Too Hot to Handle: Just Another Bump in the Roe

In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.

Next! Move ’em on through!

Norma Leah McCorvey died February 18, and unless you happened across this article in The Economist or something like it in one of the few other well-known publications that referenced her passing, you might not have the slightest idea that Norma was the “Jane Roe” in Roe v. Wade, probably the most significant U.S. Supreme Court ruling of the last century.

Tom: You also might not know that by the time the Supremes actually ruled on her case, the baby Norma McCorvey went to court to get the State’s permission to murder in her own womb was 2-1/2 years old and had been adopted. That’s the legal system for you.

The Divine Veto

Lately I’ve been wondering how much latitude God gives his servants in choosing how they go about doing his work. If you read either Testament carefully, it seems like it could be an awful lot.

Now, bear in mind that from John Calvin’s perspective, it is really God doing everything that is done in the universe. I don’t think he ever used the word “pawn” (which might have been the most honest way to describe how he thought God treats his creatures), but in effect he taught that sentient beings, good or bad, cannot really act contrary to the will of God. God’s determinate counsel initiates and controls every transaction in the universe — “all events whatsoever”, as Calvin put it.

I’m not operating on that wavelength at all, so disciples of Mr. Calvin may want to take a pass on the following musings.

A Non-Binary Proposition

God took a nation for himself from all the peoples of the earth. If you’re Israel, that’s what you might call a mixed blessing.

On the one hand, there was lots of good stuff that came with being uniquely God’s. As Paul puts it to the Romans, “to [Israelites] belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises”, and he goes on to mention the patriarchs and Messiah. Being a Jew was a tremendous privilege.

On the other hand, as another Jew once put it, “With great power there must also come — great responsibility.”

Out of the Closet and Out of the Sea

Globalism is out of the closet. Finally.

For years now, politicians from countries all over the world enraptured with the Ideology That Dared Not Speak Its Name have pursued their dream of global government. Until the end of last year, they were savvy enough to do it behind the scenes, giving the occasional barely-perceptible nod to national interests in order to avoid raising the hackles of the rank and file that their policies had impoverished and unemployed by the millions. Attentive observers of Washington and the Eurozone noticed something was a bit off, but recognized that being overly vocal with their suspicions would tend to nuke their credibility with the audience that pays the bills.

Hey, even political commentators have to eat, right?

A Man Without A Clue

To call Agur a bit of an obscure Old Testament character would not be out of line.

The first twenty-nine chapters of the book of Proverbs set out the compiled wisdom of Solomon. Obviously not all of it; we’re told he wrote 3,000 proverbs and an additional 1,005 songs, so this is the tip of a large iceberg. It’s a pretty impressive resume by any standard.

Agur son of Jakeh, on the other hand, rates a mere 33 verses, most of which he gives over to the making of lists: “Here are four things that are small but wise …”, “Here are three things that shake the earth …”, “Here are three things that are very stately …” and so on.

While it is certainly the inspired word of God, I’m not sure the average observation attributed to Agur stacks up with those of the great king of Israel.

I will tell you this though: he had a few good lines in him.

The Hatred of King Jesus

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In Need of Analysis: Wake Up and Smell the Potpourri

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B-B-B-Betty in a Dress

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Too Hot to Handle: Different Ways to Die in the Dark

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Perception Is Not Reality

Perception can be fantasyland

My former boss used to love to say “Perception is reality”. All he meant by it, I think, is that it’s important in business to consider how our actions appear to others. That’s certainly a relevant concern when your income depends on your ability to convince people to buy stuff, but it’s not quite what the person who coined the phrase intended to convey.

The line has been attributed to eighties political strategist Lee Atwater. I dislike it thoroughly: communication is tough enough without deliberately eroding the meaning of words. Our general failure to apply our critical faculties to aphorisms like Atwater’s simply accelerates the disintegration of language into meaningless babble.

I’m not kidding. Hey, we’re talking about the nature of reality here.

That Wacky Old Testament (10)

The book of 2 Kings starts with a bang — or at least with fire from heaven, which is plenty eventful enough for most of us.

