On the subject of the article How Do Christians Become Conservative? by Mike Lux, I had some thoughts I believe the world would do well to read, so I figured I’d make a couple posts about it.  The first one is here, which is a collection some general thoughts about the fallacy of equating a Christian worldview with political liberalism.  Of course, being a non-Christian, he stepped way out of his element by trying to explain Christian principles such as the nature of God, Jesus’ mission and teachings, the content of the Bible, heaven and hell, the church, etc.  So I thought I’d offer a different perspective, a Christian perspective, on these issues, and at the same time point out theological errors and logical errors in his arguments.

Understand that I’m not trying to school a non-Christian on Christian doctrine, but I’m trying to address the issue of Christians who are political liberals agreeing with arguments like this, possibly because he’s on the same side politically, rather than matching up what he says with the truth we find in Scripture and observe in human behavior.  He’s way off theologically, which is excusable, but what’s inexcusable is for Christians to agree with some of the theological errors.  If you read my former post, which you really should if you haven’t already, you will know that this response follows on the heels of a flurry of comments on a Facebook post.  A few lines at ta time isn’t enough of a platform to state my case, so I figured I could ramble on for as long as I wanted on my own blog.

So here’s a collection of logical and theological fallacies I thought I’d expose:

• “If that [not being religious or thinking about religious stuff] sends one to hell, at least I’ll be there with a lot of my favorite people.”
  Sarcastically saying that he prefers to spend eternity in despair based on his company, without the God Who is the source of all joy and significance, demonstrates that he has no concept of, or maybe no regard for, the teachings about hell that are in the bible he claims to know “pretty well”.
• “Conservative Christians’ primary argument regarding Jesus and politics is that all he cared about was spiritual matters and an individual’s relationship with God.”
  False and absurd.  I am, hang around with, and am taught by Conservative Christians, and we all know that He is concerned for peoples’ physical well-being, as well as economic and cultural status.
• “…if you actually read the Gospels, it is clear that Jesus’ main concern in terms of the people whose fates he cared about was for the poor, the oppressed, and the outcast.”
  Blatantly false.  If you actually read the gospels, you will see Him demonstrate that He cares for all people regardless of their socioeconomic status.
• His “serious class warrior” paragraph is all over the place — this could be a whole separate post.  “[Jesus] didn’t seem to like rich folks very much.”  So when Progressives spew their mantra about loving everyone, they mean everyone except rich people?  “In Matthew 6, he focuses on the love of money as a major problem.”  The love of money applies equally to people who have it and don’t have it.  “In Luke 12, he says that the wealthy who store up treasure are cursed by God.”  That curse is a consequence of misuse, not of being successful.  “…it is the poor who will get into heaven.”  Even if his beliefs aren’t as extreme as what he writes, we all know that getting into heaven doesn’t depend on a low economic status – if we thought so, we would try to keep poor people poor and make rich people poor in order for them to have a better chance of getting into heaven.  “He chases the wealthy bankers and merchants from the Temple.”  Presumably Lux is talking about Mark 11, which says nothing about the merchants being wealthy, and even if they were, that’s not why he drove them out.
• One of Lux’s favorite passages is the end of Acts 2.  But this passage talks about an individual church of faithful believers, not about a larger society – these people are bound together by their identity in Christ, not by being under some governmental authority.  Moreover, this small-group communal sharing is voluntary, not orchestrated by government.
• The thesis of his diatribe is that Conservatives do not do what Jesus taught about having compassion for the poor, because conservative politics are antithetical to His teachings.  Yes, the bible is loaded with passages about helping the poor, but contrary to what he wants us to believe, Christianity is loaded with conservatives who put this into practice.  Somehow pretending that it’s the political conservatives that are not doing the Word of God in this regard is just plain ludicrous, and propagating this nonsense is just plain irresponsible.

So we see that Lux is incapable of handling and applying the biblical text.  Not that he should — after all he’s not a Christian and has no regard for biblical authority.  That’s what disturbs me about Christians citing this article as a “great article” — how can an article that’s logically inconsistent and full of falsehoods and mischaracterizations be “great” to anyone?  How can an article that mischaracterizes God and misquotes and misapplies His Word be “great” to any Christian?

