Wishing you a joyful New Year

I'm not sanguine about 2009; I don't think it's going to be, objectively and materially, a good year for America or the world.  That said, I hope and pray that even if it's a hard year for all of us, that God uses those difficulties and those challenges to make us a better, wiser, more mature, and more godly people, and thus that it will be a year that bears good fruit in this nation in the future; and I pray for everyone who reads this that God will richly bless you this coming year in ways you do not expect and cannot see coming now, such that whatever happens, you will look back on 2009 as a good year, and one filled with joy.

Happy New Year.

It all depends what the meaning of “is” is

In today’s daily piece on the First Things website, titled “The Good Life,” Amy Julia Becker meditates on what it means for life to be good as it is in the face of human disabilities—and in the face of those who vehemently deny that possibility. She begins with this quote from William Motley, an Oxford geneticist, from a letter to the editor of the New York Times:

Fighting Down syndrome with prenatal screening does not “border on eugenics.” It is a “search-and-destroy mission” on the disease, not on a category of citizens.

As Becker notes, this is merely an attempt to evade the fact that his “search-and-destroy mission” will in fact eliminate a category of citizens, regardless of whether they are declared to be its targets or not; he’s attempting to defend himself by redefining the reality, and thus by avoiding the argument rather than answering it. Put another way, he’s attempting to define the humanity of Down Syndrome children out of the discussion.

Which prompts the thought that there is no category of people with whom you couldn’t do the exact same thing. Want to get rid of homosexuals, or black people, or redheads? It’s not eugenics, just a “search-and-destroy mission” on a particular characteristic. All you need is for society to agree that that particular characteristic is undesirable, and boom! you’re free to proceed, unhampered by any of those pesky ethical considerations.

It’s just one more way to argue that society should be free to get rid of the inconvenient. Which seems fine, as long as you’re strong and productive and able to defend yourself. But those who live by that particular sword will die by it in the end. Sure, right now, everyone agrees that you’re a contributing member of society; but will they always?

The Washington Post and the liberal double standard

My heartfelt thanks to Paul Hinderaker for posting this classic letter to the editor from the Washington Post, from a chap named Martin Carr:

I've got to stop reading the Post. The Dec. 17 front-page fluff piece on Caroline Kennedy [Friends Say Kennedy Has Long Wanted Public Role] was nauseating. You devoted more than 1,200 words to the subject but none that addressed why she is qualified to take on the role of a U.S. Senator. Her maiden name—and I loved the part about how she has now abandoned her married name—is her only "qualification," and a dubious one at that.

What really irritated me was the paragraph about how her cousin thinks she'd be great because she's a mom and the Senate needs more such real people. Hmmm. . . . Seems to me we just had the "realest" person I can ever remember running for vice president—a mother of five who got involved in politics because she didn't like the way things were happening in her home town—and she was excoriated by The Post and other media outlets for being inexperienced and uninformed.

Caroline Kennedy's qualifications are nil, and I'm ashamed that The Post is pretending that she has some. Have you lost all sense of editorial balance and real journalism?

I have continued to be amazed at the way in which utterly unfounded and ridiculous slurs against Sarah Palin have been disseminated and believed for no other reason than that people dislike her party affiliation. Here, the Post has given us the flip side of that. And the MSM wonders why they have no credibility . . .

Samuel Huntington, RIP

I'm working with a fairly limited connection here at the moment, but I wanted to note the death of Harvard political scientist and author Samuel P. Huntington. Over the last decade, Dr. Huntington took a pounding from his fellow members of the liberal Western intelligentsia; when they wanted to join Francis Fukuyama in celebrating The End of History, he had the guts in his article "The Clash of Civilizations?" (and the resulting book, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order), to point out how foolish that triumphalism was. As Mark Steyn put it, Dr. Huntington's key point was that

the conventional western elite view of man as homo economicus is reductive—that cultural identity is a more profound indicator that western-style economic liberty cannot easily trump.

As a consequence, he argued that the post-Cold War era would not see the end of major conflict, but rather would see a shift from wars of ideology to wars driven by conflicts between cultures—and particularly by the conflict along "Islam's bloody borders." He was pilloried for his argument, but it seems to me that history has validated his analysis, where Dr. Fukuyama's position has fallen by the wayside. For those interested in reading more, Power Line has a good short roundup of pieces on Dr. Huntington, including Robert Kaplan's excellent profile of him in The Atlantic. For his insight, his capacity for independent thought, and his willingness to follow out his analysis in the face of the conventional wisdom, Dr. Huntington will be greatly missed.

A nod to the Browncoats

I've been meaning to post this and hadn't gotten around to doing so, but now's probably as good a time as ever; so, apropos of nothing in particular, here's the title sequence to the late, much lamented show Firefly:

I do hope that someday we get the rest of the story; and I particularly hope that that includes Whedon resurrecting the characters he so callously killed off. (Yes, people die, but under the circumstances, I think that really was a callous way to treat the actors in question.)

The world's wait and the church's mission

When Christ came to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, he inaugurated the kingdom of God on earth; in forbearing to declare the day of God’s vengeance, he put off its consummation. He established a time of mercy, with judgment held off; which means that while the patience of God is extended to sinners—which is all of us—the world continues to wait for its complete redemption, and for the fullness of the kingdom of God.

Sometimes people cry out against that fact, asking with the Psalmist, “How long, O Lord? How long will the wicked prosper? How long will you let the injustice and suffering of the world go on?” We don’t have answers for those questions, because God hasn’t given us those answers; we don’t know when Christ will come again to set everything finally right, and so we don’t know why he hasn’t come back already. But what we do have, as we contemplate the child in the manger, is a response to those questions. Indeed, in a way, we are the response to those questions, or ought to be. God responded to the wickedness and injustice and suffering in this world by sending his Son Jesus Christ, and Christ left us behind to continue his work until all the world has heard the good news and the time is right for him to return; and as this world waits for that fulfillment, that wait is our opportunity to work on his behalf as his agents and representatives, as the agents and representatives of the world which is to come.

What this means is, we as the church aren’t just about gathering for an hour or two on Sunday mornings. This is an important part of our life in Christ, as we come together to worship him and to be trained for the rest of our mission, it’s the beginning of everything we do, but it’s only the beginning. When Jesus returned to the Father, he left us behind to shine his light into every corner of the world—both outward, into the areas of our society and other places around the globe where his name is not known, or where people know his name but resist him, and inward, into the darkest places in our own hearts. Our mission is to follow the example of the one who sent us—the one who told the truth so clearly and unflinchingly that people finally killed him for it—so that all those who seek the light of God may find it.

(Excerpted, edited, from “The Incoming Kingdom”)

Living between

“Whereas you have been forsaken and hated, with no one passing through,
I will make you majestic forever, a joy from age to age.
You shall suck the milk of nations; you shall nurse at the breast of kings;
and you shall know that I, the LORD, am your Savior
and your Redeemer, the Mighty One of Jacob.

“Instead of bronze I will bring gold, and instead of iron I will bring silver;
instead of wood, bronze, instead of stones, iron.
I will make your overseers peace and your taskmasters righteousness.
Violence shall no more be heard in your land,
devastation or destruction within your borders;
you shall call your walls Salvation, and your gates Praise.

“The sun shall be no more your light by day,
nor for brightness shall the moon give you light;
but the LORD will be your everlasting light, and your God will be your glory.
Your sun shall no more go down, nor your moon withdraw itself;
for the LORD will be your everlasting light, and your days of mourning shall be ended.
Your people shall all be righteous; they shall possess the land forever,
the branch of my planting, the work of my hands,
that I might be glorified.
The least one shall become a clan, and the smallest one a mighty nation;
I am the LORD;
in its time I will hasten it.”

