Saddleback showdown
August 18, 2008
Saturday evening’s Saddleback political event may come to be regarded as the true kick-off of the presidential election campaign of 2008. It was unprecedented in terms of venue and format. Held at California’s Saddleback Church, Pastor Rick Warren conducted back-to-back hour-long interviews, first with Barack Obama and then with John McCain. The interviews overlapped briefly, producing this memorable photo op.
The meeting was billed as a step toward a return to civility in political public intercourse, but the candidates were not given the opportunity to engage each other, civilly or otherwise. Rick Warren posed the questions and pretty much sat back and let the candidates respond as they wished. Neither heard the answers of their rival. The result was a stark contrast of views, especially on abortion and religious faith. It was no surprise that Obama was pro-choice and McCain pro-life, of course, but what they said (or didn’t say) about their faith in front of a neo-evangelical audience was very interesting.
Taken at face value, Obama professes an orthodox Christian faith. His use of Scripture and his talk about the Lordship of Jesus Christ (indirectly) is impossible to reconcile with his pro-choice views, but at least he knew the language and basic principles of being a Christian. Quoting Rick Warren’s The Purpose Driven Life, he professed that his religion wasn’t about Obama but about God. Or something like that.
John McCain, on the other hand, sounded like his faith and convictions were based more on patriotism than belief in God. His unbridled optimism about the future of our country is very appealing, but no one with a Christian worldview would share McCain’s enthusiasm about putting America first.
Worldview
What kept me uncharacteristically glued to the tube for two long hours with too many commercials was the hope of getting some insight into their respective worldviews. I didn’t expect either to reflect a Christian worldview, and I wasn’t disappointed in that. Missing in the responses of both Obama and McCain were clues about what they believed about Creation, the Fall, and Redemption, which arguably are the structural elements of every philosophy and ideology, Christian or secular.
When asked whether or not they believed in the existence of evil, each quickly answered yes, but they elaborated on their answers in vastly different ways. Obama sees evil mostly in the abstract and appeared to see evidence of evil both in the U.S. and abroad. His specific examples of evil were few and sketchy. My conclusion was that he does not deny that bad things happen but does not have clear conviction about the source of evil in the world or how to respond to it. Except for saying that we all must join together to fight evil in the world, his posture seemed basically reactive and vague. This partly may be because he has been fortunate enough to have had little personal contact with evil.
McCain, in contrast, has strong feelings about evil in the world. He mentioned his Viet Nam captivity, the events of 9/11 and talked about the threat of Al-Qaida today. He had no trouble pointing to specific examples of evil in the world today. Such black or white characterizations may not always be a Good Thing for a President, although in the cases of prison brutality and Al-Qaida it’s easy to agree. I would feel more comfortable with McCain if I thought his convictions were part of a Christian worldview.
The genius of Rick Warren’s approach was letting us hear Obama and McCain respond off the cuff to open ended questions about the issues of the day. It was not a debate. Each man responded in his own way to the same questions. Most of the time Warren was able to sit back and listen with the rest of us without imposing his own views.
One thought that I came away with is that Obama is too young and too inexperienced; McCain is too old and too experienced. What is sure is that they would bring quite different perspectives to the problems of the day. Who they would select as key advisors is crucial, and we should keep our eyes peeled for clues as the campaign grinds on..
When asked who are the three wisest people you know, and who would you most rely on as President, Obama first named his wife, his grandmother, and Senator Kennedy. McCain put General Petraeus at the top of his list and added a couple of respected national figures, the names of whom I don’t recall. (There is a lot that I don’t recall these days.) I found neither response very comforting.
If you listened to the Saddleback Showdown, what are your thoughts? If you didn’t listen, you may have missed an important bit of our political history.
Dave, wondering how to vote for Mr. None of the Above.
Virgo cluster
July 8, 2008
Credit & Copyright: Günter Kerschhuber (Gahberg Observatory)
(Click on image for larger view)
Explanation: The Virgo Cluster of Galaxies is the closest cluster of galaxies to our Milky Way Galaxy. The Virgo Cluster is so close that it spans more than 5 degrees on the sky - about 10 times the angle made by a full Moon. With its heart lying about 70 million light years distant, the Virgo Cluster is the nearest cluster of galaxies, contains over 2,000 galaxies, and has a noticeable gravitational pull on the galaxies of the Local Group of Galaxies surrounding our Milky Way Galaxy. The cluster contains not only galaxies filled with stars but also gas so hot it glows in X-rays. Motions of galaxies in and around clusters indicate that they contain more dark matter than any visible matter we can see. Pictured above, the heart of the Virgo Cluster includes bright Messier galaxies such as Markarian’s Eyes on the upper left, M86 just to the upper right of center, M84 on the far right, as well as spiral galaxy NGC 4388 at the bottom right.