So, a link to this article was posted by a Facebook friend…

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mike-lux/how-do-christians-become_b_570361.html

The title of the article is “How Do Christians Become Conservative?”, and the meta description that Facebook extracted to display is “Jesus may not have been primarily concerned with politics, but for what politics he did have, it is virtually impossible to argue that he was anything but a progressive thinker.”

Knowing that “progressive”, just like “moderate”, is a code word for “liberal”, you’d think that this is another article written by a liberal Christian telling everyone that God is a liberal and that if you’re a Christian you should be liberal too.  And you’d be right.  Except for the Christian author part.  It’s an article written by a non-Christian, trying to explain why he’s bewildered that any Christian can be a conservative.

If you haven’t read the article, do so now.
If you still haven’t read the article, do so now.
If you’ve read some of the article, and skipped over it because you liked it or didn’t like it or whatever, finish it now.

If you still haven’t read the article in its entirety, I encourage you to read on anyway through my comments, because they’re useful, but if you don’t get the complete context it’s your own fault.  What a terrible intolerant conservative thing to say, I know.

Here are Facebook comments I posted in reply to the original post, after some commenters said things like “nice article” and “great article”:

What a terrible article – a non-Christian taking his best shot at explaining the nature of God, Jesus’ mission and teachings, the content of the Bible, heaven and hell, the church, etc. is bound to miss the mark on many counts, and he sure does. I can excuse him for not knowing what he’s talking about, but I can’t excuse a Christian for accepting his false assumptions and being dragged along to some of the places he goes.

As expected, there were responses.  I would like to thank pretty much everyone who commented for being civil.  I hope the others can say the same about me.  A guy, I’ll call him “Ivan”, said:

So you have issues with the article. Fair enough…but you didn’t mention what any of them were. And you can’t accept a christian….I’m assuming a friend of yours…..from pondering this subject? Pondering, questioning….is a good thing. People should do more of it. God forbid someone might have a different interpretation. <name of unknown person>, help me collect some rocks so we can “stone” <Original Poster> when he comes to work. =)

I should have known.  Yeah, I did have an arm-length list of issues I was typing, but I didn’t want to be the guy who monopolized the post comments.  So I replied:

Ivan – I started to list my disagreements, but it was just too long. Look for Plan B, my own blog post, where anyone can make a comment.
What I said is that I can’t excuse a Christian for accepting false assumptions about the Christian faith from a non-Christian … friends included, friends especially. Pondering, questioning is indeed a good thing – I do so from one direction just as others do from the other.
<Original Poster>, I don’t want to stone you. My beef is with the content of the article and certain thought processes, not with you as an individual. I would like to caution Christians not to use the arguments Mr. Lux uses to arrive at  his conclusions. If you arrive at a similar place and can justify it properly, that’s one thing, but not the way he does it.

I listed out some example “issues I have with the article” and said I’d follow up with a more appropriate way to expound on them, to write as much as I want to without being too intrusive into someone else’s Facebook page. So here is is:

What I originally wanted to say and had to prune it down is this:

Mr. Lux says “I am always puzzled by how people who claim to be followers of the Jesus I read about in the Bible can be political conservatives.”  There are many who would say “I am always puzzled by how people who claim to be followers of the Jesus I read about in the Bible can be political liberals.”

What a terrible article – a non-Christian taking his best shot at explaining the nature of God, Jesus’ mission and teachings, the content of the Bible, heaven and hell, the church, etc. is bound to miss the mark on many counts, and he sure does.  I can excuse him for not knowing what he’s talking about, but I can’t excuse a Christian for accepting his false assumptions and being dragged along to false conclusions.

He uses his thoughts about God and the Bible to support the notion that political liberals care for the poor and outcast, while political conservatives don’t.  Hogwash.  The trend is this (not absolute, but a trend): Christian political liberals advocate empowering a government to deal with the poor and marginalized, while Christian political conservatives advocate taking personal responsibility for such.  Why the conservative perspective?  Because when God says to care for people, he isn’t talking to a centralized government – he’s talking to individual believers.  Not surprisingly, Mr. Lux doesn’t communicate that.  Pagans can feel good about pooling their money to give to some societal entity to distribute as it sees fit and believe they’re being altruistic, but if Christians do that, they’re being irresponsible.  I don’t want to beat up on liberals (because, honestly, some conservatives weaken the conservative position by doing so) but rather offer some challenging food for thought: if we really want to help the people who need it, we should take responsibility for it ourselves — a responsibility God explicitly gives to individuals — instead of passing it along to an impersonal entity.  I say impersonal entity to be purposefully general — this could be local or state governments, a federal government, a charity or cause that’s funded by government or businesses, whatever.