The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me,
because the LORD has anointed me to bring good news to the poor;
he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives,
and the opening of the prison to those who are bound;
to proclaim the year of the LORD’s favor,
and the day of vengeance of our God;
to comfort all who mourn;
to grant to those who mourn in Zion—
to give them a beautiful headdress instead of ashes,
the oil of gladness instead of mourning,
the garment of praise instead of a faint spirit;
that they may be called oaks of righteousness,
the planting of the LORD, that he may be glorified.
They shall build up the ancient ruins; they shall raise up the former devastations;
they shall repair the ruined cities, the devastations of many generations.
Strangers shall stand and tend your flocks;
foreigners shall be your plowmen and vinedressers;
but you shall be called the priests of the LORD;
they shall speak of you as the ministers of our God;
you shall eat the wealth of the nations, and in their glory you shall boast.

—Isaiah 60:15-61:6 (ESV)

And [Jesus] came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. And as was his custom, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and he stood up to read. And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll
and found the place where it was written,

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives
and recovering of sight to the blind,
to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

And he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him.
And he began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

—Luke 4:16-21 (ESV)

When Nazi Germany fired the first shots of World War II in 1939, their enemies were ill-prepared for the assault, and by 1942 Germany and its allies controlled most of Europe, including a large chunk of Russia, and almost all of North Africa. By the spring of 1943, however, the tide of war had turned; the Nazis had been driven out of Africa and had lost much of their ground in Russia. That summer, the Allies invaded Italy, and by September of 1943 Italy had surrendered. Most of northern Italy remained Nazi-controlled after that, however, and the Italian mountains prevented the Allies from gaining much ground there. It was clear that an invasion of France was necessary.

On June 6, 1944, D-Day, the Allies invaded northern France, in the region known as Normandy. Planning for the assault assigned five different landing zones. American troops hit Utah and Omaha Beaches; the British took Gold and Sword Beaches; and Canadian infantry and armor were assigned to Juno Beach. The troops at Utah Beach landed in the wrong area, and their mistake meant that they met little resistance and thus had great success; Omaha Beach, by contrast, was quite strongly defended, and the invaders there took heavy casualties before finally establishing a small beachhead. The situation of the Brits and Canadians was somewhere in between, as they faced hard fighting but succeeded in driving several miles inland.

The Germans’ only real hope of fending off the invasion had been to drive the Allies back off the beach, and they had failed. From this point, the Allies made steady gains, and by September 15, 1944, they had reached the borders of Germany itself. The Nazis did launch one last offensive that December, sparking a battle which would become known as the Battle of the Bulge, but the offensive failed, and on May 7, 1945, Nazi Germany formally surrendered; in Europe, World War II was over. But though the fighting in Europe didn’t end until that day in May, which was quickly dubbed V-E Day, that wasn’t when the war was won; to all intents and purposes, the war ended on D-Day, when the Allied invasion of Normandy succeeded, because Germany’s last real hope of avoiding defeat depended on keeping those armies from securing that beachhead. Once they failed there, the rest of the war was nothing more than a formality, for all the suffering and death it brought; Hitler might just as well have sued for peace on June 7, 1944, for all the good fighting was going to do him. On that day, while the Allies had not yet defeated Germany, they had already won; their victory was already assured, it just was not yet fully realized, because the enemy refused to accept their defeat. As a consequence, they had to keep waiting, and suffering, and working, in order to bring about the victory they had already earned.

As Christians, we’re in much the same position. On the one hand, when we look at the description Isaiah gives us of the kingdom of God, we see a beautiful and glorious picture of God’s reign, a staggering promise of what he will do in the future—but something which is clearly not the world as we know it. “No longer will violence be heard in your land.” “The sun will no more be your light by day,” nor will the moon light the night, “for the Lord will be your everlasting light . . . and your days of sorrow will end. Your people will all be righteous . . .” Good news to the oppressed, healing for the brokenhearted, liberty to the captives, release for the prisoners, comfort for all who mourn; the day of the Lord’s favor on those who seek him, and his vengeance on the wicked. The devastations of the ages repaired, and the erosion of centuries undone. This is a long way from the reality we find in the morning paper.

And yet, granted that undeniable fact, there’s something else that needs to be said as well. In one of his very first public appearances, Jesus read from the heart of this passage, and then proclaimed, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” At other times he said the same thing in different ways, declaring, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe the good news.” This great promise, this future which Jesus taught was coming, he also declares to have already come. The kingdom of God is not yet here, it still remains to be realized, but in Jesus Christ and his Holy Spirit it’s already here among us.

You can see this clearly in the way Jesus uses Isaiah 61. He reads the promise of verse 1, declares that he has come to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor—and then stops. He doesn’t go on to announce “the day of vengeance of our God,” he stops. Jesus in his first coming—and ultimately, on the cross—began this process, but he didn’t finish it; he inaugurated the kingdom of God on earth, but he didn’t bring it fully into being. That’s left to his second coming, which is still in the future. That’s why Scripture says repeatedly that we are in the last days; the dramatic stuff that Revelation talks about hasn’t happened yet—or at least not for the last time—but that could be right around the corner. In every way that matters, we have been in the last days for two thousand years, ever since Christ came, because that was D-Day. The war which has been raging on earth ever since our ultimate grandparents first disobeyed God has already been won; the only question remaining is how much more fighting there will be.

Which means that the work Christ began is still going on—in us. We as Christians live between the times, between D-Day and V-E Day; we live in two realities at once. We live in the present reality that Jesus brought the kingdom of God to earth, brought us into his kingdom by his death and resurrection, and sealed us to himself by giving us his Holy Spirit; and so we look back and we celebrate his first coming at Christmas. At the same time, we do not live in his perfected kingdom, but in a fallen, sin-soaked, pain-haunted, temptation-riddled, death-scarred world, and we cling to the hope of what God has promised us; and so we look forward in anticipation of Christ’s second coming, when all will be made more right than we can now imagine. As Christians, we look forward and backward at once, because we live between the times, citizens of two worlds at the same time. We live as the representatives of a future that is not only coming, but incoming; there is a new world breaking in to this one, and we’re the thin point of the wedge, the point of contact.

This has profound implications for our understanding of our earthly allegiances. Yes, we serve others in this world—our family, our friends, our communities, the organizations which employ us, our nation—but we don’t belong to them. We don’t truly work for this world, we work for Christ, and Christ alone. We live backwards to the rest of the world—we live from the future to the present, and our ultimate allegiance is to a kingdom which has not yet fully come. We are, right now, the kingdom of God on this earth; we are the incoming kingdom, which will fully come when Christ returns in glory, and we are called to live in the light of his coming, according to his agenda, not this world’s, and not our own. We’ve been given a message for the world—now is the acceptable time, now is the year of the Lord’s favor, and the day of his vengeance has been put on hold to give as many people as possible a chance to respond—and we need to share it with as many people as we can. We’ve been given the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, and we need to shine that light wherever we go, in every conversation we have and on every issue we face. Sometimes that will square with what this world recognizes as good, and we’ll be praised for it; sometimes it will bring us into conflict with the powers that be and with the ruling assumptions of our culture, and we’ll be criticized. Whichever it is, we need to follow Christ as faithfully as we’re able, regardless of what anyone else thinks of us. This is the work God has given us to do while we wait.

(Excerpted, edited, from “The Incoming Kingdom”)

Christmas meditation

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him; nothing that has been made was made without him. In him was life, and the life was the light of all people.
The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

—John 1:1-5

Have you ever wondered why Jesus was born at night? We sing about it in any number of our carols—“Silent Night”; “It Came upon the Midnight Clear”; “O Holy Night”; “Lo! How a Rose E’er Blooming,”; “O Little Town of Bethlehem”; “Away in a Manger”; and of course, the various references to the shepherds watching their flocks by night. Above Bethlehem’s “deep and dreamless sleep,” “the stars in the sky looked down where he lay”—where, if you believe the carols, he lay sleeping peacefully next to his mother, then woke up without crying, which would make him a most implausible newborn. (We like to imagine it that way, but somehow, after three kids of my own, I don’t buy it.)  But in any case, we have this mental picture—still, quiet night; sweet hay, contented animals; quiet, happy baby, radiant mother; and the stars shining serenely down on this beautiful scene—have you ever asked why it should be that way? There’s no particular reason Jesus couldn’t have been born at 3 in the afternoon or 10 in the morning, after all; why was he born at night?

