The mind boggles

AP: Michigan Girl Scout sells 17,328 boxes of cookies

"It's always been one of those goals I wanted to accomplish," [Jennifer] Sharpe said Wednesday.

Really?

Politics in a nutshell

I've been reminded several times recently of the line (I forget who said it) that the difference between conservatives and liberals is summarized in Brown v. Board of Education. In Brown, if I recall correctly, the Court said that changes should be made "with deliberate speed"; conservatives emphasized deliberate, liberals emphasized speed. As a thumbnail sketch of the two political philosophies, it's not bad.

(As a side note: it works for churches, too.)

Explanations aren't excuses

The Atlantic has a piece up today titled "Burma's Days," which is essentially a thumbnail sketch of why the behavior of the military junta that rules Burma (and renamed the country Myanmar nine years ago), deplorable though it may be, makes perfect sense in light of Burmese history and culture. It's a useful piece for the information in it (and a more useful one yet for the links to other articles), but it's also an irritating example of the tendency among Western intelligentsia to look for excuses for foreign dictators. People who condemn the Israeli government for breathing will look the other way at Mugabe's efforts to depopulate Zimbabwe or calmly explain how the Burmese military should be excused for diverting aid from cyclone victims because "they have reason to be suspicious about their neighbors and outside powers." (And of course, those who wouldn't make those particular mistakes may yet have a soft spot in their hearts for the corrupt rulers of Saudi Arabia, or be perfectly content with the generals running Pakistan; this is a game both left and right can play, and have.) Why is that?

I suppose I can understand the Realpolitik approach that says, essentially, as long as dictators don't give us any trouble, we should let them run their countries however they want; I don't like it, and in the long run, I think it's self-defeating (to borrow from Barack Obama on Pakistan, if we choose to promote stability instead of democracy, we tend to wind up with neither), but at least I can see the logic. But what on earth moves our journalists and public intellectuals to find excuses for these thugs? That, I just don't get.

(As you can see, I go with "Burma" over "Myanmar." The latter is probably closer, as far as I can tell, to what the Burmese people call themselves—not that we let that bother us with places like Hungary—but I have two related reasons for not using it. One, the name change came from the junta, which is an illegitimate government, and therefore in my opinion is likewise illegitimate; and two, it's not just my opinion. I had, for several months several moves ago, a landlord who was in exile from Burma due to his activities with the opposition; he called his country Burma and himself Burmese. He knew a lot more than I do, and had a lot more reason to care, so if it was good enough for him, it's good enough for me.)

Doctrine in a nutshell (or two)

HT: Ray Ortlund

And I never get tired of this song.

Creed

I believe in God the Father,
Almighty Maker of Heaven and Maker of Earth,
And in Jesus Christ His only begotten Son, our Lord.
He was conceived by the Holy Spirit,
Born of the virgin Mary,
Suffered under Pontius Pilate
He was crucified and dead and buried.

And I believe what I believe
Is what makes me what I am;
I did not make it, no, it is making me—
It is the very truth of God and not the invention of any man.

I believe that He who suffered was crucified, buried and dead;
He descended into Hell and on the third day, He rose again.
He ascended into Heaven where he sits at God's mighty right hand.
I believe that He's returning to judge the quick and the dead of the sons of men.

Chorus

I believe in God the Father,
Almighty Maker of Heaven and Maker of Earth,
And in Jesus Christ His only begotten Son, our Lord.
I believe in the Holy Spirit,
One Holy Church,
The communion of saints,
The forgiveness of sins,
I believe in the resurrection,
I believe in a life that never ends.

Chorus

Words and music: Rich Mullins/Beaker
© 1993 Edward Grant, Inc./Kid Brothers of St. Frank Publishing
From the album a liturgy, a legacy, & a ragamuffin band, by Rich Mullins

The genius of Bach

Bach : music :: Shakespeare : playwriting. Not only in terms of genius, but also in the fact that the power of the work comes through no matter what you do with it (whether it be Nazi-era Richard III or "electronic Bach"). As Jan Swafford writes in Slate,

His music tends to work in all versions, I submit, because the notes-qua-notes are so good. Mozart, Beethoven, Stravinsky, or [your favorite composer here] were constantly concerned with the instruments that played or sung their work: great notes, too, but intimately bound to their media. In The Art of Fugue Bach didn't seem to care what the medium was; it would work no matter what. A lot of his music—not all, but a lot—is like that: incomparable notes, regardless of avatar. . .

