26February2021

How Democracies Die

Written By robfaircloth

I’m a little behind on my reading, and just got around to an issue of Modern Reformation from July of 2019.

In it is a review of a book called How Democracies Die by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, published in 2018.

The reviewer summarizes what the authors describe as a subversive overthrow of democracy, contrasted with radical overthrows such as the coup d’etats in Argentina, Brazil, and other states.

This subversive overthrow occurs in a series of steps:

  • “the leaders of established parties fail to serve as effective gatekeepers”
  • the subversive candidate “succeeds in rejecting many of the unwritten rules” and transgresses those rules “without consequence”
  • the subversive candidate “denies the legitimacy of their [sic] opponents”
  • the candidate takes over party apparatus and state apparatus
  • “violence is tolerated or encouraged against opponents in order to harden views of opponents as enemies”
  • “civil liberties are curtailed in terms of movement and freedom of the press”
  • “courts are packed with justices who are partisan loyalists”
  • “constitutional restrictions” are used to tilt the field in favor of the candidate”

What occurred to me, and probably to you, as well, is that when you read these descriptions you see these things occurring in the other party’s actions.

Continue Reading “How Democracies Die”

25February2021

Don’t be Like the Hypocrites

Written By robfaircloth

No one likes a hypocrite.

Politicians who attend beauty parlors they’ve closed to others. Governors who attend large gatherings they’ve prohibited for others. Celebrities who travel to receive an environmental award by jetting to the award ceremony.

If there is anything we like less than a hypocrite, though, it is to be considered a hypocrite. We like to imagine ourselves consistent, sincere, and faithful to the truth.

But the reality is, as taught by Scripture, that in our sinful condition we are hypocritical: our behavior is inconsistent with the truth. We act hypocritically when our behavior doesn’t match the truth. This might be because our knowledge of truth is deficient, or because we know the truth, but prefer to act according to something else.

Continue Reading “Don’t be Like the Hypocrites”

11February2021

Governments Demand Total Allegiance (& Faith Incurs Their Wrath)

Written By robfaircloth

King Nebuchadnezzar built a golden statue at which officials of various religions and faiths were to genuflect (worship) at prescribed times (Daniel 3:1-7). It was the king’s attempt, as it were, to bring a modicum of unity to the pluralistic realm over which he reigned.

But like most such attempts, there was something else going on, and the faith of a few insignificant citizens exposed it.

You might be familiar with the story: Nebuchadnezzar erected a gold statue ninety feet tall, and ordered that at the prescribed musical signal, all the government officials were to “fall down and worship” the image. Nonconformity was punishable by death in a fiery furnace.

It apparently escaped the king’s immediate attention, given the spectacle of the multitudinous music-fest, that Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego — Daniel’s friends — did not comply.

But, not to worry. Some of their coworkers ratted them out. “Certain Chaldeans” (Daniel 3:8) dutifully complied with the king’s oppressive edict, and turned in others who did not. They reported that “certain Jews” were being particularly offensive: they “pay no attention to you, O king.”

“Full compliance is necessary,” we might imagine them saying, for the “good of the people.”

Nebuchadnezzar, as they say, was not pleased. In a “furious rage” he ordered the boys to appear before him and explain themselves, questioning whether there was any “god who will deliver” them. If he had not been pleased before, he was particularly un-pleased with their answer: God can deliver us, but even if he doesn’t, we won’t worship your gold statute.

Now “filled with fury,” Nebuchadnezzar ordered the furnace heated seven times hotter than normal because, for these insouciant miscreants, any old burning just wouldn’t do.

What prompted the Chaldeans to rat out their fellow cosmopolitan coworkers? What prompted Nebuchadnezzar to wax so completely apoplectic?

The desire for complete comformity among the people, and the desire for absolute allegiance to the government.

The result? The super-hot furnace burned the guards alive, but Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego emerged not ashen, not harmed, and not even smelling of smoke.