Some might say the question’s meaningless, that there was no reason, but I don’t believe that—God doesn’t waste anything, and he doesn’t do anything without a reason. Granted, we can’t know for sure what that reason was, but I think it’s a question worth asking, and trying to answer. You might argue it was because of the star—so that the star could shine, and be seen, from the moment of his birth; there’s probably truth to that, but for my part, I think there’s something bigger going on here. I think, just as with God’s command to Hosea to go marry a woman who would be unfaithful to him, what we have here is a parable brought to life. Jesus wasn’t born when the world was bright and sunny, he was born in the darkest part of the night, when there was little light by which to see. He was born at the time when the rhythms and the energy of human life are lowest, when we are most vulnerable—physically, emotionally, spiritually—when it’s hardest to think clearly and easiest to make mistakes. I don’t think that’s just a physical fact—I think it’s a metaphor, and one to which we need to pay close attention.

Now, you might think this is just me, but it isn’t. Here’s another question: have you ever wondered why we celebrate Christmas in late December? No, it’s not because he was born in December; I know we have carols like “In the Bleak Midwinter” and “Do You Hear What I Hear?” with their images of “snow on snow on snow” as the baby Jesus “shivers in the cold,” but he wasn’t born in December; rather, he was born in March or April. That’s why the shepherds were out in the fields with their flocks—it was lambing season. But when the early church was formalizing everything, the date for the Christ Mass was set in late December, not early April, for two very good reasons. One, having Easter and Christmas about the same time would have left the spring calendar way too crowded—not an insignificant point.  More importantly, though, they wanted the symbolism of celebrating the birth of Christ during the darkest part of the year, the time when the night is longest and coldest. The early church picked up the image of the Light of the World coming in the dark of the night, and they set Christmas at a time which would emphasize it, just past the longest night of the year.

This is an important thing for us to remember when we think about Christmas. After all, if you stop and think about your images of this season, you probably think of Christmas trees, gifts, ornaments, stockings . . . and lights. Lots of lights. Lights on Christmas trees, on houses, on businesses; light-up wire deer in people’s yards, and flashing lights spelling out “Season’s Greetings” over the garage door of a house; icicle lights, strings of white lights, blue lights, colored lights; during our vacation in Arizona a couple years ago, we even saw people stringing the cacti in their front yards with Christmas lights. No evergreens? No problem—just put the lights on whatever you have. We can go without a real pine or fir tree, but it seems we can’t celebrate Christmas, we can’t even imagine it, without lights everywhere and everywhere.

Which is good, and as it should be, because Christmas is about light, as John shows us—it’s about the Light of the World, born as one of us. But if we only focus on the light, we miss half the story, because the Light didn’t come into a world full of light; the star didn’t shine at high noon of midsummer. No, the Light came in the darkness of the night, to a world in desperate need. It’s all too easy to forget that, when things are going well, when we have family and friends around us; it’s easy, when we have food on the table, money to pay the bills, and lots of love and joy in our lives, to wrap ourselves in a little bubble of light and let ourselves forget the darkness. It’s easy to forget that there are those in darkness who need the light.

That’s a sad thing, because there are many for whom this world is dark indeed. Those who are lonely, those who feel unloved or rejected, know well the darkness of the world; so do those who are struggling to keep their marriage together, or who are trying as hard as they can to help someone they love get free of an addiction to drugs or alcohol, or to do so themselves. For those among us who have recently had someone they love die, who have lost the light they knew in that person’s life, the world can be very dark, and it can be very hard to see any light at all. There are a lot of hurting people in this world, a lot of people for whom life is very dark; and unfortunately, for many, the way the world celebrates Christmas only makes matters worse, which is why depression rates worsen significantly at this time of the year. After all, if you’re unhappy, what help is it to hear the constant message, “Don’t be sad! ’Tis the season to be jolly”? To quote the singer/songwriter/worship leader Dwight Beal, “it’s like seeing a great party and not having an invitation.”

This is why, as much as we emphasize the light, we need to take our cue from John and remember the darkness, too. “Light” is one of John’s favorite words, popping up all over his gospel, but he never forgot where the light shines—it shines in the darkness. And note that present tense—not “shone,” but “shines.” God said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” and that light hasn’t stopped shining yet. The light of the Word, who is the Light of the World, shone into the darkness at the beginning of creation, lighting everything as the world was spun out of nothing; the light continued to shine on, and in, the first human beings; after their fall into sin, it continued to shine through the darkness of our fallen world; it shone most brightly of all in Jesus, when the Word was born as a fellow human being; and it continues to shine through his teaching, and—however imperfectly—through us, the church he left behind him, who are his body. In the darkness, the light shines. The darkness tried to put out the light, nailing Jesus to a cross, but even there, it failed, for the light only shone far brighter when he rose again from the grave. The light shines, and the darkness did not overcome it, for it cannot. Though battles may still rage, the war is over; the victory is won. Jesus has won.

These are the “tidings of comfort and joy” which we bring at Christmas—not just “be happy because everybody else is happy,” but “be happy because no matter how dark things get, the light still shines.” As the carol has it, “Let nothing you dismay; remember, Christ our savior was born upon this day to save us all from Satan’s power when we had gone astray.” To celebrate Christmas by pretending for a while that the darkness isn’t there is to miss the point entirely; the message of Christmas is that God knows the darkness in this world—including the darkness you face, whatever it may be, however deep it may be—and that Jesus is his answer to it. Jesus came because of the darkness, to light up the darkness—and ultimately dispel it.

British atheist declares, "Africa needs God."

And amazingly, his reasons are not merely practical, nor rooted in some sort of dismissive idea that "primitive people need religion"; they are, if I may say so, theological, and quite respectful.  It's a remarkable article, and I encourage you to read it.

HT:  Hot Air

A little more music for Christmas

This is a medley of "God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen" and "We Three Kings of Orient Are" done in a folk-rock style by the Barenaked Ladies and Sarah McLachlan.  Great track, imho.  The video is just the words (with, annoyingly, a few errors).

HT:  Ed Morrissey

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night

Here's hoping all of you have a glorious Christmas full of the love of God and the wonder of the Incarnation.

Carol for Christmas Eve

This is probably my favorite Christmas carol (not counting "Joy to the World," since as I noted earlier, it's not really a Christmas song).  There's no hope of undoing George Whitfield's edits to Charles Wesley's text, since they're embedded even in the common title—but we would still do well to include the verses he cut.

Hark! the Herald Angels Sing

Hark! the herald angels sing
Glory to the newborn King,
Peace on earth and mercy mild,
God and sinners reconciled!
Joyful all ye nations rise,
Join the triumph of the skies;
With th' angelic host proclaim,
"Christ is born in Bethlehem!"

Hark! the herald angels sing
Glory to the newborn King.

Christ, by highest heaven adored,
Christ, the everlasting Lord,
Late in time behold him come,
Offspring of the virgin's womb!
Veiled in flesh the Godhead see:
Hail th' incarnate Deity,
Pleased as man with men to dwell,
Jesus, our Immanuel!

Hark! the herald angels sing
Glory to the newborn King.

Hail the heaven-born Prince of Peace!
Hail the Sun of Righteousness!
Light and life to all he brings,
Risen with healing in his wings.
Mild, he lays his glory by,
Born that man no more may die,
Born to raise the sons of earth,
Born to give them second birth.

Hark! the herald angels sing
Glory to the newborn King.

Come, desire of nations, come,
Fix in us thy humble home;
Rise, the woman's conquering seed,
Bruise in us the serpent's head.
Now display thy saving power,
Ruin'd nature now restore;
Now in mystic union join
Thine to ours, and ours to thine.