The prophet Elijah has just passed on another of his many messages from God, this one to the effect that the illness suffered by wicked King Ahaziah will surely result in his death. Ahaziah is understandably less than thrilled to receive this news. He sends a military unit of fifty men with their captain to bring Elijah back to Samaria, where he lies bedridden, presumably in hope of intimidating the prophet into foretelling a fate more to his taste.

The captain is insufficiently deferential to the prophet, who promptly calls down fire from heaven on him and on his soldiers.

Sovereignty in Action

Our Calvinist friends tell us God is sovereign, and I would be the last to disagree with them. Of course, we define “sovereignty” a little differently.

I think it’s possible to believe that God is King of Everything without believing he personally ordains every act that takes place within his kingdom. John Calvin, on the other hand, was convinced that “all events whatsoever are governed by the secret counsel of God” and that “nothing happens without his counsel”. Words like counsel and government imply not just knowledge but personal direction.

But if God is behind every single event that takes place in the universe, then why do the scriptures constantly single out certain events to assure us that it was God who did them? I mean, he does EVERYTHING, right?

Media and the Gospel

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The Best Move

One of Satan’s most effective and longstanding cons is getting people moving when they really ought to stand still. He did it with Eve, didn’t he? That tree in the middle of the garden was good for food, and it was a delight to the eyes, and to be desired to make one wise.

Thing is, it was just as good for food the day before. It was just as delightful to the eyes three weeks before that. The wisdom it conferred would be the same yesterday, today or tomorrow. There was exactly zero urgency about having a bite of its fruit right then. None whatsoever. Nobody was going to starve, and that exceptionally desirable tree was not going anywhere.

Playing Word Games

Keeping laws cannot save us, as we were reminded earlier this week. God gave his law to Israel for the purpose of demonstrating to mankind our total inability to consistently abide by whatever rules we might make for ourselves, not so that we could accumulate sufficient spiritual brownie points to inspire St. Peter to open the gate of heaven just a crack and let us squeak through.

That being understood, laws still serve a very useful purpose. They cannot by themselves reclaim a single lost human heart, but a society in which the majority of citizens recognize and respect the rule of law will do notably better over the long term than a society that operates only on the principle of the will to power.

We are currently observing the abandonment of the rule of law south of the (Canadian) border.

Too Hot to Handle: Forgive Us, But …

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That Wacky Old Testament (9)

“The law of the Lord is perfect ...”

Not only perfect, but more desirable than gold and sweeter than a honeycomb. So says the word of God, and I believe it. But perhaps we ought to ask ourselves exactly what the Psalmist intended to convey with the word “perfect”. Because when people today examine what the law of Moses says on the subject of slavery, or the role of women, or animal sacrifices, they seem to find an awful lot to quibble about.

They would argue — quite forcefully, I might add — that the law of the Lord is far from perfect. Primitive, even.

Marry or Burn

I have a dear friend (he’s in heaven now) who spent his entire life waiting for the right woman to come along. Shortly before his death in his early sixties he was still doing it. Needless to say, she never appeared.

Mind you, the “right woman” was youthful, spiritual, fit, stunningly attractive AND willing to marry a much older, sedentary, admittedly peculiar man who didn’t bring home a whole lot of money even in the best years of his life and usually drove vehicles ten years past their prime.

You can see the problem. He was a great guy and he loved the Lord, but his fantasy just wasn’t happening, and everyone knew it except him.

Faith, Inc.

“But whoever has doubts is condemned if he eats, because the eating is not from faith. For whatever does not proceed from faith is sin.”

A while back, I read a piece written by a fellow believer on the subject of finding peace in the quest to live one’s life in the will of God. I’d link to it but it has not yet been published. A major theme of his paper was that both the peace of God and the will of God are often found corporately rather than individually; that it was not intended that we live our Christian lives in isolation from other believers, but rather that we discover God’s will together through submission to one another and to him.

Corporate, eh? Interesting idea, and almost surely not one prompted by the spirit of the age in which we currently live.

Sound and Silence (or Banishing the Banshee)

I have a neighbour that screams like a banshee — or at least she used to. She doesn’t anymore, and herein lies a tale.

Like many families, we live in a semi-detached house with nothing more than a cinder-block partition and a little ancient insulation separating us from our neighbours. You can’t hear everything that occurs on the other side of the party wall, but you can hear plenty, especially when voices are raised.

We heard plenty. Regularly. Our neighbour made sure of it.