A Christian worldview must somehow take into account the cosmos. I am tempted to think that only in this day of the Hubble telescope and it’s friends am I finally equipped to think seriously about God and historical beginnings. But that would be saying that the shepherd of ancient times, in the dark of night, contemplating the sky full of stars, could not know what he needed to know about God and beginnings. It doesn’t take much reflection to know that would be saying nonsense.
Today, the Astronomy Picture of the Day is just a part of the flood of information I am besieged with every hour of the day. I am trying to sip from a firehose. My shepherd on the hill had plenty of time to ponder his sky-view, and I suspect that his philosophical conclusions were of greater value to him than my fleeting thoughts while looking at the image above. What do you think?
Dave, blessed but not overawed by scientific progress.
God loves movies
September 13, 2007
“Like hell He does!” was my instant reaction.
I was minding my own business, curled up with the latest Modern Reformation, when I was jarred by the title “God Loves Movies.” The article, which turned out to be very lively reading, purports to show that modernist Christianity has neglected to understand how very important visual imagery, drama, and storytelling are to God. How the author got his interview wasn’t revealed.
The author is one Brian Godawa, “…screenwriter for the award-winning feature film ‘To End All Wars,’ and author of ‘Hollywood Worldviews: Watching Films with Wisdom and Discernment.’ ” He cites The Lord of the Rings and The Passion of the Christ as examples of how a visual medium creates a “spiritual gut experience” for the viewer. Indeed.
And then there are dreams and visions: God’s form of television and movies. Joseph’s dreams of fat and skinny zombie cows, Ezekial’s Close Encounters with spinning wheels, Nebuchadnezzar’s Terminator statue, as well as other visions given to dozens of Old and New Testament saints are all stunning high-definition, Dolby Sensurround feasts for the senses as well as spirit. God loves movies. He produced a lot of them.
You can imagine the examples Godawa finds in The Book of Revelation, which he calls “a theatrical orgy of visual imagery, produced, written, and directed by Jesus Christ.”
I don’t know what to think of this article that contradicts so many of my shibboleths. Do not the mental images produced by lucid writing have so much more impact on the senses? Why spend several hours in a theater seat having your senses pounded when a few minutes with a book in hand creates a better image - with more understanding? Why suffer hearing loss from blaring theater sound when an hour at a concert is so much more uplifting?
I guess I have always resented the way movies and TV try to play mind games with me. When it comes to what I subject my mind to, I’m definitely pro-choice. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
Dave, which he always was a stubborn cuss.
The frayed knot
May 25, 2007
As the divorce rate plummets at the top of American society and rises at the bottom, the widening “marriage gap” is breeding inequality, says this interesting article from The Economist.
Marriage in America | The frayed knot | Economist.com
THE students at West Virginia University don’t want you to think they take life too seriously. It is the third-best “party school” in America, according to the Princeton Review’s annual ranking of such things, and comes a creditable fifth in the “lots of beer” category. Booze sometimes causes students’ clothes to fall off. Those who wake up garmentless after a hook-up endure the “walk of shame”, trudging back to their own dormitories in an obviously borrowed football shirt, stirring up gossip with every step.
And yet, for all their protestations of wildness, the students are a serious-minded bunch. Yes, they have pre-marital sex. “I don’t see how it’s a bad thing,” says Ashley, an 18-year-old studying criminology. But they are careful not to fall pregnant. It would be “a major disaster,” says Ashley. She has plans. She wants to finish her degree, go to the FBI academy in Virginia and then start a career as a “profiler” helping to catch dangerous criminals. She wants to get married when she is about 24, and have children perhaps at 26. She thinks having children out of wedlock is not wrong, but unwise.
The idea that differing views on the sanctity of marriage is creating a growing “caste system” in American society is new to me. It’s alarming that God’s opinion and the role of the church on all this is nowhere mentioned in the article, which may also say something about the world view of the media. And our increasingly pagan society.
