harmonicminer

Congress clears historic health care bill

“This is what change looks like,” Obama said a few moments later in televised remarks that stirred memories of his 2008 campaign promise of “change we can believe in.”

All you young folks who voted for Obama? You’re going to pay for it, literally. Pretty much for your whole life. And then your kids can start.

Daily Presidential Tracking Poll – Rasmussen Reportsâ„¢

As the House prepares to vote on the health care plan proposed by the President and Congressional Democrats, just 41% of voters favor the plan while 54% are opposed. Those figures include 26% who Strongly Favor the plan and 45% who are Strongly Opposed. Most voters believe it will raise the cost of health care and reduce the quality of care. Still, nearly two-out-of-three voters believe it is at least somewhat likely to pass and become law.

From a political perspective, 50% of voters are less likely to vote for a Member of Congress who supports the health care reform plan proposed by the President and Congressional Democrats. Just 20% believe that most Members of Congress will understand the proposed health care bill before they vote on it.

Here’s the graphic truth about public opinion on Obama’s presidency so far:

It’s those “strongly approve” and “strongly disapprove” people who feel most strongly, and who will be activists and donors for the coming campaigns.  That “strongly disapprove” number ought to make clear the political suicide being practiced by any congress-critter in a “purple” district who votes for the health care federal take-over.

Fight Between Erskine College and Its Denomination Will Head to Court (Complete coverage at the link.)

Like many church-based institutions of higher education, Erskine College and Seminary in Due West, South Carolina, has had many battles over the relationship between faith and learning at its campus. But the drama that unfolded at the college March 3 was unlike the online debates and denominational meeting grumblings that had come before.

In a special meeting that day, the General Synod of the denomination that sponsors Erskine—the Associate Reformed Presbyterian (ARP) Church—heard a commission’s report which concluded: “the oversight exercised by the Board of Trustees and the Administration of Erskine College and Seminary is not in faithful accordance with the standards of the ARP Church and the synod’s previously issued directives.”

More simply put, the commission found evidence of mission drift—as well as “a number of financial irregularities and administrative failures”—in the college and seminary and blamed the board for letting it happen.

As a result, the synod voted 204-to-68 to restructure the Erskine Board of Trustees, firing and replacing 14 board members and keeping 16 holdovers for a 30-member interim board of trustees. (The commission recommended that the board size be cut at the synod’s June meeting from 34 members to 16.)

A preliminary report issued last month by the ARP’s investigating commission found “irreconcilable and competing visions” among board members on several fronts, including the integration of faith and learning on campus. But that confusion, the commission said, was widespread.

It will indeed be interesting to see how things turn our for Erskine.

In this case, it was the “parent” church exercising some discipline over the educational institution. But what mechanism is going to produce that kind of oversight for Christian colleges and universities with much weaker denominational ties, or nearly none? All it takes is a couple of decades of diversion from the central mission of the institution, and it can become nearly impossible to change course and get back on track, when there is no body providing strong oversight to the board.  A skilled administration (in the absence of strong denominational and alumni input) can eventually “shape” a board, creating a dynamic where the board reflects the administration as much as vice versa, and diluting the essentially supervisory task of the board.

This is in addition to the normal challenges that even strongly denominational schools must face, including the generally leftward pull of academia, and the pressures created by the necessity to hire faculty whose graduate training will have been mostly at secular institutions.

There seems to be a general “chaos tending” pattern, a sort of missional entropy, at work.  Of course, no human institution is eternal, and some have completely changed while retaining their former names, and even large slices of their former rhetoric.

Having just reread the Pentateuch, Joshua and Judges, I am reminded that one generation easily forgets the miracles experienced by the last, and the tendency to worship foreign gods seems ever-present.  And it’s awfully easy for us to start believing in our own strength and wisdom, our own cleverness and savvy, instead of in the same God as our forebears.

Previous posts have pointed up the huge problems in Mexico, and the very real danger that it is about to become a failed state. And the killers there aren’t just killing each other.

Mexico is getting out of control. While we should be sure not to make more out of this incident than it is, the killing of a US Consulate employee and her husband as well as the slaying of the wife of another consulate employee in Juarez is bad enough on its face and a sign that Mexico is having a difficult time curbing the drug violence ravaging the notoriously corrupt country.

