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When Ben Helton signed up for an online dating service, under “religion” he called himself “spiritually apathetic.”
Sunday mornings, when Bill Dohm turns his eyes toward heaven, he’s just checking the weather so he can fly his 1946 Aeronca Champ two-seater plane.
Helton, 28, and Dohm, 54, aren’t atheists, either. They simply shrug off God, religion, heaven or the ever-trendy search-for-meaning and/or purpose.
Their attitude could be summed up as “So what?”
“The real dirty little secret of religiosity in America is that there are so many people for whom spiritual interest, thinking about ultimate questions, is minimal,” says Mark Silk, professor of religion and public life at Trinity College, Hartford, Conn.
Americans on spirituality
46%
Percentage who say they never wonder whether they will go to heaven.
44%
Percentage who don’t spend time seeking “eternal wisdom.”
18%
Percentage who don’t think God has a purpose or plan for everyone.
As Christmas Day glides by — all gilt, no substance — for many, clergy and religion experts are dismayed. They fear for souls’ salvation and for the common threads of faith snapping in society. Others see no such dire consequences to a more openly secular America as people not only fess up to being faithless but admit they’re skipping out on spiritual, the cool default word of the decade, as well.
Only now, however, are they turning up in the statistical stream. Researchers have begun asking the kind of nuanced questions that reveal just how big the So What set might be:
•44% told the 2011 Baylor University Religion Survey they spend no time seeking “eternal wisdom,” and 19% said “it’s useless to search for meaning.”
•46% told a 2011 survey by Nashville-based evangelical research agency, LifeWay Research, they never wonder whether they will go to heaven.
•28% told LifeWay “it’s not a major priority in my life to find my deeper purpose.” And 18% scoffed that God has a purpose or plan for everyone.
•6.3% of Americans turned up on Pew Forum’s 2007 Religious Landscape Survey as totally secular — unconnected to God or a higher power or any religious identity and willing to say religion is not important in their lives.
Hemant Mehta, who blogs as The Friendly Atheist, calls them the “apatheists”
The Rev. Mariann Edgar Budde, Episcopal Bishop of Washington D.C., calls them honest.
“We live in a society today where it is acceptable now to say that they have no spiritual curiosity. At almost any other time in history, that would have been unacceptable,” Budde says.
She finds this “very sad because the whole purpose of faith is to be a source of guidance, strength and perspective in difficult times. To be human is to have a sense of purpose, an awareness that our life is an utterly unique expression of creation and we want to live it with meaning, grace and beauty.”
‘We might as well be cars’
Nah, Helton says.
Helton, a high school band teacher in Chicago, only goes to the Catholic Church of his youth to hear his mother sing in the choir.
His mind led him away. The more Helton read evolutionary psychology and neuro-psychology, he says, the more it seemed to him, “We might as well be cars. That, to me, makes more sense than believing what you can’t see.”
Ashley Gerst, 27, a 3-D animator and filmmaker in New York, shifts between “leaning to the atheist and leaning toward apathy.”
“I would just like to see more people admit they don’t believe. The only thing I’m pushy about is I don’t want to be pushed. I don’t want to change others and I don’t want to debate my view,” Gerst says.
Most So Whats are like Gerst, says David Kinnaman, author of You Lost Me on young adults drifting away from church.
They’re uninterested in trying to talk a diverse set of friends into a shared viewpoint in a culture that celebrates an idea that all truths are equally valid, he says. Personal experience, personal authority matter most. Hence Scripture and tradition are quaint, irrelevant, artifacts. Instead of followers of Jesus, they’re followers of 5,000 unseen “friends” on Facebook or Twitter.
“I think Jesus is getting lost in the data stream,” says Kinnaman, president of the Christian research firm The Barna Group.
‘Spiritual’ is the hipster way of saying they’re concerned with social injustice. But if you strip away the hipster factor,” says Kinnaman, “I’d estimate seven in 10 young adults would say they don’t see much influence of God or religion in their lives at all.”
The ‘Nones’ are rising
This trend may have been leaving subtle tracks for years.
The hot religion statistical trend of recent decades was the rise of the “Nones” — the people who checked “no religious identity” on the American Religious Identification Surveys (ARIS). The Nones numbers leapt from 8% in 1990 to 15% in 2008.
The So Whats appear to be a growing secular subset. The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life’s Landscape Survey dug in to the Nones to discover that nearly half said they believed “nothing in particular.”
Neither raging atheist scientist Richard Dawkins, author of numerous best sellers such as The God Delusion, nor televangelist Pat Robertson would understand this fuzzy stance, says Barry Kosmin, co-author of the ARIS and director Institute for the Study of Secularism at Trinity College, Hartford, Conn.
