Gospel hope and gospel change

We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain, where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf.

—Hebrews 6:19-20a (ESV)

And we desire each one of you to show the same earnestness to have the full assurance of hope until the end, so that you may not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.

—Hebrews 6:11-12 (ESV)

The gospel rests ultimately on the fact that God is faithful. We have hope because God who cannot lie and who cannot go back on his word made a promise, and in Jesus, he kept it. In Jesus, we need not worry about being swept away by the storms of life or capsized by their waves, for our hope in him is a soul anchor, a sure and steadfast anchor for the soul that holds us firm and steadfast where we need to be in the face of the worst life can throw at us. Nothing in this world can pull that anchor loose, because it isn’t hooked onto anything worldly: it’s hooked onto the very throne of God.

Bill Kristol on conservative intolerance

As noted, I have my reservations about the Beck rally last Saturday, but I do appreciate the opportunity it gave Bill Kristol for this comment:

So evangelical Christian Sarah Palin spent Friday night with (mostly) observant Jews, along with various Christians, including some Amish. Then on Saturday she spoke at a rally hosted by a Mormon who went out of his way in his remarks to refer to the important role of "churches, synagogues and mosques" in American life.

Early Monday morning, as it happened, I received an e-mail from (Catholic convert) Newt Gingrich from Rome, asking for contact information for a (Jewish) scholar whose book on certain (not very religious) enlightenment thinkers he was reading.

Welcome to today's intolerant, divisive, close-minded, and just plain scary American conservatism.

How's that "changing Washington" thing working?

Judging by Gov. Christie's experience in New Jersey, not so well. As you may have heard, the state's Race to the Top application was disqualified, costing the state some $400 million, "because some clerk in Trenton turned in the wrong Excel spreadsheet"; out of a thousand-plus-page application, one page was incorrectly submitted, so the U.S. Department of Education threw out the whole thing. As you can probably imagine, the governor was not at all happy.

Was the administration being petty, seizing an excuse to deny funding to a political opponent? Maybe; and then again, maybe not. After all, one should never ascribe to malice what can be explained perfectly well by incompetence. Either way, though, this is exactly the sort of thing that Barack Obama promised us his administration would not be about. I don't blame him for not keeping his promise to change Washington—it was beyond human capability; but I don't think it speaks well of him that he made it, or of so many others that they actually believed it. And if preventing these sorts of occurrences is too much to ask, one would think they could at least show some sort of commitment to setting them right. (Unless, just maybe, they are in fact playing petty politics after all.)

It should be noted that the DoE did have one rejoinder to Gov. Christie: they released a video proving that NJ state education commissioner Bret Schundler had not in fact verbally given them the correct information. When the governor found out that his education commissioner had lied to him, he fired Schundler after all.

An ironic unintended consequence of Obamacare

I've posted before about Obamacare and the Law of Unintended Consequences, pointing out the great potential for government aggression in the health care sector of our economy to produce exactly the opposite of its intended purpose—but I have to admit, this one surprised me anyway:

Faced with mounting debt and looming costs from the new federal health-care law, many local governments are leaving the hospital business, shedding public facilities that can be the caregiver of last resort. . . .

More than a fifth of the nation's 5,000 hospitals are owned by governments and many are drowning in debt caused by rising health-care costs, a spike in uninsured patients, cuts in Medicare and Medicaid and payments on construction bonds sold in fatter times. Because most public hospitals tend to be solo operations, they don't enjoy the economies of scale, or more generous insurance contracts, which bolster revenue at many larger nonprofit and for-profit systems.

Local officials also predict an expensive future as new requirements—for technology, quality accounting and care coordination—start under the overhaul, which became law in March.

Moody's Investors Service said in April that many standalone hospitals won't have the resources to invest in information technology or manage bundled payments well. Many nonprofits have bad credit ratings and in a tight credit market cannot borrow money, either. Meantime, the federal government is expected to cut aid to hospitals.

Yes, you're reading that right: the expansion of government-run health care looks to be resulting in . . . less government-run health care, and more for-profit hospitals.

Would Browncoats still have been brown in the '80s?

This went by a while ago, but I decided I couldn't resist posting it; as it happens, I love the real title sequence for Firefly, but this '80s-style version from the folks at i09 is a lot of fun, too; and while they only get two cheers as a result of leaving out Simon (and no, I don't buy the excuse), they get most of the third one back for the way they fixed that.

