This ministry needs your financial support! Donate now!
Posted by Anthony on March 24, 2010
“the “right” within the church attempt to leverage the gov. to legislate morality. The “left” within the church attempt to leverage the gov. to legislate compassion. Both approaches fail miserably and are an abdication of our responsibility to be the voice, hands and feet of Jesus in this world.” – spoken by a friend.
Someone slid this article across my desk that inquires as to why evangelical Christians are against universal health care. Now, strictly speaking, I’m not an evangelical. Also, I don’t think that all Christians oppose universal health care, and I will not presume that Christians who do will share all my reasons. I hope this caveat spares me the litany of comments accusing me of ‘generalizing.’
I will take the article as my foil as it is one of the finest expressions of liberal hubris and arrogance that I’ve seen in a while. The author begins by indicating he seriously wanted to know why Christians who are supposed to be all about love would oppose health care. The end includes a long screed:
(p.s. this opinion is reserved for those Christians who have not actually thought about the consequences, and decided that more people are harmed than helped by the new law. They are being consistent with their beliefs. That being said, if you think you are in that camp of people excluded, you probably aren’t. You probably are just being geedy [sic], selfish and jerkish, but convincing yourself that this is why you oppose it, while the truth remains you just dont want taxed, or adhere to some abstract notion of how this bill is UnGodly).
Read the rest of the entry… »
Posted by Anthony on March 3, 2010
The headline I read today was “New charge on dinner tab is in bad taste.” The opening paragraphs seemed to set the stage for the article:
Nothing succeeds in the travel industry like a bad idea. The latest hidden mandatory add-on is a “health” charge added to restaurant bills. As far as I know, this scam cropped up first in San Francisco, but you can count on it to spread.
The rationale for this one is to cover the employers’ mandatory contribution to the City’s “Healthy San Francisco” health-coverage system. The charge actually is levied on employers, but at least some restaurants are adding a few dollars or percentage points to each customer’s bill to cover this charge.
Reading this, I assumed that the ‘scam’ was going to be the new charge levied on employers to cover their ‘mandatory contribution’ to a city’s health-coverage system. Boy was I wrong!
Ed Perkins protests, “Employees’ health insurance is no less of a cost of doing business than rent, property taxes, food costs, security services and all the other inputs businesses require to operate. To single out health care for a separate surcharge is unwarranted.” Read the rest of the entry… »
Posted by Anthony on February 26, 2010
Not too long ago, FallenandFlawed blog interviewed me about my apologetics ministry and some of my activities. As tends to happen with me, I got a little long and only a portion of the interview could be posted. With permission, here are the remaining questions and answers:
Q. In 2009 ACM launched a Christian Writing Contest, which was an outgrowth of ACM’s desire to develop a genre of fiction called “literary apologetics.” Forgive me, but immediately books like C. S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce and The Chronicles of Narnia come to mind. Is that what you’re looking for? What kind of material did you receive?
Lewis’s works certainly represent the epitome of what we think about ‘literary apologetics.’ To expand on our intent, though, you’d have to also mention writers like G.K. Chesterton, Dorothy Sayers, Madeline L’Engle, and J.R.R Tolkien. We could throw in some others, too, like Graham Greene and Charles Williams. I guess you could say that what sets our vision apart is that we are thinking more intentionally. I doubt very much, for example, that Tolkien meant his work as any kind of apologetic. The key point is to communicate the Christian world view through the arts, and fiction in particular. This can be overt, but it need not be. Quality story-telling from a person who is a Christian may not be explicitly Christian in content but the ‘air’ the reader breathes will influence them towards a Christian perspective. Such literature may not ultimately save, just as ‘clean air’ won’t extract a drowning man from the waves, but at least you aren’t overwhelmed by noxious fumes during the rescue. Read the rest of the entry… »
Posted by Anthony on November 12, 2009
But, besides all this, there is something which is not seen. The fifty millions expended by the State cannot be spent, as they otherwise would have been, by the tax-payers. It is necessary to deduct, from all the good attributed to the public expenditure which has been effected, all the harm caused by the prevention of private expense, unless we say that James B. would have done nothing with the crown that he had gained, and of which the tax had deprived him; an absurd assertion, for if he took the trouble to earn it, it was because he expected the satisfaction of using it, He would have repaired the palings in his garden, which he cannot now do, and this is that which is not seen. [... etc] He would have become a member of the Mutual Assistance Society, but now he cannot; this is what is not seen. (Frederic Bastiat, 1850)
Mr. Bastiat does a terrific job in showing how taxes put to the socialist’s ends only serves to diminish freedom but what I want the reader to note the connection he draws here between taxation and ‘mutual assistance.’ It is agreed by all that we should like to help our fellow man. Liberals and socialists believe they can do that better by collective administration of coerced funds than individuals can do through churches, charities, and the like.
