Dave For President

Or maybe just some financial cabinet position. Check out Dave Ramsey's idea for the "Common Sense Fix" for our country's current financial problems. He suggests three things that we all can do:

1. Pray for your leaders. Pray for them to resist a spirit of FEAR and to embrace WISDOM. Even if you don't like them or agree with them, pray for them and tell them you are praying for them. There is a spirit over this problem that must be broken. Also, most of the media personalities are afraid as well and that is affecting their reporting. Pray for fear to be removed from them; they are making this worse.
2. Send the Common Sense Fix to your Representatives and Senators. (click here for a text version that you can copy and paste into their web contact forms)
3. Tell others. Send a link to this page to everyone in your address book and tell them to urgently follow these 3 steps TODAY.

I've been contacting my Senators and Representatives quite a bit in the past year. And today I also contacted Senators Obama, McCain, and Biden. If you hate phones (like I do), their web forms are usually pretty slick (except for Obama's, which suffered an error when I submitted it).

Upcoming Conferences

Here are a couple of upcoming conferences that look pretty interesting:

• The Purpose Driven Death Missions Conference
• Together for Adoption Conference

What Does It Mean to Deny Yourself?

Found this quoted by Michael Mckinley at the 9Marks Church Matters blog:

From John Stott's The Cross of Christ, regarding Jesus' statement in Mark 8:34:

To deny ourselves is to behave towards ourselves as Peter did towards Jesus when he denied him three times. The verb is the same (aparneomai). He disowned him, repudiated him, turned his back on him. Self-denial is not denying to ourselves luxuries such as chocolates, cakes, cigarettes and cocktails (although it might include this); it is actually denying or disowning ourselves, renouncing our supposed right to go our own way. ‘To deny oneself is… to turn from the idolatry of self-centeredness.’

Kauflin on Music

Here's some video from the recent Desiring God National Conference - "The Power of Words and the Wonder of God." Some good thoughts on music from Bob Kauflin:

It's Been Too Long...

I'm looking forward to this - a nice appetizer before the new season starts in January.

The Aim of Gospel Ministry

Here's a great quote, courtesy Of First Importance:

“To cut off the sinner from all reliance upon himself, his merits and his powers; and throw him, naked and helpless, into the hands of the Holy Spirit to lead him to Christ in faith; should be the one great aim of the ministry.”

- Ichabod S. Spencer

Emotional Hippies

Words don't do this justice:

Off the Palin Bandwagon

Talking abortion with ABC's Charles Gibson:


I'll look at three direct quotes from the clip:

1. "I think that states should be able to decide that issue."

I'm so sick of the "states' rights" card being played as if it were a strong stand on an issue. Really? "I believe abortion is murder, but I think states should decide if infanticide is okay." What sense does that make? Isn't this the same kind of logic that ultimately led to the Civil War? Are we one day going to fight another civil war or become two separate nations based on whether we think killing babies is okay?

2. "I do respect other people's opinion on this, also."

How do you respect another person's opinion when you think their opinion condones murder? Do I have to respect Peter Singer's opinion that "killing an infant is never equivalent to killing a person"?

3. "I know that we can all agree on the need for and the desire for fewer abortions in America."

Really? If you think abortion is okay, why would there be any need or desire to have fewer abortions?

I agree with many of Mrs. Palin's positions, but I wish she held them as stronger convictions. I'm disappointed that she's already playing politics and parroting the "my opinion is..." line that's become so common in our relativistic, post-modern society. Give me someone who stands for Truth.

The Onion

If you enjoy satire, then The Onion is the place for you. Check out this "story" from week 1 of the NFL season:

Palin Hypocrisy Watch

From Justin Taylor:

I recently linked to an article from Slate.com by physician Rahul K. Parikh, who wrote:

"Her to decision to have [her son, Trig,] is also a sign of her hypocrisy."

In other words, Sarah Palin is a hypocrite for not killing her child.

Now we have a post on the Washington Post religion blog by Wendy Doniger, Professor of the History of Religions at the University of Chicago’s Divinity School. Dr. Doniger apparently believes that Palin's hypocrisies are numberous--but she has identified Palin's Greatest Hypocrisy.

Ready?

"Her greatest hypocrisy is in her pretense that she is a woman."

Read the whole thing.

Voting Advice

If you don't want Congressmen telling you who to vote for (see previous clip), how about an actor?

That's the big question on my mind when I go to the polls: Do you think dinosaurs were here 4000 years ago?

You've got to admire Matt Damon as an actor, though. Here's some of my favorite work of his:

Despicable

Before you watch this clip, I feel the need to explain myself a bit. I know I've been particularly critical of Obama & Biden lately, and have been approving of Sarah Palin. For the record, I generally do not consider myself a Republican - I was registered as an independent until this year's caucus, and have yet to change my registration back to independent. Of the four presidential/VP candidates, I would/will not vote for Obama, Biden, or McCain. I would consider voting for Palin for president, but a VP is not enough to make me vote for a ticket. Anyway, on to the clip: this is Congressman Steve Cohen, a Democrat representing the ninth district of Tennessee, speaking on the floor of Congress:

This really is meaningless as to who a person should vote for (except for when Cohen's term is up), but just shows the idiocy of a politician.