“But a lot of these people are concerned more with the tangible, the real stuff like mortgages or their favorite football team or the everyday world,” Kosmin says.
The Rev. Ema Drouillard, who specializes in San Francisco-area non-denominational ceremonies, said in 2001 about 30% of her clients refused any reference to religion at their weddings.
A decade later, 80% of her clients choose her carefully God-free ceremony. The only faith they pledge is in each other. No higher authority is consulted as they vow to walk beside each other, “offering courage and hope through all your endeavors.”
“A lot of people just aren’t on any spiritual path. They say, ‘We are just focusing on the party.’ Or they have no language for their spirituality so they just leave it out,” Drouillard says.
When church historian Diana Butler Bass researched her upcoming book, Christianity After Religion: The End of Church and the Birth of a New Spiritual Awakening, she found the So Whats are “a growing category.”
Says Bass, “We can’t underestimate the power of the collapse of institutional religion in the first 10 years of this century. It’s freed so many people to say they don’t really care. They don’t miss rituals or traditions they may never have had anyway.”
For them, the Almighty is off the radar, like some tiny foreign country they know exists but never think about.
“God? Purpose? You don’t need an opinion on those things to function,” says Suhas Sreedhar, 26, a engineer working in a computer company in Manhattan.
Raised in New Jersey by his devoutly Hindu mother and staunchly atheist father, “I was saturated with both views and after a while, I realized I don’t need either perspective.
“There may be unanswerable questions that could be cool or fascinating. Speculating on them is a fun parlor game, but they don’t shed any meaning on my life,” Sreedhar says.
Goodness more than Godliness
This is a disaster for Christians, says Scott McConnell, director of LifeWay Research,
“If you’re not worried about heaven, you won’t notice or care if Jesus is essential your salvation. You’re not thinking about any consequences,” McConnell says.
But Rabbi Micah Greenstein of Temple Israel, Memphis, is not so alarmed. He sees people behaving spiritually — caring for each other and the world — even if they skip the label.
“Judaism teaches that spirituality is practical. When you see something that is broken, fix it. When you find something that is lost, return it. When you see something that needs to be done, do it. In that way you will be taking care of the world and fulfilling your role as God’s partner, know it or not,” the rabbi says.
“Spirituality is about the relational — whether you are relating to God, to others, to the world or to yourself. I do believe most people see life more as a mystery than as a machine. I would call that God even if they don’t,” Greenstein says.
Bill Dohm, who lives in Broad Run, Va., is more inclined to talk about goodness than Godliness.
“I try to live my life and do the best I can. I figure if I do good, good things will happen. I’m not at all worried about the afterlife. How could they turn me down when people do whatever they want during the week. They go to church all the time then they come home and they gamble, they party, they use God’s name in vain.
“So either it will be like a switch turned off and it’s done or, if there is a heaven, I’m going have to do some talking to get up there.”
Until then, every week, he faithfully drives to a Catholic church where, he says, “I drop off my mother-in-law, get back in the car and drive home.”
Messianic congregations are on the rise in the United States and Canada.
According to ChristianSourceLists.com, there are 272 Messianic churches in the US and 12 in Canada—and that figure does not include small house church fellowships.
Given that there were only a handful of congregations in North America distinctively identified as Jewish Messianic congregations 50 years ago, this is a notable rise.
Of the total number of Messianic congregations in the U.S. today, nearly half are in five states: Florida (28); New York (26); California (26); Pennsylvania (20); and Texas (20). And the three cities boast the most Messianic worship centers are Manhattan (12), Miami (10), and Philadelphia (8).
The term “Messianic Judaism” means acceptance of Jesus Christ as being the Messiah (“Yeshua Ha’Mashiach”) and the second person of the Trinity. Although the term “Messianic Judaism” can be traced back to the late 19th century, where it was used in the evangelical magazine “Our Hope,” it did not gain prominence until the early 1970s.
In fact, the initial growth of this movement seems to parallel the charismatic movement of the 1970s, with the vast majority of the Messianic congregations themselves being charismatic in their theological orientation.
By 2003 the number of Jewish Messianic congregations had grown to about 150. Today the Messianic movement is a global phenomenon, with most estimates placing the number in excess of 400 Messianic congregations worldwide.
Thus saith the LORD, which maketh a way in the sea, and a path in the mighty waters; Remember ye not the former things, neither consider the things of old. Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert.
Job’s spectacular turnaround isn’t just a reward for righteousness but also a joyous act of God’s generosity. The fact that God owes us nothing has never deterred him from giving us everything, freely and graciously (cf. 2Co 9:7). Notice that Job’s restoration comes only after he forgives his friends and prays for them. As Jesus says, “Forgive, and you will be forgiven. Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you” (Lk 6:37-38).
