Gods and their Makers

A picture from the Courier-Journal online: "An artisan sleeps among idols of elephant headed Hindu God Ganesh at his roadside workshop, ahead of the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Ahmadabad, India, late Wednesday, Aug. 27, 2008. The ten-day long Ganesh Chaturthi festival will begin Sept. 3."

This image reminded me of Isaiah 44:9ff

9 All who fashion idols are nothing, and the things they delight in do not profit. Their witnesses neither see nor know, that they may be put to shame. 10 Who fashions a god or casts an idol that is profitable for nothing? 11 Behold, all his companions shall be put to shame, and the craftsmen are only human. Let them all assemble, let them stand forth. They shall be terrified; they shall be put to shame together.

12 The ironsmith takes a cutting tool and works it over the coals. He fashions it with hammers and works it with his strong arm. He becomes hungry, and his strength fails; he drinks no water and is faint. 13The carpenter stretches a line; he marks it out with a pencil. He shapes it with planes and marks it with a compass. He shapes it into the figure of a man, with the beauty of a man, to dwell in a house. 14 He cuts down cedars, or he chooses a cypress tree or an oak and lets it grow strong among the trees of the forest. He plants a cedar and the rain nourishes it. 15Then it becomes fuel for a man. He takes a part of it and warms himself; he kindles a fire and bakes
bread. Also he makes a god and worships it; he makes it an idol and falls down before it. 16Half of it he burns in the fire. Over the half he eats meat; he roasts it and is satisfied. Also he warms himself and says, "Aha, I am warm, I have seen the fire!" 17And the rest of it he makes into a god, his idol, and falls down to it and worships it. He prays to it and says, "Deliver me, for you are my god!"

18They know not, nor do they discern, for he has shut their eyes, so that they cannot see, and their hearts, so that they cannot understand. 19No one considers, nor is there knowledge or discernment to say, "Half of it I burned in the fire; I also baked bread on its coals; I roasted meat and have eaten. And shall I make the rest of it an abomination? Shall I fall down before a block of wood?" 20 He feeds on ashes; a deluded heart has led him astray, and he cannot deliver himself or say, "Is there not a lie in my right hand?"

Palaver (New Word No. 5)

In writing critically about the recent removal of North Korea from the United States list of terrorist-sponsoring states, John Bolton states:

So now Pyongyang has what it wants, and Washington has a vague, inadequate
invitation to more [nuclear weapons] verification palavering.

Google brought multiple definitions for "palaver" with varying connotations:

• chatter: speak (about unimportant matters) rapidly and incessantly
• wheedle: influence or urge by gentle urging, caressing, or flattering; "He palavered her into going along"
• blandishment: flattery intended to persuade
• loud and confused and empty talk; "mere rhetoric"
• talk, unnecessary talk, fuss; a meeting at which there is much talk; to discuss with much talk

Regardless of the definition chosen, clearly Bolton doesn't think the decision is a good one. North Korea has broken every international agreement it has made since 1953. With such an unimpressive history, Bolton is surely right that this will fare no better. The Bush Administration is grasping for anything they can spin as victory.

John Bolton is a polarizing figure for many, often branded as a warhawk and neocon. On North Korea, though, he is hard to argue with. Read the WSJ editorial here.

Sexualization and the Decline of Friendships

Here is a good post by Tim Challies reflecting on an increasingly sexualized culture and its influence on male friendships.

What does it say...

that this was the No. 1 grossing film of last week?

Missionaries or "Vacationaries"?

Evan Sparks of the American Enterprise Institute ecourages American Christians to reassess the value of short-term mission trips in this WSJ editorial.

Playing Frisbee on a Precipice

Peggy Noonan today, as good as she gets:

As to what they will do about the crisis, Mr. Obama will raise taxes on the rich and help us weatherize our homes, while Mr. McCain favors "energy independence" and buying up mortgages. On the causes of the crisis they spoke of insufficient regulation, or high spending.

But these were not the great causes. Neither party has clean hands. Or rather, both parties have dirty hands.

Here is the truth, spoken by the increasingly impressive Sen. Tom Coburn: "The root of the problem is political greed in Congress. Members . . . from both parties wanted short-term political credit for promoting homeownership even though they were putting our entire economy at risk by encouraging people to buy homes they couldn't afford. Then, instead of conducting thorough oversight and correcting obvious problems with unstable entities like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, members of Congress chose to . . . distract themselves with unprecedented amounts of pork-barrel spending." That is the truth.

And yet at the debate, when one citizen-questioner invited both candidates to think aloud about the responsibility of our representatives in Washington, they both gently suggested she was cynical.

She was not cynical. She was informed.

Why would anyone trust either candidate to help dig us out of this if they can't speak frankly about what got us into it?

