminatory policies towards states, regions, and groups that have imported other countries' problems to the USA should be implemented in USA immigration law. Discrimination is a dirty word today, but it is necessary for law and society to function. The family "discriminates", even against those outsiders with whom it enjoys respectful and amicable relations; while all professions discriminate in favor of specific sets of skills.

In immigration, the US Congress could pass a law that would give the president, in consultation with the Secretaries of State, Homeland Security, and Defense the right to place visa moratoria on states, regions, and groups deemed inimical to US security and public order. Such visa bans--which would cover even family unification and skills-based immmigrant cases as well as non-immigrant categories--would target problems such as terrorism, narcotics and human trafficking, organized crime, and the like. These bans could then be lifted when the executive branch agencies deem the crises that require discrimination to be over.

For example, when I was serving as a consular officer in the Far East, much was made of a "Fujianese" problem--alien smuggling from that coastal province, including links to highly effective organized crime. In the aftermath of the 1989 protests, bona fide Chinese asylum seekers from all over China ended up in Thailand, all claiming that they had originally hoped to go to Fujian and find a way to Taiwan, but that the authorities were watching the area too closely for them. Yet, at the same time, the alien-smuggling gangs operating out of the Fuzhou area (the provincial capital and immediately adjacent counties), did not miss a beat. The same human smuggling operations resulted in populations in several American cities that were for all intents and purposes indentured to smuggling gangs, plus the organization of all but impenetrable criminal gangs dealing in narcotics and vice.

But the problem was not really a "Fujianese" problem. It was highly localized in the city of Fuzhou (the provincial capital) and adjacent counties. While in Bangkok, I was called on to translate when the Thai police arrested a smuggler and gave American immigration officials access to the prisoner. The man's wallet was literally stuffed with the name cards of Communist Party Secretaries, high officers of the Fujian Garrison Commmand, and Chinese government officials. Clearly, the operation the people-smuggler represented was well-connected. But later, when I served in Guangzhou as a consular officer, I could not help but note that whereas almost all cases from the Fuzhou area involved former illegals, Fujianese cases from other parts of the province were run-of-the-mill close relatives of US citizens and lawful permanent residents or students who had been recruited by US companies while in the USA; all legitimate immigration cases under then-current law.

Perhaps had the law allowed the Secretary of State to issue a ban on immigrants and visitors from Fuzhou city, Lianjiang County, and a handful of other nearby localities, and had the Bureau of Consular Affairs the budget and resources for a thorough anti-fraud effort, legal immigrants would not have been inconvenienced, and a clear message sent to corrupt host country authorities and a population prone to accept the blandishments of the smuggling gangs that the road was closed. This might have given incentive to the host country to attack the problem at its root.

Similarly, in the War on Terror, we would not even need to ban Muslim immigration (as some of the more zealous outside of government have suggested). Rather, terror-supporting groups like Falastin Arab Muslims, Lebanese Shi'ites, most of the population of Pakistan, and certain others might be barred from entering the USA until such time as support for anti-American terror among such groups has clearly dimminished. Yet, at the same time, visas would continue to be available to Iraqi and Iranian Kurds, West Africans, Hui, Circassians, and other Muslims whose support for Islamic supremacism is either lacking or sufficiently muted.

Some may argue that such laws and policies would cut the nerve of American humanitarian concern for asylum seekers. Yet no country should be required to admit its avowed enemies. Many from the Fuzhou area of China abuse the asylum system for admission, yet the Fujian-American Association which they support is outspokenly pro-Beijing. Has anyone heard of a German-Jewish emigre association of the World War II era that would even give the Nazis credit for making the trains run on time? The idea that genuine refugees would support the regime that endangered them is preposterous. Further, it is a national disgrace that members of the Mojaheddin-e-Khalq are allowed to use their problems with Khomeini-ite Iran to gain asylum in the USA. These are people who, in their own circles, boast of being the first "revolutionary fighters" into the "nest of spies" back in 1979. No-one should think that the USA has any moral or humanitarian duty to admit such people. Carefully considered and targeted discrimination could allow immigration officers to ban such doubtful entrants while admitting others.

Things like "Diversity IMmigration" should be done away with. The late Ted Kennedy supported the idea back in the 1980's because (a) he was dismayed that his 1965 reforms didn't re-vitalize the Irish and Italian ghettoes that had guaranteed Democratic dominance in New England and (b) a lot of Chinese, Vietnamese, and Korean immigrants started voting Republican as soon as the ink on their naturalization certificates was dry, and an uncomfortably visible minority of Latin-Americans, did, too. I've noted among my own students that some of the rare Republicans in the community I serve are recent West African immigrants (small businessmen feeling the tax squeeze). The "diversity visa" lottery was the last gasp of Ted Kennedy's attempt to revitalize an important 20th century Democratic base, failed badly, and was derisively referred to as the "Irish Sweepstakes" by those whose job it was to administer it.

Carefully targeted discrimination in the hands of reponsible and carefully trained officers of executive branch agencies would also allow a frank recognition that some cultures are more mutually assimilable than others. The USA cannot afford the sorts of no-go areas and rape zones that afflict some of the Banlieux of French cities, cities of northern England, or Malmo, Sweden. Groups that have made it clear that they intend to form Sharia enclaves in the Dar-el-Harb could be excluded.

I would also retain birthright citizenship (including for children of the American diaspora) and all the legal protections for non-citizens enshrined in the 14th Amendment. I'd even be lenient on, say, bona fide spouses who marry while visiting the USA and whose American spouses don't bother to do the paperwork until ICE finds them a couple of years later. The only change I would introduce would be a Constitutional Amendment defining marriage as between one man and one woman. The culture of Islamic polygamy is too dangerous to be allowed to take root in the USA. It was the cradle from which Osama Bin Laden came, and that is enough. As for the current push for homosexual rights, it still remains a clear fact that being raised in a two-parent, heterosexual household is likely to remain best for future generations. Continued vigilance against fraud should be exercised, as well as presumption of fraud in all cases of arranged marriages between persons of great age discrepancies. These, after all, are prima facie opposed to the principle of liberty underlying all of America's founding documents.

Perhaps the chief immigration reforms I would institute would be more funding and staffing for the Bureau of Consular Affairs, ICE, and the Border Patrol in order to better enforce the laws we already have on the books. I'd also deliberately limit asylum to people who are both truly in danger and accepting of American values (i.e., no Communists, pedophiles, or Mojaheddin-e-Khalq). The disfunctionality of the American immigration system seems to be in its being underpaid and overworked, coupled with some of the problems of a corrupt culture in legal and judicial circles in which the lawyer's craft, the temptation of subversion, and political ambition often count for more than either law or justice. But that is a different issue.

more may be said on immigration issues later

New Years Wishes

2010-12-31T07:13:00.000-08:00

The New Year is upon us, and I pray that God would indeed "crown the year with goodness" (Ps. 65:1).

Happy New Year, one and all!

China Sets a Trap [?]

2010-12-26T19:46:00.001-08:00

The British periodical _Guardian_ reports that Wikileaks reveals that China is privately ready to abandon North Korea, and may be open to Korean re-unification under Seoul. This sounds very suspicious. It is more likely that Chinese officials are planting misinformation with their American counterparts, possibly setting a military trap.

It is more than conceivable that pretending a willingness to abandon the Kim dynasty of Pyongyang is a way to make America over-confident should Pyongyang re-open the Korean War. A renewed Korean War in which America remains unprepared for massive Chinese Communist support for the North Korean state provides Beijing with a golden opportunity to trap US forces, move on Taiwan, isolate Japan, and possibly remove the American presence from the Western Pacific for good. It would allow Beijing, in a single dramatic conflict, to fulfill a large part of the what the regime sees as its historic mission, namely, to end the legacy of Western imperialism in the Far East. Beijing's official organs never broach the possibility that Taiwan's continuing wariness about reunification, despite its clear lack of international support and a government headed by the pan-Blues, may just have to do with differing indigenous political evolutions on the two sides of the Taiwan Strait; but insist that the existence of a "China Irredentia" can only be because of the nefarious plots of first Tokyo, then Washington. Similarly, the performance of the Chinese forces in the Korean War of 1950-53 remains a large part of China's self-image as a rising power. Should a Beijing-Pyongyang alliance win a second Korean War, with Communist absorption of Taiwan as a further benefit to Beijing, China would be in an excellent position to completely eclipse Japan as a power in the Far East.

