Alan Jacobs has re-cycled an excellent essay he wrote ten years ago as a column for the late lamented Books & Culture. He found what he had to say then particularly apropos to the present day. I don’t recall reading it 10 years ago, so maybe I missed that early edition of Books & Culture; but I’m very glad Jacobs decided to reprint this essay on his blog. Give it a read here.
Category: Contemporary Issues (Page 6 of 8)
Quoting Miroslav Volf:
We are in a major crisis of legitimacy and trust. No better time to renew commitment to trustworthiness, as individuals and communities.
Well said.
Here are the raw numbers we have to account for in our failed health care system.
Highlights.
We spend more PUBLIC money on healthcare than comparable countries with national health care systems. When you add the private money in, we spend enormously more money on health care than countries with national health care systems. I mean really enormously more!
Ask regular people with national health care if they like it. They will gripe about it. Every system has limitations.
Ask regular people with national health care if they would trade it for the American system. They would not.
Rich people should be able to use their resources to get the health care they want. Regular people need something a whole lot more like national health care in these other countries than what we have now.
If we were reasonable, we could spend less than now and get better care and cover everyone. Less GDP than now, and less GDP than France – who is already less than us. The numbers are clear. They are not complicated. They are enormously unfavorable to us and our system. They are unfavorable for any system currently under serious consideration in Washington. It is a scandalous failure of our politics and society.
“The problem of sexual confusion in our culture, which is huge, is not going to be solved by the reassertion of power.” Thus says the wise and learned Sarah Williams in these talks given at Corban University, which I cannot recommend highly enough. Williams is a first-rate scholar and does us a great service in explaining the world from which our present day came and how we got here, with regard to how we think of people and sex. I don’t know much about Corban University; but Sarah Williams I have read and listened to quite a lot over the past couple of years, to my great profit. Such great free resources are not so easy to find! This one is top notch.
Sex in the Postmodern Story, Part 1
Sex in the Postmodern Story, Part 2
Sex in the Postmodern Story, Part 3
Judah got in a lot of trouble for depending on Assyria to protect them from the Israel/Aram coalition. And then Judah got in a lot of trouble for looking to Babylon to protect them from the Assyrians. Later, Judah got in a lot of trouble for depending on Egypt to protect them from the Babylonians. And so it goes.
People of God, vote for whomever you can vote with a clear conscience and then stand by without shame as a leader without being an embarrassment to God. But remember: #WeDontNeedEitherOne
There is no candidate running who will usher in the kingdom of God or prevent its coming.
Finally, Isaiah 30:1-3 is apropos:
Woe to the obstinate children,â€
declares the LORD,
“to those who carry out plans that are not mine,
forming an alliance, but not by my Spirit,
heaping sin upon sin;
who go down to Egypt
without consulting me;
who look for help to Pharaoh’s protection,
to Egypt’s shade for refuge.
But Pharaoh’s protection will be to your shame,
Egypt’s shade will bring you disgrace.
[NIV]
I’m not a particular fan of Bill Gates. However in this interview of Bill Gates from the Atlantic, Gates quite reasonably expresses the need to increase the rate of development for new energy sources (by a lot) because of climate change with less drama and more sense than is found in most such comments.
The interesting thing to me is that this article has created quite a buzz. But the buzz is not about the central ideas of the article. It’s about Bill Gates sidebar comments that he doesn’t think the free market is good at every kind of technological advance or every allocation of resources. The buzz is that Bill Gates is against free markets and has come out as a socialist!
Whether the article is meritorious on its own terms or not, this is sheer and utter nonsense. It prevents actual discussion of substance because the discussion is hijacked by hot button political issues. What Gates actually said isn’t being discussed. His comment on free markets is the only thing.
And that is where our public discourse is today. It’s so ridden with land mine hot button issues that you can’t even discuss anything. And if you happen to miss one of the mines and some interest is offended, they throw you and all your good ideas and labor away because of the one thing you said that made you an offender. That’s a recipe for permanent social adolescence. One can make no mistakes (if they are mistakes) or we’ll replace you with someone else who hasn’t done anything we could possibly be upset about. That’s no way to live.
In The World is not Ours to Save, Tyler Wigg-Stevenson recommends for those who follow Jesus
“enduring, kingdom-oriented activism grounded in the faithfulness of vocation instead of the anxiety of a broken world.”
From a David Brooks TED talk:
- 95% of profs believe they are above-average teachers
- 96% of college students believe they have above-average social skills
- 19% of earners polled by TIME reported they were in the top 1% of earners
How’s that?