One had the sense this week that our entire political class is playing Frisbee on the edge of a precipice, that no one is being serious enough, honest enough, that it's all too revved, too intense, and yet too shallow.

Read the whole thing here.

"I am a liberal Democrat. And I do not favor same sex marriage."

So says David Blankenhorn in the opening lines of this forceful L.A. Times Op-Ed, entitled "Protecting marriage to protect children."

Here are the opening paragraphs:

Many seem to believe that marriage is simply a private love relationship between two people. They accept this view, in part, because Americans have increasingly emphasized and come to value the intimate, emotional side of marriage, and in part because almost all opinion leaders today, from journalists to judges, strongly embrace this position. That's certainly the idea that underpinned the California Supreme Court's legalization of same-sex marriage. But I spent a year studying the history and anthropology of marriage, and I've come to a different conclusion.

Marriage as a human institution is constantly evolving, and many of its features vary across groups and cultures. But there is one constant. In all societies, marriage shapes the rights and obligations of parenthood. Among us humans, the scholars report, marriage is not primarily a license to have sex. Nor is it primarily a license to receive benefits or social recognition. It is primarily a license to have children.

In this sense, marriage is a gift that society bestows on its next generation. Marriage (and only marriage) unites the three core dimensions of parenthood -- biological, social and legal -- into one pro-child form: the married couple. Marriage says to a child: The man and the woman whose sexual union made you will also be there to love and raise you. Marriage says to society as a whole: For every child born, there is a recognized mother and a father, accountable to the child and to each other.

So, maybe this is the best situation. But many children are not raised in a loving, monogamous, intact two-biological-parent home. What, then, is the difference between homosexual marriage and single-parent or blended family homes?

Every child being raised by gay or lesbian couples will be denied his birthright to both parents who made him. Every single one [just like children brought into other alternate family models]. Moreover, losing that right will not be a consequence of something that at least most of us view as tragic, such as a marriage that didn't last, or an unexpected pregnancy where the father-to-be has no intention of sticking around. On the contrary, in the case of same-sex marriage and the children of those unions, it will be explained to everyone, including the children, that something wonderful has happened!

Basically, most alternate family models acknowledge that a natural family would have been ideal, and regret that circumstances prevented them from following that tried and true course. Pro-homosexual marriages, however, do not acknowledge this deficit, but believe their situation carries equal benefit to children.

Clearly, this pro-gay, anti-gay marriage viewpoint is not going to be looked upon kindly by many (see, e.g., the 70+ online comments). In fact, most will see Blankenhorn's actions as politically treasonous, denying him the right to be a "liberal Democrat." Just like Obama is not really black, Lieberman is not really a Democract, Bush is not small government (one with which I agree). Regardless of the credibility of his choice of labels, though, Blankenhorn says these are the sorts of conversations that must be had in order to adequately discuss any kind of marriage revision. Unfortunately, these are also the sorts of conversations which will be cut short by branding them as hate-mongering, bigoted and homophobic.

[HT: Thabiti Anyabwile]

An Alternative to the ESVSB

The highly anticipated English Standard Version (ESV) Study Bible comes out in a few weeks. For it, there has been nothing but praise. But my gut is telling me to go with a different study bible...

The Green Bible. "Understand the Bible's Powerful Message for the Earth." From their ad in Christianity Today, "Discover again why the Bible continues to be so relevant. When confronting our greatest challenges, reformers have turned to the Bible again and again to inform and inspire. The same is true today." Some of its features:

• Green-Letter Edition: Verses and passages that speak to God's care for creation highlighted in green.
• Foreword by Desmond Tutu
• Essays by Brian McLaren, Barbara Brown Taylor, N.T. Wright, Matthew Sleeth, and many others.
• Inspirational quotes from Christian teachings throughout the ages.
• A green Bible topical index
• A personal green Bible trail study guide
• Recycled paper, suing soy-based ink with a cotton/linen cover

Progress in Iraq

We have all heard that the surge was effective, but what does that mean? Dexter Filkins paints a picture for us in his NYT piece, "Back in Iraq, Jarred by the Calm." It is well worth your time. If you're like me, you had a hard time listening to story after story of bombing after suicide-bombing. This will be a breath of fresh air, and give life to the political discussion which will no doubt air tonight in the presidential debates.

Here's a taste:

Abu Nawas Park — I didn’t recognize that, either. By the time I had left the country in August 2006, the two-mile stretch of riverside park was a grim, spooky, deserted place, a symbol for the dying city that Baghdad had become.

These days, the same park is filled with people: families with children, women in jeans, women walking alone. Even the nighttime, when Iraqis used to cower inside their homes, no longer scares them. I can hear their laughter wafting from the park. At sundown the other day, I had to weave my way through perhaps 2,000 people. It was an astonishing, beautiful scene — impossible, incomprehensible, only months ago.