Naked Chinese pressure on a number of neighboring governments to boycott the Nobel ceremony that honored Liu Xiaobo is a reminder that Beijing remains the last, best hope of 20th century totalitarianism. It is certain that China feels that its rising power permits it to censor critical voices not only at home, but abroad as well. It is therefore inconceivable that a Korea reunified under a multiparty government allied to the United States (and, with reunification, possibly confident enough to undertake a final reconciliation with Japan) could be truly welcome to Beijing's rulers. The Korean minority in China's northeast is already a vector for underground Christian propaganda; and the possibility of their becoming a vector for political dissidence would only be strengthened by Korean reunification on Seoul's terms.

As students of Sunzi, China's leaders know that one of America's great weaknesses is a deep desire to believe that the Chinese Communist regime is fundamentally benign, internationally responsible, and not really represented by the continuing anti-American message found in China's government-controlled media. This is something they know they can use for political and military leverage, just as they have used it to gain international economic respectability in the face of such practices as using prison and child labor.

Hence, the US Government should take such feelers from Beijing with a large grain of salt.

A Christmas Meditation

2010-12-25T05:53:00.000-08:00

Matthew 1:1-21

I don't really make that much about Christmas. It was not commanded in Holy Scripture, so its observance cannot be imposed on the conscience. However, I have nothing afainst people who choose certain times to focus on the great events of Jesus Christ's life among us; and Christmas is a time when many are open to hearing something about the Savior, so here goes with a meditation.

I love the Gospel stories about the birth of Christ--Matthew 2 and Luke 2. I love the prologue to John, the Gospel that reminds us up front how Jesus isn't just man, but God Incarnate and "pitching his tent" among us.

But, believe it or not, I really love Matthew One, with all of its boring "begats".

Why, Uncle Cephas? Are you just a dull old man?

The Genealogy of Jesus reminds us of several things, not least of which is how God the Son chose to identify with real, flesh-and-blood people, despite all of our fallenness and misery.

Jesus, like all the rest of us, has a history. His genealogy in Matthew One shows us that this history is the long, long history of ancient Israel. His line begins with Abraham, passes through Kings David and Solomon, the greatest of Israel's kings, and moves on down to that point which the Apostle Paul calls "the fullness of time", when world-empire belonged to Rome and Herod the Great sat on the throne of Judaea. Jesus identified with a people and its story.

This, perhaps, is why Matthew plays with the idea of fourteen major generations from Abraham to the Babylonian Exile, then fourteen from the Exile to the Messiah (which is just the Anglicization for M'shiach, or "Anoiinted One", which in Greek is "Christos"). Seven is the number of perfection, fourteen is perfection doubled. Matthew's point isn't that he's playing a game of "Catch me if you Can in my Knowledge of Biblical genealogy"--one, by the way, that he loses, since many a Bible student has found gaps in his genealogy--but that the flow of Hebrew history isn't random, but follows a divine plan that meets its fulfillment in the Redeemer of the world.

As an American, I know this doesn't particularly flatter me; nor does it flatter my dear spouse who was born Chinese. But it is a reminder that God has his own purposes in history, and they are not necessarily purposes there to aggrandize me and mine. But it should be enough for us that God was concerned enough with us as historical persons that when he chose to become one of us, that he did not ignore history with all its lumps, warts, and imperfections. And, perhaps, in choosing a relatively small nation for his own, he reminds us that our notions of power, greatness, and national glory are not necessarily his.

Apart from God's guiding hand in human history, Jesus' genealogy reminds us that God chose to identify with sinners.

Many have the idea that the Savior of mankind had to come from the great and good. As a descendant of kings and Persian satraps from David to Zorobabel (Zerubbabel in the Old Testament), Jesus does descend from the great. But a reading of the Old Testament reminds us that Jesus does not necessarily descend from the good. The incarnation of God the son is not about congratulating mankind on a job well done, but about the redemption of sinners.

Judah and Tamar (Judas and Thamar in verse 4, following the Greek spellings) show us a sordid tale of deception, anger, and violation, in which a man lies with his daughter-in-law when she is disguised as a prostitute (Genesis 38). We see as well Rachad (Rahab) the harlot, who with her house was the only survivor of the city of Jericho following its capture by Joshua. And from which of David's numerous marriages did the Savior come? From David's adultery with Bathsheba and and the murder of Uriah the Hittite (Urias in the Greek spelling)--the very crime for which, as Nathan the prophet announced, the blood would not depart from David's house (II Samuel 11).

Following these unedifying tales come the kings of Judah. What a contrast the books of Samuel and Kings offer to the boasting chronicles of virtually every other ancient nation! Yes, wise Solomon, and the pious kings Asa, Hezekiah, and Josiah are mentioned. But Solomon, for all his wisdom, was the one who multiplied wives and horses, contrary to the mitzvot of Deuteronomy 17, and whose foreign wives--the staple of ancient Middle Eastern diplomacy--distanced him from the God he originally served. And Solomon's glorious, extensive kingdom, stretching from the wadis of the Sinai peninsula (the Brook of Egypt) to the Euphrates River, came into the hands of his son Rehoboam (Roboam), who ignored the counsel of the older, wiser men and took that of his contemporaries, that he might oppress the people of Israel, showing a "little finger thicker than [his] father's waist" and putting aside the whips with which Solomon chastised men to chastise them with scorpions. And to this, the ten northern tribes answered with secession under Jeroboam.

Most of the other kings are not remembered as good men. Throughout the books of the kings sound the gloomy refrains "he did evil in the sight of the LORD" or "He walked in the way of Jeroboam, who taught Israel to sin". They culminate in Manasseh, who, the Old Testament tells us, walked in all the Canaanite abominations, for which Israel was commanded to cleanse the land. It was for the sins of Mannaseh that Judah herself was condemned to destruction and exile.

And here is a reflection of how Jesus puts the importance of family in persepctive--especially since Christmas is a time of family gatherings and remembrances. Many of us wish to think of ourselves as good people, who descend from good people, and whose families are exemplars of what is right rather than of what is wrong. Hence the ancestral cult found in many cultures across the globe. Hence the importance to many of "good family". But Jesus' genealogy reminds us that we worship a transcendent and holy God rather than dead men; and that we need not walk in the sins and follies of our fathers.

The genealogy ends with the naming of Jesus. He is the namesake of Joshua, who led Israel into the promised land, bearing a name that means "YHWH saves", for Jesus' mission is to save his elect people from all nations, kindreds, people, and tongues from their sins (Mt.1:21; Rev. 7:9). This he accomplished in his life of obedience to divine law in the place of our law-breaking, his sacrificial death on the cross in which he bore our sins, and his resurrection--body AND soul--from the dead.

Reading this genealogy, I am floored by how the sinless Son of God identifies with sinful men. If any had the right to disown his family, it was Jesus Christ. Yet he did not; and through his apostle, shows us his identification with sinners for the sake of their salvation. I pray that from meditation on this passage, I and other Christians would put aside the "holier than thou" facade that comes too easily. It is not the case that we were wiser and better than others that brings us to salvation, but rather that our salvation comes from God's grace shown in Christ. I pray that this witness would be effectual to the salvation of many more.

Matthew One is the great testimony to the humanity of Jesus Christ (even if Matthew confesses Jesus' divinity in recording the apostles' awestruck "who is this, that even winds and waves obey him?"), just as John One is the great testimony to his divinity (even if John also records Jesus' humanity in his weeping over the death of Lazarus). As the Epistle to the Hebrews says, it reminds us that despite our sin and shame, the Lord is not ashamed to call us brethren, and partakes of our nature for the sake of bringing us salvation (Hebrews 2:12 ff.). It is my prayer that many will hear this message in this time of year, and that Christmas of 2010 may be the start of spiritual renewal and salvation for many.

Dhimmitude and Secularism

2010-12-19T06:45:00.001-08:00

There's an interesting column and discussion over at Robert Spencer's _Jihad Watch_:

http://www.jihadwatch.org/2010/12/the-soft-dhimmitude-of-secularism.html

My caveats about the post are that the author, one Roland Shirk, does not seem to see the importance of theological [specifically, Reformed Christian] ideas in the nurturing of Western ideals of rule of law, consent of the governed, and political compact. Further, it is probably also time to open the question about whether ignorance of theological tradition (including their own) has not crippled Western states, peoples, and governments from squarely facing the jihadist menace.

Thinkers, musicians, etc.