If the resources over which I have stewardship aren’t taken by a government to be mismanaged, some of which gets to the people an impersonal entity determines need to be helped by it, then responsibility falls on me to use those resources to help the people I personally am determined to help.  Do I embrace that?  Do I like that?  Not necessarily, admittedly, and less than I should, but that’s the way it should be.  God mandated it.  When He (in the person of the Father in the OT through the prophets, and in the person of Jesus in the NT) tells his people to care for others, he’s talking to “me” and “you”, not to the unbeliever or to “society”.  There are a lot of issues in play – here are some that come to mind:

• Even the most socialist liberal wacko will agree that governments are wasteful and inefficient.  If the US government collects $1.00 from me to help people, how much has already been spent because we’re trillions of dollars in debt?  Answer: all of it.  But let’s put reality on hold and pretend that the government isn’t in debt: How much of that dollar is eaten up by overhead?  You have to pay government employees to process those resources, pay their benefits, pay for the buildings and air conditioning, etc., not to mention some of it undoubtedly swallowed up by corruption (arguably more in a socialist government), overspending.  If 43¢ of the $1.00 I give is absorbed in overhead and 16¢ in mismanagement, that leaves 41¢ to go to the recipients.  If I distribute that myself, it’s the whole $1.00.  If the process is managed by a small or concentrated private group, there is incentive to be more efficient.  If that organization is Christian, the incentive is directed by the Holy Spirit.  (If you’re not a Christian, I lost you on that one, but Mr. Lux’s article is explicitly addressing the Christian perspective, so I am too).  If I find a good reputable organization that uses 17¢ in overhead and loses 6¢ in mismanagement, that leaves 77¢ to go to the recipients.  If I truly care about people, I’ll pray really hard and ask God if he wants the poor and outcast to get 41¢ or 77¢ of His $1.00 that He’s entrusted me to manage for Him.
• As a Christian, if you embrace the responsibility to help people yourself through your own social network, you target where your resources go.  So if you have a particular affinity or desire to minister to a focused group of people like Muslims or single moms or the elderly or photographers, you interact with those people and understand their needs on a personal level, and are more able to determine their needs than someone who sits in a building in Atlanta and processes a check to send them every month.  Does that mean you don’t care about Buddhists or jobless fathers or children or painters?  Of course not, but you are making your best effort to care for a group of people you have in your sphere of influence, investing resources including money but also including prayer, time, materials, social connections, and other things an impersonal entity is ill-equipped to provide.
• Speaking of targeting resources, if a “society” pools its resources and a central entity determines who needs what out of that pool, there is the very real issue of those resources used in a way that individuals don’t agree with.  From the conservative Christian perspective, if those resources are ultimately used for <insert heinous immoral filth here>, the control and responsibility of those decisions has been taken away from the individual.  The point here isn’t which things are bad and which are OK, the point is that individuals and focused groups are the right ones to make those determinations, not politicians and lawmakers and agency officials.

There is a whole lot more to being a Christian liberal or Christian conservative than helping the poor and outcast, but Mr. Lux (thankfully) doesn’t go into that in his article so neither will I.  Staying on-topic: certainly, the conservative is in danger of being a hypocrite by hoarding wealth as his own rather than using it to further the kingdom of the One who entrusts him with it; conversely, the liberal is in danger of being a hypocrite by substituting ‘society’ for a personal faith and integration within a community of believers.  Shamefully, Mr. Lux and others are quick to point out the former but ignore the latter.