When I left Baghdad two years ago, the nation’s social fabric seemed too shredded to ever come together again. The very worst had lost its power to shock. To return now is to be jarred in the oddest way possible: by the normal, by the pleasant, even by hope. The questions are jarring, too. Is it really different now? Is this something like peace or victory? And, if so, for whom: the Americans or the Iraqis?...

But if this is not peace, it is not war, either — at least not the war I knew. When I left Iraq in the summer of 2006, after living three and a half years here following the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s regime, I believed that evil had triumphed, and that it would be many years before it might be stopped. Iraq, filled with so many people living so close together, nurturing dark and unknowable grievances, seemed destined for a ghastly unraveling.

And now, in the late summer of 2008, comes the calm. Violence has dropped by as much as 90 percent. A handful of the five million Iraqis who fled their homes — one-sixth of all Iraqis — are beginning to return. The mornings, once punctuated by the sounds of exploding bombs, are still. Is it possible that the rage, the thirst for revenge, the sectarian furies, have begun to fade? That Iraqis have been exhausted and frightened by what they have seen?

“We are normal people, ordinary people, like people everywhere,” Aziz al-Saiedi said to me the other day, as we sat on a park bench in Sadr City, only recently freed from the grip of the Mahdi Army. The park was just a small patch of bare ground with a couple of swing sets; it didn’t even have a name, yet it was filled to the bursting. “We want what everyone else wants in this world,” he said.

All the recent discussion about Iraq concerns who can claim credit for these remarkable changes. I don't care who's responsible -- and, clearly, the sharp turnaround is not due to the decisions of only a few men. Still, I am thankful to God for establishing peace and prayerful that he will hold back the wickedness of those who would seek to destroy it.

(HT: Justin Taylor)

Abortion and Choice

Good thoughts by John Mark Reynolds on abortion and liberty (i.e., "choice"). (Note: What follows is three separate quotations, not one long quotation):

Every aborted baby looks alike, but every child allowed to live becomes absolutely unique. Abortion crushes liberty for the sake of a single choice—it ends possibility with the cruel actuality of murder.

The right to control over one’s own body ends at the other person’s body. Here, advances in technology have given Americans a window on the womb and knowledge which the authors of Roe did not have. The unborn child is not merely an organ of the mother’s body. Science is at war with the reasoning of Roe.

Liberty always loses when the weak lose rights for the benefit of the stronger... History [does not] suggest that social equality for a group is best gained by suppressing a different group.

Marvel of Marvels

Most of you will know that me and my wife, Maggie, are expecting our first child. Her due date is April 19th. We are very excited, but thankful for nine months time to prepare our home and marriage.

While we are acquiring baby essentials and learning about what it means to parent, our child isn't twiddling his or her little thumbs. Wondrous and marvelous changes are happening to ready this child for life outside the womb. We're following these events in a book, From Conception to Birth: a Life Unfolds by Alexander Tsiaras and Barry Werth. Tsiaras uses the latest in microphotography to capture prenatal development and Werth describes what he beholds.

Here's where Maggie and child are right now:

Despite its wondrous growth and development, its physical achievement, the fetus so far has shown little or no discernible independent movement. It has differentiated into parts - organs, muscles, systems - each with a capacity to perform a specific function. The marvel now is how those parts begin to reunify; how they mold themselves into a form that anticipates, to the last detail, the day the newborn will leave the protective comfort of its mother and begin to fend for itself.

Gradually, at about 8 weeks, the fetus begins to stir, as if from a paralyzing sleep. "Now when the brain signals," embryologist Robert Rugh and obstetrician Landrum Shettles note, "the muscles respond and the fetus begins to kick, turn its feet, and curl its toes." Though it measures little more than an inch long, its arms bend at the elbows and its fingers gather in a fist. Its eyes are sealed shut, months away from first sight. Yet as Rugh and Shettles, pioneering observers, noted, when researchers began in the 1970s to snap more and more portraits inside the womb, it frowns, squints, furrows its brow, purses its lips, and opens its mouth.

These activities lack "purpose" - there is no specific correlation between stimulus and response. But as the fetus stirs, it jars our understanding: In order for even the healthiest to become an individual, able to survive outside its mother, there reamins an astonishing amount of growth, preparation, and refinement still to master.

And so while the 2-month-old fetus may be more or less whole, it will require another 7 months inside its mother before it can fully face the world -- 7 months in which its weight will multiply up to 1,000 times. It is as if all the instruments of an orchestra have been created. Now, in the third month, rehearsals begin for a lifelong symphony, and hte players must learn to perform. In unison.