10February2021

“Follow the science!” except to follow something else

Written By robfaircloth

The Supreme Court (SCOTUS) recently decided a case regarding indoor worship services in California. As with many SCOTUS decisions, the justices were divided largely along partisan lines, with the majority ruling generally that California had not given proper deference to the First Amendment when limiting church services.

California argued that the COVID-19 pandemic justified a restriction of church’s activities, and apparently disparate treatment of church life and other activities. The majority disagreed, and the concerns of the dissenting justices are revealing.

Justice Elena Kagan, writing in dissent, complained that the majority had “displaced the judgment of experts” regarding safety-based church restrictions, and wondered if “the Court does not believe the science, or does it think even the best science must give way?”

One is prompted to wonder what Justice Kagan thinks is the “best science” in this regard.

The “science” regarding COVID-19 has been all over the proverbial laboratory since the virus first appeared: science has advocated “two weeks to flatten the curve”; science has said masks were good, then they weren’t, then one was good, then two was better; science has said that the virus survived long periods on surfaces, until it didn’t; science has said that only a narrow segment of the population is at particular risk, but everyone should be quarantined, tested, masked, and inoculated; science has said everyone should be vaccinated, but vaccinations won’t eliminate masks, distancing, and shutdowns; science has all but ignored the consequences — scientifically deduced — from the now year-long scientific approach, which includes higher rates of domestic violence, drug use, suicide, and economic woes.

Which, “science,” then, is “best”?

That a Supreme Court justice would suggest that the Court’s understanding of constitutional law would defer to science, much less the “best science,” is alarming.

“Science” is all but settled on many significant questions of the day, and further has the potential to negate all reasonable judgment in favor of “experts” who could very well be wrong.

After all, it is modern “science” that contends that lithium mines are “greener” than pipelines, that burning corn in cars is better than people eating it, that unborn babies are “blobs of tissue” or parasites to be excised from the mother’s body at will, and it is “science” that has determined that biological sex is a social construct and that boys competing in girls’ sports are really girls, after all, and you shouldn’t argue with “science,” because, well, “trust the experts.”

As someone once said, “An expert is one who knows more and more about less and less.”

8February2021

When the Supreme Court is not so Supreme

Written By robfaircloth

Recently the Supreme Court ruled that California could not ban church services indefinitely.

While I agree with the decision as good law (I practiced law for 20 years), I have a couple of issues with it: first, not all justices prioritized application First Amendment (religious liberty) standards, and second, it was decided 6-3.

Back in 2013, I wrote “Why 5-4 Decisions Are Unpatriotic.” Five to four decisions are still unpatriotic, but so are those that are decided 6-3, 7-2 and 8-1, for that matter.

The reason that I think this, and you should, too, is that non-unanimous opinions are usually divided along party lines: justices appointed by Democrats usually part company with justices appointed by Republicans. When this happens, the Supreme Court is not so much applying law as mimicking what Congress did, or what Congress would do if it fulfilled its responsibility to govern.

This is why appointments to the Supreme Court are so hotly contested, because it has come to function as a sort of super-legislature: a much smaller and less accountable congress, as it were. Call me idealistic, but the Supreme Court should decide the law, not politics.

Requiring unanimous decisions (with room for concurring opinions) would correct the power imbalance that currently favors the Court, and would put the actual act of governing back in the hands of Congress, which is all too eager to have unelected justices decide difficult matters so that it can campaign without having to explain its political baggage to voters.

Some will disagree, because the Court is now seen as protector of those liberties that Congress and the States might not guard so closely. But if nine people eminently qualified can’t agree what liberties to guard, and how to guard them, is it really guarding anything? Are we really better off with divided decisions in any real fashion beyond the next vacancy to be filled?

Consider three simple fixes to how government functions:

  • Require unanimous Supreme Court decisions
  • Eliminate executive orders
  • limit congressional terms.

Think about it.

[Addendum: I would add the additional fix of eliminating, somehow, the current state of government by bureaucracy. Regulatory agencies, like the Supreme Court, are the way that elected officials pass off responsibility and accountability to govern, and to answer to the people for how they govern.]

