9/11: A reminder that freedom isn't free

The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime,
and the punishment of his guilt.

—John Philpott Curran

During the decade of the 1990s, our times often seemed peaceful on the surface. Yet beneath the surface were currents of danger. Terrorists were training and planning in distant camps. . . . America's response to terrorism was generally piecemeal and symbolic. The terrorists concluded this was a sign of weakness, and their plans became more ambitious, and their attacks more deadly. Most Americans still felt that terrorism was something distant, and something that would not strike on a large scale in America. That is the time my opponent wants to go back to. A time when danger was real and growing, but we didn't know it. . . . September 11, 2001 changed all that. We realized that the apparent security of the 1990s was an illusion. . . . Will we make decisions in the light of September 11, or continue to live in the mirage of safety that was actually a time of gathering threats?

—George W. Bush, October 18, 2004

History will not end until the Lord returns, and neither will the twist of the human heart toward evil. The idea that we can just ignore or deny this reality and go on about what we'd rather be doing, whether in domestic or in foreign policy, is the political equivalent of cheap grace; and it is no more capable of bringing what blessing our politics can muster than its theological parallel can bring salvation. It may be true, as Theodore Parker said, that the arc of the moral universe "bends toward justice," but if it is, we must remember that it's only true because God is the one bending it—taken all in all, the collective effort of humanity is to bend it the other way.

This world is fallen, and all of us are tainted by the evil that rots its core; and all too many have given in to that evil and placed their lives in its service. Most have not done so knowing it to be evil—there are very few at the level of Milton's Satan or Shakespeare's version of Richard III—but that doesn't make them any better. Indeed, the fact that people like Adolf Hitler and Osama bin Laden do vast evil believing they serve what is right and good only makes them more dangerous, because it makes them far more effective in corrupting others, and far less likely to repent. Evil is a cancer in the human soul, and like any cancer, it will not stop growing until either it or its host is destroyed—which means that those who serve it will not stop unless someone else stops them.

Which is why the 18th-century Irish politician John Philpott Curran was right. There are those in this world who are the servants of evil, those movements which are driven by it, and those nations which are ruled by such—some in the name of religion, some in allegiance to political or economic theory, some in devotion to nation or tribe—and in their service to that spiritual cancer, they operate themselves as cancers within society, the body politic, and the international order; they will not stop until they are stopped. As Edmund Burke did not say (but as remains true nevertheless), the only thing that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing; the logical corollary is that to prevent the triumph of evil, those who would oppose it must be vigilant to watch for its rise, and must stand and fight when it does.

Must that always mean war? Not necessarily; as Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., among others, have shown, there are times when nonviolent moral resistance is the most effective form of opposition (helped in Gandhi's case, I would argue, by the fact that the Raj was not evil). But the fact that that works in some societies doesn't mean that it works in all, because nonviolent resistance depends for its effect on the willingness of others to repent—and not everyone is willing. Some people are hard of heart and stiff of neck, unwilling to humble themselves, liable only to judgment; they will not stop unless they are forced to do so. When such people rule nations and are bent on tyranny and conquest, then sometimes, war becomes necessary. A tragic necessity, yes, but no less necessary for all that.

We have enemies who have decided in their hearts that they must destroy us, and they will not be shaken from that decision, because they have excluded anything that could shake them; they are unflinching in their resolve to building up the power and ability to do what they have committed themselves to do. This is hard for Americans to understand or accept, because—with the characteristic arrogance of our Western culture—we think that everyone, deep down, thinks and feels and understands the world as we do, and thus is "rational" on our terms, by our definition of the word. We fail to understand people and cultures that really don't value their own lives and their own individual wills and desires above all else. But there are those in this world who don't, who simply have different priorities than ours, and who consequently cannot be negotiated with or deterred or talked out of things as if they were (or really wanted to be) just like us—and who in fact have nothing but contempt for the very idea.

There are people, movements, nations, who want to destroy America and our culture (which they believe to be Christian culture, far though it is from being so), and who will not be dissuaded by any of our attempts at persuasion or appeasement. Indeed, go as far back as you want in history, you'll never find a case where appeasement of enemies has worked; rather, time after time, it only encourages them. If someone is determined to defeat you and has the ability to do so, it isn't possible for you to choose for things to be different, because their choice has removed that option; your only choice is either to let them do so, or to try to stop them.

But is it right to try to stop them? What of the morality of force? As individuals, when someone hates us, we are called to turn the other cheek and trust to the justice of God—but that's when we ourselves are the only ones at risk. When it comes to defending others from harm, the calculus is different; this is especially true of government, which bears the responsibility to defend all its citizens from evil, and has been given the power of the sword for that purpose. The decision to use force of any sort—whether it be the national military or the local police—must not be made lightly; it must be done only when there is clear certainty that the deployment of force is necessary in the cause of justice. But when it is truly necessary in order to defend the right, if that defense is properly our responsibility, then we cannot shrink back: we must stand and fight, or else allow evil to triumph.

Freedom and justice and true peace only come at a cost, in this lost and broken world of ours; they must forever be defended against those who do not value them, and would destroy them for their own purposes. This includes defending them against those who would use the fact that we value them against us—who would subvert our freedoms and use our willingness to accept a false peace, the mere absence of overt military conflict, to extort from us our own piecemeal surrender. If "peace" is achieved by craven cowering before the threats of the vicious, it is no real peace, merely a temporary and unstable counterfeit that does nothing but postpone the inevitable conflict; and if that false peace is gained through the sacrifice of freedom and justice, it is worth nothing at all. For any society willing to do so, the only epitaph has already been written by Benjamin Franklin:

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.

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.

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.

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.

The tree of liberty is rooted in the soil of the gospel

As Calvin Coolidge put it, in a remarkable speech delivered on the 150th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence,

No one can examine this record and escape the conclusion that in the great outline of its principles the Declaration was the result of the religious teachings of the preceding period. The profound philosophy which Jonathan Edwards applied to theology, the popular preaching of George Whitefield, had aroused the thought and stirred the people of the Colonies in preparation for this great event. No doubt the speculations which had been going on in England, and especially on the Continent, lent their influence to the general sentiment of the times. Of course, the world is always influenced by all the experience and all the thought of the past. But when we come to a contemplation of the immediate conception of the principles of human relationship which went into the Declaration of Independence we are not required to extend our search beyond our own shores. They are found in the texts, the sermons, and the writings of the early colonial clergy who were earnestly undertaking to instruct their congregations in the great mystery of how to live. They preached equality because they believed in the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. They justified freedom by the text that we are all created in the divine image, all partakers of the divine spirit. . . .