Bach universalized what he called "the art and science of music" by the power of gripping melody, rich harmony, towering perorations, intimate whisperings, explosive joy, piercing tragedy.

That's why, as Swafford writes, a work as demanding and formal as The Art of Fugue can still end up at the top of the best-seller list (as Pierre-Laurent Aimard's solo-piano version did this spring): just because it's Bach at his best. Genius has that kind of power.

HT: Alan Jacobs

Belated thoughts on prayer

Over a month ago now, Barry put up a post on prayer asking, essentially, if prayer changes things, why does so little seem to change? I meant to respond at the time, but for a variety of reasons, didn't get to it; but then I was reminded of his post during a conversation last week with several colleagues in ministry. The question of why our prayers so often don't get the answer for which we hope is a live one for most pastors, and it's one for which I don't have any kind of truly satisfactory answer; but I do have two thoughts.

First, I don't believe that prayer changes things. I believe God changes things. I don't believe there's power in prayer, I believe there's power in the God to whom we pray. I do believe Pascal was right, that prayer is the means by which God gives us the dignity of causality—of doing something other than just passively absorbing his actions—but even if in prayer he allows us a voice in what he does, that doesn't mean there's any power in us or our actions, let alone enough power to compel him to do as we want.

Second, I'm learning to trust that God knows what he's doing. One of my colleagues last week, musing on all the times God has not given him what he's prayed for, made a statement to the effect that "I've come to see all those refusals as my salvation." Experience had taught him that God was right not to grant him his requests. The longer I go, the more times I see in my own life where that's clearly the case, and the more I learn to trust him for his "no" as well as his "yes."

So why doesn't God heal more? Why don't we see people raised from the dead? I don't know. I've been a part of churches where that happened; I've seen remarkable healing take place right before my eyes as I and others prayed. I've also been a part of other churches that were, as far as I could tell, no less faithful in following God—but prayers for healing were rarely granted. I don't know why. I don't suppose I ever will know why. Maybe it has something to do with challenging our modern emphasis on cure over care, which has certainly reached the point of being theologically problematic. But whatever the reason, I'm learning to trust God who has promised that whatever we may bear in this life, in the end, "All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well."

John McCain, unnatural politician

A couple weeks ago, Karl Rove had an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal in which he asserted that "Mr. McCain is one of the most private individuals to run for president in history," and argued that the Senator will have to set his reticence aside and open up to American voters if he wants to win in November. Rove has a point regarding what the electorate will want, and what stories are important for Sen. McCain to tell in the course of making his case to the voters; but what I think he fails to understand is that it's not just a matter of being a naturally private person, as if he just needed to overcome his embarrassment and brag a little more. Sen. McCain's reticence, I believe, goes to the heart of who he is.

In the first place, it seems to me that he has a real aversion to making political capital out of things that are truly meaningful to him. The stories he's told about his life during this campaign have been stories he's told to explain himself, to help people understand him, not to make himself look good or play on voters' emotions. Clearly, he would prefer to inspire voters by talking about honor, duty, patriotism and courage, not by bragging about what a wonderful person he is; the stories he's told about himself have tended to be self-deprecating rather than self-exalting.

Similarly, though by any normal definition you'd have to call Sen. McCain an evangelical conservative (and one with a strong personal testimony, at that), he's been very resistant to leading with his faith, preferring to duck such questions or answer them sidelong. I respect that; I think using one's faith for political gain, turning Jesus into a means to an end, is spiritually a risky thing at best. That said, however, running for office is an act of self-communication; if your relationship with Jesus is at the core of who you are and why you believe and do what you believe and do, then you have to tell people that in a way that they'll understand. Though I think his theology is notably off at points, I don't think he deserves the skepticism he's received from other evangelicals; if he wants their active, involved support rather than just (most of) their votes, he's going to need to find a way to make that clear.

Second, I believe there's another issue as well with regard to Sen. McCain's military experience. I think I've written about this somewhere (though I can't find it), but having grown up in a military family, I've spent a lot of time around combat veterans, some of whom were Vietnamese POWs. In all that time, I've noticed a clear pattern in the kind of stories I hear and the kind I don't. I hear funny stories, and stories that show what a sharp pilot Commander X was, or how good a shiphandler Captain Y was; I hear stories as object lessons about leadership and doing your job right, and sometimes I hear stories about fellow officers sold up the river by the politicians. What I do not hear, and have never heard, are stories about the blood and guts of combat (for lack of a better phrase). My brother was with my father when he went to the Wall, and saw him break down; I have never seen that side of his experience, and I would be surprised if I ever do. Because, you see, I have never been there; I don't understand, and I can't.

