Threatened by Intelligence

A series of studies done at University of Buffalo, California Lutheran U. and the University of Texas, Austin, appear to show that while many men say they would like a partner who is smarter than they are when the question is purely hypothetical, when confronted with the reality they really … don’t.

“Six studies revealed that when evaluating psychologically distant targets, men showed greater attraction toward women who displayed more (vs. less) intelligence than themselves. In contrast, when targets were psychologically near, men showed less attraction toward women who outsmarted them.”

This is surprising? Seriously?

Getting It Backwards

Christian response on the Internet to the ongoing refugee/immigration issue reminds me how easy it is to get things backwards.

This is not the first time it has happened, and it won’t be the last.

First, there was a barrage of pro-immigration posts at various websites that buttressed their arguments with what appeared to be supportive proof texts: we were to be “Good Samaritans”; we were to “welcome the sojourner”; we are “all one in Christ”. The writers of these pieces moved swiftly from cursory proof to immediate and morally-imperative action: “Here’s how you can help, Christians!”

And some of us did.

A Kiss on the Lips

When I lie to you, I have wronged you. On some level I know it.

Immediate repentance and a request for forgiveness can fix that, although asking and receiving forgiveness for some of the stupid, pointless lies we tell can be humiliating. It rarely works out like a sixties TV confession where Ward pats Beaver on the head and says, “That’s okay, son, we all make mistakes; the important thing is being man enough to admit them” — after which everybody goes for ice cream.

More often the person you have wronged looks at you like you have three heads.

Assumptions and Loaded Conversations

The most recent version of this post is available here.

Rehabilitating the Proverbs 31 Wife

Poor, much-maligned wife of the last chapter of Proverbs! Google her and see. After you get through the usual commentary citations, much of what you find is Christians complaining:

• Complaining that the woman in King Lemuel’s acrostic poem is an anachronism. (She isn’t.)
• Complaining that the poem should have been about men instead and rewriting it for our benefit. (It wasn’t written about men. Deal with it.)
• Complaining that Proverbs 31 is not about a “real woman”, it’s about “wisdom” as a concept. (Possibly true, but irrelevant: if it’s about wisdom as a concept, it’s about how that concept looks when it is worked out in the life of a married woman.)
• Complaining that single women (like Ruth before she married Boaz) should be considered “Proverbs 31 women” too. (A single women may be all kinds of wonderful things but the one thing she cannot be is an “excellent wife”, which happens to be the subject matter of this chapter.)
• Complaining that the chapter gets used as a checklist by which modern Christian wives are judged by others.

Hmm, that last one may have a grain of truth to it ...

The Inside Scoop

Those in the news business are forever occupied with beating one another to a story. Old media or new, success is measured in the ability to get the inside scoop.

God, on the other hand, is not in the business of broadcasting his secrets. Communicating is something in which he takes great pleasure, but not something he does casually. His truth is for those who value it and understand its worth, not for those who dismiss or trivialize it.

The value of God’s word is one of its repeated themes.

A Horse Plunging Headlong

The most recent version of this post is available here.

A Man Without A Clue

The most recent version of this post is available here.

Big Government, Micro-Regulation and Morality

In a 2012 article for National Review entitled “The Perversion of Rights”, Mark Steyn laments the age of micro-regulation:

“That’s the real ‘hot topic’ here — whether a majority of citizens, in America as elsewhere in the West, is willing to ‘leave it up to the government’ to make decisions on everything that matters. On the face of it, the choice between the Obama administration and the Catholic Church should not be a tough one. On the one hand, we have the plain language of the First Amendment as stated in the U.S. Constitution since 1791: ‘Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.’

On the other, we have a regulation invented by executive order under the vast powers given to Kathleen Sebelius under a 2,500-page catalogue of statist enforcement passed into law by a government party that didn’t even bother to read it.”

Abomination x 3

In case anyone doubts the relevance of the Old Testament thousands of years after it was written, The Wall Street Journal comments on the implementation of the (un)Affordable Care Act:

“… there have been so many unilateral executive waivers and delays that ObamaCare must be unrecognizable to its drafters, to the extent they ever knew what the law contained.”

as does Solomon, son of David:

“Unequal weights and unequal measures
    are both alike an abomination to the Lord.”

(Proverbs 20:10)

Breaking the Spirit

“No one gives up on something until it turns on them, whether or not that thing is real or unreal.”

― Thomas Ligotti

Ligotti’s statement may or may not be true, but there is something to be said for people who live consistently.

Those who have become disillusioned by Christians are among the most intensely disillusioned people I have ever met. They are the hardest to reach, the hardest to talk to about my faith, the most difficult to even know where to begin with.

How do you initiate any kind of dialogue with those who believe they have already taken the measure of your faith and found it wanting?

Agnosticism and Folly

The most recent version of this post is available here.

The Beginning of Wisdom

The most current version of this post is available here.

Assumptions and Loaded Conversations

The most recent version of this post is available here.