27December2011

How RomneyCare is OK

Written By robfaircloth

Presidential candidates Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich are both receiving fire over Massachusetts’ version of universal health care, commonly known as “RomneyCare”: Romney for being the political parent of the plan as Governor, Gingrich for having enthusiastically supported it at the time.

Having favored such a plan in light of the politically explosive national version — ObamaCare — is seen as a cause to suspect the candidates’ conservative  credentials.

Romney and Gingrich have given feeble responses to their critics on this issue, and have largely missed a prime opportunity to school the electorate in the United States’ system of federalism.

Despite what conventional wisdom would say, federalism is not a political plan that transfers all power and authority to the federal authorities. Federalism is simply the recognition that limited powers are granted to the national government, while all other powers are reserved to state governments. In other words, what is good at the state level is not necessarily good at the national level.

In the case of RomneyCare, Massachusetts citizens — through their elected representatives — pass a plan to pool resources and provide some measure of health care to all Massachusetts citizens. If a Massachusetts resident objects to the extent that he refuses to participate, he is able — under the federal system — to move to another State of the Union that does not have such a plan.

This was the intent and the superior wisdom of the framers of the Constitution. It was understood that the citizens of each state were better able to address their needs and desires than a centralized mass of bureaucrats who were far away, both geographically and philosophically.

Thus, the primary reason that ObamaCare is objectionable — as would be a national version of RomneyCare — is that is eliminates the federal option for citizens to vote with their feet. Under national healthcare — ObamaCare — if a citizen objects, moving to another State does not help him: he must move outside the jurisdiction of the national government. This sort of Hobson’s choice was what the Framers found to be an onerous burden on liberty, and is what they sought to avoid with the federalist system.

So RomneyCare is a perfectly legitimate expression of political will — for Massachusetts. The rest of us may debate the wisdom of the plan, and whether our respective States should explore similar plans, but not while under a threat that we, too, will all be subject to it; that decision is left to each State. ObamaCare is a perfect example of an illegitimate expression of political will because it subverts federalism and oppresses both State authority and individual liberty.

25December2011

The Functional Authority of Scripture

Written By robfaircloth

Here’s a good description of how Scripture should operate in the life of a believer:

Merely affirming that the Bible is inspired accomplishes very little. Asserting its authority isn’t much better. The inspiration and authority of the Scriptures are of value to us only so far as we change our beliefs to conform to its principles and alter our behavior to coincide with its imperatives.

(Sam Storms, in the Foreword to Note to Self: the Discipline of Preaching to Yourself, by Joe Thorn: Crowssway 2011).

This description is offered for us to cherish the Word of God as superior to to any other pretender for ultimate truth. Does the Word change us?

23December2011

Leonard Sweet’s I Am A Follower

Written By robfaircloth1 Comment on Leonard Sweet’s I Am A Follower

Many times I had thought that much of evangelical Christian life focused too much on making everyone leaders, which catered to a fleshly emphasis on the priesthood of believer, which is itself a euphemism for radical independence.

If everyone is a leader, after all, who will they be leading?

I had not read anything by Leonard Sweet before, and reviewing I Am A Follower is a jump outside my customary range of authors and titles, and, probably, a leap outside my theological tradition. But stretching is good, occasionally, despite what my aging hamstrings tell me.

Sweet addresses primarily the problem posed when the church adopts and incorporates worldly business practices – especially in the area of defining leadership and training leaders. Much of the book is organized into chapters focusing on the Way, the Truth, and the Life (from Jesus’ self-description in John 14:6) as an encouragement for believers to order their lives around following Jesus.

Sweet uses the metaphor of a dance to illustrate his main point: the first one dancing is considered a bit kooky until another joins in, at which point everyone feels comfortable. Believers should be like those “first followers”, unafraid to swim against the cultural stream.

It is this encouragement for believers to follow Jesus – despite the criticism of culture, family and friends – that is perhaps the strongest point of Sweet’s book. Equally challenging is his insistence that a believer’s influence is not in leadership strengths but spiritual weakness: ‘when you are weak, I am strong’. However, his dance metaphor is sometimes forced and a bit confused (Sweet encourages us to join where Jesus is dancing, but also describes Jesus as being the dance). If such things bother you, skip the Prologue.

I Am A Follower is heavy on illustrations and leaves the reader frequently looking for the point that supports them. The book comes in at 260 pages, and could have been equally effective – without so many anecdotes and illustrations – at half that length.