2010-12-04T20:46:00.000-08:00

Here are bits of miscellaneous doggerel which I wrote in my spare time. For some odd reason, I have always loved the limerick, although I cannot claim to have any connection with the city that named it.

Old Hobbes said out loud, with a snort,
That particular lives of the sort
Unfettered by kings
Are most unhappy things:
Being nasty, brutish, and short!

Rousseau, the great libertarian,
Celebrated the noble barbarian.
Using science abysmal,
He said society's dismal,
And made politics contractarian.

Rousseau said that people are good,
And that the nasty young thugs in the hood
Obtain notoriety
From evil society,
And not out of nature or blood.

A pastor named Martin Rinkart--
His flock must have wounded his heart!
When plague killed half of them
He penned a great hymn
Entitled "Nun Danket Alle Gott".

Beethoven justly may boast
That in music he did more than most.
His setting to Shiller-
's "Ode to Joy" is a thriller,
Although he was deaf as a post.

Igor said "My_Sacre du Printemps_
Created a great contretemps.
Some Petersburg louse
Booed it out of the house,
So I took myself off to douce France!"

A guy named Muhammad said, "God
Must think it incredibly odd!
The Christians and Jews
Greet my message with boos,
And the Qureish want me under the sod!"

The Birther Red Herring

2010-11-16T16:45:00.000-08:00

Now that the Republicans have regained control of the House of Representatives, many are clamoring for an inquiry in to whether President Obama was born in the USA or not, presumably to prove his Constitutional ineligibility for office. While a conservative, never a supported of the current president, and concerned about how the president's radical Left connections constitute a danger to the republic, Uncle Cephas holds that the birther movement is a political red herring, doomed to failure, and a diversion from the more important task of crafting alternative policies, shrinking government, and exposing a radical agenda.

It is said that the president was born in Kenya rather than in Hawaii. If this is indeed the case, it may prove the president a liar, but it would not constitutionally disqualify him from the presidency.

The Constitution, in Article II, requires that the president be a "natural born citizen" of the United States. This indeed covers persons born in the USA (exclusive of those born to foreign parents in diplomatic status or visiting heads of state). However, it also covers a large number of people born outside the USA. With large numbers of Americans living and working overseas, US immigration and nationality law recognizes that American citizenship can be transmitted to offspring born outside the USA. In the 1980's and 1990's, when Uncle Cephas worked in the Far East and became the father of two sons over there, the requirements were that the US citizen parent must have resided in the USA for five years or more, two of which were after the age of 14 years. Hence, while my sons do not have birth certificates from any state in the USA, they do have Consular Reports of Birth Abroad issued by responsible US diplomatic offices. Further, their earliest entries into their country of citizenship was on passports rather than immigration documents.

If President Obama was indeed born in Kenya, but nonetheless was the son of Ann Dunham, he was born a US citizen. All evidence indicates that Ms. Dunham, however ill-advised her union with Barack Obama, Sr., was an American citizen who met transmission requirements. No evidence has been brought forth alleging that the President was born to any other mother. The President's Indonesian-born half-sister also benefited from transmission requirements descried in American nationality law. Obama's hypothetical birth in Kenya would disqualify him only if it were proven that he was not only born in Kenya, but also born to a couple of which neither parent was a US-citizen.

Should conservatives wish to question the president's fitness for office, let them examine his support for partial birth abortion and the unsavory crowd of Communists, race-baiters, Troofers, and Maoists that surround him. Let them look into the wisdom of pushing through major entitlement legislation at a time when the United States economy is all but bankrupt. Let them look into allegations that Obama's justice department is unwilling to look into possible voter intimidation by members of the New Black Panther Party during the 2008 election. By all means look into organizations such as ACORN. Let them also ask that if Obama was such a brilliant professor of Constitutional Law, where is his published scholarship?

It might also be useful to remind the detractors of Mrs. Palin that Alaska does indeed share a border with Russia--a maritime one passing through the narrow straits between Big and Little Diomede Islands in the Bering Sea, right off the easternmost peninsula of Siberia. The fact that the Left--official, media, and academic--failed to notice such an elementary fact suggests that their Eurocentricity renders them thoroughly unfit to guide American foreign, security, defense, and intelligence policy.

But following the birther line will prove to be no more than barking up the wrong tree.

2010-11-10T14:49:00.000-08:00

Robert Spencer of _Jihad Watch_ has just engaged with Dr. Peter Kreeft in a debate on whether the only good Muslim is a bad one--apparently meaning that only a Muslim who disregards much of his religion (contempt for the Kufr, supremacism towards the Ahl-al-Kitab, jihad) is a "good" person.

I have not grown in my appreciation for Peter Kreeft--and not just because he is an apostate from my community of Reformed Christians.

His regard for Islam seems to stem from how it brings a "fear of the LORD" back into a liberalized Western Christendom that has forgotten that beginning of wisdom; and its apparent stand for "morality". Both views, I believe, are thoroughly mistaken.

As someone who has accepted as part of the cost of discipleship the scorn, ridicule, insults, and palpable misunderstandings of many (including those near and dear to me), I can see in Islam only fear of the community and the sword rather than the fear of the living and true God. And, from the standpoint of biblical ethics, Islam is about the most immoral religion there is--and all the more immoral for its pretense of honoring the God of Abraham, Moses, the prophets, and Messiah. At best, Islam is only another "rod of God's anger", like the Assyrians of old (Isaiah 10:5-11,15) raised against the iconodule Christians of the early medieval era, and now raised against the blithely amoral post-Christian West.

Every corrective that modern Christians need can be found in the Old and New Testaments. For too long, our Christian supposed "scholars" and "thinkers" (or, are they supposed "Christian" scholars and thinkers?) have faced issues like Hell, the ban on the Canaanites, and other such things by crying "barbarian!" at Moses our teacher, the prophets, the apostles, and Jesus Christ himself (while pretending to avoid doing such with the last-mentioned). Yet how they bend over backwards to "understand" Islam, along with the grievance-mongering of every third world bandit -cum-liberator-and-president-for-life! This is the only reason why Kreeft can be fooled into thinking Islam's shame culture and fear of community is the same as biblical fear of the LORD.

The God who can raise up the Assyrian as the rod of his anger against Israel and Judah (Isaiah 10:5-11,15) can raise up others against the iconodule church of the 6th-8th centuries and against the careless, clueless, destroyed-for-want-of-knowledge one of the 21st--to say nothing of a culture that welcomes rediscovery of the beggarly religions of ancient Europe as mere "spiritual experimentation". The God who can destroy both body and soul in Hell is fearful enough--and how much greater should our gratitude for His mercy in Christ be against such a backdrop!

Against such things, a god (allah) who can be driven away from the prayers of a congregation by a leader who mispronounces a single word in a language not his own or breaks wind is just plain silly.

And, if we want allies against the Sodomites, how can Kreeft dare suggest that a religion whose holy warriors sing about "peach-bottomed boys" in between prayers and murder is such an ally?

Jews, Christians, and the Land of Israel

2010-10-30T22:22:00.001-07:00

There have been a number of discussions on this topic from commentors on Jihad Watch, especially in reaction to commments of various Eastern Catholic prelates from the Middle East. This has raised questions that reveal rifts between Dispensationalist, supercessionist, and Confessional Reformed Christians on the place of ethnic Israel in Christian theology.

This is an issue on which I plan to post some comments before long.

In the Interests of Fairness...

2010-09-11T19:01:00.000-07:00

Not all Muslims celebrate the 9/11 attacks. This is from the Uighur-American Association. It's cut and pasted in full:

UAA stands with the victims of terrorism on September 11
Yesterday | Press Releases

For immediate release
September 10, 2010, 10:20 am EST
Contact: Uyghur American Association +1 (202) 478-1920

Nine years ago, terrorists attacked America and the freedoms America stands for. The Uyghur American Association (UAA) mourns the loss of those killed in the attack, and stands with the victims of terrorism around the globe.

"Today, the United States is rebuilding in the wake of the September 11 attacks, even as it remembers the loss of so many innocent people, and the deep wound this caused to the entire nation," said Uyghur human rights leader Rebiya Kadeer. "America continues to stand as a beacon of hope and freedom to people throughout the world."

Thousands of Americans from all walks of life perished in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and on Flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania. Citizens of dozens of other countries were also killed in the attacks, and we must remember that terrorism threatens all civilized nations in the world and remains a constant threat to all free societies.

"The Uyghur people support the global struggle against terrorism, and we know that democracy and human rights can only be achieved and sustained through dialogue and peaceful means," said Ms. Kadeer. "The desire of the Uyghur people, and people throughout the world, to live in a peaceful and free society is threatened by acts of terrorism."

