Jesusnomics

So in case you’ve been living under a rock, there are a bunch of people who have been camped out on Wall Street (and elsewhere) for the past while who are protesting against corporations and calling for…um…well, we’re not really sure what they’re calling for but I’m sure whatever it is has very good intentions. Because that’s what counts, right? It’s just good to see people standing up and speaking truth to power.

The problem, of course, is that in this age we’re not exactly sure what “truth” is. When someone is brandishing a sign that calls corporations “evil” you need some kind of basic frame of reference as to what evil is in order for it to have any real effect. As it is, apparently each person out there in the protest is making it up as they go along as to exactly what they think is wrong and is left to come up with their own conclusions (or lack thereof) as to how to fix it.

By way of contrast it is helpful to look at a set of protests that really did bring about some lasting change during the Civil Rights era. But the difference in the purpose of the Civil Rights marches with the Occupy Wall Street protests is striking. For starters, the Civil Rights marches actually had a stated purpose: ending segregation and discrimination. More importantly that purpose was backed by a moral resolve which was able to withstand fierce opposition. That resolve and moral certainty allowed for a unity of focus that brought people together working for common goals. When the marchers said that segregation and discrimination was evil there was no question in anybody’s mind of what “evil” meant.

But if evil isn’t real and if truth is whatever you make of it and if the only real moral ills in this world are whatever doesn’t make me happy, then it’s going to be really hard to get any group of people to share the same message for very long. And that’s if you can actually get anybody in the crowd to articulate a message to start with. Postmodernists really don’t make great protesters.

On the heels of the rejoicing and celebrations that a mass murderer has been brought to justice, some Christians are immediately coming out with statements that being happy over someone’s death isn’t a very Jesus thing to do.

Predictably leading the charge is Brian MacLaren who had this to say:

I can only say that this image does not reflect well on my country, especially in contrast to the images that have been so strong here in recent days … revelers celebrating a wedding.

Joyfully celebrating the killing of a killer who joyfully celebrated killing carries an irony that I hope will not be lost on us. Are we learning anything, or simply spinning harder in the cycle of violence?

The Vatican chimed in with this:

Faced with the death of a man, a Christian never rejoices, but reflects on the serious responsibility of each and every one of us before God and before man, and hopes and commits himself so that no event be an opportunity for further growth of hatred, but for peace.

Which leads me to wonder why God put Ps. 58:10-11 in the Bible

“The righteous shall rejoice when he seeth the vengeance: he shall wash his feet in the blood of the wicked. So that a man shall say, Verily there is a reward for the righteous: verily he is a God that judgeth in the earth.”

I guess all those martyrs who are under altar screaming out for justice in Revelation 6:9-10 really should just shut up and sing Kum ba yah instead .

There is a righteous vengeance. And Jesus is the one who will ultimately execute it upon all the wicked. Rejoicing in justice is a very Jesus thing to do. It is not evil to rejoice that this murderer has been brought to his earthly end.

Barack Obama says he is a Christian and I take him at his Word. But his articulation of that faith seemed more direct than usual this week even for an event where such statements would be appropriate.

On April 19th, The President made some remarks at the Easter Prayer Breakfast where he said in part:

I wanted to host this breakfast for a simple reason -– because as busy as we are, as many tasks as pile up, during this season, we are reminded that there’s something about the resurrection — something about the resurrection of our savior, Jesus Christ, that puts everything else in perspective.

[W]e’re reminded that in that moment, he took on the sins of the world — past, present and future — and he extended to us that unfathomable gift of grace and salvation through his death and resurrection.

In the words of the book Isaiah: “But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.”

This magnificent grace, this expansive grace, this “Amazing Grace” calls me to reflect. And it calls me to pray. It calls me to ask God for forgiveness for the times that I’ve not shown grace to others, those times that I’ve fallen short. It calls me to praise God for the gift of our son — his Son and our Savior.

It’s an unusual moment of clarity for a President who seems loath to visit a church or be seen hobnobbing with members of the clergy.

John Piper, preacher, writer, and Calvinist extraordinaire, caused a bit of a stir when he weighed in on his blog about the recent burning of a Koran and the resulting violent riots that ensued.

As the Christian Post reports:

Piper…concluded that the parallel between Christianity and Islam is not of Christ to Muslim prophet Muhammad and the Koran to the Bible. Rather, the Koran parallels Christ.