It's a shame Fox mishandled the show so badly; but I haven't given up hope. You can knock a Browncoat down . . . but keeping one down is quite another matter.

On not praying for a religious revival

A Mormon television star stands in front of the Lincoln Memorial and calls American Christians to revival. He assembles some evangelical celebrities to give testimonies, and then preaches a God and country revivalism that leaves the evangelicals cheering that they’ve heard the gospel, right there in the nation’s capital.

The news media pronounces him the new leader of America’s Christian conservative movement, and a flock of America’s Christian conservatives have no problem with that.

That’s Russell Moore’s brief summary of the rally Glenn Beck pulled together on the Mall in Washington, D.C. last Saturday (HT: Jared Wilson), and it seems to me to be more or less fair. It’s certainly generated a lot of praise and positive commentary for Beck from people in the American church; but it troubles me. Indeed—though I’m not one for theological purity tests in politics, like this guy seems to me to be advocating, as a precondition for working together for the common good—I have to agree with Dr. Moore: this is a scandal.

Two years on, the Palin Revolution is gaining steam

Two years ago today, Sen. John McCain threw the political world for a loop by announcing Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate. Last August 29, I wrote this, considering the first year's fruits of that decision:

A thought on keeping faith and politics straight

Musing on some of the posts I’ve read from Glenn Beck’s big D.C. rally today, I came back to an observation that occurred to me while I was writing last Sunday’s sermon. I have many times heard people give thanks that we live in a nation where we are allowed to worship God without having to worry about dying for it, and that is indeed reason to be grateful; but how often do we stop to give thanks to Jesus that we can worship God without dying for it? The fundamental freedom to worship God in spirit and in truth doesn’t come from our Constitution, it comes from Christ. Worthy is the Lamb who was slaughtered, because it’s only through his blood, it’s only because he allowed himself to be butchered, that we can enter the presence of God. We need to remember which is the greater gift.

Unfortunately, I think sometimes we lose sight of that, and it shifts our focus. We Americans should be proud of and grateful for our country, yes, because it’s the one God has given us, and because we’re fortunate to live here; but we should never, under any circumstances, for any reason, seek to use our faith for political purposes. We should never do anything that makes our allegiance to Christ secondary to our allegiance to any earthly flag. To do so is idolatry, and a betrayal of the one we claim to worship.

An Observation on the Importance of Humility in Planning: With Special Direction to the Inadvisability of Premature Declarations of Victory

Yeah, the title's very 17th-century, but I’m in a weird mood.

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”—yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.

—James 4:13-17 (ESV)

Oh, well . . . I’m starting to feel better, and I think I’m actually rolling on writing again, so . . . praise God.

A call to arms: against the political machine

As the French would say: Aux armes, citoyens! Aux barricades!

If you follow national politics, you probably know that Sen. Lisa Murkowski (RINO-AK) has narrowly lost a primary challenge to an Alaskan attorney, a friend and ally of Gov. Sarah Palin, named Joe Miller. You've probably also seen the news that the GOP establishment (specifically, the Alaska Republican Party and the National Republican Senatorial Committee) has been actively working for Sen. Murkowski against Miller—urging her to attack him, running a phone bank for her out of Alaska Republican Party headquarters on election day, and now sending the NRSC's general counsel to Alaska to give her "guidance"; as well, Thomas Van Flein has filed a protest with Alaska's Division of Elections against Bonnie Jack, an observer with the Murkowski campaign, who "used confidential information outside the voter observation confines and called a voter to resurrect a disqualified ballot." The situation is such that Miller is now having to fight back against his own ostensible party. (Remember, the chair of the Alaska GOP is the guy who had to pay the biggest ethics fine in Alaskan history after Sarah Palin blew the whistle on him, and is also a personal enemy of Miller's, for reasons that will be referenced below.)

Riehl has some choice things to say about the whole situation:

Up periscope

I thought I got a version of this posted a couple weeks ago . . . oh, well. For those who've wondered, no, nothing's wrong; I just had a very busy July, then crashed the last week leading into vacation. I didn't really have the energy to write over my week off, so I didn't—actually, I didn't do much on the computer at all last week. (That might be one of the reasons it was a restful week.) I'd intended to get back to writing earlier this week, but circumstances have not permitted; still, I have some things I'm working on. (That's actually been part of the reason for my silence as well—I've been working on some longer pieces, and gotten rather bogged down.) The future is always contingent from our point of view, but it's certainly my intent to get rolling again this week.