So in terms of “helping the poor and outcast”, the political conservative approach is more than compatible with God’s will, and I would argue, even a better fit than political liberalism — assuming that either is wrapped an authentic biblical Christian worldview.   In the spectrum of political conservatives, it’s obvious that many are to some degree heartless, uncaring, ruthless, tyrannical, profit-oriented, oppressive, immoral.  You’re fooling yourself, however, if you believe that the same doesn’t apply to many political liberals.  What’s at issue here is, assuming one is a Christian, how does that Christian worldview inform the political philosophy you have regarding care for the poor and outcast?  To further narrow it down, what if you are a Christian and have a decent biblical perspective on the nature of God, sin, and the person and work of Jesus, and are at least trying to do a fairly good job of obeying His Word?  If that’s where you start, where I believe I am, then the mandate to care for the poor and outcast is to be embraced on a personal level (the political conservative approach), and not on a societal level (the political liberal approach).

Furthermore, I believe that the societal approach does a discredit to Christianity by divorcing the meeting of needs from the gospel.  Mr. Lux wouldn’t agree with me here, but I frankly don’t care: the purpose of a Christian showing love and mercy and care for people who need it is to demonstrate God’s provision connected with the gospel message, not to make them more comfortable — this isn’t to say that God doesn’t want you to be more comfortable, it’s to say that God wants you to realize that true comfort is by His provision, not by the provision of “society” or an intangible “goodness”, or a pagan deity or impersonal “spirituality”.  If we take the societal approach, we give the impression that humanity’s greatest needs are solved by governments and institutions and programs rather than by a personal God interacting personally through His people.  If the problems are addressed on a personal level by Christians, that personal interaction will (should!) include an introduction to the God who cares enough about the person to interact personally.  The societal approach sends the message “society cares”; the personal approach sends the message “God cares”; the personal approach coupled with a proper perspective on God and the bible sends the message “God cares, and by the way, let me clarify what I mean by ‘God’”.  Yes, you can fall on either side of the political spectrum and still be engaged in the personal approach, but I would argue the conservative side is no less biblical, even more so, because if the resources a person is using aren’t dumped in to society’s pot, the individual — on whom the responsibility lies –  can better target their use.

Whoa, this post is quite long.  But quite good, if I do say so myself.  I have a slew of particular logical and theological problems with what Mr. Lux says, but in order to break things up a bit I’ll make another post about them.

I’m not one for New Year’s resolutions.  If anything is worth starting next month or next year, it’s worth starting now.  Besides, I know myself well enough to know that after a few days or weeks I’m going to wonder why I even thought I’d do such-and-such in the first place.

So, this year, not so much a resolution as a goal:  I will endeavor not to buy a vehicle in 2010.

In 2007, our Nissan Maxima got crashed and totaled, making it necessary to purchase another car.  We decided on a 1999 BMW 323i, which turned out to be a rotten deal.  I wouldn’t go so far as to say that we made a mistake purchasing it, because you can’t see the future and you don’t know what you don’t know, but it sure ended up all wrong.  After two $1000+ repairs, and another impending one, in 8 months, we cut our losses in 2008 and got our 2005 Nissan Altima.  It’s been great.

Then in 2009, our old 1997 Altima had enough engine wear that it was going to cost more than it was worth to fix, so we went car shopping again, settling on a 2007 Mazda6.

So, with the Mazda purchase, we are hopeful that our car buying is done for a long time.  We’re hoping for 10 years.  Maybe in 2019 we’ll have to start shopping for vehicles again, so, hopefully no blog posts or news articles regarding vehicle purchases till then.

Well, the Burj Dubai Khalifa, the new tallest building in the world, opened today. I am constantly amazed at super tall buildings, some of the most incredible industrial marvels in the world.  I still don’t know how the engineers and builders can be so sure of structural integrity as literally 100s of 1000s of tons of expensive material and invaluable human lives exert immense stress on the foundation and lower floors.  How do you ‘calculate’ the effects of the various stresses that are outside of your control?

Some questions and observations come to mind as I read a little:

The Burj sets many new height records: notably, in addition to being the tallest building in the world now, it’s the tallest structure too, surpassing even radio towers that were taller than any building. And it has more floors than any other building, the highest observation deck, and the highest swimming pool.

The glitz and spectacular stuff about the building seem to be counterbalanced by the negative: The Dubaians apparently are in massive debt (not as massive as the U.S., of course).  Dubai is one of the emirates that make up the UAE, and after having over-extended itself (perhaps by massive building projects?), it was bailed out by the neighboring emirate of Abu Dhabi, who propped up Dubai with billions of dollars to cover its debts. In gratitude, Dubai named its premiere landmark “Burj Khalifa” after Abu Dhabi’s emir (and UAE President) Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan.

