At last President Obama and I agree

... on something at least.

h/t Don Sampson

Stages of Conversion

Ouch. Ouch, ouch, ouch.

Thus endeth my reaction to this blog post (hat tip to this guy) by some Lutheran blogger I otherwise know nothing about.

He nails the behavior and attitudes of those who have left one tradition within the Christian faith for another, identifying stages such as the jackass, the nutjob, and the know-it-all, and progressing (so one hopes, by the tender mercies of God) to the spot where one realizes he is:

much worse at being a decent human being than all those people too stupid and impious to realize how awesome your new religion is. While many of the reasons that you had for joining your current tradition remain, and thus so do you, you decide it's time to cut yourself, your church, everyone else's churches, and rest of the world some slack.

I hope I'm there, too.

Questioning Predestination

Rev. William H. Smith, pastor of Covenant Presbyterian Church of Louisville, Miss., writes:

One of the doctrines people commonly associate with Presbyterianism is predestination. Actually, this is not a peculiarly Presbyterian doctrine - at least not historically. The Church of England (transplanted to America, the Episcopal Church) traditionally confesses this truth, as do all the Reformed churches of Europe. So do some Baptists (there is a movement, for instance, within the Southern Baptist Convention that holds this doctrine.

This is not the place, and I am not the person, for a lengthy treatise on predestination. Rather, I would like to set forth the doctrine in a brief series of questions and answers.

Well, here are his questions and answers, and I commend him for setting forth this doctrine in such a succinct, understandable, and pastoral way. If you are one of my friends who disagrees with the whole idea that God plans and causes everything that happens in creation ("but what about free will?!") I hope you'll give him the couple of minutes required to read this.

* * * * *

And, for a bonus, Pastor Smith explains the biblical teaching on divorce in the same way.

(h/t The Aquila Report)

Children of Men, in real life: Japan's shrinking population

If you've seen the movie, you know the premise. But it's not that farfetched, as the media is starting to notice. This article chronicles Japan's slow-motion demographic catastrophe: fewer and fewer children being born, resulting rather unsurprisingly in an overall population that is beginning to shrink.

I'm not philosophically in sync with Whitney Houston on many things, but in this case she's right: children are the future of any society - as well as a blessing and a heritage from the Lord. Any society that devalues them invokes His curse -- destroying itself, as these numbers make clear. And please understand that I'm not going after Japan particularly, merely the whole Western obsession with self, of which Japanese society is merely one example.

(h/t Susan)

The Gay Marriage Movement Has Never Really Been About Gay Marriage

I'm recommending this column by Maggie Gallagher in National Review Online. She analyzes the arguments offered by the pro-gay marriage lobby, particularly that of equating resistance to gay marriage to racism, and demonstrates pretty effectively what the true goal is. Her conclusion is right on the money:

The architects of this strategy have targeted marriage because it stands in the way of the America they want to create: They hope to use the law to reshape the culture in exactly the same way that the law was used to reshape the culture of the old racist south.

Gay-marriage advocates are willing to use a variety of arguments to allay fears and reduce opposition to getting this new “equality” principle inserted in the law; these voices may even believe what they are saying. But once the principle is in the law, the next step will be to use the law to stigmatize, marginalize, and repress those who disagree with the government’s new views on marriage and sexual orientation.

And,

Many of the harshest legal conflicts could be alleviated with religious-exemption legislation. But gay-marriage advocates will fight those religious exemptions tooth and nail (as they did in Massachusetts when the Catholic Church asked for one for Catholic Charities) because, they will say, it’s the principle of the thing: We wouldn’t give a religious-liberty exemption to a racist, so why should someone who opposes gay marriage get one?

We miss the forest for exact descriptions of trees when we offer up the track record of homosexual promiscuity and disease, the need of children for a father and a mother, and the slippery slope of polygamous, bestial, and incestuous unions as primary reasons why gay marriage should remain illegal. Every one of these arguments is quite true, and useful in some contexts. Yet each of them assumes that what gay marriage advocates want is marriage. Ms. Gallagher makes the compelling point that the goal is not marriage but elevation of sodomy to the status of an inalienable right, with all the chilling ramifications that would have for anyone who dares to speak or to advise in favor of biblical norms.

Apropos of Nothing Else on this Blog: New Twist on a Great Old Idea

I think this is a really clever update of a great old idea: the rainwater cistern.

Once upon a time, houses were commonly built with cisterns under or adjacent to the foundation for catching rainwater, which could then used in the garden or for washing. My beloved old house in Appleton, Wisconsin (built approximately 1912) appeared to have one under the cellar floor -- alas, with the pipe system removed.

Since then, I've been intrigued by the possibility of somehow sneaking one onto my property (which would require a David Copperfield-level deception perpetrated against my nosy homeowners' association). It would require a rather large hole in my backyard, and it's a bit hard to think of a way to explain that.

This clever young Australian architect, however, has designed a modular system (you can purchase as many chambers as you like for your site, each holding something like 50 gallons) that can be plumbed together and installed in any number of ways. The under-the-deck idea is a win-win: no digging below grade, a space that would most likely be wasted anyway, and it's barely visible! I wish her well! And maybe, maybe, I'll order a set sometime!

Slaughter in the Heartland

Having been raised by transplanted Kansans, visiting the Wheat State once or twice a year throughout my childhood was a sublime pleasure. Our destination was Grandma's house in Rosalia, a tiny burg a few miles outside of El Dorado (which is pronounced with a long "a," unless you want to sound like you're from California, or Mars, or some equally irrelevant place), and among the persimmon trees and the old sheds out back, I spent many a happy hour.

Perhaps you, like me, still think of Kansas (if at all) as one of those heartland places where the good is still known to be good, and evil is still called evil. It's a nice, tempting image, but quite far from the reality that, among other evidences, one of the nation's most infamous late-term abortionists makes buckets of money at his vile trade in nearby Wichita. And for another, that when a good man tasked with enforcing the law runs afoul of those who have benefitted from the abortionist's PAC money, he ends up the victim of shocking breaches of constitutional powers, cronyism, and corruption, with $200,000 in legal fees to boot.

Please take a few minutes to read this chronicle of the experience of Phill Kline, the state's former attorney general. His approach to opposing abortion was masterful: he merely insisted that the state enforce the laws on its books - a commendable methodology for one tasked with law enforcement, you might think. And the result? Denis Boyles of National Review Online tells it far better than I can.

And while you're reading, consider that many watchers have Governor Kathleen Sibelius on Barak Obama's short list for VP.

H/T Tony Woodlief writing in World on the Web. Don't miss the nice pictures he links of the honorable Governor grinning with the abortionist.