Modern believers probably could use a bit of instruction about how to be good followers, but Sweet goes a bit far in criticizing leadership, and gives little guidance on how believers follow in a church with biblical offices of leaders (elders and deacons), or how followership works when some measure of organization and leadership is reasonably necessary.

[This review does not address Leonard Sweet’s theological and philosophical views, which are unorthodox, nor does this author or this site approve of those views; discerning readers should examine reviews of Sweet’s broader views available elsewhere.]

Disclosure: I received a copy of this book from the publisher through the Book Sneeze (BookSneeze®.com <http://BookSneeze®.com>) book review program. I was not required or encouraged to write a positive review; the thoughts expressed here are my own.

22December2011

Tattoo the wise men on your big toe

Written By robfaircloth1 Comment on Tattoo the wise men on your big toe

It’s possible that our manger scenes are wrong.

Not that I’m engaging in biblical criticism (higher or lower). I’m embarking on transactional questionism. Alright, that sounds a bit highfalutin: I’m pointing out the time compression that may be evident in our manger scenes.

The traditional manger scene is etched on our collective memory: Mary, Joseph and baby Jesus, surrounded by animals lowing, in a bucolic scene accompanied by shepherds and three (not two, not four) wise men/magi/kings. But perhaps the wise men shouldn’t be there…yet. The wise men were led to Bethlehem by a star, and Herod, you might remember, ordered that all male children in Bethlehem aged two and under be killed. This might mean that the star appeared to the Magi two years prior to Jesus’ birth, or that it appeared at the time of Jesus’ birth and it took the Magi two years to trek over there (without the benefit of jet travel and airline food). Herod was simply covering all the bases in his ego-induced murderous rage.

But, not to worry. For those of you interested in reflecting the possible historical reality in your creches and manger scenes and Christmas cantatas, I have several possible solutions:

1) Public Creches

If you are responsible for setting up nativity displays on behalf of your city, town, or hamlet, put Mary, Joseph, baby Jesus, the animals and the shepherds at City Hall. Put the wise men three blocks away at the downtown fire station.

2) Church Cantatas

For the dramatic final scene of your Christmas performance, in which all pay homage to the infant king, parade the animals and shepherds before baby Jesus with Mary and Joseph. Wait thirty minutes, then show slighter older Mary and Joseph at home with toddler Jesus, visited by the wise men.

3) Home Nativity Scenes, Option 1

Put the fam + animals + shepherds on your front lawn. Put the magi on your neighbor’s porch.

4) Home Nativity Scenes, Option 2

Put Mary, Joseph, Jesus, animals and shepherds on your front lawn in December, as usual. Put the three kings of Orient on your front lawn…in March.

5) Body Art

If you are into (almost) eternal ink — not that I am either approving or disapproving of such — tattoo the manger scene proper on your shoulder. Put the wise men on your big toe.

15December2011

“Are you ready for Santa? Surely you’ve been good!”

Written By robfaircloth

When you have decided as a family not to participate in the Santa Claus phenomena, the ubiquity of the jolly old fat man and the gravitational pull he exerts on all yuletide conversations — public and private — becomes even more noticeable. (See this article for more).

Don’t worry: our four children have never believed there was a Santa Claus. They still receive presents at Christmas. They are not freaks.

I was picking up a few last minute items at the local market prepping for our church Christmas party. The cashier asked “Are you ready for Santa?” Note, at this point, I have none of the aforementioned Santa-challenged children with me: a grown woman was asking me, a grown man, about Santa — even adults seemingly cannot converse about the season of Christ’s advent without resort to a commercialized mythical elf. I muttered a few unintelligible syllables while fumbling for some cash when she encouraged me: “Surely you’ve been good?”

It was simply too much. I responded “No, I have not been good. Nor have you been good. Nor have any of the children who believes in Santa Claus been good. Which is precisely the problem. None of us are good, and if we were to truly rely upon that measure to ensure that a benign being with supernatural power to give gifts to men is nice to us, then we would all be sorely disappointed. Instead, I trust that God does not count our badness against us, but has counted it against Jesus Christ, and through him those who repent and believe enjoy all the glories of heaven in the eternal state.”

I didn’t really say that. I wish I had. Or something similar. I wish everyone would realize that Santa’s standards are impossible to attain, whether he is jolly or not.

When I did not play along with her line of yuletide cross-examination, the cashier tried to salvage some assurance that I — a fellow traveller on this celestial ball and dependent to the mercies of Santa — had some semblance of Christmas spirit: “Have you decorated your tree?”