Hark! the herald angels sing
Glory to the newborn King.

Adam's likeness, Lord, efface,
Stamp thy image in its place.
Second Adam from above,
Reinstate us in thy love.
Let us thee, though lost, regain,
Thee, the life, the inner man:
O, to all thyself impart,
Form'd in each believing heart.

Hark! the herald angels sing
Glory to the newborn King.

Words:  Charles Wesley, alt. George Whitfield, Martin Madan,
and William Hayman Cummings
Music:  Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy,
adapted and arranged by William Hayman Cummings
MENDELSSOHN, 7.7.7.7.7.7.7.7.7.7.

Weather and computers don't mix

Why the power outages would come a couple days after the ice storm I have no idea, but so it has been; and why the ISP our church uses should have their DSL down I don't know either, but so also it has been.  As such, this is a very low-connectivity period for us; I'm hoping that will change very soon, as it's quite irritating and more than a little limiting.

Seasonal frustration

I've heard a lot of people complain about having Christmas decorations and Christmas music in all the stores starting the day after Thanksgiving, and I get where they're coming from, but I don't exactly agree; in particular, even if it is properly Advent, Christmas music at least has the potential to be far better than the normal run of store music.  

No, what I really object to is the kind of so-called "Christmas" music we usually get these days:  to wit, "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer," "Jingle Bells," "Jingle Bell Rock," "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree," and this year, what might be the worst song Paul McCartney ever wrote (something called "Wonderful Christmastime"), spiced with the occasional Frank Sinatra or Bing Crosby tune, in seemingly unending rotation, courtesy of various singers and bands.  (The other day I heard a version of "Jingle Bell Rock" that was so awful and so over the top I broke out laughing; I think it's the only positive experience I've ever had of that song, which I loathe to the very core of my being.)

For crying out loud, if they're going to play Christmas music at all, would it kill them to play music that's actually about, you know, Christmas?

Arab leaders to Israel: "Take the shot!"

OK, now this is interesting:  apparently, Israel is being encouraged to target and kill the leaders of Hamas—encouraged not by the West, but by Arab leaders.  According to a report posted on Power Line,

Israel's Maariv reports unnamed heads of Arab states that have passed diplomatic messages to Jerusalem encouraging Israel to kill Iranian funded and trained Hamas leaders in the Gaza Strip in response to Hamas' firing of scores of rockets against Southern Israel during the current "cease fire".

What some Middle East policy analysts and diplomats in Washington may not realize with respect to increasingly optimistic Western assessments of Hamas as a diplomatic partner is that today's news report in Israel reflects more the rule in Arab capitals than the exception. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak expressed his concern to the Arab press that "Egypt shares a border with Iran following Hamas' May 2008 rocket assault on the Israeli city of Ashkelon with Iranian manufactured grad rockets.

Earlier this month Egyptian Foreign Minister Egypt's Ahmed Abul Gheit warned that Cairo would never accept an "Islamic emirate" in Gaza—a key stated goal of Hamas. Mohammad Abdallah Al Zulfa, member of The Saudi Shoura Council said yesterday on the Arab network's Alhurra news program that "Iran is the big threat in today's world, supporting all the terrorists from Hamas to Hezbollah to some other terrorists that we don't know their names yet". "Iran destabilized the region by supporting all the illegal activities and activists such as Hamas. . . ."

Sounds to me like the leaders of Israel's Arab neighbors have figured out they're next on the hit list and are hoping to use Israel as a proxy to do what they themselves dare not (because of the PR fallout, and the chance of Iranian retaliation).

Avery Cardinal Dulles, RIP

I'm not sure how I missed this, though part of it is that I had gone a week or two without checking the First Things website; his death last Friday wasn't surprising, given that he was 90 years old and in poor health, but it's still a loss for the church.  As Joseph Bottum summarized his career,

Created cardinal for his theological work by John Paul II, Avery Dulles was one of the great figures of the twentieth century: a theologian, an intellectual, a teacher, a writer, a lecturer, and a kind and gentle man.

In his long life, he wrote more than 700 articles and twenty-two books, and it is hard to imagine how anyone today can fill the roles he played in the Catholic world and American public life. As the disease that took his life progressed, his final months were a trial that took away his powers to speak, write, and move. But he seemed, in those months, to live even more serenely, more spiritually, and more beautifully. May God welcome him home.

Bottum's obituary of Cardinal Dulles expands this, and tells in brief the story of a remarkable life.  It is a strange thing that the great-grandson of one Secretary of State (John Watson Foster), great-nephew of a second (Robert Lansing), son of a third (John Foster Dulles), and nephew of a Director of Central Intelligence (Allen Dulles) should become known not as a government official but as a Catholic theologian, but such was the mystery of God.  A profound thinker and a man of grace both in his theology and in his life, he, like the pope who ordained him cardinal, represented the Roman church at its very best.  Requiescat in pace, Avery Robert Dulles.

Carol of the Week

This great hymn by Isaac Watts is commonly miscast as a Christmas hymn, when Watts didn't write it for Christmas and it really has nothing particularly to do with the birth of Christ; it's actually a better fit for this season of Advent, since what it's really about is Christ's Second Coming.

Joy to the World

Joy to the world! the Lord is come;
Let earth receive her King.
Let every heart prepare him room,
And heaven and nature sing.

Joy to the world! the Savior reigns;
Let men their songs employ,
While fields and floods, rocks, hills and plains,
Repeat the sounding joy.

No more let sins and sorrows grow,
Nor thorns infest the ground;
He comes to make his blessings flow
Far as the curse is found.

He rules the world with truth and grace,
And makes the nations prove
The glories of his righteousness,
And wonders of his love.

Words:  Isaac Watts
Music:  Lowell Mason, from a theme by George Frederick Handel
ANTIOCH, 8.6.8.6.6.6.

An ice day

It's definitely high winter in the Midwest.  The heaviest weight of this storm fell north of us, but we got a respectable amount of ice last night, though the temperature did rise above freezing and start melting some of that this afternoon; it will be interesting to see what the weekend brings.  Anyway, I thought I'd post a few pictures (the rest after the break), because as destructive as they can be, ice storms are beautiful, too.

That tree isn't having a good year; it had one of its trunks (if that's the right word for them) break off earlier this year, and now it's lost another one to the ice:

There's even a little green under the ice:

For Eli

I saw this in The Classic FM Pocket Book of Music, which I ran across at Dr. Kavanaugh's house; this is the entry on the French horn:

A member of the brass family, if this instrument was uncoiled it would not only stretch for more than three metres, it would also give you something to do on a Sunday afternoon.  Best not attempted during the quiet bit in a concert, though.  Great composers for the horn include Mozart and Richard Strauss.

And just to be fair, here's what they have to say about mine own instrument, the bassoon:

The bassoon is the lowest woodwind instrument of the orchestra.  It looks something like a didgeridoo wearing too much jewellery, but with an espresso frother coming out of the side.  In fact, just like espresso, it too comes in single and double varieties.

Government aid: the real "trickle-down economy"

Liberals react to times of conservative ascendancy in economic policy by deriding the "trickle-down economy"; even in times such as these which are far from that, you can see this derision lurking behind liberal critiques of the Wall Street rescue package.  The irony of this is that, as Thomas Sowell has pointed out, the modern liberal approach to helping the poor is actually its own form of trickle-down economics—the only difference is that the substrate through which the money trickles is government rather than the private sector.  

This might seem like a minor difference, but it really isn't.  In the private sector, the people at the bottom are in the same system as the people in the middle levels; in the government sector, they aren't.  Thus, in the private sector, as the money trickles down to the folks in the lowest-paying jobs, it helps create new higher-paying jobs, opening up opportunities for those folks to move up the ladder and make more money.  In the government sector, as the money trickles down to be paid out to clients, it also helps create new government jobs—which benefits people in government, but does not create opportunities for those on the bottom (in most cases, at least).