From my own observations, combat veterans rarely talk about that kind of thing except among their own, with those who don't need to be told how it was because they already understand, because they, too, were there. That's why I never trusted John Kerry, because he was the kind of man who could make political capital out of his medals, and out of turning on those with whom he had served; which told me that he'd only gone into the military for what he could get out of it. Fundamentally, he was a political officer, someone who had put on the uniform as a politician, and such people are not to be trusted.

Sen. McCain, by contrast, went into the service for very different reasons, and served out of very different motives; and though he, too, went into politics after returning to civilian life, he has made very different (and much more limited) use of his military career in the pursuit of his political goals. Karl Rove is asking him to change that, and to cross a line that I suspect he might find not only difficult but even somewhat dishonorable to cross. I think Rove is right, that his campaign will need to find a way to do that if they're going to run successfully; but I also think it might be asking too much of the Senator himself to tell those stories. Maybe their best option would be to get folks like Col. Bud Day to cris-cross the country and tell them for him.

In defense of the church, part III: Doctrine

There's a strong anti-doctrinal spirit in parts of the church these days, as the impulse in this direction of oldline Protestant liberalism is being reinforced by Emergent types who are assiduously reinventing Walter Rauschenbusch; it's a spirit that's captured quite well in this video from Solomon's Porch in Minneapolis:

I'm struck, in that video, by the blithe confidence with which people look into the camera and assert that their church has no doctrinal statement that anyone has to believe because everyone has their different opinions and they're all valid, and that upholding anything as unchanging truth is a waste of time because Scripture is evolving, as if a) they're obviously true, and b) doctrine is obviously a bad thing. The problem is, these statements don't hold.

They don't hold for three reasons. The first is that if you want Scripture to mean anything at all, it can't mean that. You will not find "everyone has ideas and they're all valid" in the Word of God. What you will find instead is Jesus declaring, "I am the way and the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father except through me" (John 14:6); what you'll find is Paul telling Timothy, "But as for you, continue in what you have learned and firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it, and how from childhood you have known the sacred writings that are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work" (2 Timothy 3:14-17). What you'll find, in other words, is a strong concern through all Scripture that the church know and believe and uphold the truth, which in fact does not change, because truth is of God and God doesn't change. If we actually want to follow Christ, that necessarily means that we need to be concerned to know and believe and proclaim the truth—and that in turn means that we do need doctrine, and an understanding of at least the most basic beliefs that we need to hold if we're to follow where he's actually going (as opposed to where we want to believe he's going).

The second reason is that, as John Hatton has noted in a brilliant post on Confessing Evangelical, doctrine is necessary as the "constitution for a community." He pulls this phrase from Columbia law professor Eben Moglen, the lawyer for the Free Software Foundation who helped draft (and enforce) the GNU General Public License; according to Moglen, that's the primary purpose of free software licenses, not that they provide a platform for enforcement, but that they constitute (which is to say, create and give form to) a community with a given identity and purpose. Without that constitution,

groups arise within the community who, being ignorant of the principles on which the community is constituted, start to reject and work against those principles. They do not mean to undermine the community—quite the opposite; they consider they are strengthening it—but by undermining that community’s constitution it is inevitable that they will end up damaging the community itself.

This is a phenomenon with which the church is all too familiar, and it shows why there is a need to teach people the faith. Not because people need to know doctrine inside-out in order to be good Christians; not because it is a useful technique that is effective in building up individuals and the church; but because poorly-taught Christians may find themselves inadvertently undermining the constitution on which the church is built, by coming to reject doctrines they have never even known or understood in the first place. . . .

In addition, the free software movement and the church are both faced by numerous external opponents (variously, the world, the flesh, the devil, and Microsoft ;-) ), and ignorance of the constitution on which each community is founded makes it easier for those external opponents to damage that community and the individuals within it.