As if proof of our Christmas spirit is perpetuating the Santa Claus myth, or that of Rudolph or spying elves, or drinking egg nog or decorating trees…how dreadfully weak is the testimony of Christians to the true spirit of Christmas.

15December2011

Your Money or Your Life: Is Jesus a Street Thug?

Written By robfaircloth

A street thug approaches a couple in an alleyway and demands “your money or your life!” The man pushes the woman forward, and the thug says “what are you doing?” The man replies, “Oh, I thought you said ‘your money or your wife’!”

The iconic threat of the street thug is a subject for standup comedy, but his intentions are all too serious: give him your cash, and you might live; refuse and he kills you, taking your coin, anyway.

Jesus issues a sanctified demand quite similar to that of the thug, though with much different implications: in Mark’s gospel Jesus frequently demonstrates that those who would attempt to follow him cannot cling to their money at the same time. The rich young man turned away when it became apparent that Jesus’ lordship extended to his monetary wealth (Mark 10:17-22). The poor widow was praised when her offering of two lepta constituted more than the extravagant offerings of the rich, because it was “all she had to live on” (Mark 12:41-44).

In effect, the rich young man kept his wealth and lost his life. The widow gave her wealth and gained much more than the physical sustenance it may have provided.

God measures our giving — the extent to which we aren’t clinging to money — differently than the world does. Actual dollar amounts are not what counts: we would expect the wealthy to give larger sums, and the poor to give lesser sums. God measures our giving by 1) what we have kept for ourselves, 2) what the giving costs us, 3) what sacrifice we made to give it.

If we determine how much to give to kingdom work through the church based upon what we will be able to keep for ourselves, we are clinging to money. If we can give and discern no effect on our standard of living, we are clinging to money. If the gift doesn’t required us to alter spending on other things or to modify other behavior, we are clinging to money.

Jesus demands “your money or your life.” Yet his is not a threat to kill us if we don’t give him our money, but a stern reminder that unless we turn loose of wealth’s void promise, we remain dead in sin.

10December2011

Evolutionary scientist claims benefit of blind faith; gives self brain cramp

Written By robfaircloth

Consider where you would place the author of these comments on the faith vs. reason spectrum:

I’m not advocating irrationality or extreme emotionality. Many, perhaps even most, of the problems plaguing individuals and groups arise from actions based on passion. … fundamentalism, for example, remains a severe threat to civilization.

We’d likely conclude that the holder of these sentiments rejects outright anything that can’t be proved, and objects to rational, reasonable people getting worked up about them.

But consider these statements from the same author in the same article:

…I’m pretty sure that people gain a selective advantage from believing in things they can’t prove. Those who are occasionally consumed by false beliefs do better in life than those who insist on evidence before they believe and act. Those who are occasionally swept away by emotions do better than those who calculate every move.

Additionally:

The great things in life are done by people who go ahead when going ahead seems senseless to others.

Randolph M. Nesse’s contribution to What We Believe But Cannot Prove (Harper 2006) asserts that acting on beliefs that are not scientifically proven are beneficial in some contexts, and if in moderation (note his caution about “fundamentalism”). His goal is to determine how natural selection gave rise to such beliefs.

This is, certainly, a strange juxtaposition of utilitarian reason finding some benefit to emotional fideism. Scientists (the subtitle of the book is “today’s leading thinkers in science”) claim some usefulness of faith, but wrap it in Darwinian evolution (“natural selection”) in order to swallow the bitter pill. One pictures putting the dog’s medicine in a peanut butter ball.

But notice the confusion that a scientific view of faith produces. “False beliefs” are contrasted with those who “insist on evidence”, but even a Christian view of faith opposes a belief that is held despite clear evidence to the contrary, which is what false belief is. And the subject is further obscured when the author equates one who holds “false beliefs” with those who are “swept away by emotions.”

What, exactly, does the author contrast with supposedly scientifically provable belief?

It is remarkable that faith is in this context given props, even if the respect is tempered and held in terms of evolutionary theory. But science cannot comprehend faith, even if “natural selection” keeps some who hold it around. Darwin’s theory cannot provide a reason for emotion, belief, or faith, because the survival of the fittest is incompatible with blind faith: the gazelle who simply believes that the lion isn’t there is quickly eliminated from the family tree.

Yet we are not left adrift in understanding faith, or where it came from. Faith is the “assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1), and is a gift of God (Ephesians 2:8).