Thus the key is that "trickle-down economy" is really a misnomer as applied to the private sector, because what really matters isn't the movement downward but the opportunities it creates for movement upward as it opens cracks in the substrate.  It is, however, an accurate descriptor of the government-assistance economy—and thus it's here that we really hit the reality that expecting money to trickle down to those in need is a highly inefficient way to distribute it.  As Michael Novak writes, citing Sowell, in the latest First Things (excerpted here—it's not even up on the site yet),

if you add up all the money that Congress has designated for the relief of the poor, the total turns out to be more than would be required simply to give every poor family some $30,000 in cash per year. Another way to look at it: Most of the American poor already have significant income, if not quite enough to lift them above the poverty level. If one calculates the gap between the financial benefits they already enjoy and the full sum that would lift them above the poverty level, it turns out to be a much smaller amount than is currently designated to be spent for their benefit. As the economist Thomas Sowell writes, to try to feed the swallows by feeding the horses is an immensely inefficient way to get help to the swallows. The middlemen in poverty programs often fare far better than the poor. Direct cash grants might be far more efficient.

I think they would, especially since (as Barack Obama has already proposed, and George McGovern before him) the disbursement could be handled through the IRS; you'd want some sort of sliding scale at the top end so as not to provide people with a powerful incentive to remain officially poor, but a grant program like this that was funded by the complete abolition of the federal welfare bureaucracy would be, I suspect, both more efficient and more effective than the programs we have now.  It would also have the advantage of transparency, and thus intellectual honesty, about what the government is really doing here:  namely, taking money from some people to give to others.  Doing both in terms of the tax code would provide much greater clarity about how much, and to whom, and on what basis.  Given these advantages, I think this would be a proposal conservatives could gladly support.

Time for damage control?

According to the Chicago Sun-Times (your source for all the sordid details about Chicago politics that the media didn't want you to know before November 4),

President-elect Barack Obama's chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, is reportedly on 21 different taped conversations by the feds—dealing with his boss' vacant Senate seat!

As Hugh Hewitt notes,

Given Emanuel's deserved reputations for smarts and toughness, it is likely he wasn't approached by Blago on the pay-to-play conspiracy, but the prospect of blunt talk between the congressman and the governor about many subjects and people has to be unsettling to the president-elect and his most important aide.

Unfortunately for the incoming administration, once he's indicted, Blagojevich is entitled to copies of all those tapes as part of the government's responsibility to disclose all the evidence against him, which means that

the prospect of slow, selective leaking of parts of the exchanges is part of the calculation about political damage now underway at the office of the president-elect. The president-elect would be best served by calling on the U.S. Attorney to release any and all tapes between any of his advisor or staff and Blagojevich and his staff. Better to get all of the shop talk, however salty, out early and completely than drip by drip over the next few months.

It will be interesting to see if Barack Obama (or Rep. Emanuel) is savvy enough to do exactly that, or if the Obama team will instead follow the example of most politicians by turtling up and hoping for the best.  In most cases, that's a disastrous strategy which only maximizes the damage; however, given that during the campaign, the media made it work for the Obama team by sweeping everything under the rug as fast as they possibly could, they may well be tempted to try it again here.  In this case, given that there's a federal investigation involved, it isn't likely to work, but you never know.

The overwhelming coming of God

The beginning of the gospel about Jesus Christ, the Son of God. 

It is written in Isaiah the prophet,

“I will send my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way”—

“a voice of one calling in the desert, ‘Prepare the way for the Lord,

make straight paths for him.’”

And so John came, baptizing in the desert region and preaching a baptism of repentance

for the forgiveness of sins.

—Mark 1:1-4

For God to be born as a human being was a wonderful thing for this world; it was also a deeply perilous thing for us. John the Baptizer understood this, and the writers of the Scripture understood this, even if we too often don’t. That’s why we have this curious little thing here in Mark, which I highlighted in this post: he says, “As it is written in Isaiah,” and then he doesn’t quote Isaiah, he quotes Malachi. It’s only after he’s thrown Malachi in there that he gets to Isaiah. The folks who like to look for errors and contradictions in Scripture jump all over this one, but the truth is, this is no mistake.

It is, rather, the first example of a structure Mark uses in a number of places in his gospel—scholars call them “sandwiches,” in a rare example of a technical term which is actually intelligible.  By way of illustration, you can find another in Mark 11, in his telling of the story of the cursing of the fig tree.  Jesus curses the fig tree, it withers, and he uses that to teach the disciples a lesson. But Mark doesn’t tell that story straight through; instead, he separates it, and in between, he puts the story of the cleansing of the temple. The cursing of the fig tree “sandwiches” this story. Mark does this to give added emphasis to the cleansing of the temple, and to tell us that these two events belong together—we can’t really understand one of them without understanding the other one.

It’s the same thing here. Mark says, “As it is written in Isaiah . . . the voice of one crying in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way of the Lord.’” But he doesn’t leave this in one piece—he separates it, and in between the two halves, he puts Malachi 3:1.  It’s jarring—intentionally so, I think—as an audience expecting the great promise-proclamation of Isaiah 40 (because what else would he be quoting, given the context?  They knew their Scripture) gets instead the foreboding of judgment of Malachi 3, and the message that we can't take Isaiah's hope without Malachi's warning.

God came to earth, and is coming again, to deliver us from the power of sin and death, and to bring an end to all oppression and injustice; but we cannot imagine ourselves to be guiltless in this respect, and so as part of this, he comes to cleanse and refine his people, washing and burning away all our impurities.  Thus Malachi asks rightly, “Who can endure the day of his coming? Who can stand when he appears?” because even for those who love and fear him, his coming will not be easy—it will be overwhelming.  He will come not to affirm us as we are as wonderful people, but rather to purify us—to complete the work of smelting away all the slag and the dross in our lives. 

In the face of that, who can stand? None of us. Not even one. The good news is, though, we don’t have to.  As the singer-songwriter Sarah Masen put it, “The fool stands only to fall, but the wise trip on grace.” All we can do is cast ourselves on the grace of God, on the price paid for us by Christ on the cross; all we can do is lay all of ourselves at his feet and let him refine us and purify us until we can bear his joy, his love, his goodness, his holiness, his peace.

(Excerpted, edited, from “Who Can Stand?”)

Birds, bees, and guinea pigs

Most days, the route I take to and from the church takes me past one of our town's pet shops; and for the last while, one side of their sign has been advertising "BABY GUINEA PIGS & STARTER KITS."  Maybe it's just me, but wouldn't a starter kit for a baby guinea pig be a mommy and daddy guinea pig?

Just wondering.

The perilous presence of God

I learned a lesson last week: preaching on waiting can be just as dangerous as praying for patience. I told the congregation that we need to learn to see waiting not as wasted time but rather as a productive part of God's work in our lives, and I guess he decided to put me to the test on the subject—I think I got to know every single one of the slowest drivers in this county on a first-license-plate basis. I spent the week waiting on the folks who don’t turn right on reds, and the ones who don’t go when the light turns green; I found myself behind one driver after another who was afraid to get within five miles an hour of the speed limit, except when God decided I needed a little variety and put me behind a guy going ten under. It was rather frustrating—at least until I realized God had made me my own sermon illustration, and then I was able to laugh at it.

For all the inherent risks, though, I decided to keep talking about this, because God does make us wait, and it’s important for us to understand why; it’s important that we see this as part of God’s work, and resist being tempted into finding something else to do. In our society in which the most-pressed button in the elevator is the “door close” button because we can’t wait ten seconds for it to close by itself, we need to understand who and what we’re waiting for, and that the waiting is necessary to prepare us for his coming. It's necessary because without the work God does in us while we wait, we won't be able to endure it when he comes.