“The giving of the Koran is in Islam what the incarnation of Christ is to Christianity,” asserted Piper in a blog posting on the Desiring God website. “If this is so, then Koran-burning is parallel to Christ-crucifying.”

I’ll agree that it makes a certain kind of sense to draw those parallels between the emphasis on The Word incarnate and the written words of the Koran as far as their value to the respective religions. That being said, I’m just not exactly sure what Piper is trying to demonstrate here. Is he giving a justification for the incredible overreaction of some Muslims who rioted and killed people because someone half a world away burned a copy of their sacred text?

I honestly think he isn’t really trying to assign an absolute moral equivalence to the burning of a Koran and the crucifixion of Christ. I suspect what he’s really doing here is pontificating in scholarly fashion over a theological comparison without really stopping to consider how his words sound to people in non-scholarly world.

However, even the pontification here is a little lacking. It would seem a little strange to say that after 1400 years of varying degrees of radical Islamic aggression that suddenly a reaction to an obscure guy burning a book suddenly explains “why the Muslims are so mad.” Simply put, Islamofascist fundamentalists are angry because their God is angry and they follow his example. Everything else is just grist to that mill. Cartoons of Allah, women who uncover their heads or dare to educate themselves, a teacher who names her teddy bear Muhammad, or a guy who lights a few pages on fire are all just excuses to lash out with an all-consuming anger.

Of course, a quick look around the world will show that not every Muslim is of this same angry stripe. Then again, the ones who aren’t lighting things on fire or beheading folks rarely make the news. And even the Islamic population that isn’t actively participating in acts of violence seems oddly reticent about condemning those acts when pushed to give an opinion. But that’s a different discussion altogether…

Back to the point, in my opinion, I don’t think Piper’s pontifications are particularly helpful. He sounds a lot like like he’s trying to pick up Falwell’s mantle of less-than-well-phrased public statements. Lord save us from your followers.

Ronald Reagan was right. The most frightening words a person can here are “we’re from the government and we’re here to help.”

Notice how the lady violates the man’s First Amendment rights both by telling him that he can’t protest the workers (thereby curtailing his freedom of speech) and then by ordering him to go inside his house as he peacefully stands on his property (thereby denying him a right to peaceful assembly).

I’m all for law and order but when power is abused, it’s time for those who abuse it to start losing their jobs. I honestly hope this woman loses hers.

I gave my own thoughts on the “What Would Jesus Cut” crowd recently but when I read Jeff Jacoby’s response this morning, I couldn’t help but re-post a bit of it here:

Wallis fumed in an interview that Congress should be cutting defense spending instead of health or nutrition programs. “House Republicans want to beat our ploughshares into more swords,” he said. “These priorities that they’re offering are not just wrong or unfair, they’re unbiblical.” Unbiblical! Does Wallis really believe that no one advocating budget cuts he opposes can have serious ethical grounds for doing do? It must be wonderful to be so certain that what Wallis wants is precisely what God wants. Not all of us are as confident that our religious faith translates as readily into a detailed partisan agenda.

A more fundamental problem with the “What Would Jesus Cut?” campaign is its planted axiom that Jesus would want Congress to do anything at all. Yes, we are emphatically commanded by Scripture to help the poor, to comfort the afflicted, and to love the stranger. But those obligations are personal, not political. It requires a considerable leap of both faith and logic to read the Bible as mandating elaborate government assistance programs, to be funded by a vast apparatus of compulsory taxation. I admit that I am no New Testament scholar, but I cannot recall Jesus ever saying that the way to enter Heaven is to dole out money extracted from your neighbors’ pockets.

Wow. That last line especially sums up the real problem with the philosophy behind this movement. It’s all about giving away large sums…of other people’s money. Where is the spiritual value in giving away another person’s possessions via the power of a tax code? I really can’t see how Jesus would be particularly impressed.

Today’s bit of twitter brililance comes from @johnleesandiego who writes of the current union protests going on in Wisconsin:

“Jesus was a community organizer, Pilate was a Governor.” #wiunion #solidarityWI

Perhaps he’d be good enough to show me in Scripture one protest that Jesus organized? One picket line? A rally against the poor working conditions of the Jews? A speech given in defense of the working man against the oppressive rule of the Romans?

The attempt to shoehorn Jesus into the jackboots of a union boss is just plain silly but it is a great example of how the Left is just as prone trying to bring Jesus to the aid of their political causes as they accuse the Right of being.