In the past nine years, the Chinese government has used the threat of terrorism and the sad occasion of September 11 as a justification for its repressive treatment of Uyghurs in East Turkestan and has re-branded its repressive actions against peaceful Uyghurs as "anti-terror" efforts. The Chinese regime continues to attempt to portray the Uyghur people's struggle for the recognition and protection of their fundamental human rights as being motivated by violent and 'terrorist' intent.

This campaign against the Uyghur people has resulted in a deteriorating human rights situation in East Turkestan. A series of crackdowns has led to detentions, arrests, torture, and executions, as the PRC government has attempted to silence all forms of Uyghur protest, no matter how peaceful, by labeling them as "terrorism". Internationally, the PRC has used its influence within the Shanghai Cooperation Organization to pressure neighboring countries to return Uyghur activists to China, where they are subjected to the country's arbitrary and non-transparent legal system. In addition, the government has attempted to influence overseas Uyghur activists by harassing family members who remain in East Turkestan.

Since July 5, 2009, when security forces brutally repressed a peaceful demonstration of Uyghurs in the regional capital of Urumchi, and ethnic violence broke out in the city, the Chinese government has not moved to heal the ethnic divide between Uyghurs and Chinese or recognize the legitimate grievances raised by Uyghur demonstrators. Chinese officials have instead actively worked to further heighten ethnic tensions, and to silence Uyghurs whose voices may have provided a bridge between the two ethnic groups. Chinese authorities have categorized the July 5 protests as an incident orchestrated by "outside hostile forces", including terrorist groups, and among the many Uyghurs arbitrarily detained in the wake of the July 5, 2009 unrest have been a number of Uyghur journalists and website staff.

"For the Chinese government to become a truly responsible member of the international community, it must promote human rights and democracy for all of its citizens, and stop misusing the "war on terror" to persecute Uyghurs," said Ms. Kadeer. "Only in this way will it be able to ensure peace and stability in East Turkestan and throughout the People's Republic of China."

A Lost Teaching Opportunity

2010-09-11T07:34:00.000-07:00

Now, on Spetember 11, a day that will live in infamy (as a famous recorded voice once said), the media are abuzz with reports about the proposed Ground Zero Mosque (aka Cordoba House) and a Florida pastor's plans to burn the Qu'ran. I'm against both, and feel grateful that Pastor jones of Gainesville has decided to back off the burning. But I remain greatly bothered by the plans of a sleazy slumlord to build a mega-mosque so near Ground Zero. It smacks of Islamic triumphalism. I am further bothered by our national leadership's gutless reaction to not-so-thinly veiled jihadist threats. It was a lost opportunity to teach something important.

Perhaps Pastor Jones backed off because he noticed that in spite of jihadist bravado and bullying, there is a noticeable movement away from Islam going on in the world today. Not too long ago, the teenaged daughter of Sri Lankan immigrants named Rifqa Bary made headlines by fleeing home claiming that she feared becoming an "honor killing" victim over her conversion to Christianity. Missions organizations have been both pleased and taken by surprised at unprecedented numbers of Muslims elswhere inquiring into Christianity. In the little Teherans of America, Christians of Muslim heritage are beginning to catch up with ethnic Armenians and Assyrians of Iranian national origin. A quiet flow of previously Muslim West African immigrants into Christian churches is also happening in some of the major urban areas of the USA.

Hence, the right thing for any Christian leader to do in times such as these is to make it clear to Muslims that the Gospel is not a club held over their heads, but the doorway through which they are invited to pass in order to know God. This is why I salute Pastor Jones' decision to back off an action more at home in the streets of Karachi, Cairo, or even Jakarta than in America.

But in the past week, why did our leadership ignore a marvelous teaching moment? While its concerns were understandable, Obama, Petraeus, and Clinton all failed to remind the world that America has such a thing as the First Amendment. The portion of the US Constitution that would have protected the burning of the Qu'ran also protects many things dear to our Commander-in-Chief.

Saul Alinsky used to urge the have-nots of America to pitch their demands so high that they would bring down "the system". The would-be Green Jobs Czar Van Jones' right to be a "Troofer" and claim that George Bush engineered the destruction of the Twin Towers is also protected by the First Amendment. Safe Schools' Czar Kevin Jenning's right to advocate teaching children the glories of sodomy also is protected by the First Amendment. The Reverend Jeremiah Wright's twenty years of preaching to the Obama family that God should d__n the USA is also covered by the free exercise and free speech clauses. Michelle's shame in the country that made her a rich woman prior to her husband's winning the Democratic nomination, disgusting as it was and remains, is also protected.

The Fist Amendment also protects the right of many a Muslim imam's right to call the Jews the kin of apes and pigs, accuse Christians of polytheism, and deny that the Shoah took place; and do it in the heart of America.

Our leaders should have told the entire Muslim world that while they did not condone Jones' earlier proposal--a statement with which I am in complete agreement, by the way--the actions of a pastor leading a 50-member congregation was not something in which the US Government was obligated to interfere. Indeed, had the major media not been so desperate for a Christian "equivalent" of Muslims' burning Christians alive in northern Nigeria or kidnapping Christian girls, forcibly converting them to Islam, and marrying them to Muslims (usually following rape) in places like Pakistan and Egypt, nobody would have noticed Jones' earlier plan.

Let's only hope they don't miss the opportunity next time.

Blood for Fifteen Minutes of Fame

2010-07-28T15:54:00.000-07:00

The Wikileaks are out, and now the American public knows that American allies in Afghanistan have a corrupt, incompetent, and none-too-trustowrthy regime. Why, it's even said that a senior police official in Afghanistan is actually an Iranian spy.

I was never much of a fan of going into Afghanistan. It would have been far better to wait until Osama Bin Ladin decided he wanted to crow about bringing down the Twin Towers and the front of the Pentagon, let him get on an airplane, and then send in fighters to grab him the way the Achille Lauro hijackers were grabbed. Afghanistan is one of the dark places of the earth, where there is little save rocks, poverty, and extremely bigoted Islam which, within not-to-distant historical memory prided itself on closing down the ancient Syriac Christian communities that once made the country home, and now, within living memory, have liquidated a Jewish community that has existed since before the book of Esther was written.

But I hope that if the authorities catch the real perpetrator of the leaks and convict him in court, they have the good sense to hang him.

One important group that has been "outed" in the leaks is a large number of people who have provided America and its allies with information on the movements of key Qaida and Taliban actors. These were people who thought we offered something better to their country (such as the right to educate one's daughters and listen to music), and trusted us enough to give us real help. And, before Michael Moore starts tarring such people as the equivalents of the Vichy and Quisling collaborators of World War II, let us remember that the people outed were those who were helping us hunt down some criminals who killed 3,000 of us on 9/11. It is now almost certain that these outed Afghans and Pakistanis will probably be butchered by their pro-Taliban neighbors, whose "Religion of Peace" thinks that if a neighboring Christian or Hindu girl is pretty, she is fair game to be kidnapped, raped, forcibly converted to Islam, and married off to her abductor.

Congratulations, Mr. Leaker. You've signed the death warrants for hundreds, if not thousands, who saw 9/11 as a crime, and were helping us bring its perpetrators to justice. And for this, you've gotten your fifteen minutes of fame.

The Judgement on Comrade Duch--a Travesty

2010-07-26T16:24:00.001-07:00

Today, a tribunal in Cambodia sentenced Comrade Duch, former supervisor of Tuol Seng Prison, to a lengthy prison term. I join the chorus of those who see a miscarriage of justice. Instead of justice, it is yet another instance of the ghost of the former Soviet Union hijacking the conscience of the world, and, in so doing, corrupting it.

First of all, it is wrong to identify only the Pol Pot Democratic Kampuchea movement as responsible for the Cambodian horrors of 1975-78. Second, it is a travesty to turn the Tuol Seng prison into a monument, and focus on what happened behind its walls as the symbol of Cambodian suffering. Tuol Seng was simply the place where the Khmer Rouge regime incarcerated its own, while ordinary Cambodians suffered and died in their own villages or resettlement areas. Tuol Seng is a monument to that portion of the Cambodian Communist Party which fell afoul of its own movement's propensity for internal intrigue and purge.