The key here is that those who reject doctrine (or conceive themselves to be doing so, anyway) do so because they misconstrue it as primarily regulatory in purpose, as if the main reason we have doctrines is so we can punish those who disagree. As Hatton, applying Moglen, shows, that's wrong: the primary purpose of doctrine is formative, creating us as the people of God, as the kind of community God wants us to be. Set it aside, and you may be fine for a while, but ultimately you'll find "poorly-taught Christians . . . inadvertently undermining the constitution on which the church is built, by coming to reject doctrines they have never even known or understood in the first place." Who we are and how we live begins with and flows out of what we believe; we cannot be a unified community in Christ, we cannot serve God together as his people, in any faithful way for any length of time without holding at least our most important beliefs in common (such as who this God is we're worshiping, and who this Jesus is we're following, and why we're doing this at all). As Rich Mullins summed up the matter in his song "Creed,"

I believe what I believe is what makes me what I am;
I did not make it—no, it is making me;
It is the very truth of God and not the invention of any man.

The third reason the statements I referenced above don't hold is that they fail the Francis Schaeffer test: "Can you live them out?" You can't; Solomon's Porch can't, and their video shows it. In the snippets from Doug Pagitt's sermon (at least, I assume it's Doug Pagitt preaching), he makes such statements as, "Ultimately, community that's Christian means to be a community of love." That's a doctrinal statement. It makes no sense whatsoever without a complete doctrinal context that provides definitions (so that we know what words like "community," "Christian," and "love" mean; they aren't self-evident) and goals (so that we know, for instance, why we value community, and why we want a community that's Christian as opposed to some other kind), and it asserts something that we must believe: a Christian community is a community of love. On the basis of what they say, the folks at Solomon's Porch ought to be completely happy if someone stood up at that point and said, "You're wrong; that might have been true once, but it isn't now"—but they wouldn't. They might say, "all those ideas are important and valued," but if someone tried to interrupt the message to insist that a Christian community is not a community of love, they would find out exactly how important and valued that idea isn't.

And that is necessarily so. It has to be; because if they really believed their own sweeping statements and tried to live accordingly, they would find that the rejection of doctrine is a universal acid that dissolves community. And so, even as the folks in that video insist that all beliefs are welcome, they also say, "If Jesus were alive today, what would he be concerned about? Well, he'd be concerned about what I'm concerned about" (and therefore, by clear implication, you ought to be concerned about that, too). They're not rejecting doctrine as such; they can't, because they wouldn't have a coherent community if they did. What they're rejecting is any doctrinal authority except themselves—which ultimately ends in rejecting the authority and primacy of Jesus, and building a church that's all about us and how wonderful we are.

This is, I believe, where the attack on doctrine comes from. People may say they're attacking the church because it insists on believing specific things, but their overt complaint is in fact incoherent, and merely a mask for the real complaint: that the church is telling them things they don't want to hear. That's not all bad, nor is it necessarily unreasonable, since no church has all its doctrines right, and too many churches teach things which are harmful, or proclaim things in harmful ways; but the problem comes when we start to think that the church should only tell us what we want to hear, and only ask us to believe what we want to believe. That's not the model we have from Jesus. Jesus spent a lot of time telling people things they didn't want to hear, because it was what they needed to hear; if we as the church are to be faithful to his call, we must go and do likewise.

(NB: the last paragraph has been edited to more clearly and accurately express my point.)

Thinking with the fishes

Just a quick post tonight, because I'm dead tired—most of my neurons are sitting in corners sulking, refusing to talk to each other. I have several posts I've been hoping to get done, but . . . well, maybe tomorrow . . . maybe Monday.

Anyway, if you're not familiar with The Porpoise-Diving Life, check out the May issue on the website. I'm more than a little biased here, since my wife contributed a piece, and the editor is Erin Word, whom I like quite well, but I do think there's some good material up. (Sara's, btw, is the last one in the list, "The Mythical Good Christian Is Just a Piece of Topiary.") Reading through a few of the pieces set me in mind, for some reason, of a certain theme that pops up a few times in Paul's letters:

"For neither circumcision counts for anything nor uncircumcision,
but keeping the commandments of God."

—1 Corinthians 7:19 (ESV)

"For through the Spirit, by faith, we ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything,
but only faith working through love."

—Galatians 5:5-6 (ESV)

"But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. For neither circumcision counts
for anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation."

—Galatians 6:14-15 (ESV)

Of course, the issue these days isn't circumcision; the new legalism has its own equivalents. Let's just be careful that in throwing off legalism, we don't make a fetish of its opposite. As Paul is at pains to tell us, circumcision is nothing, but neither is uncircumcision . . .