If this apprehension of the facts be correct, and the documentary evidence would appear to verify it, then certain conclusions are bound to follow. A spring will cease to flow if its source be dried up; a tree will wither if it roots be destroyed. In its main features the Declaration of Independence is a great spiritual document. It is a declaration not of material but of spiritual conceptions. Equality, liberty, popular sovereignty, the rights of man—these are not elements which we can see and touch. They are ideals. They have their source and their roots in the religious convictions. They belong to the unseen world. Unless the faith of the American people in these religious convictions is to endure, the principles of our Declaration will perish. We can not continue to enjoy the result if we neglect and abandon the cause.

Criminalizing evangelism?

You've probably heard about the Christians who were arrested last Friday night in Dearborn, MI and charged with disorderly conduct for attempting to give people copies of an English/Arabic Gospel of John outside the Arab International Festival. If not, here's the video they took (though I'm not sure how, since their cameras were confiscated):

What is the purpose of argument?

I mean that as a completely serious question. I've been mulling it recently, ever since I got tangentially involved in an argument in a comment thread on another blog. The blogger in question seems to spend the largest part of his time going after atheists, and it would appear that there are many who rise to the bait. I've never quite understood that behavior, really; I'm happy to debate issues with people who comment here—as long as the conversation seems to me to be productive, and an actual conversation—but I don't generally have a great deal of interest in going to other people's blogs just to tell them they're wrong.

Fox News and sexual hypocrisy

It's my observation that Douglas Wilson, of Credenda/Agenda and Christ Church of Moscow, Idaho, is at his best when he can let his snark ascend and just turn it loose; he's also at his best when he has something deep and profoundly important to set his teeth into and be snarky about. (This is, I think, why he was the perfect person to debate Christopher Hitchens.) As such, it's no surprise that his recent guest piece at the Washington Post's "On Faith" blog, titled "Foxy News," is Wilson at his best.

Preaching against porn while consuming it avidly is certainly inconsistent, and is what theologians in another old-timey era used to call "a sin"—a theological category that perhaps needs to be rehabilitated. But I want to consider this issue at another level—we need to start thinking about the politics of porn. . . .

A number of evangelicals are up in arms about President Obama himself, and Obamacare, and Obama-other-things, and Obama-anything-else, and are warning us in dire tones about the impending slavery that is involved in all this "socialism." And—full disclosure here—I am economically pretty conservative myself, just slightly to the left of King Arthur, so I am not pointing out this part of it to differ with any of it. But what I am noticing in this discussion is a striking public tolerance for right-wing skankyness. When I am cruising around for my Internet news, I am far more likely to run into Moabite women at Fox News than anywhere else. . . .

Surely it should be possible to access fair and balanced news without running into women who think they are supposed to be a sale at Macy's—with 40 percent off.

What then? On the assumption that what we are willing to associate with in public is just a fraction of what we are willing to associate with in private, one of my basic concerns about evangelical involvement in politics in the age of Obama (measured in this discussion by their general friendliness to Foxy News) is that they are not nearly as hostile to "slavery" as some of the rhetoric might seem to indicate. I know that politics is supposed to make strange bedfellows, but "strange bedfellows" was always supposed to be a metaphor, wasn't it?

A man cannot sell himself into slavery in his private life, and then turn around and successfully take a stand as a free man in the public square. At least, that is how the thinking used to go among conservatives. If sexual indulgence is one of the more obvious bribes that can be offered to a slave, how does it change anything if a person takes the bribe in private? And if that bribe is taken in private, over time, indications of that reality will start to show up in public, in the sorts of ways I have been discussing.

Be sure to read the whole thing—it's truly priceless. I remember when Fox was a favorite target for ire of conservatives, because of shows like "Married . . . with Children" and, yes, "The Simpsons." (It seems a little strange now to think of that.) People would occasionally point out, as a mitigating factor, that Rupert Murdoch was pretty conservative in a lot of ways, but that was usually dismissed with the comment that the sleaze he peddled disqualified him. Until he launched Fox News, and before too long, political expediency took over . . .

Politics in the end view

I don't make any apologies for blogging on political matters; I believe they’re important, and that we as Christians need to learn to see all aspects of life, including politics, with the eyes of faith. There are some things going on in our country right now that deeply concern me, and I think that concern is both warranted and appropriate. That said, there’s a risk in this, too—the risk of coming to overvalue political victories and defeats, to attach too much significance to them. It’s the risk of narrowed perspective, and it has contributed to the politicization of all too much of the American church (on both sides of the political divide).

To counter it, we need to pull back and reorient ourselves. We need to remember not only that this world isn’t all there us, but that for those of us who are in Christ and now live by the Holy Spirit, it isn’t even really our home. In Christ, we have been made citizens of another country, and given the life of the world to come; we don’t simply live in the present anymore—we live in the future, too. Our life comes from the future, from the coming kingdom of God which is breaking into the kingdoms of this world—in us, the people of God. In us, the future kingdom of God is present, the rule of God is exercised, the authority of God in and over this world is proclaimed. We are ambassadors from the future to the present, and the life God calls us to live only makes sense if we see it in that perspective.

Put another way, what we need to understand is that biblically, we are in the last days. To be sure, we’re still waiting for the last last days—this isn’t to say that the end of the world is right around the corner; people keep thinking it might be, but so far, it hasn’t happened. The point is more this: in God’s time, itwill happen, and we don’t know when that will be—and for that matter, many of us will die before then, which will be the end of the world for us, and we don’t know when that will be, either—but whenever it comes, that’s the end toward which we’re moving, when everything God has begun in us will be completed and fulfilled. That’s the destination of our journey, the purpose of our calling, the goal that will make sense of everything along the way.