Immediately after the Khmer Rouge victory, the faction associated with Hun Sen was equally culpable in the mass murders of mostly non-Communist countrymen. Only following a personal falling out between Hun Sen and Pol Pot did the former rush to seek "rescue" from the Vietnamese. Prior to that falling out, Hun Sen and his henchmen were very much part of the Angka Loeu, aquiescent in the "revolutionary catharsis" taking place across their country, and part of the relatively privileged ruling elite.

The mass of the Cambodian democide's victims fell and went into unmarked graves in the countryside, especially in the northwestern portion of the country. These were the people who had the misfortune of having more than an elementary education, proficiency in a language other than Khmer, adherence to a traditional religion, myopia, or the peasant stubbornness that cannot understand why it must give up the family buffalo and farm tools to the abstraction known as the collective.

However, the people who suffered at Tuol Seng are remembered because they, like so many 20th century people, smoked the Marxist opiate of the intellectuals. Ultimately, their faction came into alliance with the Soviet Union, the power under whose benign supervision the mass of the European intelligentsia hoped to live and work. Never mind that this idea whose time had come between 1917 and 1989 proved to be a singularly bad one. Never mind that it counted more killed, imprisoned, or exiled for the political or ideological crimes in seventy years (indeed, still does in North Korea and Cuba) than suffered for the wrong kind of Christianity or none at all in the fifteen centuries between the conversion of Constantine and Ruggles v. New York (1811). Never mind that when "The Revolution" failed to unleash the unheralded productive forces promised by Marx and Lenin, its adherents began to blame those fortunate enough to escape the revolutionary wrath. Never mind that, after loudly accusing all who questioned it of racism, it blamed the Slavic Untermensch, primitive Asiatic, and Caribbean Mulatto for the backwardness it imposed on all lands it conquered. Too many invested their minds and consciences in the Soviet Marxist project to reconsider when it failed. Well spoke Eugene Ionesco when he accused his Communist colleague Sartre of being the "unconscience of Europe".

But Hun Sen had the fortune to ally himself with the Soviet Union before it was too late.

The faces on the walls of Tuol Seng are those of cannibals eaten by their own colleagues; the Ernst Roehms who fell to a Southeast Asian Hitler. The ordinary victims of the Cambodian horrors have no monument apart from the memories of their relatives between Poipet and Long Beach.

As with the corruption of conscience and memory by the Marxists of the West, Tuol Seng is a hijacking and corruption of the world's conscience concerning the Cambodian democide. For Comrade Duch to stand in the dock while Hun Sen's people enjoy power and honor is yet another modern travesty masquerading as justice.

What the dickens is this?

2010-07-24T18:18:00.000-07:00

Jihad Watch's Robert Spencer reports the following:

********************

July 24, 2010
Sharia in New Jersey: Muslim husband rapes wife, judge sees no sexual assault because Islam forbids wives to refuse sex

Muhammad said: "If a husband calls his wife to his bed [i.e. to have sexual relation] and she refuses and causes him to sleep in anger, the angels will curse her till morning" (Bukhari 4.54.460).

He also said: "By him in Whose Hand lies my life, a woman can not carry out the right of her Lord, till she carries out the right of her husband. And if he asks her to surrender herself [to him for sexual intercourse] she should not refuse him even if she is on a camel's saddle" (Ibn Majah 1854).

And now a New Jersey judge sees no evidence that a Muslim committed sexual assault of his wife -- not because he didn't do it, but because he was acting on his Islamic beliefs: "This court does not feel that, under the circumstances, that this defendant had a criminal desire to or intent to sexually assault or to sexually contact the plaintiff when he did. The court believes that he was operating under his belief that it is, as the husband, his desire to have sex when and whether he wanted to, was something that was consistent with his practices and it was something that was not prohibited."

Luckily, the appellate court overturned this decision, and a Sharia ruling by an American court has not been allowed to stand. This time.

"Cultural Defense Accepted as to Nonconsensual Sex in New Jersey Trial Court, Rejected on Appeal," by Eugene Volokh in The Volokh Conspiracy, July 23 (thanks to CameoRed):

From today's opinion in S.D. v. M.J.R. (N.J. Super. Ct. App. Div.), a domestic restraining order case:

The record reflects that plaintiff, S.D., and defendant, M.J.R., are citizens of Morocco and adherents to the Muslim faith. They were wed in Morocco in an arranged marriage on July 31, 2008, when plaintiff was seventeen years old. [FN1] The parties did not know each other prior to the marriage. On August 29, 2008, they came to New Jersey as the result of defendant's employment in this country as an accountant....

[Long discussion of the wife's allegations of abuse, which included several instances of nonconsensual sex as well as other abuse, omitted for space reasons. -EV]

Upon their return to the apartment, defendant forced plaintiff to have sex with him while she cried. Plaintiff testified that defendant always told her

this is according to our religion. You are my wife, I c[an] do anything to you. The woman, she should submit and do anything I ask her to do.

After having sex, defendant took plaintiff to a travel agency to buy a ticket for her return to Morocco. However the ticket was not purchased, and the couple returned to the apartment. Once there, defendant threatened divorce, but nonetheless again engaged in nonconsensual sex while plaintiff cried. Later that day, defendant and his mother took plaintiff to the home of the Imam and, in the presence of the Imam, his wife, and defendant's mother, defendant verbally divorced plaintiff....[...]

While recognizing that defendant had engaged in sexual relations with plaintiff against her expressed wishes in November 2008 and on the night of January 15 to 16, 2009, the judge did not find sexual assault or criminal sexual conduct to have been proven. He stated:

This court does not feel that, under the circumstances, that this defendant had a criminal desire to or intent to sexually assault or to sexually contact the plaintiff when he did. The court believes that he was operating under his belief that it is, as the husband, his desire to have sex when and whether he wanted to, was something that was consistent with his practices and it was something that was not prohibited.

After acknowledging that this was a case in which religious custom clashed with the law, and that under the law, plaintiff had a right to refuse defendant's advances, the judge found that defendant did not act with a criminal intent when he repeatedly insisted upon intercourse, despite plaintiff's contrary wishes.

Having found acts of domestic violence consisting of assault and harassment to have occurred, the judge turned to the issue of whether a final restraining order should be entered. He found such an order unnecessary, vacated the temporary restraints previously entered in the matter and dismissed plaintiff's domestic violence action....

The appellate court reversed this absurd decision, saying:

As the judge recognized, the case thus presents a conflict between the criminal law and religious precepts. In resolving this conflict, the judge determined to except defendant from the operation of the State's statutes as the result of his religious beliefs. In doing so, the judge was mistaken.

A close call. But no doubt more of this is to come.

*****************

My comment:

How culturally relativistic have we become? With any other demographic, this case would've been called rape. How is it that a supposedly "secular" American jurist now gives a Muslim male a blank check to abuse his wife because of something in Bukhari?

American liberalism has apparently become so open-minded that its brains have fallen right out of its head.

Bad Faith in the Middle East--and Israel is not to Blame

2010-07-10T18:36:00.000-07:00

The Oslo Peace Process is dead, or at least proven to have been stillborn.

Reuters reports that on July 9, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas told the Arab League that he would support a war with Israel if the Arab League joins in. Yet the following day, he received a telephone call from President Obama thanking him for his contributions to the Mideast Peace Process. Hasn't anyone else noted that there is something terribly wrong with this?

To Americans, the Palestinian Authority speaks of seeking peace and desiring negotiations with Israel. Yet with its fellow Arabs and Muslims, it speaks of another war. Taken against a backdrop of persistent holocaust denial (and, worse yet,the lack of any admission that the post-1948 policies of Arab governments throughout the region may have had something with the mass emigration of Jewish communities that had been in existence since before Arabic was a written vernacular). This does not bode well for the future of a peace process.

A peace process can go on only if both sides desire peace, and are willing to reach compromises to enforce it. Israel showed such a desire in its complete withdrawal from Gaza; which was followed not only by the destruction of every trace of Israeli occupation includidng greenhouses built to aid the Gazan economy, but also by frequent rocket and other terror attacks launched from the Gaza Strip into Israel.
Indeed, Hamas' record since being voted into power in Gaza is one of continued provocation, testing defenses, strengthening ties with Iran and Iranian proxies in Lebanon, plus ceaseless agitation while basic services and all non-patronage employment come to a standstill.

Nor have the supposed "moderates" of Fatah on the West Bank been much better. Suicide bombers continue to be lionized as heroes and martyrs,and lower level attacks on Israel continue to be launched from the West Bank. Nor has Mr. Abbas' administration taken any concrete steps to reduce such attacks--if it has any ability or even desire to do so.