This is a view that neither Mr. Bastiat or myself share, but perhaps this isn’t the place for that whole discussion. Rather, let me draw attention to a basic economic problem facing us today in regards to providing charitable assistance in regards to people’s health: for any individual, church, or charity that wished to help with someone’s health care expenses, these expenses would likely be so prohibitively high that they would be unable to do so.
Churches have a hard enough time paying their staff a fair wage- how can they afford to help a single cancer patient (or whatever) whose medical bills exceed the salaries of three staffers? Read the rest of the entry… »
Posted by Anthony on July 23, 2009
Please see my previous posts on this topic for more important background. In the course of those posts I have tried to lay out a couple of important principles. My audience was strictly Christian in those cases. In this post, nonChristians are potentially included, too. Here are the earlier posts in sum:
- Taxation always has some impact on the liberty of those taxed.
- Using government/taxation to provide important and necessary social programs differs from using private individuals, organizations, or churches to do so on a very important point: the funds that the private entities use are freely given within the private organization itself… while the funds the government uses comes by coercion and threat of punishment.
- Christians should not abrogate to the government the tasks and duties given to them.
- When Christians use the government to advance their social causes this requires taxation, and thus a diminishing of liberty to some extent within the community taxed. Importantly, Christians are then using someone else’s (coerced) funds to do their good deeds.
And some important clarifications were required.
- None of this implies that anyone, and certainly not Christians, should be indifferent to the plight of those with various needs around us.
- None of this is to say that even within the Christian world view there is no proper place and function for the government.
- None of this is to say that Christians shouldn’t pay taxes or that governments shouldn’t tax.
- However, since in this country all citizens, Christians included, have the right under the rule of law to participate in and even change the government and how it operates, Christians should think very carefully about how to proceed.
It is possible to be enslaved within a tyrannical system without actually being locked up in chains. Nor does there need to be an identifiable tyrant at the top for it to be tyranny. Read the rest of the entry… »
Posted by Anthony on July 10, 2009
I had a series in mind about freedom, government, taxation, and Christianity but discussion over the first of those entries has led me to take a detour and cover some preliminary ground. The original post was titled ‘The Christian Church shouldn’t use the Government to do THEIR good deeds.’ I posted it to my blog but it received attention and criticism on my facebook page.
I drew some flak even from conservative Christians who ostensibly abide by ‘limited government.’ It appeared to me that there is some important ground that needs to be covered. The following is in part a response to the criticism of the original note but also worthy in its own right.
Important caveat: the following is written BY A CHRISTIAN and pertains ONLY TO CHRISTIANS, and then, ONLY THE CHRISTIANS THAT TAKE THE BIBLE AS THEIR FINAL AUTHORITY. I hope that is sufficiently clear.
——————-
1 Peter 4:17: “For it is time for judgment to begin with the family of God; and if it begins with us, what will the outcome be for those who do not obey the gospel of God?”
Sprinkled throughout the Scriptures is evidence of God’s fondness for a certain order of interaction with the human race. The idea that judgment begins with the family of God is not isolated to Peter and the idea that there are stages in judgment is not isolated to the apostles. For example, Jesus himself alludes to it in Mark 7 when he at first refuses to minister to the Syrophoenician Woman, saying, “First let the children eat all they want.”
Out of all the peoples and nations on the planet, God chose to work his plan through one particular person, Abraham, and then one particular nation, Israel, until such time that he revealed himself personally. At that point, his goal was to reach the world through the Church. The Gospel came first to the Jews because it was only appropriate that it do so. Paul warns in Romans 11:13-21 that there was a pattern to God’s work, beginning with the Jews: “For if God did not spare the natural branches, he will not spare you either.” Read the rest of the entry… »
Posted by Anthony on May 20, 2009
So they finally discovered the ‘missing link.’ Huh, I was under the impression that missing links posed no problems. I guess after you think you’ve resolved the problem you can admit you had one. I’ll leave it to others to decide if they really have resolved it.