To live in the last days, and to live in the understanding that we’re in the last days, is to live with that orientation and that focus: toward the future, toward dying and being reborn, toward the kingdom of God. It’s to live with the understanding that what happens in the present is primarily important for the effects it will have in the future; what we do in this world matters, and this world itself matters, not because it’s all there is but because it isn’t. What matters isn’t the things, and the worldly victories, and the worldly praise; rather, what matters is what will endure: the people we meet, the truth we speak, the lessons we learn, the love we give—and of course, the ones we don’t, as well. In the end, if we shut people out, if we refuse to speak or to hear truth, if we withhold love, for whatever reason, the only person we impoverish is ourselves. If we focus our attention, our concern, our efforts, on the things the world values, such as money and power, we may get the rewards the world has to offer (or we may not), but when this world goes, they’ll be gone. As my wife’s grandfather used to say, “You can’t take it with you, but you can send it on ahead”—and it’s only what you send on ahead that will last.

As such, we ought not get too tied up in winning victories now; after all, we worship a God who has been known to do more with earthly defeats than worldly victories anyway. We need to work for what is good and right and true to the best of our ability and the best of our judgment, but we need to remember that in the end, winning isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Whether we win or lose, God is in control; what matters most is not that we get our way, but that we do things his way, that we speak his truth in his love, fearlessly, every chance we get. If we do that, we can let the chips fall where they may, because by his sovereign will, he controls every last one of them.

(Adapted from “The Life of the World to Come”)

The culture of death and the death of culture

In an excellent short essay in the latest issue of The City, Baylor's Francis J. Beckwith responds to a Washington Post column by one T. R. Reid claiming that ObamaPelosiCare would reduce the number of abortions. His evidence? There are more abortions per thousand women in the U.S. than in countries like Denmark, Japan, Germany, and the UK. Of course, the birth rate's also quite a bit higher in the U.S. than in those countries, so his choice of statistic is more than a little disingenuous. But then, as Dr. Beckwith points out, there's also a much deeper and more profound problem with Reid's argument:

The prolife position is not merely about "reducing the number of abortions," though that is certainly a consequence that all prolifers should welcome. Rather, the prolife position is the moral and political belief that all members of the human community are intrinsically valuable and thus are entitled to the protection of the laws. "Reducing the number of abortions" may happen in a regime in which this belief is denied, and that is the regime that the liberal supporters of universal health coverage want to preserve and want prolifers to help subsidize. It is a regime in which the continued existence of the unborn is always at the absolute discretion of the postnatal. Reducing the number of these discretionary acts by trying to pacify and accommodate the needs of those who want to procure abortions—physicians, mothers, and fathers—only reinforces the idea that the unborn are objects whose value depends exclusively on our wanting them.

A culture that has fewer abortions because its citizens have, in the words of John Lennon, "nothing to kill or die for, and no religion too," is a sad, dying, empty culture. Mr. Reid seems to think being prolife is just about instituting policies that result in fewer abortions. But it's not. It's about loving children, life, and the importance of passing on one's heritage to one's legacy.

As Dr. Beckwith points out, that cultural emptiness—we might say, the absence of a strong pro-life impulse—has profound negative consequences:

What is going on in these nations is a shared understanding among its citizenry about the nature of its culture and its progeny: our civilization's future and the generations required to people it are not worth perpetuating. It is practical nihilism, for each nation believes that its traditions, customs, and what remains of its faith are not worthy of being preserved, developed, and shared outside of the populace that currently occupies its borders. In practical terms, this means, for one thing, that the present generation of Europeans older than 55 will not have enough future workers to sustain their own health care needs when they are elderly.

So, as we have seen in the Netherlands, involuntary, non-voluntary, and voluntary euthanasia will certainly become the great cost containers (or as they say more candidly in Alaska, "death panels").

That's about it. At its heart, the pro-abortion position is a bet on power; the abortion regime is a classic example of the tyranny of the majority, the powerful abusing the powerless because they can and it suits them. Even the weakest and most powerless women are still infinitely powerful by comparison to their unborn children; and of course, many children are aborted not because women desire the abortion but because they are coerced into it by someone else, usually by the father of the child. Though there are exceptions, almost all abortions are essentially matters of convenience for somebody, driven by the unwillingness to sacrifice pleasures in the present for the sake of the future, and the refusal to allow the self to diminish so that someone else may grow.

This is malignant individualism, a cancer of the ego; and it is not only destructive of human life insofar as it drives the abortion mills, it is also destructive of human flourishing on a broader scale, because it is absolutely inimical to any sort of healthy culture. True growth depends on the willingness to sacrifice, or at least invest, the present for the sake of the future; true culture, healthy culture, arises out of love of life and openness to life, even when that love and that openness carry with them a real cost. To choose abortion is to choose the opposite: rather than choosing life at the cost of one's convenience, comfort and pleasures, it is to choose death for the sake of protecting one's pleasures, convenience and comfort. That may be pleasing in the short term, but in the long term, no good can come of it.

Jesus is Lord

Ever since the very beginning, the church has declared that Jesus is Lord; and I suspect that ever since pretty early on in there, large chunks of the church have proceeded to go out and ignore that proclamation. When we say that, we’re not saying any small thing. Rather, we’re saying that we acknowledge him not merely as the one who saves us, not merely as someone who blesses us, not merely as someone who loves us and whom we love, but also as the God of the universe, the one who created and sustains and commands everything that is; we’re bowing before him as the one who has the undisputed right to our wholehearted worship, our absolute allegiance, and our unquestioning obedience. No exceptions; no qualifications; no ifs, ands, or buts.

Which is easy enough to say; but of course, just saying it isn’t good enough. This is one of those things, if you just say it and don’t do it, you haven’t really said it at all. Making this confession commits us to actually living it out—and that’s the rub, because there are always places where we don’t want to do that. We tend to want to tell Jesus, “OK, you can be Lord of 95% of my life, or even 98%—but I have this thing over here that I want to hang on to, that I want to keep doing my way. It doesn’t bother you, it doesn’t affect anything else, so just let me keep doing this one thing and you can have the rest of my life.” To us, that makes sense; to us, that seems perfectly reasonable. We don’t understand why Jesus looks back at us and says, “No. You need to give me that, too”; but that’s what he does, every time.