Pastor and author Gordon MacDonald notes that in
“…the first forty chapters of the book of Job, this man faced a sample of nearly every imaginable kind of suffering. On a few occasions he appeared to bend under the weight of the stress, but he never broke. Given every reason to doubt himself and to revise his view of God, he stayed the course.
Every person who desires to live generously will want to acquaint himself with the journey of Job. His is a message from ancient times of a man with a soul that was bigger than the circumstances. Satan certainly got his answer: Job feared God in comfortable times and in chaotic times. No contest!
As this amazing book concludes, a couple of points stand out as worth pondering. Notice that God never told Job why all this was happening to him … All of Job’s anguish finds its roots in a strange conversation in which Job’s character was impugned. One would like to hear God say to Job, “Now that this is all over, let me tell you what it was all about.” But Job was left, apparently, to live out his days continuing to trust in God …
More significantly, Job regained his prosperity … (see Job 42:10). What does this tell us? First, that prosperity is not always a coincidence nor merely the result of hard work. In this case at least, God showered prosperity upon a man because the man had demonstrated his faithfulness.
Second, the prosperity came not simply because Job had endured the suffering but because he prayed for his friends … Job had no reason to pray grace upon these “friends” of his. They’d done little more than add to his misery during his dark days. Still Job, through his prayer, wished for their best and prayed that God would act kindly toward them …
Two important lessons to keep in mind: First, everything we own may be attributed to Providence as much as to hard work; remember, there are others who work hard without gaining material prosperity. Second, we must never forget that a grace-filled heart does more to trigger God’s kindness than all the more visible things a person can do.”
Think About It
How do you think this story would have ended had Job not prayed for his friends?
How is the story of Job tied not just to the topic of suffering but also to the idea of prosperity?
What life lessons can you take away from the story of Job?
Pray About It
Lord, Samuel reminds me that prayer is important when he says to the people, “As for me, far be it from me that I should sin against the LORD by failing to pray for you” (1Sa 12:23). Remind me, Lord, that my prayers on behalf of others are my duty as well as my privilege.
“In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, if any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink.” John 7:37
Patience had her perfect work in the Lord Jesus, and until the last day of the feast he pleaded with the Jews, even as on this last day of the year he pleads with us, and waits to be gracious to us. Admirable indeed is the longsuffering of the Saviour in bearing with some of us year after year, notwithstanding our provocations, rebellions, and resistance of his Holy Spirit. Wonder of wonders that we are still in the land of mercy!
Pity expressed herself most plainly, for Jesus cried, which implies not only the loudness of his voice, but the tenderness of his tones. He entreats us to be reconciled. “We pray you,” says the Apostle, “as though God did beseech you by us.” What earnest, pathetic terms are these! How deep must be the love which makes the Lord weep over sinners, and like a mother woo his children to his bosom! Surely at the call of such a cry our willing hearts will come.
Provision is made most plenteously; all is provided that man can need to quench his soul’s thirst. To his conscience the atonement brings peace; to his understanding the gospel brings the richest instruction; to his heart the person of Jesus is the noblest object of affection; to the whole man the truth as it is in Jesus supplies the purest nutriment. Thirst is terrible, but Jesus can remove it. Though the soul were utterly famished, Jesus could restore it.
Proclamation is made most freely, that every thirsty one is welcome. No other distinction is made but that of thirst. Whether it be the thirst of avarice, ambition, pleasure, knowledge, or rest, he who suffers from it is invited. The thirst may be bad in itself, and be no sign of grace, but rather a mark of inordinate sin longing to be gratified with deeper draughts of lust; but it is not goodness in the creature which brings him the invitation, the Lord Jesus sends it freely, and without respect of persons.
Personality is declared most fully. The sinner must come to Jesus, not to works, ordinances, or doctrines, but to a personal Redeemer, who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree. The bleeding, dying, rising Saviour, is the only star of hope to a sinner. Oh for grace to come now and drink, ere the sun sets upon the year’s last day!
No waiting or preparation is so much as hinted at. Drinking represents a reception for which no fitness is required. A fool, a thief, a harlot can drink; and so sinfulness of character is no bar to the invitation to believe in Jesus. We want no golden cup, no bejewelled chalice, in which to convey the water to the thirsty; the mouth of poverty is welcome to stoop down and quaff the flowing flood. Blistered, leprous, filthy lips may touch the stream of divine love; they cannot pollute it, but shall themselves be purified. Jesus is the fount of hope. Dear reader, hear the dear Redeemer’s loving voice as he cries to each of us,
“IF ANY MAN THIRST,
LET HIM
COME UNTO ME
AND DRINK.”