The problem with historical parallels

is knowing what's really parallel to what. This is where the deeper problem with Barack Obama's attempt at historical equivalence comes in. After all, had he wanted to name Republicans instead of Democrats, he could have said much the same thing with greater accuracy by citing Nixon and Reagan; but though his comparison would have been correct in the letter of the matter, it would have been wrong in the spirit. When Nixon opened the SALT talks, or when Reagan went to the Reykjavik summit, they were dealing with a government that worked, fundamentally, on a modern rationalist Western understanding of power and politics in which "if you do this, you will die" is a deterrent. The ability to deter the action of other powers by making that threat is the linchpin of the Western approach to diplomacy; this is not to say that every diplomatic move rests on the threat of force, or that all such encounters are in some way fundamentally hostile, but it is to say that the rules by which the game is played have developed, over centuries, from that point and on that basis. Which raises the question: how do you address an enemy for whom death is not a deterrent?

That, unfortunately, is the situation we're in with respect to powers like Iran, and organizations like Hamas and Hizb'allah. This is the point Alan Dershowitz was trying to get across a couple months ago in his editorial "Worshippers of Death"; that's why he hit his readers with this barrage of quotes:

"We are going to win, because they love life and we love death," said Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah. He has also said: "[E]ach of us lives his days and nights hoping more than anything to be killed for the sake of Allah." Shortly after 9/11, Osama bin Laden told a reporter: "We love death. The U.S. loves life. That is the big difference between us."

"The Americans love Pepsi-Cola, we love death," explained Afghani al Qaeda operative Maulana Inyadullah. Sheik Feiz Mohammed, leader of the Global Islamic Youth Center in Sydney, Australia, preached: "We want to have children and offer them as soldiers defending Islam. Teach them this: There is nothing more beloved to me than wanting to die as a mujahid." Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in a speech: "It is the zenith of honor for a man, a young person, boy or girl, to be prepared to sacrifice his life in order to serve the interests of his nation and his religion."

In other words, even if talking with our enemies has worked in the past (a dubious assertion, on the whole), there's a lot less reason to think it might work this time, because we don't have the same leverage here; we can't make them behave, because we can't deter them from acting. All we can do is stop them. (As Dershowitz points out, we're at a disadvantage in that, as well; but that's a subject for another post, at least.) Unfortunately, the message doesn't seem to have taken, judging by Sen. Obama's remarks. What matters here isn't whether the American people think talking with, say, Iran or Syria, is a sign of weakness; what matters is that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Bashar al'Assad most assuredly will—and will react accordingly.

Why lawyers shouldn't teach history

"I trust the American people to understand that it is not weakness, but wisdom to talk
not just to our friends, but to our enemies, like Roosevelt did, and Kennedy did,
and Truman did."

—Sen. Barack Obama, 5/6/08

I've been meaning to get around to commenting on this ridiculous case of historical malpractice. This might just be the single most wrongheaded political statement I've heard during this campaign (which, given this campaign, is saying something). I can't think of a single enemy with whom either Roosevelt (either Roosevelt, come to that, though I presume he's referring to the Democrat) or Truman had diplomatic conversations except the one with whom we were allied; as for JFK, it was talking to our enemies that got him into trouble. If he'd stood up to the shoe-pounder to begin with, we would all have been better off. (Then, of course, the Kennedy Administration's misbehaviors in Vietnam are surely nothing Sen. Obama wants to hold up as a model.)

RealClearPolitics' Jack Kelly, in his helpful survey of the senator's historical ridiculosity, suggests Neville Chamberlain as a better historical analogue, noting that Chamberlain's declaration of peace "didn't work out so well." I might add that among American Presidents, the real appeasers are folks like Carter—or, if we want to include internal enemies, James Buchanan. I presume Sen. Obama wouldn't have been in favor of continuing to negotiate with domestic slaveowners?

The Gospel in the Ascension

In the church, we talk a fair bit about Jesus’ death on the cross to pay the penalty for our sin, and how his death was for each and every one of us. (At least, we’re supposed to; if your church doesn’t, that’s not good.) Bill had a great little post reflecting on that over at The Thinklings a month or so ago. That's an important truth for us to think about and talk about in understanding just how much God loves us. The only problem is that too often we stop there—we don’t realize that the truth goes even farther than that.