In truth, whatever is the last thing we want to give up is the first thing Jesus asks of us, and the first thing that truly acknowledging his lordship requires of us. It may be a sin, or it may not; it may be something he intends to take away from us, or it may be something he intends to let us keep. Indeed, it may be our greatest gift, the one thing he will use most powerfully in our life for our blessing and the blessing of others. But whatever it is, good or ill, we have to give it over to him and let it be his, not ours. Anything we will not give up, anything of which we’re unwilling to let go, is something which is more important to us than Jesus is; and anything which is more important to us than Jesus is an idol, and God will not tolerate idols in our lives.

It’s tempting to look at this and say, “No, it really doesn’t matter that much.” Even if what we’re trying to hang onto is a sin, we can always convince ourselves that it’s not that big a deal; and if it isn’t—well, marriage, for instance, is a good and biblical thing, and if we’re married and love the person to whom we’re married, it doesn’t seem particularly unreasonable to tell Jesus no, this person is all mine. God can have the rest of my life, but my marriage is all mine.

Now, certainly, we have enduring allegiances in this world that are good and right. But here’s the rub: every single one of those allegiances, and every last one of those loves, has to take its proper place—behind our love for and our allegiance to our Lord Jesus Christ. We love our family, our friends, our church, our country, maybe our jobs, and then along comes Jesus and says, “Anyone who comes to me and doesn’t hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, cannot be my disciple.” No, I didn’t make that up, it’s Luke 14:26. Obviously, “hate” is a strong word, especially when Jesus commands us to love everybody, but this is a rabbinic way of speaking—he’s saying that our love for everyone other than him has to come so far second to our love for him that we’ll put him and his will first, even if it means that others come away from it thinking we hate them. This is the degree of allegiance our Lord wants from us, and the totality of worship he desires from us—with no competition, no exceptions, and nothing else smuggled in.

That sounds pretty demanding, but it really isn’t; it’s simply what’s necessary. C. S. Lewis explained this well when he wrote,

God claims all, because he is love and must bless. He cannot bless us unless he has us. When we try to keep within us an area that is our own, we try to keep an area of death. Therefore, in love, he claims all.

Politics and the Christian tongue

Above all, my brothers, do not swear, either by heaven or by earth or by any other oath, but let your “yes” be yes and your “no” be no, so that you may not fall
under condemnation.

—James 5:12 (ESV)

This isn’t normally thought of as a political text, but I think it is, in a way; or at least, I believe it has significant implications for the way in which we conduct our politics. There are a number of reasons for James’ objection to oaths, but one is that oaths and strong language are an attempt to manipulate our hearers. We use such language to try to get people to believe what we say or to go along with what we want them to do, not because they believe us or trust us, but on some other basis. Oaths are essentially persuasive language, but not an honest or straightfoward form of persuasion; rather than attempting to persuade people with facts and honest argument, they attempt to persuade people by impressing them with our determination, or our anger, or our force of character, or the strength of our words.

This is the same sort of problem we see in our political advertising and argument. Most of the time, most of our politicians are unwilling just to come right out and tell you what they stand for and what they intend to do, and then to let you decide to support or oppose them without any attempt on their part to influence your choice. Equally, most politicians are unwilling to allow their opponents to do the same without their interference. As a consequence, they’re all trying to spin their own positions for maximum votes—trying to convince you that they’re saying what you want to hear—while at the same time doing everything they can to make you believe that the other candidate is a cannibal mass-murderer who apprenticed under the Wicked Witch.

Though sordid, this isn’t really all that surprising, or shouldn’t be. The problem with career politicians is that politics is their career, which means they have to win if they want to continue to have a job; as such, their highest priority usually tends to be winning. Just as the first priority of any business is to stay in business (for after all, none of those other priorities can be realized if you go out of business), so most politicians come to see staying in office as their highest priority. While they may, at least at first, hold that priority for good and noble reasons, over time, it will tend to corrupt them; and in particular, it will tend to lead them to de-emphasize truth. Truth, after all, is uncontrollable, and honest persuasion isn’t the most effective way to win—so if winning is your primary concern, you’re going to find another way to go about it.

For Christians in politics, this is a major problem, and a grievous temptation. James calls us to eschew such manipulation of language for plain, straightforward speech—to speak the truth, say what we mean, and mean what we say. As Christians, we shouldn’t need to add anything to our words to convince people of our honesty and sincerity; we should be known as truthful people whose word can be trusted and whose integrity is obvious. Others may not agree with us, but they should have no doubts that we’re being straight with them; nor should they have any doubt that we’re treating them with respect. We should not seek to manipulate others into doing things our way, nor to pressure or intimidate them into giving way for us. Rather, our practice should be to speak the truth plainly and openly—not that we have to say everything, but that we should not seek to misdirect others by what we say and don’t say, or by how we say it.

This, of course, is not necessarily the optimum course to achieve success as the world defines it; but as Christians, we should understand that success ultimately is not in our hands anyway, but in the hands of the God who is Lord of, in, and through all things. As it is God who determines our success, then, we should devote ourselves to the truth and let him do as he will. This necessarily leads to the countercultural conclusion that the truly Christian politician should not run to win, but rather should run to present the truth, as best as they understand it, and to offer their best judgment for what should be done as clearly, cogently, and fairly (and, yes, persuasively, with integrity) as they possibly can—and leave the vote in God’s hands.

(Adapted from “Speaking before God”)

Politics and the practical problem of evil

In his book A Long Obedience in the Same Direction, Eugene Peterson begins the chapter on Psalm 124 with this story:

I was at a Red Cross bloodmobile to donate my annual pint, and being asked a series of questions by a nurse to see if there was any reason for disqualification. The final question on the list was, “Do you engage in hazardous work?” I said, “Yes.” She was interrupted from her routine and looked up, a little surprised, for I was wearing a clerical collar by which she could identify me as a pastor. Her hesitation was only momentary; she smiled, ignored my answer and marked the no on her questionnaire, saying, “I don’t mean that kind of hazardous.”

Eugene didn’t pursue that discussion, as there was a line of people behind him, but he notes later in that chapter that the nurse missed his point. It’s not the particular work of a pastor but the life of discipleship in general which is hazardous; and one reason for that is the power of evil in this world.