Evening
“The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved.” Jeremiah 8:20
Not saved! Dear reader, is this your mournful plight? Warned of the judgment to come, bidden to escape for your life, and yet at this moment not saved! You know the way of salvation, you read it in the Bible, you hear it from the pulpit, it is explained to you by friends, and yet you neglect it, and therefore you are not saved. You will be without excuse when the Lord shall judge the quick and dead. The Holy Spirit has given more or less of blessing upon the word which has been preached in your hearing, and times of refreshing have come from the divine presence, and yet you are without Christ. All these hopeful seasons have come and gone–your summer and your harvest have past–and yet you are not saved. Years have followed one another into eternity, and your last year will soon be here: youth has gone, manhood is going, and yet you are not saved. Let me ask you–will you ever be saved? Is there any likelihood of it? Already the most propitious seasons have left you unsaved; will other occasions alter your condition? Means have failed with you–the best of means, used perseveringly and with the utmost affection–what more can be done for you? Affliction and prosperity have alike failed to impress you; tears and prayers and sermons have been wasted on your barren heart. Are not the probabilities dead against your ever being saved? Is it not more than likely that you will abide as you are till death forever bars the door of hope? Do you recoil from the supposition? Yet it is a most reasonable one: he who is not washed in so many waters will in all probability go filthy to his end. The convenient time never has come, why should it ever come? It is logical to fear that it never will arrive, and that Felix like, you will find no convenient season till you are in hell. O bethink you of what that hell is, and of the dread probability that you will soon be cast into it!
Reader, suppose you should die unsaved, your doom no words can picture. Write out your dread estate in tears and blood, talk of it with groans and gnashing of teeth: you will be punished with everlasting destruction from the glory of the Lord, and from the glory of his power. A brother’s voice would fain startle you into earnestness. O be wise, be wise in time, and ere another year begins, believe in Jesus, who is able to save to the uttermost. Consecrate these last hours to lonely thought, and if deep repentance be bred in you, it will be well; and if it lead to a humble faith in Jesus, it will be best of all. O see to it that this year pass not away, and you an unforgiven spirit. Let not the new year’s midnight peals sound upon a joyless spirit! Now, now, NOW believe, and live.
In my lifetime, I have witnessed only three cases of what I consider masterful governance: Ronald Reagan’s presidency, Rudy Giuliani’s mayoralty, and Margaret Thatcher’s prime-ministership. I have certainly witnessed other prominent historical figures — great moral figures such as Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Vaclav Havel, Lech Walesa, and Pope John Paul all come readily to mind here. But for taking an unwieldy government, in the midst of crisis, in the face of massive resistance by rent-seeking special interests and ideologically opposed elites, and forcing major economic and social improvements in the body politic over which one has been given executive power, those three were peerless.
In each of the three cases, the leader took office in a time when the citizens were discouraged, the economy desperate, and the social fabric frayed. And in each case, the executive was able to turn the situation around.
Margaret Thatcher is once again brought to mind by several recent stories, two of which were occasioned by the newly-released bio-flick The Iron Lady,starring Meryl Streep, based upon Thatcher’s life.
The first article is by Andrew Pierce. Pierce tells us the melancholy news that Baroness Thatcher, now (at age 86) frail and debilitated after a stroke, will be spending Christmas with only her nurse. Her two children and two grandchildren will unfortunately be elsewhere. She is aware of the film’s release, but as Pierce notes, “the great lady, who has no interest in watching the film, will have plenty of time to ponder her achievements — which are given scant credit in the film — over the Christmas period.”
This leads us to the second article, by Charles Moore. Moore reminds us of much of what Baroness Thatcher was able to accomplish. She rose from middle-class roots (her father was a storekeeper), rare enough in British politics. She was and is the only woman who ever headed a British political party, and the first female prime minister anywhere in the Anglophone world. And she to this day is the longest-serving PM in British history (at least since universal suffrage was instituted). She was in office from 1979 to 1990 and left from internal opposition within her party, not electoral defeat.
She was derisively given the nickname “The Iron Lady” by her staunch enemies, the Soviets. Thatcher embraced the term, and the moniker stuck.
Her first accomplishment was challenging the then-regnant policy of accommodation with — really, appeasement of — the growth of the Soviet Empire. Even before Reagan was running for president, she held that NATO should increase its military strength to oppose Soviet expansion and roll back the USSR’s control of Eastern Europe.