Maybe everything will turn out OK in the long term for Dubai, but apparently a lot of people in the area see impending economic collapse. Maybe it’s a good investment to build huge developments like Downtown Burj Khalifa (of which the tower is the centerpiece), World Islands and Palm Islands to attract visitors. The idea is to move Dubai’s economy toward tourism and away from oil, since the relatively small oil reserves that made Dubai rich are not going to continue to carry it.

Maybe they bit off more than they can chew, needing outside lenders to support their ambitious investing, if these building projects of unprecedented scale are truly investments. Or maybe they got the big head, letting their pride get in the way of planned growth, the allure of being recognized for their impressive achievements (kind of like these guys) obscuring the purpose of those achievements (presumably to have a strong economy and a stable culture).  If the latter is the case, then it has surely already backfired: do a Google search on the term “Burj Khalifa”, and what you’ll find is more information on Dubai’s economic woes than the impressiveness of their tower.

Oh, and the biggest question in my mind: when will Alain Robert make the climb?

I had a great experience getting the newest addition to my MS69 Silver Eagle collection.  I looked around on eBay for quite some time to see if the price would be right.  But then I happened upon Paradise Mint, a dealer in the Bradenton, Florida area who has great prices on these, along with a large variety of slabbed NGC and PCGS graded coins.  It looked like their price ($23.00 – the lowest I’ve seen anywhere) would beat any eBay auction price, and they ship all their stuff free, so I decided to go ahead and place the order on their web site.

I ordered on Monday morning and had a shipping confirmation e-mail within two hours.  Wow, they received my order, packed it, produced a shipping label, and e-mailed my all that morning.  Awesome! On Wednesday, I got home from the Red Sox game and there was my coin, having arrived in the mail that day.

I was kind of bummed when I examined it, though — there was a very noticeable smudge and dark mark across the “9″ in the date, and even a discolored splotch on the reverse to the left of the eagle.  Of course this was no fault of Paradise Mint’s – they were delivering a slabbed coin graded by NGC, so I really was disappointed with NGC that they would give this an MS69 despite these fairly major blemishes.

I sat on it for a few days, wondering if it would be worth it to ask for an exchange.  If it cost $5 to send it back and $5 to have them ship another one, that would wipe out any money I had saved, not to mention the fact that I wouldn’t be guaranteed the replacement would be any better.  The next Tuesday I found out it would cost me less than $2 to mail it back, so I decided to use the web site’s contact form to explain the situation and ask for a replacement.  Much to my amazement, an e-mail response came within the hour saying that an exchange would not be a problem.  Much more amazingly, the e-mail was in complete, grammatically-correct, punctuated sentences.  After another round of e-mails making sure of the address and other details, I sent it off in the mail.

USPS tracking for the package showed that it arrived Thursday in Florida, and on Friday morning I had another tracking e-mail from Paradise Mint indicating that my replacement order had shipped.  So here it is Monday evening and it’s waiting in my mailbox when I get home.  I open the package, and wow, this one is beautiful!  If the guys at Paradise Mint hand-selected one for me instead of just grabbing one off the stack, then hats off to them for picking a great one.

So the end result is: I’m extremely happy with the service I got from Paradise Mint, and next year when I’m looking to buy my 2010 Silver Eagle, you can bet I’ll check them out first.  Sure, the coin is the same thing I could expect from any dealer or individual eBay seller, but the level of personalized service I got this time around (well, and the great price) has certainly earned my business.

Ginger and I went to see Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs today.  As usual, we got there early because it’s a fairly new movie and we wanted a primo seat.  So, as usual, we sat through the pre-movie on-screen stuff — what we used to think of as ‘previews’, but I thought a little harder about this time than usual.

Advertisers are having to adjust.  It’s been going on for some time now, and this may not be new to you, but I’ve see advertising take at least two whole new directions lately.  One of these ways has to do specifically with movie theaters, and that got me to thinking about the other one.