When we hear the word “evil,” I suspect most of us think of the extreme cases—genocidal dictators like Hitler, for instance, psychotic mass murderers, psychopathic serial killers, and people of that sort—the cases where, you might say, we find it straight up in a shotglass, 120 proof. The problem is, we usually meet it mixed in, hidden behind a bunch of other colors and flavors to sweeten it and make it look pretty, so that people who aren’t paying attention will swallow it whole. A friend of mine first encountered Long Island Iced Tea at the age of 12 at a party his family was attending; he’d had a couple before he or anyone else realized that he wasn’t drinking regular iced tea, in part because the alcohol took a while to hit his system. I guess when it did, he went from zero to blitzed in three seconds flat. A lot of times, we’re like that with the evil in the world—we swallow it without realizing it, and by the time the consequences show up, it’s too late.

The basic problem is that because there’s evil in every one of us, because we’re all tainted, everything we create, even the best we ever do, is also tainted; and that includes every human system—every family, every government, every charity, every association, and yes, every church. They’re all imperfect, because we’re all imperfect. I don’t care whether you vote Republican or Democrat, whether you supported Barack Obama or John McCain, whether you were ecstatic last November 4 or despondent: the Obama administration is deeply flawed, and so would a McCain administration have been, and you could say the same thing about Clinton, Reagan, Kennedy, Roosevelt (either one), Lincoln, Washington, or any other president you might care to name. They were all possessed of considerable virtues, but each was also compromised by evil in ways both obvious and subtle. That’s just the way of it in this fallen world of ours.

What that means is that, if you try to live the Christian life for all your worth—if you really open yourself up to the Spirit for God to lead however he will—you’ll find that in trying to be on God’s side, you’ll wind up on nobody else’s (not completely, anyway). Those who are born of the Spirit are like the wind, Jesus tells us—independent of any human control (or prediction, really). It’s impossible to sign on with any given political program, whether Democrat or Republican, and reflexively support it, because the Spirit will be constantly prompting you to recognize the evil in that program, and in those who’re pushing it, and to remember that they, too, are human and therefore wrong a significant percentage of the time. (Along with that, of course, the Spirit will also be constantly prompting you to recognize the same things about yourself; there lies the beginning of humility.) As Jesus said, no one can serve two masters, so if you’re going to follow him, you can’t follow anyone or anything else; which means that sooner or later, following him is going to put you crossways of the powers that be.

Of course, that truth is clearer and sharper some times and places than others. One of the reasons we give thanks for our political system is that it was designed by people with a clear awareness of human sinfulness; and if the checks and balances they built in as a result, in an effort to neutralize our vices and give virtue the best possible chance to triumph, sometimes make our government resemble one of Rube Goldberg’s ludicrous contraptions, well, it’s a small price to pay, given the alternatives.

Even so, if the temptation to back down, to compromise our faith, to go along to get along rather than standing up and resisting evil when we meet it in our government or our culture, is less obvious and clear-cut now than it has been at other times in human history, that doesn’t make it any less of a threat. We might be better able to fool ourselves into thinking we’re obeying God when we choose to compromise with evil, but that only makes the temptation more insidious, and more dangerous.

As Christians, we need to face the fact that we are always in opposition to the powers that be, at least to some degree. There are governments that do many things we can support, on a qualified basis, but even there, we must always hold ourselves apart from them and be calling them to account for the things they do wrong. We must be careful not to make the mistake (which far too many Christians, of whatever political persuasion, have in recent years) of identifying the work of the kingdom of God with the agenda of any given political party, or of mistaking supporting a political platform for advancing the work of God on Earth. We cannot with integrity sit that comfortably or identify ourselves that closely with any political organization, because we and they fundamentally are not about the same thing.

Rather, we need to recognize that if our primary commitment is to be faithful followers of Jesus Christ, we will make enemies. We will tend to be thorns in the side of those who hold power, digging out the things they want hidden and challenging them to be better than they are (or, maybe, than they want to be); we will also be an irritant in our culture, challenging people in their comfortable assumption that they’re doing just fine, calling them to set aside some of their desires and follow a more difficult path. But if we will hold fast to God, the psalmist declares boldly that God will keep us secure, both against the temptations of evil and against its assaults.

On abortion and the political divide

I was thinking this morning about one of the odder facts of recent American political history: the flip-flop in positions on abortion between the parties. Up into the ’60s, the Democratic Party was firmly pro-life, as hard as that may be to believe now. In large part, I imagine, that was due to the fact that Catholics were as firmly in the Democratic camp as blacks are now, and the Catholic Church has always been strongly pro-life—in fact (here’s another thing that sounds bizarre now), when Roe v. Wade was handed down in 1973, the decision was applauded by the leadership of the Southern Baptist Convention(!) on grounds of religious freedom. Abortion was seen as a Catholic issue; the SBC interpreted Roe as a victory for Protestants over Catholics, and thus (by their anti-Catholic logic) as a freeing of the law from Catholic influence. Beyond that, though, it was generally understood that the logic of liberalism and its emphasis on social justice meant defending the rights of the unborn.

Within a very short time, though, that all changed, and the pro-life movement found itself entrenched within the Republican Party instead. Why? Well, part of that is probably the rise of the Catholic Right—noted traditional Catholic William F. Buckley launched National Review in 1955, and though not an overtly Catholic magazine, it’s always had a definite Catholic character to it—but the shift came nearly two decades later; at most, the rise of the Catholic Right gave Catholics who left the Democratic Party someplace to go. It doesn’t explain why they left, nor why many non-Catholics went with them. Take the Rev. Richard John Neuhaus, who as a Lutheran pastor in NYC was a leading intellectual light on the Left in the ’60s, involved in the civil rights movement and an intimate of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.; how is it that by the ’80s, he was one of the most influential thinkers and leaders in this country on the Right?

The answer is that after Roe, the parties reconfigured themselves. As Princeton’s Robert P. George tells the story,

Neuhaus opposed abortion for the same reasons he had fought for civil rights and against the Vietnam War. At the root of his thinking was the conviction that human beings, as creatures fashioned in the image and likeness of God, possess a profound, inherent, and equal dignity. This dignity must be respected by all and protected by law. That, so far as Neuhaus was concerned, was not only a biblical mandate but also the bedrock principle of the American constitutional order. Respect for the dignity of human beings meant, among other things, not subjecting them to a system of racial oppression; not wasting their lives in futile wars; not slaughtering them in the womb.