Dave, quick to point out that “pagan” is not being used here pejoratively, just factually.
Climate change
April 7, 2007
The Economist is convinced by the recent IPCC report on climate change that global warming is a) a reality, and b) the world must do something about it. That something, this article concludes, is to both adapt to the climate change and try to reverse it.
Climate change | All washed up | Economist.com
WE WERE right, all along. That is the thrust of the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a United Nations body set up to pronounce authoritatively on the science of global warming. In 2001 it predicted that global warming would lead to many ills, including greater numbers of extinctions, growing shortages of water, higher incidence of tropical diseases, and lower yields from agriculture, fishing and forestry in some places. Now the scientists who write the reports say they have much stronger evidence that such calamities are indeed occurring—faster, in many cases, than they originally thought.
That there have been changes in climate I readily concede. My skepticism comes from lack of confidence in the conclusions being drawn from the studies. I look askance at the IPCC report partly because of the politics of it (can any global agency be objective?) and partly because that conclusions about climate change depend a lot on one’s worldview.
A secular worldview that assumes separate spheres for religion and science tends to place its trust in science and ignore the possibility that a sovereign God may have something to say about his handiwork. A Christian worldview, on the other hand is apt to ignore the real contributions of science to our understanding of how things work. Like climate change science. Like cosmology.
What’s needed on both sides of the debate is a good dose of humility and a better sense of the limitations of human thought.
Dave, which he is not so humble himself.
General Pace thinks homosexual practice is immoral
March 14, 2007
Think what you will, but our Chief of Staff’s personal beliefs regarding “immorality” (of any stripe) arguably reflect the beliefs of a majority of Americans. I think it is refreshing that our top military man is unapologetic about his beliefs. He is in good company. If this results in another debate about the role of gays in the military, that is good.
General’s comments boost debate on gays in military - The Boston Globe
Pace said in the Tribune interview that he opposes such efforts as Meehan’s because “I believe that homosexual acts between two individuals are immoral and that we should not condone immoral acts. I do not believe the United States is well served by a policy that says it is OK to be immoral in any way.”
As many are already pointing out, the military exists to “kill people and break things,” as I believe Rush Limbaugh is fond of saying. But it’s fact. It seems very obvious to me that allowing any form of immorality within the close-knit military community, especially in the infantry, would greatly reduce the probability that a grunt will come out of a fire fight alive.
Unfortunately, the fact that the word “immorality” is so out of fashion in large parts of our society today does not bode well for the national debate.
Dave, who has never been shot at but has a pretty good idea what those who have been in combat would say.
Reduced to counting Barack Obama’s nose hairs
February 16, 2007
I wish I had thought of that line. Peggy Noonan, while opining about the media’s obessing on the presidential race, says this:
Earlier this week I heard a minister quote a spiritual genius: “All the problems in the world are caused by man’s inability to sit quietly in a room by himself.” We’re restless and need action, which in a modern media world means information. We need the busy buzz–the Internet, TV, instant messages, magazines and newspapers, the beeps and boops and bops. Rudy’s up in Iowa. Hillary’s stuck. We want to be among the first to have this information and the first to share it. And we want it not because it’s crucial but because it distracts us from the crucial. It takes our minds away from what is most important. Who you are, for instance, or what we are about. It’s a great relief not to think about the important. It’s a relief to focus on factoids.
Does this ring true, even profound, with you as it does with me? She hearkens back to the story of Esau, Isaac’s oldest son, who “sold his soul for a mess of pottage” (Genesis 25:29-34). In this case, she says, the wannabe presidents are selling their souls for a “pot of message.” (A little too cute, perhaps?)
About the candidates, she says this:
But it must be uncomfortable to walk around in a skin that isn’t really your own. It must be really damaging to your soul, if you have a soul, and not just appetites, or a rugged, rocky little sense of what you deserve.
Maybe the candidates would do themselves good by leaving the trail a few days and trying to sit quietly in a room, by themselves, with no distractions, and think about big things, such as who they are.
Right on!
Dave, still adjusting to walking around in his own skin.
Colossians 2:20-23
February 4, 2007
2:20 If you have died with Christ to the elemental spirits of the world, why do you submit to them as though you lived in the world? 2:21 “Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!” 2:22 These are all destined to perish with use, founded as they are on human commands and teachings. 2:23 Even though they have the appearance of wisdom with their self-imposed worship and false humility achieved by an unsparing treatment of the body – a wisdom with no true value – they in reality result in fleshly indulgence.