You see, Jesus became a human being with a human body, and in that body he suffered temptation beyond anything any of us can imagine (since he never knew the lifting of temptation that comes with giving in to it), and in that body he suffered agony beyond anything any of us can comprehend—and as great as the physical torment of the crucifixion was, the spiritual torment of taking on the entire guilt for the entire weight of human sin and pain for all of recorded history was far, far greater; and having born all that pain in his body, with the scars of that pain permanently etched in his flesh, he kept it. He kept that body with its map of his suffering, and in that body he returned to the Father’s side. His incarnation was no mere temporary thing; the physical trainer from whom I took a spin class used to tell us, “You can do anything for five minutes” (when we were five minutes from the end and about ready to fall off the stationary bikes), but this was no matter of God calculating that he could, after all, bear being human for thirty years or so. This was permanent—a permanent change with permanent scars.

And here’s the key: he did it for you. This is how much God loves you, that he would go to such lengths as this for you. The Son of God became human for all time, and as a human suffered wounds he will bear for all time, for you. If we’re honest with ourselves, we have to admit that like everything else about us, our love has limits: we reach a place, if people push us too far, where we have to say, “Yes, I love you, but not that much.” Some of us can go farther than others, but none of us can keep going forever. God’s love can, and does, and has, far beyond where we could have expected. No matter how far you go from God, the Father’s love goes farther. No matter how great your sin, it has a limit, and God’s love doesn’t, and neither does the meaning of his sacrifice on the cross; no matter how great your sin, it’s covered.

That’s important for us to remember in our down times, and the times when we’re wrestling with a temptation we just can’t seem to beat, because those are the times when we risk giving in to despair; those are the times that the devil comes and whispers in our ears, trying to convince us that God has given up on us, that he can’t possibly love us anymore after all we’ve done. The fact of the matter is, when you look at everything Jesus did for us, everything he went through to save us, there’s no way that anything we can do can change his mind about that; the very worst we can do is but a small part of the pain he bore for us. He didn’t come down to this earth under the illusion that we’re better than we actually are; he didn’t come down to take just some of our sin, as if there were some things that even he wouldn’t die to redeem. No, he came down here to pay the price for all our sin, to heal all our wounds and carry all our diseases; he came to raise the dead of a dying world, nothing less, and now he has gone on ahead to prepare our way. Christ has gone up with shouts of joy in order that we might follow him, that we might be invited to live forever in the eternal blessing of the love of God.

Down to her last fingernail

After getting clocked in North Carolina and barely eking out a victory in Indiana, by any rational calculation, Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign is all but dead. Had she gotten the best-case scenario for which she was hoping—a double-digit win in Indiana and a loss within 5-7 points in NC—she could make a rational case for herself on the basis of the political situation; what the actual results indicate is that Sen. Obama has weathered the blows, at least with Democratic voters, and is still on his feet. Barring the unexpected, her hopes for the White House are over.

The problem is, of course, in this craziest of all campaign seasons, how could we possibly have the cheek to bar the unexpected? When was the last time we had anything but the unexpected? Unless Sen. Obama completely self-destructs, he's the nominee—but his self-destruction somehow seems completely possible, even if I can't imagine anyone without Sen. Clinton's ego actually betting on it. What's more, I can even think of two completely possible ways by which that could happen.

One, while we've heard all we need to hear about the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.'s beliefs, what we haven't heard him talk about (at least in any detail) is his relationship with Sen. Obama. If someone starts asking him those questions, depending on his answers, that could torpedo Sen. Obama.

Two, final arguments open Monday in the trial of Obama associate Antoin "Tony" Rezko. As Hugh Hewitt notes, "if Rezko is convicted and is facing a long stretch in jail, won't he have to think long and hard about naming names in order to limit his years in federal prison?" Should that happen, things could get very, very messy for Illinois Democrats; the likeliest major pol to go down would seem to be not Sen. Obama but Gov. Rod Blagojevich, but the fact that Rezko did Sen. Obama large, expensive favors would tie him closely enough to the story to be fatal to his ambitions, should it end up breaking open on that scale.

What are the odds of either of these things happening? Who knows? What were the odds of any of the things we've seen so far? But if Sen. Clinton stays in the race until she's pushed out, she maximizes her chance of taking advantage if either one does. So, down to her last fingernail she may be, and there may be nothing but the strength of her blood-red polish keeping it from breaking off—but as long as it holds, she's not going anywhere.

Song of the Week, for a distressed friend

These days, if people have heard of Stormie Omartian, most of them know her for her books, while her husband Michael is primarily mentioned as a producer; that's a shame, because he put out some great albums of his own, beginning with White Horse and Adam Again back in the '70s, and a number of fine ones together with her as well. The only one of their joint albums I have is Mainstream, and the tape is dying after a quarter-century, which is too bad, since it's not even listed on Amazon. I'll listen to it until it goes, anyway. This song is off that album; as I was listening to it in the car on the way back from work the other day, I had the sense that someone I know needs to hear the message of this song. So, no audio, but up it goes.