The discovery of this ‘missing link’ comes as I’ve been ruminating on the role of secularism in our society, science, and education. Secularists insist that those who want to involve themselves in goverment have to frame their desired policies, legislation, etc, in secular terms, or else be ‘unconstitutional.’ Secularists really believe that this approach constitutes being ‘neutral.’ And of course, secularists get to decide what secularism entails.
(For a fascinating exhibition of this, I submit this thread on my discussion forum.)
It is nonsense to believe that secularism is ‘neutral.’ For the purposes of this post, though, what I want to contend is that there isn’t such a thing as ‘neutrality.’ In today’s post-modern world, I wouldn’t think that is controversial. What we find, however, is that there are huge areas of our experience that we are told really are neutral. Here again, the ‘neutralists’ are the ones who decide what fits into this category. The rest of us don’t get to have a say.
The government is one such instance. Science and education are two others.
To make my point plain before I begin: I believe that the ideal government won’t insist on ‘neutrality’ (which is impossible) but rather allow everyone to come to the table on fair terms.
Secular education, we are informed, is devoid of ‘religious’ content. This is why they feel like they can distribute condoms and have Planned Parenthood come in and offer ‘services.’ You see how it works: if you are against abortion, that’s religious. If you are for it, that’s secular. If you are for the sexual morality theoretically embodied in traditional marriage, you’re religious. If you could care less, that’s secular. You have two sides of the same coin, and instead of acknowledging that the whole coin is ‘religious’ the secularists have decided that only one side is- the side they disagree with- and oh, by the way, don’t you remember that only secularists perspectives are allowed in the public schools?
Likewise, science we are informed is ‘neutral.’ One must keep religious content out of science at all costs! To do otherwise is to establish religion! The interesting thing about what passes as science today is that you can break it up into two basic parts. One part, the part really supported by the scientific method, really is neutral in the sense that they represent brute facts. The temperature at which water boils has no moral implications. The other part, the part with a more modern approach to science where observation and direct experimentation is not critical, very often does have moral implications.
It seems that the less empirically demonstrable the claim, the more moral are the implications.
Take for example the question of when human life begins and is entitled to the rights of human beings. It is easy to find secularists contending that their views are scientific whereas those religious nutjob pro-lifers have a religious view. On the secularist’s own terms, though, when you choose (as a society) to grant human rights is basically just societal convention. How interesting that they wish to decide what the societal convention really says? The fact that half of America’s population is pro-life is irrelevant. Why? Because their perspective is religious, that’s why. But ask them to scientifically demonstrate when a human life begins and when it deserves the rights we accord to humans and you are not going to get anything empircally demonstrable.
The number one example of a so called scientific theory that is loaded with moral and religious implications is of course evolution itself. There was a time when people were more willing to admit this.
The famous Scopes Monkey trial resolves around the state of Tennessee saying that evolution could not be taught in science classrooms. The horror! But we forget what evolutionism entailed at the time. For example, the textbook that was at the center of the Monkey Trial presents some interesting things as ‘science.’
Quote from the textbook:
Eugenics. When people marry there are certain things that the individual as well as the race should demand. The most important of these is freedom from germ diseases which might be handed down to the offspring. Tuberculosis, syphilis, that dread disease which cripples and kills hundreds of thousands of innocent children, epilepsy, and feeble-mindedness are handicaps which it is not only unfair but criminal to hand down to posterity. The science of being well born is called eugenics.
or,
If such people were lower animals, we would probably kill them off to prevent them from spreading. Humanity will not allow this, but we do have the remedy of separating the sexes in asylums or other places and in various ways preventing intermarriage and the possibilities of perpetuating such a low and degenerate race. Remedies of this sort have been tried success fully in Europe and are now meeting with success in this country.
I discuss this more in this post discussing one professor’s claim that we have a moral obligation to abort our potentially disabled children.
These comments are from the science book that Tennessee wanted kept out of their classrooms! The horror! Read the rest of the entry… »