Is there anything so marvelous as this? King David didn't know the half of it when he wrote in Psalm 139, "For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb." What comfort Maggie and I take from this reality! And not just while our child is in utero, but for his/her entire life. David knows that God's knitting doesn't stop with the birth -- v. 16, "Your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be."

God has great plans. He is working them out right now in glorious detail. Let us respond as David did: "I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well."

SNL Skits

I've been fairly impressed with the new SNL cast. Here's a skit from last night I found very funny:

Just Another Election

Peggy Noonan is an insightful critic of American politics. She has a regular Friday column on the WSJ Opinion Page that is well worth checking out. Here's this week.

As a former speechwriter for President Reagan, she leans conservative. However, she's not a surrogate for McCain or the Republican party. She's not a Bill Bennett or Karl Rove. She regularly criticizes both Republican and Democratic politics.

In reality, she presents herself more as a surrogate for the American people. She seeks to capture the thoughts and perceptions of average Americans. Notice the simplicity of her language -- short sentences and fragments, earthy descriptions, the occasional curse word. Compare reading her to reading George Will, who has me often reaching for Wikipedia or Wiktionary. Her seriousness is always laced with humor because she knows there are more important things than politics. Though she's a pundit, she knows it's improper to take herself too seriously. Her writing style is really refreshing.

What's striking about Noonan is the tremendous respect she has for the average American person, especially in contrast to the knowledge and ruling classes. What makes up "normal" -- marriages, families, jobs, schools, churches, vacations, sickness -- holds so much weight and meaning for her. It also gives insight and credibility in deciding how to (or who will) run a country. And Noonan knows that this is who fundamentally decides elections. So she tries to glean that insight for those in the knowledge and ruling class who might have forgotten the value of common sense.

From this week's column:

A final point. Do you ever have the passing thought that the presidential election doesn't matter as much as we think? Whoever wins will govern within more of less the same limits, both domestically and internationally. A New York liberal leaning toward Mr. McCain told me this week he has no fear that Mr. McCain may be a more militant figure than Mr. Obama. We already have two wars, "we're out of army." Even if Mr. McCain wanted a war, he said, he couldn't start one.

I wonder if we follow the election so passionately because we're afraid. We're afraid a lot of our national problems are intractable, and the future too full of challenge.

We cannot tolerate feeling this way. So we make believe the election can change everything. And we follow it passionately to convince ourselves its outcome will be decisive and make everything better. We reassure ourselves with pictures of the cheering crowds at the rally. We even find some comfort in the latest story of the latest dirty trick. But deep inside we think: Ah, that won't work either.

Some part of me thinks we are all making believe this is a life-changing election because we know it's not a life-changing election. Ever have that thought? Me too. Then there's a rally or a scandal or a gaffe, and it passes.

Rest assured, you won't get that from MSNBC or Politico.com.

Anathem (Books to Read No. 1)

If the publishing industry placed a moratorium on new books, there would in my mind still be an endless number of books worth reading. Yet, time is not endless and other more worthy responsibilities abound.

A more sane man might give up on the endeavor, but I am no sane man. I frequently entertain grand plans to read them all. I think to myself regularly, 'I must remember this title for that spare moment when [insert fantasy].' Unfortunately, the equation of my life renders spare moments equal to something like n + 1, where n stands for some actual time in the future and spare moments are always just beyond reach.

And time is only the first problem faced by my grand schemes. The other is remembering the titles themselves. Left to my own devices, that is becoming increasingly difficult as more and more books are stored in my feeble memory.

That's where this new series of posts come in. As books are recommended to me, I will recommend them to you. In so doing, I have a searchable database of recommended books which (theoretically) will always be available. I have some other nmenonic devices in mind, but this will do until those are in place.

------------------

This first book is a perfect inaugural post for this series. Anathem by Neal Stephenson (William Morrow, 937 pages, $29.95, reviewed more thoroughly here) is a fantasy set on a very earth-like planet with earth-like people in the earth-like future. In the face of an increasingly technologized culture, a group of people form a monastic society which separates itself from modern comforts. They spend all their time reading and studying and learning. Geeky, I know.

Those outside are called slines. Here is how they are described by the narrator Erasmus, "I was struck by their intelligence, their polish, and how much stuff they owned. But there was nothing underneath. They knew many things but had no idea why. And strangely this made them more, rather than less, certain they were right."

Every now then the cult must war, because anti-intellectualism revolts against the monastery and disperses its followers. This story, though, centers around a period when the slines faced a problem so tough they appeal to the monks for help.

After I finished my English undergraduate degree, I almost exclusively read non-fiction. I have such great memories of escaping into a book and would like to try it again. I've often thought I would like fantasy or science fiction books for this reason. Maybe this will be a good start.

Tell me what you think if you pick it up.