Believing for the Best in You

After all I've said to try to change your mind,
Are you still going to doubt my words?
You can show me your failures and point out your flaws—
I don't hear you.
There are two sides to every story,
And glory is on your side;
One hope in every dreamer—the Redeemer;
And that is why

I'm believing for the best in you,
Believing for the best in you;
You've got Jesus in your heart, and you love Him so—
Well, that's all I need to know, all I need to know.
I'm believing for the best in you.

You've been searching through the garden of your life
For seeds that were planted there;
When I show you the blossoms and point out the vines,
You don't see them.
You're looking so hard for the flower
When the hour is still ahead,
And all that is not showing is growing,
And that is why

Chorus

The eyes of the Lord are upon you;
He sees what He made you to be.
So arise and shine,
For thy light has come
And there's no way to hide it from me.

Chorus

Words and music: Michael and Stormie Omartian
© 1982 See This House Music/Birdwing Music/Cherry Lane Music Publishing Co.
From the album Mainstream, by Michael & Stormie Omartian

This all made more sense on Mountain Time

Staying up to watch election returns, that is; it's two hours earlier in Colorado. I can't keep doing this when it means being up until midnight on a school night. (Why do elections have to be on Tuesdays, anyway?)

Political junkie or otherwise, I need to start putting sleep ahead of politics.

Well, of course they are

I think Hugh Hewitt's missing the point a bit on Barack Obama (which is rather like a donkey telling an elephant his nose is unimpressive, but bear with me). Hewitt writes,

What Obama has won is the heart of the left, and they don't care that he cannot win Pennsylvania or Ohio in the fall. They want one of their own. They prefer six months of theater they produce to four years of power in which they have supporting roles.

So the Democrats, fresh off the 2004 rejection of an elitist senator from the far left edge of their party, will choose to nominate an elitist senator from an even farther left precinct of their party, only one much less experienced than John Kerry.

Now, I don't disagree with any of that; but the key here is, the Soros/MoveOn/DailyKos crowd do. First, they think Sen. Obama can win in the fall. Second, even if, should someone press them, they might concede that Hillary Clinton would have a better chance, they wouldn't care: they believe the current climate is hostile enough to Republicans that this time they have a shot at electing a President who straight out thinks like them. They believe that this year, they have a real shot at electing "an elitist senator from an even farther left precinct of their party," even though that didn't work four years ago, and they're not willing to give that up for a less-satisfying victory (another Clinton). After all, if Sen. Clinton wins, their odds of electing someone as liberal as Sen. Obama President any time in the near future go down; whereas if John McCain wins, they've convinced themselves that their odds of getting what they want will be even better four years from now (scroll down to the first comment). With that sort of mindset, whyever should they settle for less than what they really want in a nominee?

Children as buying machines

That's one of Heather McDougal's complaints about TV on Cabinet of Wonders, in her post to which I linked last week:

2. People are trying to sell me stuff the whole time and are counting on me not noticing that they are trying to sell me stuff.

2a. When people are trying to sell me stuff, they are willing to do anything they can to get me to buy it, including working really hard at making me hate myself so their product can be the solution.

2b. The people who want to sell me stuff are also thinking of my children as a commodity to be bought and sold, and have absolutely no compunction about trying to turn three-year-olds into buying machines (or using the whine factor to try to get little ones to turn me into their own personal buying machine). Also, they want to make my daughters feel bad about themselves so they will buy things. Yuck.

This isn't a secret, of course; anyone who pays attention (and especially anyone with children) can see it. Still, it's no end galling how shameless media companies are about it; and perhaps the most galling thing is that the worst of all of them that way is Disney. Condé Nast Portfolio (an excellent magazine, btw, and a great read even if you don't read business magazines) has an article up titled “How Mickey Got His Groove Back” which makes this appallingly clear. If you've never run across any of the Mouse's cynical exercises in making money off so-called “tweens” (do we have to keep slicing childhood up into ever-smaller marketing segments?), Karl Taro Greenfeld's opening paragraph should give you the idea:

Perhaps it was my daughters singing along with Hannah Montana—“Get up, get loud, we’re pumping up the party now!”—eight times in a row that morning. Or maybe it was the 16 times I overheard High School Musical and High School Musical 2 playing on the television in the living room, or the several hundred dollars my wife and I spend on Disney tween products—aimed at nine- to 14-year-old girls—every year. Or the fact that a magazine (thankfully, not this one) asked me to profile a Disney tween star and then, almost before I could ask “Who?,” told me that another publication had beaten them to it. Finally, after my eight-year-old daughter pointed to a picture of Hillary Clinton and said she was supporting her for president “because she’s named Hillary, like Hilary Duff,” I decided I had to know: Who is doing this to me?