It is important to remember that in those days it was not yet clear whether support for “abortion rights” would be a litmus test for standing as a “liberal.” After all, the early movement for abortion included many conservatives, such as James J. Kilpatrick, who viewed abortion not only as a solution for the private difficulties of a “girl in trouble,” but also as a way of dealing with the public problem of impoverished (and often unmarried) women giving birth to children who would increase welfare costs to taxpayers.

At the same time, more than a few notable liberals were outspokenly pro-life. In the early 1970s, Massachusetts Senator Edward M. Kennedy, for example, replied to constituents’ inquiries about his position on abortion by saying that it was a form of “violence” incompatible with his vision of an America generous enough to care for and protect all its children, born and unborn. Some of the most eloquent and passionate pro-life speeches of the time were given by the Rev. Jesse Jackson. In condemning abortion, Jackson never failed to note that he himself was born to an unwed mother who would likely have been tempted to abort him had abortion been legal and easily available at the time.

The liberal argument against abortion was straightforward and powerful. “We liberals believe in the inherent and equal dignity of every member of the human family. We believe that the role of government is to protect all members of the community against brutality and oppression, especially the weakest and most vulnerable. We do not believe in solving personal or social problems by means of violence. We seek a fairer, nobler, more humane way. The personal and social problems created by unwanted pregnancy should not be solved by offering women the ‘choice’ of destroying their children in utero; rather, as a society we should reach out in love and compassion to mother and child alike.”

So it was that Pastor Neuhaus and many like him saw no contradiction between their commitment to liberalism and their devotion to the pro-life cause. On the contrary, they understood their pro-life convictions to be part and parcel of what it meant to be a liberal. They were “for the little guy”—and the unborn child was “the littlest guy of all.”

It seems strange to think that some of the justices who crafted Roe and its successor decision, Doe v. Bolton, were considered conservatives and considered themselves to be acting on conservative principles, but it’s the truth. The decision, however, galvanized reactions, as all major decisions do, producing shifts in the political landscape:

By 1980, when Ronald Reagan (who as governor of California in the 1960s had signed an abortion liberalization bill) sought the presidency as a staunchly pro-life conservative and Edward Kennedy, having switched sides on abortion, challenged the wishy-washy President Jimmy Carter in the Democratic primaries as a doctrinaire “abortion rights” liberal, things had pretty much sorted themselves out. “Pro-choice” conservatives were gradually becoming rarer, and “pro-life” liberals were nearly an endangered species.

This, combined with the movement to re-ideologize American politics that began in earnest in 1968, is probably the most important fact in creating the political landscape as we know it.

One further thought: what of the Rev. Dr. King? He was a man who knew his history, who knew that part of the drive behind Planned Parenthood and the promotion of legalized abortion was the eugenicist impulses of white racists like Margaret Sanger who believed that “Colored people are like human weeds and are to be exterminated”; he was also, inarguably, a man of great moral courage. He’s generally thought of now as a man of the Left, and certainly had moved in that direction in a number of ways in the last few years of his life—but would he have followed the Left’s migration on the abortion issue, helping to realize Sanger’s vision of a self-inflicted black genocide? I could be wrong—I could always be wrong—but I don’t think so. Whether he would have shifted rightward with his friend the Rev. (and later Fr.) Neuhaus on economic issues is an imponderable, but I believe the man who stood so powerfully for the civil rights of people with dark skin would have stayed with Fr. Neuhaus in standing powerfully for the civil rights of the unborn. It may well be that the greatest loser in the Rev. Dr. King's assassination was the pro-life movement then still unborn.

Speaking of conservative idolatry

here's an example that's every bit as sickening, in a different but equally serious way, as the Obamadolatry we've been seeing: the "Conservative Bible Project." What an astonishing fusion of conservative Bibliolatry with conservative patriolatry . . . just look at this:

As of 2009, there is no fully conservative translation of the Bible which satisfies the following ten guidelines:

1. Framework against Liberal Bias: providing a strong framework that enables a thought-for-thought translation without corruption by liberal bias . . .

4. Utilize Powerful Conservative Terms: using powerful new conservative terms as they develop; defective translations use the word "comrade" three times as often as "volunteer"; similarly, updating words which have a change in meaning, such as "word", "peace", and "miracle". . . .

7. Express Free Market Parables: explaining the numerous economic parables with their full free-market meaning

8. Exclude Later-Inserted Liberal Passages: excluding the later-inserted liberal passages that are not authentic, such as the adulteress story . . .

10. Prefer Conciseness over Liberal Wordiness: preferring conciseness to the liberal style of high word-to-substance ratio; avoid compound negatives and unnecessary ambiguities; prefer concise, consistent use of the word "Lord" rather than "Jehovah" or "Yahweh" or "Lord God."

Several things are clear at this point. In the first place, these people clearly know little or nothing of what they would need to know to produce a useful translation of the Bible—just enough to be dangerous, at best. (I'll duel any of these fools—and I use the term advisedly, in its full biblical sense—over the authenticity of John 7:53-8:11, the story of the woman caught in adultery; there is no good reason to call it inauthentic, though on my judgment, it was probably originally a part of the gospel of Luke.) In the second place, their work is—deliberately—every bit as agenda-driven as the "liberal" work they condemn (much of which isn't liberal at all).

And in the third place, their professed interest in the Bible is a sham and a delusion. They may well believe it to be sincere—they may well be self-deluded—but it's a sham and a delusion nonetheless. Their whole approach demonstrates that they only care about the Bible as a tool to be used for their purposes; and that's about as unbiblical an approach as there is. It's also, I confess, an approach which I find completely intolerable. As I wrote recently,

If we have indeed been given birth through God’s word of truth, then to know who we are and how we should live, we need to under-stand that word of truth; which is to say, we need to stand under it, to place ourselves in position to receive and accept it. We must be quick to listen and slow to speak; we must receive and absorb the word of God, chew on it and swallow it and let it change us, rather than spitting it out whenever we don’t care for the taste.