Jesus was the Savior of Mankind and King of Kings. He wasn’t a union organizer.

There’s a horrific story coming out of Philadelphia about an abortion clinic where “doctors” in the process of committing illegal late-term abortions would cut the spinal cords of otherwise viable babies and leave them to die rather than saving them.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports in part:

Detectives from the Allegheny County district attorney’s office arrested Steven Massof, 48, at a home on Marlin Drive West in Mt. Lebanon. For the nearly five years that Mr. Massof worked at Women’s Medical Society clinic, he posed as a doctor though he did not have a medical license, according to a grand jury report.

In that time, according to the report, Mr. Massof admitted that there were about 100 instances in which he severed the spinal cords of babies who were breathing or had other signs of life.

Kermit Gosnell, the proprietor of the clinic, was charged with the deaths of one adult and seven babies in his clinic, described as a grossly unsanitary operation that doubled as a prescription drug mill.

Mr. Massof is charged with two counts of homicide and with conspiracy to commit murder for killing viable babies born alive at the clinic.

What does all this have to do with Barack Obama? Well, as it turns out, while Mr. Obama was serving as a state senator in Illinois, he “opposed legislation to protect children who are born alive, either as a result of an abortionist’s unsuccessful effort to kill them in the womb, or by the deliberate delivery of the baby prior to viability.” In other words, Obama’s record says that he thinks the horrific acts committed in Pennsylvania should be perfectly legal. If a baby somehow manages to survive the efforts to murder it in the womb, go ahead and kill it anyway. The mother shouldn’t have to to be punished with a child she doesn’t want.

Thankfully, the citizens of Pennsylvania disagree and have passed laws banning late-term abortions except for in the case of a health risk to the mother. Even in that circumstance, a second doctor is required to be present to attend to the baby when it is delivered.

I hope that the monsters of the Women’s Medical Society clinic are prosecuted to the full extent of the law. I also hope that the President who supports the murder of children will either repent or be replaced by someone with a respect for all human life, no matter how frail or small.

Ok, so the title of this piece is not even close to what actually happened but try telling that to the social media universe.  The wild-eyed lefties are out in full force today telling us that some cross-hairs on a map that targeted political races are the reason why a demonstrably insane young man decided to shoot a congresswoman and several innocent bystanders.

Let’s take a deep breath and look at what facts we have so far.

The shooter was one Jared Lee Loughner of Tucson, Arizona.  According to his YouTube channel he was also a  flag-burning fan of the Communist Manifesto. He also recorded long disjointed, rambling discourses against the government, the police, public education and pretty much everybody else.   Sounds like your typical Tea Party member, right?

Interestingly enough,  according to sources who have interviewed his high school friends,  Jared was known as being far from conservative. In fact, his friends say that he was very left wing, liberal, and radical. It’s strange that nobody in the media is reporting this little fact.

On January 8th, after leaving a cryptic goodbye message on his MySpace page, he headed down to the Tuscon Safeway and opened fire on the congresswoman and the crowd of bystanders hitting thirteen people.  It was a terrible act of violence leaving a nine-year-old girl dead and Arizona U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in critical condition.

Within hours after the shooting the social networking universe lit up with people who recalled that during the 2010 election Sarah Palin had been connected to some signs with crosshairs denoting districts that were being “targeted” as key races.  So now we’re being asked to believe that Jared The Whackjob saw these signs last November and was so moved with rage that he sat around for a couple months making crazy videos in which he didn’t mention the Tea Party, Palin, or Representative Giffords, then grabbed his gun and went and shot not only the Congresswoman but a bunch of innocent bystanders as well.

The logical leaps that are required to believe that scenario are many.

You have to believe that a flag-burning fan of Communism was a loyal fan of a right-wing defender of free markets.

You have to believe that a set of cross-hair pictures on a map were enough to send him into murderous rage directed at a specific person.

You have to believe that he was so inspired by these pictures that he not only shot his intended target but also believed that the pictures were instructing him to shoot a bunch of bystanders as well.

And you have to believe that given those things that the person who put up those pictures is somehow culpable for this act of murderous insanity.

So far, since we’ve had Obama in office, we’ve had an insane lefty shoot up the Holocaust Museum, an insane lefty crash a plane into an IRS office, and an insane  lefty  shoot a congresswoman.  It sounds to me like Sarah Palin and company certainly must have a lot to answer for.