We have a tendency to miss that, because the images we have of Christmas are such beautiful and non-threatening ones—“mother and child, holy infant so tender and mild,” with the animals watching cutely nearby. In our imaginations, even the shepherds are sanitized. Christmas is a joyous celebration, so our natural instinct is to make it safe and happy and fun, with no sharp edges anywhere in sight. The thing is, though, the coming of Jesus wasn’t like that, and his second coming won’t be either. One of the things I most appreciate about Narnia is the way in which C. S. Lewis captures this—when Aslan appears, it’s always a wonderful thing, but it’s never easy or merely pleasant, even for those who love him best; as Mr. Beaver says of him, he’s good, but he isn’t safe.

Indeed, he isn’t safe precisely because he’s good; this is why, as is so often said of him, he isn’t a tame lion. True goodness, true joy, true holiness, true love—anything which is an aspect of the character of God—these are all wonderful things, but also very perilous, because they’re powerful and deeply real; the petty parts of us, our shameful little desires and our selfish whims, cannot endure their presence. There’s a real pain that comes with any sort of intense encounter with God, or with someone who is very close to God, as those parts of ourselves are burned away or driven into hiding—or roused to fight back. This is what the judgment and wrath of God really mean: not that he picks people out and punishes them because he doesn’t like them, but simply that to our sinful natures, the goodness and holiness and love and joy and peace of God, all of his character, are intolerably painful; we can either choose to draw close to him, and allow his presence to purge us of our sin, or we can cling to our sin, and be purged of his presence.  God loves us as we are, but he cannot leave us as we are if he is to bring us to himself—we would never survive the experience.

(Excerpted, edited, from “Who Can Stand?”)

The best argument I've seen for the auto bailout

comes from Jonathan Rauch, writing in National Journal; having spent considerable time recently around General Motors for a story on the Chevy Volt, Rauch has seen quite a lot of the company's culture and internal processes, and his report suggests a strong possibility that a government loan might actually work—that the company (and, one hopes, also Ford and Chrysler) might be able to use the time the loan would buy them to finish making the changes they need to make to compete on an equal footing with the rest of the world's auto manufacturers.  Rauch writes,

Today, GM's factories are only about 6 percent less efficient than Toyota's, according to Oliver Wyman, a consulting firm, and the remaining gap will shrink as new labor agreements kick in. The company's cars are winning awards and critical plaudits. The 2008 Chevy Malibu, a hit with both buyers and analysts, represents a breakthrough: a midsize sedan that can go toe-to-toe with Toyota's ubiquitous Camry without flinching. Whether GM can consistently replicate the Malibu and other recent successes remains to be seen, but the vehicles in the pipeline look promising. . . .

What I found this year was a far cry from complacency. The ranks of line executives and engineers are thick with members of the Obama generation, who barely remember when GM was fat and happy. They are hungry to change the beleaguered company and prove its critics wrong. They are also piercingly critical of the old GM, candid to the point of eagerness in owning up to and analyzing the company's mistakes and faults. The decades of denial are over.

To succeed they will need a healthy balance sheet. Here, the problems are with legacy costs: uncompetitive pensions and benefits, rigid labor contracts, too many brands and dealers, and so on. The good news is that the company has succeeded at reducing its structural costs. It has shed more than 40 percent of its jobs and about 1,000 dealers since 2004; negotiated fully competitive wage scales for new hires; extinguished the Oldsmobile brand; and transferred retirement and health costs to its unions. The bad news is that those changes were sufficient only if everything went right economically.

In its rescue proposal to Congress, GM practically begged for a strong federal overseer with the power to force unions, dealers, and creditors to accept further retrenchment. GM wants the stick of a bankruptcy-like arrangement without the stigma of the real thing. In principle, a federal bailout could give GM a hard push into the future by wrenching its balance sheet into alignment with reality.

I don't know if I'm convinced, but I think we all need to think about this very carefully.  The most important consideration here is that the automakers aren't simply asking for money to prop up business as usual.  Rather, as Paul Hinderaker puts it,

GM is asking for the stick of a bankruptcy-like arrangement without the stigma of the real thing. The bailout issue boils down to whether it makes sense to grant this. Bankruptcy provides a bigger, more effective stick, but it is not without risk. GM might not survive the loss of confidence associated with a bankruptcy, and its failure could take down much of the supplier base, with severe consequences for the larger economy.

This is not a possibility to be taken lightly; there's a real risk in giving the automakers the loan they're asking for, but there's a real risk in not doing so as well.  The core question here is the potential reward for each risk, and the likelihood of that reward materializing.  There seems to me to be no doubt that the best-case scenario is of GM, Ford and Chrysler solving their competitiveness problems to the point where they can build better cars than their competition at an equivalent cost; the issue is which path is most likely to get us to that point, and what the downsides are for each if it doesn't.  There's no way to be sure, but for his part, it's clear which way Rauch leans:

Whether a bailout can save GM depends, then, on which GM you think you're bailing out, the calcified shell of the old GM or the new-economy company struggling to emerge. Given the record, counting on GM to succeed would be rash. But consigning it to fail might be even more so.

Mark 1 in context

Isaiah 40:1-11                                                                     Malachi 2:17-3:6
Mark 1:1-4

“Comfort, comfort my people,” says your God.

“Encourage Jerusalem, proclaim to her

                          that her hardship has been completed, 

                                         that her sin has been paid for—

             that she has received from the LORD’s hand 

                                         double for all her sins.”

You have wearied the LORD with your words. 

“How have we wearied him?” you ask?
 By saying, “All who do evil are good in the eyes of the LORD,
and he is pleased with them,” or,
“Where is the God of justice?” 

“See, I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me.
 Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple;
the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, will come,”
says the LORD Almighty.

A voice is calling,

                          “In the desert, clear a path for the LORD;

              make straight in the wilderness a highway for our God.

Let every valley be lifted up,

                            every mountain and hill be brought low;

                let the hilly place be a plain,

                            and the mountain ranges a wide valley.

The LORD’s glory will be revealed

                          and all people will see it together,

              because the mouth of the LORD has spoken.”

But who can endure the day of his coming?
 Who can stand when he appears?
 For he will be like a refiner’s fire or a launderer’s soap.
 He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver;
he will purify the Levites and refine them like gold and silver.
 Then the LORD will have men who will bring offerings in righteousness,
and the offerings of Judah and Jerusalem will be acceptable to the LORD,
as in days gone by, as in former years.

A voice says, “Call out!”—

                          and one answers, “What shall I call out?
              All people are grass,

                          and all their mercy is like the flower of the field.

The grass withers,

                         the flower fades,

              because the breath of the LORD blows on it.”

“Yes, the people are grass—

                         ‘the grass withers,

                                           the flower fades’—

              but the word of our God will stand forever.”

Go up on a high mountain, Zion who brings good tidings;

                         lift up your voice in a shout, Jerusalem, bearer of good news.
              Lift up your voice, do not fear;

                         say to the cities of Judah,

                                           “Look, your God!”

“So I will come near to you for judgment.
I will be quick to testify against sorcerers, adulterers and perjurers,
against those who defraud laborers of their wages,
who oppress the widows and the fatherless, and deprive aliens of justice,
but do not fear me,” says the LORD Almighty.
 “For I the LORD do not change;
therefore you, O descendants of Jacob, are not destroyed.”

The beginning of the gospel about Jesus Christ, the Son of God.  
It is written in Isaiah the prophet,

“I will send my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way”—
“a voice of one calling in the desert, ‘Prepare the way for the Lord,
make straight paths for him.’”

And so John came, baptizing in the desert region and preaching a baptism of repentance
for the forgiveness of sins.

Another church burning

this one a bit higher-profile than most because it's Sarah Palin's church, Wasilla Bible Church; the fire is estimated to have caused $1 million in damage.  There is, of course, already speculation that the arson was political in nature, but as John Hinderaker of Power Line notes, "There are many possible motives, and arsonists don't necessarily need what would normally be regarded as a motive."  What he doesn't say but is worth adding is that church burning has been an increasingly common crime in recent years; it's not at all necessary to explain this arson in political terms.  Indeed, even if the church was selected because Gov. Palin attends there, the motive might not have been any sort of animus against her; it might simply be that her high profile attracted the attention of someone who otherwise would have burned a different church.  We'll probably never know one way or the other unless the arsonist is caught, and for now, any speculation is unwarranted; we just need to pray for the leaders and people of Wasilla Bible Church for their recovery from this attack.

