EPA Powers Will Destabilize Our Economy And Freedoms

From: The Pen of Jonah Goldberg

One of the most important events of our lifetimes may have just transpired. A federal agency has decided that it has the power to regulate everything, including the air you breathe.

Nominally, the Environmental Protection Agency’s announcement . . . only applies to new-car emissions. But pretty much everyone agrees that the ruling opens the door to regulating, well, everything.

According to the EPA, greenhouse gases include carbon dioxide — the gas you exhale — as well as methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons and sulfur hexafluoride. It is literally impossible to imagine a significant economic or human activity that does not involve the production of one of these gases. Don’t think just of the gas and electricity bills. Cow flatulence is a serious concern of the EPA’s already. What next? Perhaps an EPA mandarin will pick up a copy of “The Greenpeace Guide to Environmentally Friendly Sex” and go after the root causes of global warming.

Whether or not global warming is a crisis that warrants immediate, drastic action (I don’t think it does), and whether or not such wholesale measures would be an economic calamity (they would be), the EPA’s decision should be disturbing to people who believe in democratic, constitutional government.

Continue reading. . . .

If You Believe What You Like

Quoting Saint Augustine:

If you believe what you like in the gospels, and reject what you don’t like, it is not the gospel you believe, but yourself.

Elementary Thoughts: Attitude – Part 1

There is a root of bitterness growing ever deeper in the lives of many of America’s children today. You see it in many of their faces and in the way they walk. When they smile, it sometimes appears to be a forced contortion of the facial muscles. You know they do not mean it. They are just going through the motions to avoid unwanted questions. Behind the smile is the mind of a cynic seeking foremost to avoid feeling the pain.

Sometimes there is anger. These children move through the halls of the school like boiling pots. All it takes is for someone to tip them slightly and the anger becomes a scalding burst of violent emotion. They respond from hurt, because they cannot find comfort or refuge from the pain. In fact, it is those who should be the primary source of comfort and refuge who are increasingly the source of the pain.

It was “Back To School Night,” in late August, and several hundred children, along with their parents, were making their way through the halls to find their new classrooms and meet the teachers. In one classroom a young mother greeted her son’s teacher. The boy stood sheepishly at his mother’s side and smiled widely when the teacher welcomed him to her class.

As the teacher began to speak about some things the boy should look forward to in her class, she was interrupted by a loud adult voice which the other parents and children could not help but hear, “Well, you need to know that Michael is bad news. You are going to really earn your pay this year. He lies and he’s always getting into trouble.”

The teacher was shocked and embarrassed for the little boy who stood there looking down at the floor. She could not believe the words that had just come out of the mother’s mouth and, especially, that they had been said in front of the child and so many other people. Michael’s mother had spoken hurtful words that prophesied a dismal year for him and the teacher. Michael, in turn, did his best that year to make sure that prophesy came true.

Colossians 3:21 says, “Fathers do not embitter your children, or they will become discouraged.” The words we speak to our children and about them are, indeed, almost prophetic in their impact. The young mother above may have thought she was doing the teacher a favor by giving her a warning about her son. The message she conveyed, however, devalued her child and gave him a negative image of his potential abilities. If he had ever had a chance of improving his behavior during that year, he was now discouraged from that goal by the person who had the most influence on his life. (Continued Monday)

There Is A Higher Authority

Christianity, at the time of the Constitution’s drafting, was considered to be the foundation of a sound moral and political order even though debates raged over particular doctrinal beliefs. In his dissenting opinion in McGowan v. Maryland (1961) William O. Douglas stated:

The institutions of our society are founded on the belief that there is an authority higher than the authority of the State; that there is a moral law which the State is powerless to alter; that the individual possesses rights, conferred by the Creator, which government must respect. The Declaration of Independence stated the now familiar theme: “We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.” And the body of the Constitution as well as the Bill of Rights enshrined those principles.

What Is The Focus Of Your Church?

From: The Pen of Kim Riddlebarger

For a number of years now, various church leaders in my neck of the woods (Orange County, CA) have told us that in order for churches to grow and recover their vitality, they needed to be more cognizant of contemporary culture. These leaders also told us that we needed to become more adept at speaking to people in ways which are meaningful to them. So far so good. But how did this stress on being “contemporary” work itself out in practice? The church I pastor—Christ Reformed Church (URC)—is within eyesight of Robert Schuller’s Crystal Cathedral. Schuller, you may recall, built his church by going throughout the local community and asking people why they didn’t go to church. The follow-up question had to do with what a church could do to get them to go. Well, it was not long before young Schuller bought a local drive-in and was preaching to people who stayed in their automobiles hooked up to the church service through the clunky drive-in speaker hanging from the car window. Going to church in their “jammies” without getting out of their cars, apparently, must have been at the top of many a person’s church wish list.

Orange County was also the home of the “Jesus People” movement in the late 60′s. Traditional charismatic and dispensational Christianity could indeed be translated into folk music (later, Christian rock) and counter-cultural churches where tie-dye and sandals replaced suits and wingtips. Traditional hymns and liturgy supposedly represented the pro-Vietnam War traditionalists and the “uptight” middle class. Sad to say, many churches thought this challenge from the youth to be a threat, rather than a golden opportunity. Seizing the opportunity, the Calvary Chapel movement was born. If you have ever sung a praise song, or witnessed drums, bass-guitars, and praise and worship singers in your church, you probably have Chuck Smith and Calvary Chapel to thank.

Though Chuck Smith was a pastor to a whole generation of local kids because traditional churches didn’t seem to care about the questions their youth were asking and Chuck Smith did, the transformation of the traditional church service into the youth-oriented pop-culture worship of the Jesus People, surely had unintended consequences. Over time, worship became an “experience.” Theologically illiterate men and women who played guitar and could sing, soon became “ministers” and were leading worship and giving testimonies. Christianity became “cool.” And to supply this burgeoning new market with all the accouterments of evangelical “coolness,” the Evangelical subculture was born. Stephen King and Eric Clapton were out. Christian novels, Christian movies, and Christian pop music were in. . . .

I mention these particular examples to make a point. The focus of the church of the lowest common denominator is me. The sermon is about problems I face. The music is music what I like. The church service is designed to entertain me. That explains why they all look and sound so much alike. Somehow, God got lost in all the talk about my felt needs. The theology of the church of the lowest common denominator is utterly man-centered. It is all about me—or at least that’s how I am made to feel. This is where we as Reformed Christians must make our stand. . . .

We do not need to become practical Arminians to see our churches grow. The solution is both very simple and quite risky. The solution is simple because we don’t have far to go to find the answer—the Scriptures, our own theology, liturgy and confessions. They contain everything we need to see Reformed churches grow, multiply and flourish. We don’t need to reinvent the theological wheel. Yet, this is risky because it means that by employing our existing resources in new ways our churches may no longer be enclaves for white cultural conservatives. If we put our theology into practice, our churches will look much more like the communities of North America—filled with all races, cultures and socio-economic groups. This kind of change can be disconcerting, though it must be pointed out that this is not because of latent racism as some may argue. The discomfort has to do with having our comfort zones challenged. Change is never easy. It is hard to reach out to others outside familiar territory.

The solution is to take the focus off me, and put it back where it belongs, on God. Instead of the church of the lowest common denominator, a Reformed church should be the church of the highest common denominator. But what does a church of the highest common denominator look like? It looks like this—it is a church where the theology, worship and evangelism is God-centered, not man-centered.