To many, the gospel of Jesus Christ is pure nonsense. Those of us who have confronted Jesus Christ, got mad at him, wrestled with what he demands, and finally bowed in submission and worship before him as Lord, know painfully well what Paul is talking about. Dying to the values the world teaches us and learning to see our world through the eyes of Jesus is a work in progress that will last until we die. -sdg-
Five years after
September 9, 2006
As the anniversary of 9/11 approaches, everyone is putting on their wise-retrospective beanies and pontificating about the significance of the twin-towers attack. Now it’s my turn, but first read this:
Five years ago, I cared for little outside my own circle of friends and family. Caring was for fools and patriotism mostly nostalgic in nature. I thought that things would continue as they always had. I was unaware of the existence of our enemies or their plans, and blissfully so.
All of that changed in a white-hot second on the morning of 9/11. Like so many other Americans, I was ripped from my comfortable womb and delivered against my will into a world where complete strangers hate me and would happily sacrifice their lives to kill me. Should I have mourned the loss of my ignorance?
I’m not sure that many had such an epiphany on the morning of 9/11 and after, but the writer makes a good point. Everything did change; the political landscape not the least, as the article points out.
I submit that no one with a Christian worldview should have been totally shocked, as so many around us say they were. The fact that people who will gladly sacrifice their lives to kill us without even knowing us should not come as a surprise. There is ugly evil in the world that we see that is being orchestrated in a world that we cannot see. It’s true. Get used to it.
I think we get our eyes opened to the existence of evil in a number of ways. One is learning to accept as reality events like terrorist attacks. Anyone exposed to TV news cannot avoid seeing what is happening in the world, even though most of the nasty stuff still happens on the other side of the world.
There are also a few books around that do a pretty good job of rubbing our noses in reality.
Here’s a gratuitous plug for a series of novels by Joel C. Rosenberg. One of his latest is The Ezekiel Option. How’s this for opening lines? “Boris Stuchenko would be dead in less than nineteen minutes. And he had no idea why.” Those nineteen minutes took only ten pages to arrive, and I would bet that every person reading them started feverishly reading and flipping pages to see what would happen. I’ve read many-many current events thrillers, but never anything like Rosenberg’s stories. He somehow maintains a frantic pace steadily from the first to the last page. Amazing!
I might add that the books are a good family-read; no sexual episodes, no profanity, no heavy-handed moralizing - just fast-paced action that has the ring of truth.
Okay, where was I?
Oh, yes. Most of us need a wake-up call of some sort, expecially if we live comfy lives in the Western world. Until we come to grips with the fact of evil in the world (and the answer to it), we are pitifully vulnerable to those times, prayerfully few, when evil stares us right in the face. It doesn’t have to be that way.
Dave, pontificating from his own little cocoon of safety.
The Problem with Prophets
September 8, 2006
Sometimes it takes a whack with a two-by-four alongside the head before I wake up. Several people have told me I have to read this article in Christianity Today, so maybe I really should. In the meantime, here is how Michael Kruse responded to a commenter to his post about the C-T article:
Kruse Kronicle: The Problem with Prophets
What some on the Left do now is chastise Christians for bringing their religious values in to the public square. (And I share some their frustration at some of the values that are brought into the public square in the name Christianity but not the legitimacy of bringing their religious values into the public square.) Christians are supposed to be a counter-cultural witness and not become entangled in matters of the state. But then on other issues they cozy up to politicians, start PACs, partner with political groups, seek organize and sway votes, as they seek to advance a political agenda. They are no longer prophets but political partisans.
It strikes me that what is going on is not prophetic witness but “proof texting” positions with one theological perspective in one place and another perspective in another place. What that says to me is that there is a predefined political agenda in search of theological justifications, not a political stance that has emerged from a consistent theological framework.
Again, not having yet read the C-T article, I agree with Kruse that one of the biggest challenges we have as evangelicals is learning to bring our beliefs into the public square in a consistent and God-honoring way. If we do it right, the result will be transparent and winsomely attractive to our pagan friends.
We’re clearly not there, yet.
Dave, moving Christianity Today to the top of his reading stack.