I wonder what Walt would think.

Old evils never die

they just find new sewers to hide in; as long as our hearts continue polluted, there will truly be nothing new under the sun. Thus, for example, if you think slavery was a peculiarly American crime that basically disappeared in 1865, think again. If Logan Paul Gage's article on E. Benjamin Skinner's exploration of contemporary slavery (an exploration recounted in detail in his book A Crime So Monstrous: Face-to-Face with Modern-Day Slavery) doesn't make you want to weep, your heart is as hard and cold as the Hope diamond.

Song of the Week

Hap's latest post, "The Beauty of Broken Glass," plays with some wonderful images, and I really encourage you to read it if you haven't. For my part, given my brain's tendency to spin off in random directions, it's no surprise that one of the things it brought to mind was this song by Andrew Peterson. (My wife doesn't care for it, but I like it quite well.)

Just As I Am

What's that on the ground?
It's what's left of my heart;
Somebody named Jesus broke it to pieces
And planted the shards.
And they're coming up green, and they're coming in bloom;
I can hardly believe this is all coming true.

Just as I am, and just as I was,
Just as I will be He loves me, He does.
He showed me the day that He shed His own blood:
He loves me, oh, He loves me, He does.

All of my life
I've held on to this fear—
These thistles and vines ensnare and entwine
What flowers appear—
It's the fear that I'll fall one too many times;
It's the fear that His love is no better than mine.
(But he tells me that)

Chorus

Well, it's time now to harvest
What little that grew;
This man they call Jesus who planted the seeds
Has come for the fruit.
And the best that I've got isn't nearly enough;
He's glad for the crop, but it's me that He loves.

Chorus

Words and music: Andrew Peterson
© 2003 New Spring Publishing (a division of Brentwood-Benson Music Publishing)
From the album Love & Thunder, by Andrew Peterson

Distortion

The Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson has a column up on WorldNetDaily on the racism that infects some black churches. His analysis makes a certain amount of sense, and he may well be right that "since the exodus of men, black preachers have retooled their message to play to women's egos"; certainly, one hears enough of that sort of complaint aimed at the white church. Where the Rev. Peterson goes wrong is in the next paragraph:

Bishop T.D. Jakes, for instance, has built an empire by targeting the emotional needs of women. His popular books include "Loose That Man & Let Him Go" and "The Lady, Her Lover, Her Lord."

There are two main problems here, which are (predictably) interrelated. The first is that this is a gross oversimplification of Bishop Jakes' ministry. Rev. Peterson's statements would lead one to expect that Bishop Jakes has written a flood of books "targeting the emotional needs of women," when even a cursory look will show the contrary. Second, Rev. Peterson writes so as to imply from context that Loose That Man & Let Him Go! is a book addressed to women encouraging them to dump the men in their lives, when nothing could be farther from the truth. In actual fact, the book is one of a number which Bishop Jakes has addressed to men urging men "to let Jesus take hold of their limitations and bondages and to come forth into the light of all God has planned for them"—a message I remember him preaching at Promise Keepers—and he's been doing that rather longer than he's been writing to women; the first of his books addressed to women, Woman, Thou Art Loosed!, wasn't published until 1994. (Loose That Man & Let Him Go! came out in 1991; the title, incidentally, is addressed not to women but to the Devil.)

All of which is to say that the Rev. Peterson appears to have an agenda, which he makes clear in the following paragraph:

Worse, Jakes has empowered women to assume leadership positions within the church, despite clear biblical admonitions against it.

It's all well and good to speak of "clear biblical admonitions"; those of us who disagree with the Rev. Peterson's school of interpretation on the role of women in the church don't see anything of the sort, but it's as appropriate for him to use such language as it is for me in return to say that his reading of the Bible is shallow, simplistic, and culturally bound. That's well within the bounds of normal academic rhetoric. What isn't, and what in fact is flat-out inappropriate, is to prop up his agenda by misrepresenting the facts. Whatever his faults and flaws (and no doubt he has many, just like all the rest of us), Bishop Jakes deserves better than that.