Too often, however, we reverse this—we’re slow to listen and quick to speak. Too often we see ourselves not as the receiver but as the judge, standing over the word of truth to critique it. There are, for instance, those who feel they have the right to disregard or reject the parts of Scripture that say things they don’t like; but really, you can’t do that without rejecting all of Scripture, because the Bible itself won’t let you do that. Once you start doing that, you have rejected the word of God as the word of truth, and have instead set it up as something to be used when convenient to support what you already believe, or would like to believe.

I suspect from their comments that the folks doing this "conservative Bible" would assert that their project is necessary because liberals do this; but while I agree that liberals very often do, the answer is not for conservatives to do the same! That only worsens the problem, it doesn't help it. This sort of exegetical obscenity is intolerable in the service of any agenda. The Bible isn't "conservative" or "liberal" in the sense that it's about any human agenda, for any person or group of people; the Bible is about God's agenda, and his agenda alone, to which we're called to submit ourselves. To do otherwise isn't to "translate" the Bible but to distort and deform it.

One wonders why these fools can't get this. Rod Dreher does, calling the project "insane hubris"; so does Ed Morrissey:

However, if one believes the Bible to be the Word of God written for His purposes, which I do, then the idea of recalibrating the language to suit partisan political purposes in this age is pretty offensive—just as offensive as they see the "liberal bias" in existing translations. If they question the authenticity of the current translations, then the only legitimate process would be to work from the original sources and retranslate. And not just retranslate with political biases in mind, but to retranslate using proper linguistic processes and correct terminology.

The challenge of Christian believers is to adhere to the Word of God, not to bend the Word of God to our preferred ideology. Doing the former requires discipline and a clear understanding of the the Bible. Doing the latter makes God subservient to an ideology, rather than the other way around.

It can't be that difficult to understand that replacing liberal bias with conservative bias doesn't make for better Bible translation, doesn't it? Is "two wrongs don't make a right" really that hard a concept? For my part, I'm with the Anchoress (whose post is a must-read) on this one: This is where I get off the boat.

On partial-birth abortion

No, it isn't all Doug Hagler all the time around here (though I should probably declare this "Doug Hagler Week," and send him a thank-you card for giving me so much to post about), but he did say something in his post on George W. Bush that I think requires a response. To wit, here was the first point he adduced in President Bush's favor:

Bush banned what is often erroneously called partial-birth abortion, or more accurately late-term abortion. I'm not sure what the moral argument in favor of late-term abortion would be.

Now, there are several things that need to be said here. First, I do agree completely with the second sentence. Second, Aric Clark tried to counter that sentence by misrepresenting late-term abortion (the abortion industry is actually woefully under-regulated, and notorious for fighting any regulation on proclaimed ideological grounds). And third, none of that is actually germain to the point, because Doug's first sentence here is almost completely wrong. On a technical level, President Bush didn't ban partial-birth abortion, Congress did, though under his leadership. On a semantic level, the term "partial-birth abortion" is not in fact erroneous. And on the level of content, "partial-birth abortion" does not mean "late-term abortion," it means something very particular.

For those who are pro-life and squeamish, you might not want to read further, especially if you already know the score on partial-birth abortion. If you're pro-choice and squeamish, I would suggest that you do read on, so that you understand what it is you're defending. And if you're pro-choice and not bothered by the details, then may God soften your heart.

To the jump . . .

*********

Partial-birth abortion is a particular procedure, technically known as intact dilation and extraction (as well as by other, similar terms) and often referred to as D&X. The Free Dictionary describes the procedure this way:

According to the American Medical Association, this procedure has four main elements.^[8] First, the cervix is dilated. Second, the fetus is positioned for a footling breech. Third, the fetus is extracted except for the head. Fourth, the brain of the fetus is evacuated so that a dead but otherwise intact fetus is delivered via the vagina.

Usually, preliminary procedures are performed over a period of two to three days, to gradually dilate the cervix using laminaria tents (sticks of seaweed which absorb fluid and swell). Sometimes drugs such as synthetic pitocin are used to induce labor. Once the cervix is sufficiently dilated, the doctor uses an ultrasound and forceps to grasp the fetus' leg. The fetus is turned to a breech position, if necessary, and the doctor pulls one or both legs out of the birth canal, causing what is referred to by some people as the 'partial birth' of the fetus. The doctor subsequently extracts the rest of the fetus, usually without the aid of forceps, leaving only the head still inside the birth canal. An incision is made at the base of the skull, scissors are inserted into the incision and opened to widen the opening^[9], and then a suction catheter is inserted into the opening. The brain is suctioned out, which causes the skull to collapse and allows the fetus to pass more easily through the birth canal. The placenta is removed and the uterine wall is vacuum aspirated using a suction curette.

The AMA doesn't acknowledge the term "partial-birth abortion," but that's not because it's factually inaccurate; to the contrary, it's descriptive and evocative, which is precisely why the AMA resists it. Nor is it true to say that the procedure is only used in "rare and terrifyingly ugly situations," as Aric Clark claimed; rather,

Ron Fitzsimmons, executive director of the National Coalition of Abortion Providers (a trade association of abortion providers), told the New York Times (Feb. 26, 1997): "In the vast majority of cases, the procedure is performed on a healthy mother with a healthy fetus that is 20 weeks or more along."^[35] Some prominent self-described pro-choice advocates quickly defended the accuracy of Fitzsimmons' statements.^[36]

This is nothing less than the torture-murder of innocent human beings for no more crime, in most cases, than being inconvenient to the mother—or to people whom the mother is unwilling to challenge. You may well argue that opposition to abortion requires pacifism, opposition to anything one might call torture, and the like, and you might well be right (though at this point, I'm not convinced; I intend to argue through some of these things in the near future)—but it seems to me far stronger in the other direction: the arguments for pacifism and for the condemnation of such things as waterboarding apply with even greater force to abortion. To call oneself a pro-choice pacifist is to be logically and morally incoherent.

Caesar worship is alive and well

It's interesting to me how people who screamed bloody murder whenever George W. Bush used a phrase that was even vaguely religious have no problem with religious ceremonies, led by clergy, wearing clerical robes, using the traditional forms of the Christian liturgy, to pray to Barack Obama. When I talk about personality cults and political idolatry and the messianic temptation of the Obama campaign, this is the kind of thing I'm thinking of—except a lot worse than anything I've thought of to this point.