On this blog in history: November 1-20, 2007

Continuing the retrospective posts . . .

. . . and it's not even fake Carson
An occasion for dispute between John Stackhouse and D. A. Carson provided an occasion to consider an unfortunate trend in disputes among Christian academics.

Midway between luck and skill
On the Battle of Midway and the providence of God.

The spirit of the soul
Lynn Redgrave, thumos, and how we face death.

Ministry as trinitarian work
After I finished Andrew Purves' book The Crucifixion of Ministry: Surrendering Our Ambitions to the Service of Christ, I went on to Stephen Seamands' book Ministry in the Image of God: The Trinitarian Shape of Christian Service, which had been on my to-read list for a while; the two books complement each other wonderfully, I think, as Dr. Seamands' work sets the message of Dr. Purves' book in a trinitarian context.

In Chicago, the birds are singing

The jailbirds, that is—starting with Barack Obama's old neighbor and associate Antoin "Tony" Rezko. Hard to say for sure, but it looks to me like Rezko started singing for his supper (and a reduced sentence) in order to make sure he got the best deal he could before Rod Blagojevich starts talking. There is no honor among thieves, and Blagojevich appears to be a particularly dishonorable specimen. (As well as, if Michael Barone is right, a particularly stupid one.)

The interesting thing about this situation is that while U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald has made it very clear that there's no evidence that the president-elect was even aware of anything improper, he hasn't made the same statement about Obama's staff. The person of concern here appears to be the designated White House Chief of Staff, Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-IL), who has suddenly ceased to be a fixture at the president-elect's press conferences; as the Chicago Tribune's John Kass points out, there are good reasons to think that if Blagojevich wanted to work a deal with the incoming Obama administration, he'd work through Rep. Emanuel; or rather, there's one good reason: Rep. Emanuel's state senator, the powerful Democratic politician James DeLeo. According to Kass,

DeLeo is also considered by some to be the real governor of Illinois. Blagojevich is the nutty guy who makes the speeches and gets the federal slap. They're so close that if Jimmy suddenly stopped walking, Rod would chip his teeth on the back of Jimmy's head.

It's reasonable to assume that if there's one fellow Rod would talk to about the Senate seat, it's Jimmy. And given their relationship, Jimmy could talk to Rahm.

(Kass further suggests, interestingly, that DeLeo's quid pro quo for setting that up might well have been appointment to Rep. Emanuel's House seat. Welcome to Illinois politics.) Given that we know that Rep. Emanuel talked multiple times with Blagojevich (see video below), it seems quite possible that he could be the next Illinois politician in the crosshairs. This, obviously, would not be a good start for the Obama administration, in a lot of ways.

HT: Scott Johnson

The Great Books perspective on Harry Potter

There's an interesting article up on Touchstone by a chap named John Granger, the author of several books on Harry Potter who's a graduate of the University of Chicago, analyzing Rowling's books as “the 'shared text' of the twenty-first century.”  This is a more significant statement than it might seem, coming from a former student of Allan Bloom, who argued “that 'shared books' are the foundation of culture, politics, and individual thinking; as such, Granger is arguing—quoting Chuck Klosterman in Esquire—that

Over time, these novels (and whatever ideas lie within them) will come to represent the mainstream ethos of our future popular culture.

Klosterman thinks that's a bad thing, but Granger strongly disagrees:

Before meeting Allan Bloom and, through him, the Western canon, my friends and I were a sarcastic and self-absorbed, if good-hearted lot, nourished on stories that were only diversion and dissipation. I have to think my children are better prepared and more willing to embrace that tradition than I was because of their years of instruction at Hogwarts castle. . . .

I struggle to think of any fictional work of the last two or three centuries that had the potential to shape the cultural and political agendas of its time as this one does. Dickens’s crusading social novels? Uncle Tom’s Cabin? The Jungle? Harry Potter differs from these in that the others ignited a latent Christian conscience. The Potter novels help foster one into existence. . . .

From this text, we can build a conversation about virtue and vice, and about what reading does to the right-side-up soul. From it, too, we can take an invitation to go on to even better books—ones that our grandparents’ great-grandparents had in common, and others that our children may one day write. Hasten the day!

It's an interesting argument, and I think he may be on to something.  It's certainly worth considering seriously.

I hope there are no skeletons in the Obama closet

because Rod Blagojevitch is going down, and he's going down hard; and unlike Tony Rezko, who kept his mouth shut after his conviction when the government tried to roll him, I don't think Blagojevitch has the necessary selflessness or nobility of character to take whole hit himself. Indeed, as Rosslyn Smith notes,

Blagojevich may have more reasons that the obvious reduction of sentence to offer additional political scalps for Patrick Fitzgerald's trophy wall. Hell hath no fury like a sociopath who sees himself on the losing end of a power struggle.

If he thinks Barack Obama can be one of those scalps, I have little doubt Blagojevich will wave it in Fitzgerald's face, for whatever he can get out of it, and just for the sheer pleasure of the thing; in fact, even if he doesn't have anything on the president-elect, I suspect Blagojevich may try to bring him down anyway. I hope he doesn't, but this is Illinois politics, and particularly Chicago politics . . . you just never know for sure. Let's hope Senator Obama did indeed come through the Chicago machine clean, and that his former colleague doesn't have anything to use against him; if not, we're all in for a really bad time.

The road to recovery begins with unsparing self-criticism

and J.R. Dunn of American Thinker has done a wonderful job of helping start that process for the Republican Party, stating bluntly, "The GOP Must Take Out the Trash."  It's an excellent piece (though I think his comments on the Democrats are overstated, that doesn't invalidate his points about the party of elephants), and I commend it to your attention.  I particularly appreciate Dunn's point that even for conservatives,

voting for the Democrats in 2008 was a rational act. Not a very smart act, and in the fullness of time definitely to prove a mistaken one. But rational because the alternative was to vote for the party of Ted Stevens, Larry Craig, Duke Cunningham, Mark Foley, and a gaggle of beggars drooling for earmarks and willing to throw small children onto train tracks to get them. In 2008, the party of Trash went up against the party of Change. That brand of Change is no doubt empty, specious, and dangerous, but you can't argue with the fact that it smells better than trash.

You pay a price for tolerating trash. Perhaps not an obvious one, perhaps not an immediate one, but you always pay a price. The GOP is now paying that price, after getting its wakeup call in 2006 and refusing to roll out of bed. As for current efforts at reform, everything else is on the table except this one factor, despite the easily comprehended fact that everything else will be totally irrelevant if this one factor is not dealt with. Corruption cannot be ignored. As has been demonstrated time and again this past decade, sane, moral, and intelligent voters will not settle for a party comprised of the reprobates that have populated the GOP in recent years.

And though Dunn doesn't mention Sarah Palin, I want to note that this is one of the major reasons I support her:  taking out the trash is a major part of her political MO, and of her reason for being in politics.

Wise words on pride

Pride is a blossom of ashes—bitter in the mouth, sharp to the nose, stinging to the eyes, and blown away on the first wind from the mountains. Plant no pride, lest you harvest shame.

—Proverb of Altiplano

This proverb (and the whole society of Altiplano) comes from Elizabeth Moon's novel Once a Hero; Moon's one of the better writers of military science fiction around, and this is one of her best. I note the irony of posting a proverb from a fictional society so soon after posting the title sequence for a non-existent sitcom, but for all that it was created in the service of a Secondary World (to use Tolkien's term), it has the ring of old truth, and is well worth remembering.