Gunmen believed to be drug traffickers shot an American consulate worker and her husband to death over the weekend in the violence-racked border town of Ciudad Juárez, and killed the husband of another consular employee and wounded his two young children, the authorities said Sunday.Jorge Alberto Salcido Ceniceros, 37, the husband of an employee of the American Consulate in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, was killed in a drive-by shooting on Saturday in Ciudad Juarez.
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President Obama expressed outrage at the “brutal murders” and in a statement from the White House vowed to “work tirelessly” with Mexican law enforcement officials to bring the killers to justice.

We echo the president’s outrage while also acknowledging that Mexico is tip-toeing the tightrope of democracy and civility with a hungry, drug trade-infused anarchy waiting below for a fall.

It’s not looking good. And the fundamental facts of the nature of Mexican society, culture and government have much more to do with why the USA has been invaded by illegal aliens than any “structural unfairness” in the relationship of the two countries.

We probably can’t solve our problems here without helping them solve their problems there. But it will take a creative approach that is nevertheless hardheaded… two qualities not in evidence in Washington very often, and very rarely found in the same person, or policy.

The previous post in this series is here.

Yet another of the many archaeological indications of the Bible’s historicity is announced as Archaeological Discovery Supports Scripture

Israeli archeologist Eilat Mazar has reported an exciting discovery-evidence that newly unearthed fortifications in Jerusalem were built 3,000 years ago. Based on the age of pottery shards that she found at the site, Mazar believes that the fortifications were built by Solomon, just as described in the Old Testament. Of course that’s interesting news for Jews and Christians, but there’s a lot more to this than you might expect. As the Associated Press reported, “If the age of the wall is correct, the finding would be an indication that Jerusalem was home to a strong central government that had the resources and manpower needed to build massive fortifications in the 10th century B.C.”

That’s a direct contradiction to the views of some scholars who believe, as the AP puts it, “that David’s [and Solomon’s] monarchy was largely mythical and that there was no strong government to speak of in that era.”

No wonder that Mazar calls the wall “the most significant construction we have from First Temple days in Israel.” And if she’s right, we will have another link in the long chain of evidence that demonstrates the basic historical veracity of the Bible.

I don’t know about you… but this sort of thing simply makes me want to shout for joy, and gives me chills. It’s exciting.

At the same time, as Chuck Colson’s article points out at the link above, our belief isn’t based solely on external confirmation of specific data points in scripture, but also on the internal witness of the Scripture itself.  I can speak from my own experience that it was certain external aspects of the universe as described by science that first made me begin to take seriously some of the Bible’s claims.  But it wasn’t until I began to research the Bible on its own terms, and in its own context, that my confidence in the scripture was built. And it was built. It didn’t appear fully formed one day.

It continues to be built.

So, my opinion is that the primary value of external evidences  (archaeology, astronomy, other aspects of historical research, biology, etc.) is to suggest to skeptics that maybe just part of the Bible might be true, and make them curious enough to consider the rest.

The thing is, when you start to study it, read about the work of the best scholars, etc., you begin to realize you’re holding in your hands something utterly remarkable, and without precedent in your life.  And little by little, you begin to hear God speaking to you through it.  And so, in a sort of boot-strapping operation, you find that reading it leads you to God, who leads you to understand a bit more of it, which leads you back to God, who leads you to yet new understanding….  and so it goes.

It’s a lifetime activity.  You’ll never know all you need to know about the Bible, on the one hand, and on the other, what you have to know in order to seek God in it is remarkably little, just to start.

Not many books are suitable for beginners as well as the most advanced readers.

The next post in this series is here.

When an abortionist is killed by a crazy anti-abortion nutcase (which happens about once every decade), it makes big, big news, dominates the news for days, results in all kinds of editorials and dark pronouncements indicting Christians, talk radio, the political Right, the Republican party, and generally results in fulminations of all kinds.  But I’m willing to bet that most readers here have not heard that a  Jury Finds Michigan Man Guilty Who Shot Pro-Life Advocate Over Abortion Signs

A jury yesterday found guilty the man who shot pro-life advocate James Pouillon because he was upset with the graphic abortion signs he used when protesting abortion outside a local high school.

Apparently a murdered late-term abortionist is an object of public pity, virtually the loss of a national resource, but a murdered abortion protester is somewhere between routine and a big yawn.

Funny…  but I don’t recall hearing about this at the time it happened…  and I pay attention to a lot of the news.

Maybe I just missed it, but ABC, NBC, CBS and so on gave it a big play.  Somehow, I doubt it.