4February2021

How do you discern your kids from the neighbors’?

Written By robfaircloth

If you are a parent, you don’t likely have much difficulty distinguishing your own kids from the neighbors’.

If the dad pulls into the driveway in the family minivan (or SUV, depending), and mom comes out and says “Dad, who are those children? They aren’t ours!” then you know dad has not discerned well (or he is some kind of criminal…).

The reason that parents can instantly recognize that foreign children are in the family SUV — except for those parents who tend to leave their children at various places, like they would their wallet or cell phone — is because they have spent so much time with them.

If they didn’t know their own children, Paul’s admonition in Galatians 1:6-9 might become “I’m astonished that you so easily forget which children you birthed, and fed, and clothed, to turn to others who don’t belong to you!”

But like parents who can discern their own children, and husbands who can discern their own wives, and art fans who can discern their favorite painter from others, disciples of Christ should be able to easily discern false gospels because they spend so much time with the true.

Disciples should be able to discern false gods because they spend so much time with the One True God.

Evaluate the time you spend studying the Bible, understanding the gospel, and communing with God, through Jesus, in the Spirit.

Does your time with the true prepare you to detect and reject the false? Are you sure? Repent of your neglect of knowing God through the gospel, and ask him to help you use your time better.

2February2021

Do you share your faith with other believers?

Written By robfaircloth

Sharing your faith has taken on the meaning, for Christians, of witnessing, or evangelizing. Sometimes we speak in terms of “sharing the gospel” or “sharing Jesus.”

I prefer “proclaim the gospel” or “proclaim Jesus,” but that is beside the present point…

Because we’ve been willingly conditioned to think of sharing your faith as witnessing, we might be tempted to insert that meaning into the term when we read that Paul told Philemon he prayed that the “sharing of your faith might become effective” (Philemon 1:6-7).

We suppose that Paul is praying for evangelistic success.

Paul says that he prays that Philemon’s faith-sharing would become “effective for the full knowledge of every good thing that is in us for the sake of Christ” (Philemon 1:6). It is true, biblically speaking, that when a disciple witnesses — evangelizes the lost — something is added to his faith experience. In other words, disciples miss something of the walk with Christ when we don’t evangelize (aside from the fact that not witnessing is disobedience).

What might we miss? The full knowledge of every good thing that is in us. Naturally, we would think that obtaining the full knowledge of every good thing that is in us, for the sake of Christ, that is, on account of Christ and for his ongoing glory, is a good thing. We would seek to be involved in whatever that thing is that will increase our knowledge of every good thing.

You would think.

But Paul isn’t saying that evangelizing the lost is connected to gaining full knowledge. It is. But he is saying something different here. Paul tells Philemon that he derives comfort and joy from Philemon, because the hearts of the saints have been refreshed through you (Philemon 1:7).

Paul refers not to Philemon’s relationship to unbelievers and its effect on his full knowledge, but instead to Philemon’s relationship to other believers: “the hearts of the saints have been refreshed…”

Paul says that the full knowledge of every good thing that we have in Christ is related to the sharing of our faith with other believers. This suggests a couple of important conclusions: 1) we should be sharing our faith with other believers, and 2) sharing our faith (proclaiming Christ) to unbelievers is also connected with sharing our faith with other believers.

Paul here is talking about fellowship in the Christian community. Where does refreshment come from in Christian community? Where does joy and camaraderie grow in a local church congregation? It is not the product of potlucks, or service projects, or ministry meetings. It is the product of sharing your faith with other people.

Do you share your faith with other believers in your church? Do you speak of your discoveries in Scripture, your struggles with sin, your difficulties in daily decisions? Or do you wear a mask and keep others at arms’ length from your real, true, spiritual self?

If you are having difficulty witnessing to unbelievers, or don’t experience much refreshing in the body of Christ, it might be because you are not sharing your faith.