Now, as Mr. Abbas attempts to enlist the Arab states in a renewed shooting war with Israel,it is clear that all talk of peace from Abbas and his associates has been in bad faith, a ploy to gain aid from the United States. Israel has been criticized for its building of Jewish housing in eastern Jerusalem and stopping a Turkish aid flotilla organized by a group that has supported terrorism. Perhaps it is now time to demand more action from the Palestinian side.

Where is the State Department's Public Diplomacy?

2010-07-09T19:36:00.000-07:00

The following News item was reported not too long ago (http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/07/09/nasa-chief-revealed-muslim-outreach-plan-al-jazeera-congress/)

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden revealed his plans to improve relations between America's space exploration agency and the Muslim world to Al Jazeera before Congress, the Washington Examiner reported.

Bolden called a couple of lawmakers with the news on June 28, after his interview with the Middle East news organization but before it aired, the newspaper reported.

"He ran down some of the things from the president's new space policy, and mentioned outreach to Muslims," Rep. Pete Olson, the top Republican on the House Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics recalled to the newspaper. "That stunned me. I didn't believe it."

Bolden's interview with Al Jazeera ignited a firestorm of controversy that has gone largely unreported by major news outlets. Michael Griffin, the NASA administrator during the latter half of the Bush administration told FoxNews.com that he believes the Muslim outreach plan is "deeply flawed."

"NASA ... represents the best of America. Its purpose is not to inspire Muslims or any other cultural entity," he said...

[End of Quote.}\\

News likes this leads one to wonder why NASA was asked to engage in outreach to the Muslim world rather than some agency of the US Department of State or US Information Service. After all, NASA is theoretically about space exploration, astronomy, engineering,and other empirical sciences; public diplomacy seems rather far from such concerns.

One wonders what the current administration is thinking!

Back on Track

2010-06-26T19:52:00.000-07:00

Jonah's Prayer

2010-06-18T18:44:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the Hiatus

2010-06-18T18:42:00.001-07:00

My apologies to readers for the long hiatus in blogging. I have had a busy end of the school year, but now plan to get back to work. My last post, on Jonah, has been edited and finished, and a Chinese blurb provided. Chinese readers are welcome to comment.

More on Jonah--Mission rather than Fish Story

2010-05-29T06:11:00.000-07:00

Then said they unto him, What shall we do unto thee, that the sea may be calm unto us? for the sea was wrought, and was tempestuous. And he said unto them, Take me up, and cast me forth into the sea; so shall the sea be calm unto you: For I know that for my sake this great tempest is upon you. Nevertheless the men rowed hard to bring it to the land: but they could not: for the sea was wrought, and was tempestuous against them. Wherefore they cried unto the LORD and said, We beseech thee, O LORD, we beseech thee, let us not perish for this man's life, and lay not upon us innocent blood: for thou, O LORD, has done as it pleased thee. So they took up Jonah and cast him forth into the sea: and the sea ceased from her raging. The then men feared the lORD exceedingly, and offered a sacrifice unto the LORD, and made vows. Now the LORD had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was inthe belly of the fish three days and three nights. (JOnah 1:11-17).

Jonah is here a reluctant missionary. His shipmates determine that he is the cause for their predicament, but instead of precipitously taking matters into their own hands, they ask him. And Jonah, instead of trying to hide, prevaricate, or protect himself, accepts his responsibility and the fate he faces.

This is an important matter in dealing with God. God is to be accepted and approached on His own terms, not on those that we think are proper. Indeed, the sailors, although probably originally Canaanitish in religion, and hence belonging to a nation hateful to God and under his ban, seem to be here recipients of great grace. Before, they called on their own gods. Now, they call on the true God, confessing him to be the one who rules wind and waves when they formerly saw such powers as gods in themselves. Further, after hearing the prophet Jonah, they accept and approach the true God through a sacrifice--presumably a goat or sheep upon reaching dry land. Too many of us think that if we do that which is good in our own eyes without a thought to what God himself desires, God owes us a favor. The sailors who carried Jonah, however, rebuke this attitude with their conversion.

As for Jonah, God is not finished with him. Jonah has shown that he understands that his disobedience to God has put other lives in peril, and he owns his sin before both God and the sailors. But after Jonah is cast into the sea, God sends a special provision in the form of a great fish.

Both the devout and the scoffer waste much breath and more ink in determining whether or not there is a known sea animal, whether whale or fish, that could carry a man inside it. This degenerates Jonah into a mere "fish story". The point, however, is that God may use whichever means he wishes to fulfill his purposes. Originally, God had purposed to have the prophet Jonah warn the Assyrian capital of its impending doom. To get Jonah back on track, he uses the storm and the great fish.

And note how Jonah is like Jesus Christ. His sacrifice leads to the conversion of his shipmates. Certainly Jonah, like all other sinners, was not capable of bearing the sins of others as was Jesus, the sinless one. Yet God gives us here an Old Testament picture of New Testament truth.

I write this confessing myself to be the sort who lets out a stream of angry words when things go wrong. But Jonah is a reminder that danger, frustration, loss, and terrors may be means whereby God returns us to himself. Jonah underwent peril on the sea to get him to return to his God-given mission. But more importantly, these perils won the souls of sailors who were otherwise lost in their false religion.

美国人常常喜欢打鱼。如果他们抓不到一条鱼，他们说他们没得的鱼是何等大的怪物。这样的故事叫做"fish story". 很多人认为圣经之约拿书也是“鱼故事“。

可是，约拿遇到暴风和危险的时候，那些水手发现他们的困难来自约拿对上帝不信实，约拿承认他的罪。他了解上帝要他去亚述国，所以他让水手吧他丢在海里。上帝差派一条大鱼吞约拿，待他到干地。

那些水手大概试腓尼基人，就是迦南族的一部分。迦南族原来位非常凶恶的民族，他们的习惯是把头绳的孩子邵在火里。上帝吩咐以色列民八家男人灭绝，并且警告以色列民他们若跟随迦南人的道路，他们也会遇到灭绝。可是这些水手虽然从那么不好的背景，上帝施恩於他们。海平静了之后，他们向耶和华献上祭物，不再对他们从前所拜的神祈祷。如此，约拿当作了传教士，领导那些水手认识真正的上帝。同时，在牺牲自己，约拿让他的伙伴认识上帝。如此，他像未来的耶稣基督。

Obama's Keystone Kop-outs

2010-05-28T17:13:00.000-07:00

The recent Arizona law allowing police to look into the immigration status of a a person already arrested or under investigation has popped open the follies of the current U.S. Government. Eric Holder, the nation's top lawyer, it now appears, does not read. In accepting Mexican President Felipe Calderon's chutzpah in criticizing the Arizona law, Mr. Obama and the honorable members of the House and Senate who applauded him show an appalling lack of perspective. Undersecretary of State Michael Posner's tinny apologies in the face of China's criticism of the Arizona law show him--and perhaps Hillary Clinton, his boss--a mere ninny. Or, perhaps, the issue reveals a government that would rather accuse other Americans of bigotry and racism than face up to a host of serious international problems.

Felipe Calderon's performance before the US Congress was chutzpah ranking with that of the man who murdered his parents with an axe and then pleads for mercy on the grounds that he is an orphan. The Mexican government has long regarded emigration to El Norte as its own safety valves; yet at the same time, its own ambassador to the United Nations has admitted that Mexico cannot lecture the USA on how it treats Mexican illegals in view of Mexico's own treatment of Guatemalans and Salvadoreans who enter Chiapas illegally. Further, given that illegal entry is a misdemeanor in the USA and a felony in Mexico renders President Calderon's speech all the more fatuous, and the applause given by American Senators and Representatives all the more craven.

China's lecturing the USA on the Arizona law is an inexcusable insult, and Undersecretary Posner's tinny apologies and mea culpas are worse. Even within China gives no welcome to desperate North Koreans who cross the Yalu and Tumen Rivers. This population, like American illegals, lives in the shadows, only with no access to public education for its children. Far from allowing debate on how to treat such people, the Chinese government offers bounties to Chinese who turn them in, and gives its law enforcement discretionary authority to shoot them. Whereas Arizona could not deny illegals the protections of the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments even if it wanted to, Communist China regards such protections as extreme cases of irrational bourgeois sentimentality. China's leaders, observing Posner's performance, probably now see America as all the more contemptible.