TWO: the advent of TiVo a few years ago, and subsequently all manner of DVRs that aren’t the TiVo brand, threw advertisers for a loop because people began to skip their commercials as they watched TV.  You can set your DVR to record something, then start watching it whenever you want to later on.  When those annoying commercials come on, you just skip over them and pick up your show at the next scene.  Instead of complaining to Congress that people were subverting their attempts to try to get them to buy stuff, the advertisers have adapted and innovated.  I don’t watch much TV except for baseball, but word has it that product placement has escalated in recent years, basically companies paying networks to embed their product into the show, thus increasing exposure inside the show instead of during the oft-skipped commercial breaks.  What I’ve noticed a lot of during baseball broadcasts is that the announcers do short 5-10-second shout-outs: typically after a commercial break, a car manufacturer’s or beer brewer’s logo takes up most of the screen while Joe Buck or Jon Miller tells you that today’s game is brought to you by XYZ company.  After the first out of the inning, the Pitcher Profile, the Batting Lineup, the Call to the Bullpen, the RBI Leader Board, etc. are all brought to you by some deodorant or snack food purveyor.

ONE: this is the one that gets me in movie theaters.  I’m making myself sound old, I know, but “in today’s postmodern microwave society”, attention spans are at an all-time low.  No, I don’t have a scientific source for that assertion, but you know what I mean.  Advertisers can’t trust their audience to sit still and pay attention to what they’re selling for a 30-second commercial, so they have to get creative and try to tell the audience that they’re doing something other than watching a commercial.  And they reinforce it in much the same way that I was told to write my papers in high school: tell what you’re going to say (introduction), then say it (body), then tell what you just said (conclusion).  Before the previews started a few years ago, the theater had house lights on, curtains over the screen, and maybe some music playing softly.  But nowadays, advertisers are taking this opportunity to show commercials.  In the intro to the block of ads, someone comes on and tells you you’re about to experience some sort of spectacle giving you an inside look at something of paramount interest.  Then they play a bunch of commercials – you’re the one who’s in the know about this cool new PDA, video-sharing web site, upcoming movie, sweet new ride, or must-see television event.  Then at the end they wrap up by telling you that you’ve just experienced a First Look or got some great insider information on some gizmo’s features.

“Huh?” I ask myself and my wife.  “I don’t have any special insider knowledge about the Nissan Cube mobile device; I haven’t been a participant in what goes on behind the plot in Jada Pinkett Smith’s new drama series – I just saw a bunch of commercials trying to get me to buy something or watch something.”  Don’t get me wrong – I’m not complaining or saying that what the advertisers are doing is wrong in some way.  I’m just saying that I take these “experiences” and “insider looks” for what they really are – advertising.

I just filled in the last blank hole in my collection of uncirculated Franklin Half Dollars.  I’ve been collecting coins in some capacity since I was about 10 years old.  I don’t know how it started, but I remember my grandpa had several Peace Dollars and Morgan Dollars, and my brother and I started snapping pocket change into Whitman folders whenever we’d come across a year/mint we didn’t already have.  My parents would take us to a local coin shop where we’d spend a buck or two on some Wheat Cents or Buffalo Nickels.  When the big bucks started rolling in from the increased allowance and lawn mowing business in the early 1980s, I can remember spending upwards of $5.00 on a single coin like a VG Wheat Cent from the 1920s or Walking Liberty Half Dollar from the 1940s.  I even spend $24 on an 1841 Seated Liberty Half Dollar minted in New Orleans.

Fast forward to 1999, when, of course, the State Quarter program likely had something to do with my increased interest in building my collection – I started getting every year’s Silver Proof Set and many older uncirculated Wheat Cents.

In the early 2000s, I decided to go ahead and make a push to complete the set of uncirculated Franklin Halves for several reasons.  I already had many of them, some cheaper ones in uncirculated condition, so I was closer to a complete set of these than to anything else.  The collection is relatively small – they were only minted between 1948 and 1963, and some years don’t have mint marks. They are relatively inexpensive, with no key dates being so rare as to command exorbitant prices — uncirculated specimens from any year and mint can be gotten for less than $50 each.

So after upgrading some I had in lower grades to uncirculated and filling in some dates I didn’t yet have, the last one I needed was the elusive 1949.  It was easy enough to find one at local coin shops over the years, but getting one in the right grade at the right price was not so easy – but being patient finally paid off and the last piece fell into place in January.