The great political temptation from which Judaism and Christianity delivered us was the worship of human beings; during the medieval period, whoever came up with the idea of the "divine right of kings" brought that partway back, but never all the way. Now, in their reaction against Christian faith and their denial of their need for a divine Messiah, folks on the Left are trying to turn a Chicago machine politician into a secular messiah. It will never work. Put not your trust in princes.

HT: Kevin Carroll, via Toby Brown

Remember: we don't speak for God

I guess this video has been bouncing around a bit, and has generated some opprobrium for the officer featured here. For my part, I'm troubled by the fact that this officer appears to be forcing this protestor to take down his sign with no justification but the threat of force—this is not how we want our police to behave—but in all honesty, I can't say I like the protestor's attitude much, either. I do, however, appreciate Alan W.'s reflections on this:

God has been doing a number on me with how many times what I want, believe, think and feel are simply reflections of the fall in Genesis 3 and trying to be "like God." . . .

I feel for Officer Cheeks much as I do about Joe the plumber. They are folks caught up in the moment and demonstrated the fact that they are humans. And Americans will make them pay the price for that too.

Here are two prophetic words for the Body of Christ. Treat people with GRACE and of course Matthew 7. I have a second word for the People of God, don't be a butt about things. If we don't like something fine but don't confuse what we like with what God likes.

Well put.

The leaven of the Pharisees and the loaf of politics

I posted yesterday on this passage from Ray Ortlund's blog:

Moral fervor is our deepest evil. When we intend to serve God, but forget to crucify Self moment by moment, we are capable of acting cruelly while feeling virtuous about it.

Let's always beware that delicious feeling that we are the defenders of the holy. Christ is the only Defender of the holy. He defends us from persecutors. He defends us from becoming persecutors. We can take refuge in him. But that esteem of him also means we regard ourselves with suspicion, especially when judging another.

As I was writing, I remembered a somewhat similar passage from C. S. Lewis:

It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated, but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

We may rightly call Lewis' observation the political application of Dr. Ortlund's point. I didn't want to go that direction with my post, so I didn't reference Lewis at that time. Denver Post columnist David Harsanyi did, though, in a recent piece (HT: Shane Vander Hart), applying Lewis' point squarely to our president and his administration:

This week, President Barack Obama claimed his version of health care reform is "a core ethical and moral obligation," beseeching religious leaders to promote his government-run scheme. Questioning the patriotism of opponents, apparently, wasn't gaining the type of traction advocates of "reform" had hoped. . . .

On Team Righteous, we have those who meet their moral obligations; on the other squad, we must have the minions of Beelzebub—by which, of course, we mean profit-driven, child-killing, mob-inciting insurance companies.

Why wasn't this multidenominational group of pastors, rabbis and other religious leaders offended that a mere earthly servant was summoning the good Lord in an effort to pass legislation? Certainly, one of the most grating habits of the Bush administration was how it framed policy positions in moral absolutes.

As CBS News recently reported, Obama has thrown around the name of God even more often than George W. Bush. Then again, no group couches policy as a moral obligation more than the left. On nearly every question of legislation, there is a pious straw man tugging at the sleeves of the wicked.

The problem with this, as both Lewis and Dr. Ortlund point out, is that it's the ultimate version of "the end justifies the means"—if "we" are on God's side and "they" are enemies of the right, the good and the just, then "we" don't need to worry about any moral constraints, because the rightness of our cause automatically justifies anything we do in its service. This is the kind of thing that makes, at the extremes, a Torquemada, a Lenin, a Dzerzhinsky, a bin Laden—the people who will "torment us without end," and do so "with the approval of their own conscience" because they know it's for the best—indeed, because they're really only doing it for our own good.

This kind of thing doesn't make for good religion; it doesn't make for good politics, either. As I said yesterday, the only real antidote to this is humility, and for all the degrees and other qualifications on display in the current White House, humility appears to be one thing that's in short supply there. Fortunately, one good thing about democratic politics is that it's usually pretty good about humbling those politicians as need it.

May it come soon.

A few further notes on the "Obama-Antichrist" tripe

Much easier to do this back in my office with my books to hand, so I can add a few things to my post last night.

One, the plural of bamah in Isaiah 14:14—to which the person who did the video refers in order to justify his back-translation of bamah—is indeed bamatey; or better, bāmātê, since the yodh there isn't functioning as a consonant but rather as a vowel marker. (Actually, the root word should really be written bāmâ, since the closing hē isn't really a consonant either, but also just a vowel marker.)

Two, now that I've had the chance to sit down with the New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology & Exegesis (NIDOTTE to its friends), I can say with confidence that this conjectured back-translation is completely wrongheaded. The word bāmâ is used in several places in the OT in the stereotyped phrase "to tread/ride on the heights of," as NIDOTTE says, "to express God's absolute sovereignty over land and sea"; Isaiah puts this phrase in the mouth of the king of Babylon to express his arrogant presumption. The word is never used to denote Heaven, the place where God dwells, however, and never would have been, since the primary meaning of bāmâ was a place of worship (the "high places" that the kings of Israel/Judah are criticized throughout the middle OT for not taking down); the word for "heights" that is used in this way is mārôm. Besides, if Jesus had used bāmâ, we wouldn't have to guess, since it actually passed into NT Greek in the form bēma.

Instead, looking at the semantic field, the word Jesus would have actually used would have been šāmayim (or its Aramaic cognate), which is the word that actually means "heaven" (it's paralleled with other words that mean "height," "sky," "firmament," etc., but those words aren't used by themselves to mean "heaven"). As such, even kībārāq min-ûbāmātê, as little as that sounds like "Barack Obama," is clearly not what Jesus actually said; the likeliest back-translation of the words "I saw Satan fall like lightning from Heaven" into Hebrew, rather, would be hāzâ (or rā'â) ha-śātān kībārāq min-vešāmayim.

All of which is to say, the idea that Jesus said "I saw Satan as Barack Obama" is utterly unsupported by the facts, and unsustainable on the basis of any real understanding of Hebrew; it's contemptible nonsense to fool the credulous and pre-deceived, nothing more.

Update: Shane VanderHart's post on this on his blog, Caffeinated Thoughts, is also well worth checking out, as he adds some good points.