Illegal immigration is indeed a complex problem. It reveals serious problems inherent in the society and government of America's neighbor to the south. It does indeed raise a host of humanitarian issues. The Arizona law does have the potential to unleash discriminatory actions. When police chiefs from several western states express concerns over the Arizona law, the nation should listen. But the law should spark a common sense dialogue about national interest and the character of America's international partners and rivals--not polarization that is geared only to short-term political gain. The Obama government has now shown the world America the Inept.

More on Jonah--Crisis and Faith

2010-05-15T05:22:00.000-07:00

Thoughts on Jonah--Pitfalls of Patriotism

2010-05-12T17:43:00.001-07:00

Now the word of the LORD came unto JOnah the son of Amittai, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it; for their wickedness is come up before me. But Jonah rose up to flee unto Tarshish from the presence of the LORD, and went down to Joppa; and he found a ship going to Tarshish: so he paid the far thereof, and went down into it, to go with them unto Tarshish, from the presence of the LORD.
(Jonah 1:1-3)

The book of Jonah is a short portion of Scripture, but extremely rich. The village atheists of the naive, innocent early 20th century era loved to attack it for its great "fish story", only to be answered by a barrage of "answers" from our side about how known fish or whales of various species were indeed capable of holding a man inside them. But the book is far deeper and more wonderful as a tale of divine grace meeting the recalcitrance and folly of man--especially in its reminder that the purposes of God are far larger than human sin; and not changed or derailed because we refuse to cooperate.

Apart from the book that bears his name, Jonah is mentioned only in a few citations in the New Testament and II Kings 14:26. In II Kings, he is said to have prophesied that the borders of Israel would be restored, which happens under Jeroboam ben Joash (not to be confused with Jeroboam ben Nebat).

Jonah thus received the blessing to know that God was prepared to preserve and aid his people even in a dark, sinful, and thoroughly unworthy time. Jeroboam ben Joash, it is said, "departed not from the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin"--specifically, an idolatry repeating the infamous episode of the golden calf (Exodus 32:1-20; I Kings 12:28-30), as if the people and their leaders learned no lessons from the past. Yet in those days, God was nonetheless willing to rescue and restore part of Israel's patrimony by an unworthy instrument. And, in those days, a prophet who recognized the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob arose to foretell such an event--Jonah the son of Amittai.

In the book of Jonah, Jonah receives a second call from God:

Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it, for their wickedness is come up before me. (Jonah 1:2).

Yet Jonah, instead of heading northeast towards Nineveh, flees to the coast and takes a ship to Tarshish--lands at the Western end of the Mediterranean--in exactly the opposite direction from that which God ordered.

It is easy to be hard on Jonah at this point. How many of us think in our hearts that, had we been in Jonah's sandals, we would have gladly heeded the divine call! We glibly envision ourselves striding boldly out the gates of some Israelite city, Scripture under one arm and staff in hand, ready to speak mightily against a sinful heathen city in northern Mesopotamia!

But let us pause. The Assyrians, the people whose capital Nineveh was, were a fierce and dangerous people. One author has described them as the storm troopers of antiquity. Archaeology has uncovered their monuments and literature, in which they boast of impaling men alive and smashing in the heads of children after conquering an enemy city. After conquering most of Mesopotamia and Aram (today's Syria), could they be expected to heed the rantings of a wandering Israelite? Could Jonah, accustomed to being the patriotic prophet of restoration, welcome the mission to speak to a people whom his own people hated and feared?

In 1940, the Japanese Christian Toyohiko Kagawa went to prison for openly expressing remorse and apologies for his country's invasion and occupation of much of the Republic of China--at a time when China was still fighting. On his release, he went to the United States in an ultimately futile attempt to short-circuit the path towards war on which both Japan and the USA were already travelling. Certain American pastors went to Japan for the same purpose, and similarly failed. But Kagawa and his American counterparts in 1940 are exceptional cases, and remembered as giants for their determined pursuit of peace. They are remarkable for how few of their kind arose in those perilous times.

Similarly, we remember the Dietrich Bonhoffers, the Wang Mingdao's, the Aleksandr Solzhenitsyns who bravely stood up in Christ's name against the horrors of 20th century totalitarianism. But again, if faced with a similar situation, would not most of us prefer to acquiesce, to go along and get along?

The refrain of these first verses of the book are that Jonah went away "from the presence of the LORD". This warns us that we must guard against self-righteousness and complacence. As we walk before God, we must adopt a posture of humility; as we deal with our fellow humans, we must cultivate both humility and charity--difficult gifts when we deal with many whom we are predisposed to see as enemies. If one who enjoyed the prophetic gift could flee from the presence of the LORD, how much more can the rest of us?

Elena Kagan Must Go

2010-05-11T17:45:00.000-07:00

In nominating Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court, the Obama administration paves the way for the not-so-slow death of the First Amendment. While Kagan has not made a paper trail with judicial decisions, she has left one as a scholar. Her writings suggest a fundamental disrespect for both the First Amendment as written and a jurisprudence of the First Amendment crafted by justices on the liberal side of the political spectrum.

In her 1993 article "Regulation of Hate Speech and Pornography After R.A.V," for the University of Chicago Law Review, she wrote:

"I take it as a given that we live in a society marred by racial and gender inequality, that certain forms of speech perpetuate and promote this inequality, and that the uncoerced disappearance of such speech would be cause for great elation."

In a 1996 paper, "Private Speech, Public Purpose: The Role of Governmental Motive in First Amendment Doctrine," Kagan argued for the suppression of speech because it may be offensive.

That paper asserted First Amendment doctrine is comprised of "motives and … actions infested with them" and she further states that "First Amendment law is best understood and most readily explained as a kind of motive-hunting."

In fact, the First Amendment represents the distilled wisdom of two centuries of struggling with the British Crown's attempts to suppress inconvenient opinions. The struggle for free speech in the Anglosphere goes back at least to late 16th century Puritan preachers who had their ears cropped for questioning the propriety of vestments. Today, the same persecuting spirit comes in a boyish bob, winsome smile, and the desire to see to it that nobody questions the wisdom of encouraging schoolchildren to engage in anal sex.

Time was when American liberals were not afraid to let Brandenburg spew his white supremacism in Ohio or American Nazis to march in Skokie, Illinois. Time was when Justice Douglas could speak of Communist propaganda as "unsold goods". Time was when every New Leftist in America honored Lenny Bruce's "How to Talk Dirty and Influence People". Time was when offensive speech was allowed into the open so it could be refuted in rational give-and-take. But now, political speech, which a generation of Supreme Court justices has seen as an unquestioned right in the First Amendment, is too dangerous.

It is just too bad that there are not enough conservative Senators to be sure that Professor Kagan gets a well-deserved Borking.

More Thoughts on Modern Religion

2010-04-29T18:08:00.000-07:00

A guy named Muhammed said, "God,
Must think it exceedingly odd!
Folks say I'm no prophet,
But headed for Tophet!
Why, they ought to be under the sod!"

They call it "religion of peace"
But I think we're all being fleeced.
Its pillar jihad
Is something quite bad,
And really should be made to cease.

Thoughts on China

2010-04-25T06:07:00.000-07:00

While we're talking of thorny international issues, I have a modest proposal for the US.

The next time China whines about how international imperialism deprived it of the fair and beautiful island of Taiwan--where even those who proudly and loudly call themselves Chinese seem very wary of reunification just yet--the US needs to put a counter-offer on the table.

Let's ask the international community to de-recognize and penalize those counter-revolutionary reactionaries and running dogs of English imperialism who live north of Line Forty-nine and the Great Lakes. After all, the United States of America is the sole legitimate heir of Great Britain's one-time North American Empire. While we're at it, let's throw in Belize, the Bahamas, and all those Caribbean islands, too. Once upon a time, when we were an up-and-coming power, we truly and sincerely believed that our manifest destiny was to incorporate the whole North American continent from the Arctic Ocean to the Isthmus of Panama and from Atlantic to Pacific.

For the benefit of all those humorless liberals and others out there, I was being facetious about Canada being illegitimate. Yes, they seem to treasure their ceremonial ties to Britain, but if the hatchet got buried good and deep back in 1815, let it stay there, and let the USA, Canada, and UK take pride in keeping it there for almost two centuries. Heck, if they want an international celebration of two hundred years of Anglo-Canadian-American peace in 1815, I'll gladly march in the parade, if my arthritic knees and spine permit it. And, while I'm at it, I'm all for the continued independence of our Latin American neighbors. I'll even support Puerto Rican independence if the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party to rally enough support for giving up US citizenship on that island (and, I'll gladly hang out a flag with a fifty-first star if the Puerto Rican Statehood Party gets enough support, too!).