On February 27, 1860, Abraham Lincoln spoke at Cooper Union in New York City, delivering a rather long address that made quite an impression on the listeners, propelling him into national prominence as a serious candidate for president. It is quite the speech. One section reminded me of a hot topic in American society today:
The question recurs, what will satisfy then? Simply this: We must not only let them alone, but we must somehow convince them that we do let them alone. This, we know by experience, is no easy task. We have been so trying to convince them from the very beginning of [the Republican Party], but with no success. In all our platforms and speeches we have constantly protested our purpose to let them alone; but this has had no tendency to convince them. Alike unavailing to convince them, is the fact that they have never detected a man of us in any attempt to disturb them. These natural and apparently adequate means all failing, what will convince them? This, and this only: cease to call slavery wrong, and join them in calling it right. And this must he done thoroughly-done in acts as well as in words. Silence will not he tolerated–we must place ourselves avowedly with them. Senator Douglas’ new sedition law must he enacted and enforced, suppressing all declarations that slavery is wrong, whether made in politics, in presses, in pulpits, or in private. We must arrest and return their fugitive slaves with greedy pleasure. We must pull down our Free State constitutions. The whole atmosphere must he disinfected from all taint of opposition to slavery, before they will cease to believe that all their troubles proceed from us.
You can read more about the speech at Wikipedia.
Some paint the issues surrounding the place of women in the family and the church as an issue of autonomy; that is, Man seeks to decide for himself and not let God be God. The issues are bundled with other contemporary issues of sex, life choices, materialistic goals, and so on. However, what I argue is not for an expansion of human autonomy, even though some see it that way. It is no argument for allowing Christians to move into what the Bible defines as sinful behavior. Rather, it is standing against human systems of oppression that oppose God and His purposes. My goal is not to free humans to choose their own way. My goal is to remove human oppression that stands against what God has created and that attempts to thwart what God is doing in the lives of women. It is to open the way for women and men to be who God created them to be, exercising the gifts he gives them as he calls without interference from other humans who hold up old traditions or ways as being God’s ways when in reality they were ways born in the curse.
No one should seek place or prominence in the body of Christ. We should all follow the example of Christ, humbling ourselves to serve in whatever manner He determines. If God lifts one into leadership or a place to exercise a spiritual gift, who should oppose Him? No one. But if God does not lift one to such a place, who should presume to take it on their own ambition or will? No one. The way I am advocating is to avoid ruling out a particular direction that God might lead. It is undeniable that God has used women in positions of leadership among his people in scripture. Some claim this was because the men were falling down on the job. Some say this is because God does not intend for women to be restricted to certain roles. Either way, if one opposes what God does for whatever reason he does it, one is opposing God. I caution Christians about proclaiming what God cannot or will not do with women, or standing legalistically on what we will allow God to do with or through women. We are not talking about a license to sin; we are talking about not standing against God when he leads or teaches through a woman when that is what he chooses to do. I believe God creates women and gives them gifts of teaching and leadership to be exercised at his calling for the benefit of the body of Christ as a standard part of life in his kingdom. However, even if you disagree that this is a normal path for women in the body of Christ, it is very dangerous to argue that we should stand against what God has demonstrated he may do when he sees fit – even if you think he only leads through women to shame sinful, distracted men!
For the women, though, there is a caution here. It is never safe to take on service in the kingdom of God just to prove that you can do it. The church is not the place to prove women are capable for the sake of human pride. God calls his people and arranges the members of the body as he sees fit. The essence of sin is to ignore God and seize autonomy to do what we determine in our own hearts and minds is “best”. Eve demonstrated the folly of that approach. Paul’s words in Philippians 2 apply to women, too. The church is not first a battleground for women’s liberation; it is the kingdom coming among us.
Every local church has to make a decision about how it will approach this issue. Either there will be limitations placed on women in the church or there will not. Either women will have the opportunity to lead and teach and preach, or they will not. There will be women as elders and pastors or there will not. God can organize us as he chooses. God can move us to change as he chooses. There is a practical issue of how each local church will approach this issue. Let us make our best attempt at faithfulness and move forward to do the work of the church without apology and also without antagonism toward brothers and sisters who choose a different approach. As much as it is in our power, we should be at peace with others who decide differently than we decide on this matter. And yet we must speak the truth in love when God says to speak.
We should want nothing more and nothing less than to allow Christ to lead us according to his priorities for his kingdom in a particular time and a particular place. What is helpful to communicate the gospel? What is helpful to advance the kingdom of God? What blesses the church? I believe that God will move his people to release women from the bondage resulting from the Fall that is reflected in human societies and cultures around the world. The timing is in God’s hands. Truth spoken in love, as God leads, is in our hands. God will move his people to change human society in the direction of his will. God’s enemies will oppose this movement.
I earnestly sought for God to guide me in this issue. In His time, He spoke, and said, “You shall have no other gods before me.” The other gods are falling. Traditions of men and false spiritual powers are being disarmed. His kingdom is advancing. Good news is preached. Prisoners are freed. The blind recover sight. The oppressed are released. It is the year of the Lord’s favor.
“to the pure, all things are pure”
– Titus 1:15, NIV