V.P. Candidate or Fletch Wannabe?

This sounds like a scene from a Fletch movie. To set it up: Chuck Graham, whom Senator Biden addresses, is a Missouri state Senator. He's a paraplegic, and therefore confined to a wheelchair.

John Has Slain His Thousands

Douglas Wilson continues to think "out loud" about Sarah Palin:

"I am continuing all this in the spirit of thinking out loud. It should be obvious -- even though I still have not made up my mind finally -- that I really like Sarah Palin and believe that she might be uniquely positioned (in just a couple months) to really do something about Roe. Here are some of the reasons for thinking that to be a possibility."

Palin - Family & Politics

MSNBC online is carrying an article from Washington Post writers Karl Vick and James V. Grimaldi entitled "Palin's family always held a place in her politics" and subtitled "Role as wife, mother are central to her appeal but generate controversy." I found the article to provide some good insight into the family dynamics of the working mother.

Heartbreaking

I've been told before that "abortion and adoption don't belong together." (See here.) That's rubbish. It's beyond time for the Church to step up and meet the needs of these babies. And meet the needs of these women with, for whatever reason, unwanted pregnancies. Especially in the richest nation in the world, there's no reason that the Church shouldn't be full of adopted children. I've heard the criticism that pro-lifers only care about babies from conception to delivery. While I don't think that's generally a valid criticism, we need to step up and smash it to pieces.

Palin as VP?

In the past week I've been asking myself some questions about Sarah Palin being picked as the Republican VP candidate. I've been going back and forth and around in circles in my mind, trying to straighten things out as I prepare to vote. And most of the time as I've been asking myself these questions, I've known that there's almost no chance that the answers will actually affect my vote.

Anyway, I appreciated reading Douglas Wilson's post attempting to ask and answer (or at least try to think about biblically) three issues raised by evangelical Christians in response to Palin's nomination:

The first is the propriety of voting for a Republican. A large number of us (myself included) have been let down so many times by these people that anything, no matter how good it looks, feels to us like Lucy setting up the football for Charlie Brown one more time. Just one more time. Please?

The second issue is the propriety of voting for a woman to hold civil office, exercising authority over men in that realm. Some argue from the clear biblical teaching on male headship in the family and the equally clear biblical teaching on the requirement for male leadership in the Church, and say that we can extend this restriction into the civil realm. And I believe that we could do this, were it not for the clear scriptural counterexample.

And last, we have the concerns that revolve around the age of Sarah Palin's children. The idea is that there is no way for her to fulfill her obligations to her family, which are fixed by God, and also fulfill the obligations she would have as vice-president.

Read the entire post.

(HT: Between Two Worlds)

Illogical Logic

I love bad arguments. A friend recently told me that he was trying to recover property taxes he had paid on his neighbor's out-building, because his assessment was incorrect. When talking to his county assessor, he was told he wouldn't be able to get his money back, because, "It's like when you're driving 55 mph in a 45 mph zone, and don't get pulled over until you're in a 45 mph zone. You still have to pay the ticket." Rightly, my friend was disgusted with the awful attempt at analogy and reminded the assessor that he hadn't broken any law, but had in essence been stolen from. Anyway, that really has nothing to do with this post - just a good example of a bad argument.

This post is really about abortion, and the terrible arguments coming from the "pro-choice" camp. Over a year ago, I posted about an article entitled "Abortion: why it's the ultimate motherly act." and argued that killing your child probably isn't really very motherly. Back in October of 2006, I posted some "almost unbelievable" logic from a Des Moines Register article entitled "A statement of courage: 'We had abortions'." In July of 2006, I posted about a response from Albert Mohler to an article from Katha Pollitt in The Nation.

This morning I read another incredibly insightful (yes, that's sarcasm) article, about new Republican VP candidate Sarah Palin's choice not to abort her son Trig after he was diagnosed with Down Syndrome. Dr. Rahul K. Parikh writes that "A 2002 study found that about 90 percent of pregnancies in the United States where the fetus was diagnosed with Down syndrome were terminated." That's some nice clinical language. Nowhere does Dr. Parikh speak of the accuracy of these Down Syndrome tests (I've seen a 5% rate of false positives quoted by several websites).

Here's the gist of Dr. Parikh's criticism of Palin:

"...by having a blood test, Palin was given a choice about what to do."

"...Palin was given a choice whether to have that child, something, if she had her way as a lawmaker, she wouldn't give others."

"Her decision to make her own choice but not grant it to others is a sign of her hypocrisy."

(Read the full article here.)

Allow me to attempt to follow his logic in another area. Evidently I'm a hypocrite because divorce is legal, but I am not divorced, and I don't think anybody should get divorced.

You make the call - does this sound like hypocrisy or consistency?