Taiwan, when it was under the administration of President Lee Teng-hui, made it clear that it wanted a formal end to the Chinese Civil War. That was an honorable and honest stance which, if allowed, would solidify a truly pacific "Pacific [Ocean] Era". If there is no trust between two peoples with similar ethnic, historical, linguistic, cultural, and religious backgrounds, a period of separation is a must in order to build the trust necessary for future reunification. Otherwise, a forced reunification will only result in a disaffected and potentially rebellious territory threatening the stability of China and its neighbors. Since the 1920's, there has not really been "One China", and international fictions to the effect that one existed only served to encourage the stronger Chinese entity to threaten or launch civil war.

Hence, whether Taiwan [with associated smaller islands] calls itself the rump of the Republic of China established in 1911, Taiwan, Great Liuqiu, or even Bob, it deserves international recognition. If, after fifty years or so, the two sides realize that they can trust each other and reunite, fine. But let's make it clear that the world does not want the threat of hot war looming over the Western Pacific.

A Dreadful Middle Eastern Imbalance

2010-04-25T05:41:00.001-07:00

Now that Premier Abbas of the Palestinian Authority has called on President Obama to impose a two-state solution, it seems that the armies of brave jihadis out to martyr themselves to liberate al-Quds are probably incapable of the task without American help. But this is not the only obscene imbalance between Israel and its neighbors.

A far more serious one is that after four generations in camps, the Palestine Arab refugees of 1948 and their offspring are not citizens of Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Kuwait, and other Arab states. This population has voting, property-rights citizenship only in Jordan, the Palestinian Authority, and Israel itself. Worse, this is a situation aided and abetted by the international community, including the United Nations. It serves no other purpose than to keep a raw wound raw.

Some argue that the Palestinian Arabs want their olive and orange groves between the Jordan and the Mediterranean; or that Syria, Lebanon, and Egypt, lacking oil wealth, cannot absorb this population. This is utter nonsense. Palestinian Arabs who ended up in the United States have become citizens, despite the vast linguistic difference between the President's English and Levantine Arabic. As for lacking oil wealth, many more millions of refugees were displaces at roughly the same time by the partition of British India, yet they and their descendants are no-questions asked Indians, Pakistanis, and Bangladeshis today. This situation has reached the point where Lahore-born Manmohan Singh could sit down with Delhi-born Pervez Musharaf to discuss defusing tensions between India and Pakistan. Yet the resettlement and absorption of the millions of displaced Hindus, Sikhs, and Christians from East Bengal, West Punjab, and Sindh and that of displaced Muslims from the Gangetic Plain went on without a penny of oil wealth to aid it.

Further, those descended from the ancient Jewish populations formerly living in lands from Iraq to Morocco and from the Hauran to Yemen, expelled and dispersed with no more than the clothes on their backs, are today no-questions-asked Israelis. And, it is worth noting, these populations predated the Arab presence in all of their lands of domicile prior to the Islamic conquests of the 7th and 8th centuries. Indeed, the prayer of Qol Nidre was probably heard and recited throughout Babylon every Yom Kippur long before the Arabic Azan was ever dreamt of. Yet today, Iraq, the second homeland of Jewry, which held large and thriving Jewish communities since the sixth century B.C. (I unapologetically write as a Christian) and where several of the Old Testament prophets are buried, is now Judenrein. The same can be said of Egypt, where a prominent Jewish community lived since shortly before the Babylonian exile, and where the Greek Septuagint, the first major translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, was produced. Yet where is the world's outrage over the destruction of these communities, whose contributions to civilization worldwide, were immense?

Further, there are many, many Greeks whose grandparents speak Turkish, whose family memories go back to the lands that were once Proconsular Asia, Pontus, and Cappadocia; and numerous Turkish families whose ancestors once lived in Thessaly and Crete. Countless states with seats in the United Nations--and others without--which have absorbed many more refugees than those displaced by the establishment of Israel in 1948. It is time to make the naturalization and permanent resettlement of the Falastin refugee population in the Arab countries--which, after all, share a language and religion with the majority of Palestinians--part of a permanent Middle Eastern settlement. That the United States has not made such calls loudly and persistently is the shame of our diplomacy. That the Arab states--apart from Jordan--have not taken steps on their own to do such a thing is their own lasting disgrace.

Another Version

2010-04-22T14:28:00.000-07:00

WIth fannies high, Obama's marching minions
Go prancing down America's main drag!
It's time to pack up all your un-PeeCee opinions,
Whether in blog, in airwaves, or in mag! (repeat last line)

The media, subservient and gaga
Care not that Geitner cheats the IRS
Of cunning pol's tale they have made a sacred saga--
"Messiah'a come!" They loudly doth profess. (repeat last line)

Our youth will be regimented and vapid,
The better formed to serve our leader's will.
Social transformation will be sudden and quite rapid
Till all us Yankees live on trash and swill (repeat last line)

Can you name that tune?

Some Thoughts on Religion

2010-04-11T18:28:00.000-07:00

Moderns, with great consternation,
Despise Calvin's predestination.
For economics, we know
Or our genes run the show
Of our lives. This we call "liberation".

A guy named Muhammad said, "God
Must think it uncommonly odd
That the Christians and Jews
Greet my message with boo's,
And the Qureysh want me under the sod."

George Will Blows it on Birthright Citizenship

2010-03-28T04:59:00.000-07:00

George Will has just come out in favor of ending birthright citizenship, and believes that doing such a thing would be within the powers of Congress. While I generally agree with Will's positions, this is one time when I think he has thoroughly missed the boat.

The Fourteenth Amendment states that those "born or naturalized in the US" and subject to American jurisdiction are citizens. This was passed chiefly to clarify the status of freedmen. This was further clarified in two other post-Civil War Amendments that affirmed voting rights--and hence citizenship--for freedmen.

The wording of the Fourteenth Amendment speaks of those under the jurisdiction of the United States as enjoying the full protection of the laws. Will rightly notes that such rights were not extended to American Indians until the 1920's, but that was because of a fiction that viewed tribes registered with the Bureau of Indian Affairs as sovereign "nations". However, this fiction is now a dead letter, and, since illegals are neither visiting heads of state nor diplomats, they are most clearly under the jurisdiction of the United States. This is one reason why deportation is such a cumbersome process: an illegal who is caught deep inside the
USA can be deported only following court proceedings.

Further, the Fourteenth Amendment also was passed at a time when over 600,000 Americans, both North and South, had been killed in the Civil War. America needed immigration, and immigration laws reflected this condition. Since the United States could never realistically implement an "ethnic" definition of citizenship, birthright citizenship was an easy and effective way to ensure the ultimate assimilation of immigrant groups.

Also, does the USA want a permanent class of non-citizens? The Turkish communities in Germany and the Korean communities inn Japan, both of which find themselves barred from citizenship, are fruitful sources of discontent and organized crime. The Falastin Arabs across the Arab world, who are also kept as stateless refugees, are an infamous source of instability. Unless effective physical barriers complete with guards operating under orders to shoot to kill were built along both of America's borders, it would be impossible to keep unwanted people out. Wretched conditions in much of Mexico and Central America would continue to push emigration from those countries in any situation. The flow of illegals from Cambodia, Myanmar, Laos, and southwestern China into Thailand during the 1990's, or the presence of large numbers of Southeast Asian guest workers in Taiwan--to take two examples of states with stringent rules for naturalization--are reminders that any country that is doing anything right will become a magnet for migration.

The only countries that do not host migrants of some kind or another are those that have made either economic, political, or social conditions intolerable for many or most of their citizens. This alone should cause Americans to develop at least a little sense of proportion about illagal immigration. Yes, it is a problem. Yes, something needs to be done. But, do cost to benefit analyses truly suggest that we need to go through the trouble of a Constitutional Amendment to solve the problem?

While deportation and other laws probably need some teeth, abolishing jus soli citizenship is no solution. And, since we live in an imperfect world in which the USA will remain a migration magnet unless it learns to turn itself into another Afghanistan, Haiti, Cuba, or Sierra Leone, jus solis citizenship will at least give the children of illegals a stake in the USA, and prevent the growth of a permanently disenfranchised and hostile class of people within its borders.

If the USA were serious about illegal immigration, it would simply appropriate the funds needed for the immigration service to do its job, and enforce the laws already on the books.