Ten good questions for Barack Obama

courtesy of Politico's Johnathan Martin and Ben Smith, which were offered as suggestions for Tom Brokaw for the president-elect's appearance on Meet the Press this past Sunday.  He didn't ask them, but they're still good questions.

Obama's Senate seat up for auction—get your bids in now

Even by the standards of Illinois politics, this is a big one: this morning the FBI arrested Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich and his chief of staff, John Harris, on federal corruption charges. Perhaps the most staggering part of the indictment is that, as U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald put it, “Blagojevich put a ‘for sale’ sign on the naming of a United States senator.”

Blagojevich is accused of a wide-ranging criminal conspiracy, including alleged attempts by the governor to try to sell or trade the U.S. Senate seat left vacant by President-elect Barack Obama in exchange for financial benefits for the governor and his wife. Blagojevich also is accused of obtaining campaign contributions in exchange for other official actions.

It’s no secret that the president-elect wants his longtime adviser Valerie Jarrett named to his Senate seat; apparently, Blagojevich was irate that his former colleague wanted him to do so without offering him anything in return, referring to President-Elect Obama in highly profane and unflattering terms. According to the story in Politico,

Federal prosecutors allege that Blagojevich explored one possible quid-pro-quo—he’d appoint a top adviser to Obama in exchange for Obama giving Blagojevich the post as as secretary of health and human services. The indictment makes clear the Obama adviser is Valerie Jarrett, now an Obama White House aide.

“Unless I get something real good . . . I’ll just send myself, you know what I’m saying,” Blagojevich was taped saying on Nov. 3, the day before Election Day.

Blagojevich, a Democrat, added that the Senate seat: “is a . . . valuable thing, you just don’t give it away for nothing.”

None of this, as Fitzgerald was careful to point out, suggests that President-Elect Obama is in any way guilty of anything; the fact that Blagojevich was trying to wrestle some sort of benefit out of him doesn’t mean that he or any of his staff were guilty of anything, and there appears to be no reason to think they were. If anything, it appears that they responded to Blagojevich’s demand for some sort of bribe by ending the conversation. That sets them apart from some of the other people Blagojevich was considering appointing to the seat, since at least one of them offered money “up front” for the job. (Update and correction: that candidate has now been confirmed to be Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-IL), but the only evidence so far that he or any of his associates offered Blagojevitch money is the governor's own statements, which have not been independently corroborated.)

This whole fiasco certainly sheds light on the political milieu through which Barack Obama rose to power, but the real import here has nothing to do with him, but rather with his successor: with the indictment against Blagojevich, who’s going to appoint the next junior Senator from the state of Illinois?

HT: Power Line

Update: You know things are getting bad when the lolcats are laughing at you:

The root of disorder

If we're going to deal with life in any truly productive way, we need to begin by facing and accepting the reality that this world is neither what we want it to be nor what it was meant to be, and neither are our lives. It wasn’t always this way. God created the world good, in harmonious order, blessed with everything necessary for life. He made us in his image and gave us the world to manage and care for, to tend and steward for its benefit and our own; he created us for relationship with him, to know him and love him as our Creator and ultimate Father. All he asked of us in return was to accept his authority—to accept that he’s God, and we’re not.

That's why, when the enemy wanted to bring us down, he started where he did. What was the bait he used on Adam and Eve? No, contra Woody Allen, it wasn't about sex; rather, it was about pride, and the desire to escape that authority. The serpent's temptation was simple: “Do this and you will be like God. You won’t have to trust him to tell you what’s right and wrong—you’ll be able to decide that for yourselves.”

You will be like God. Why was that the first temptation? Because the keystone of the created order was, and is, that God created everything and rules over everything, and all of his creation finds its proper place under his authority. To disobey, to reject his authority, was to break that order and plunge creation into chaos. We cannot find our way out of that chaos on our own, no matter how hard we try, because as long as we're trying to do it on our own, we're still contributing to the problem. The only way out is to surrender our desire for autonomy—our desire to be gods of our own lives—and let God lead us.

(Excerpted, edited, from “Out of Chaos, Hope”)

God uses waiting

Advent is a season of waiting. It’s about waiting for God’s redemption, for his promised deliverance from the power of sin and death. It’s about learning to wait faithfully and patiently, trusting God to keep his promise; it’s about preparing ourselves to celebrate Christmas by using the time leading up to that celebration to examine our hearts and discipline our impatience. Especially in our broadband microwave instant-oatmeal society, it’s about stepping back from our culture’s emphasis on fasterfasterfaster and learning to slow down, to understand that just because God doesn’t give us what we want rightnow doesn’t mean he isn’t at work; it’s about learning to understand the work he does in our lives while we wait.

And it’s about learning to understand the importance of trusting God in the waiting, and for the waiting. The Exodus gives us a great example of that. You may remember the story of how Joseph was sold into slavery in Egypt, and eventually rose to power as the right-hand man of the Pharaoh, the king of that nation; and how in a time of famine, Joseph’s father and brothers and their whole household came down from Israel to live in Egypt. For a long time, this worked out well, and Joseph’s family grew into a large and flourishing tribe, known as the Hebrews; but then a Pharaoh came to power who hated and feared them, and made them slaves as the first step in destroying them. They cried out to him to deliver them, and did he swoop down right away and set them free? No. People were born in slavery and died in slavery. The Pharaoh who first enslaved them died, and his heir took the throne, and their slavery continued. But in the proper time, when everything was right, God acted, and they were set free.

And notice who he used: Moses. Though a Hebrew, Moses grew up in the palace as Pharaoh's grandson; he was a golden boy. On the one hand, he could have settled in to his position as royalty, turned his back on the people from whom he came, and joined the oppressors; certainly many, many people in his position would have done so, given the chance, and many throughout history have. He didn’t do that. On the other hand, if he was going to be the one to free his people from slavery, you might have expected that he’d do that from his position of influence, as one of the heirs of the man who held the reins of power. That didn’t happen either.

Instead, Moses’ life went all wrong: he let his anger get the best of him and killed an Egyptian who was beating one of his fellow Hebrews, and ended up having to flee to the desert to avoid being put to death. He had it all, he had the perfect opportunity to do whatever he wanted to do, and instead he ruined the whole thing—or so it must have seemed at the time—and left himself no choice but to run for his life. Sure, his early life had seemed promising, but he’d squandered that promise, and now he’d spent forty years out in the wilderness tending sheep. He was a nobody, a has-been, a footnote to history. He was a sermon illustration in the temples of Egypt on what happens when you lose your temper. That’s all.

Except, he still had one thing: he still had faith in God, for whom he had chosen the side of his enslaved people over the side of luxury and privilege to begin with. He spent those forty years in the desert waiting, and maybe he still had ambitions or maybe he figured that he’d be a shepherd in the wilderness for the rest of his life, but he never stopped believing that God would be faithful to set his people free from their slavery in Egypt; and so when the time was right, God came to him and said, “Moses, I’ve chosen you to go tell Pharaoh to let my people go.” To be sure, Moses argued with him, but in the end, he went and told Pharaoh to let his people go; and in the end, Pharaoh didn’t really, but God delivered them anyhow, with Moses leading the way.

There’s an important lesson in this, I think: when we’re waiting for God’s deliverance—from whatever we might need him to deliver us from—our waiting isn’t wasted time, and it isn’t unnecessary. It’s God preparing the ground, and preparing us—not only for our own deliverance, but to be his agent of deliverance for others as well. This is how he works, in this time between the times, when Jesus has come to begin the reign of God on earth but not returned to complete that work; he has left us in place here as his body, the body of Christ, his hands and feet through whom he works to carry on his ministry. What God is doing in us and for us isn’t just about us; as we wait for the answers to our prayers, he’s lining things up to answer them in the proper time, but he’s also preparing us to be the answer to other people’s prayers. We wait, not only for God to deliver us, but for him to work through us to deliver others; and even the waiting is part of his work.

(Excerpted, edited, from “Deliverance”)