Thatcher also instituted far-reaching free-market economic reforms, starting with facing down and defeating the communistic mine-workers’ union. Here she was aided by the British classical economics think-tank known as the Institute of Economic Affairs, which provided her with much intellectual ammunition for her work.
She brought the top income tax rates down from 98% to 40% during her time in office. She brought the national debt down and privatized key industries. In truth, she ended British socialism. She brought unions under control, with time lost to strikes down by an astounding 94% during her time in office, from 29.5 million working days lost to 1.9 million.
As John Griffing has argued convincingly in a recent piece, the British leftist elites have systematically worked to rewrite history and disparage her economic record (as the American leftist elites have disparaged Reagan’s). He shows how her policies increased real employment, decreased inflation, and made the poor and disabled better off. He also explains why her policies were not responsible for the problems experienced by the coal industry and those caused by the Exchange Rate Mechanism.
Indeed, Thatcher’s — and Reagan’s, and Giuliani’s — success can be attributed to her understanding the strength of free-market economics and the unsustainability of safety-net programs without a healthy private economic sector upon which those programs are parasitic. They advanced this perspective even in the face of withering attacks by the bien-pensant elites in the news media and academia.
But all three were successful also because they shared an unusual personality: a sincere optimism combined with a deep toughness. Thatcher loved her country and believed profoundly in its exceptional history and nature and the greatness of its future. So did Ronald Reagan in America’s exceptional nature and destiny, as did Giuliani about New York (as well as his country).
The economic reforms Thatcher and the others were able to institute laid the basis for long-term economic revival, and Thatcher and the others’ love of the commonwealth and belief in its future were crucial in rallying the public to force the elites to disregard themselves and support the reforms.
The point here is at base a philosophically fascinating one. Some things — such as promises, marriages, currencies, and indeed nations — are social constructs. They have real existence, but — unlike atoms, molecules, planets, and galaxies — this existence depends metaphysically upon the agreement of people. A twenty-dollar-bill has the real power to buy you things, but only in a society that recognizes it. (By contrast, a planet, say, exists whether any people recognize it or not.) Great Britain (or any other polity) exists to the degree that its inhabitants recognize it, and it is great only if they believe it so.
Thatcher’s belief in the commonwealth (and Reagan’s and Giuliani’s) was infectious. It rallied a dispirited people.
This leads us to a topic Moore’s article doesn’t discuss — namely, the Falkland Islands War, which was a major event in Thatcher’s tenure. Four years into her prime-ministership, the Argentine military junta (General Leopoldo Galtieri, Brigadier Lami Dozo, and Admiral Jorge Anaya) decided to settle by military invasion a longstanding dispute over the Falkland Islands (along with the South Georgia and South Sandwich Islands), which were (and are) officially British dependent territory, with an ethnically British population.
The Argentine forces invaded the islands, calculating that the British would not fight back. Perhaps if someone else had been PM, the junta would have been correct in their assessment. But they were spectacularly mistaken with regard to the Iron Lady.
She not only fought back, but won the war in a decisive manner, leading to the restoration of British rule over the islands and the subsequent overthrow of the junta.
While the elites in Britain and much of the international community viewed the war as pointless, not Thatcher nor the Falkland Islanders nor the British public viewed it that way.
The British were proud that their armed forces were able to protect their fellow citizens.
The last article ironically suggests that Baroness Thatcher will have the last laugh regarding the Falklands. The news is that new discoveries confirm the presence in the ocean near these islands of huge deposits of petroleum reserves — as much as 60 billion barrels’ worth — that are easily recoverable. The British may wind up reaping trillions of pounds in revenue from territory that their leader — so reviled at the time by the elites — had the courage to defend.
Philosopher Gary Jason is a senior editor of Liberty, and author of the new book Dangerous Thoughts (available through GaryJasonBooks.com).
Any reasonable person does not take satisfaction in the failure and destruction of another. This is especially true when the other is innocent of any wrongdoing or lack of judgment.
Yet sometimes, epic failure can constructively serve as an example of what not to do. If the individual states of our nation are a laboratory of democracy, then the states of Europe are the laboratory of socialism. What we are witness to in Greece, and eventually in Spain, Italy, and possibly France, is the painful death of the welfare state.
Credit markets are locking up all over the continent; meanwhile, trillions have been pumped into their banks in an effort to keep them afloat. But their situation is so bad that they cannot even take the risk of making business loans. Employment is shrinking, and tax revenues are falling. Internally, the socialist cash-machine is running empty as other people’s money dries up. It is all happening just as reader of American Thinker foresaw.
The welfare state’s demise, long inevitable, will be painful and ugly, and it will harshly impact the weakest and the most innocent of the population. After all, the welfare state defies the laws of economics and the laws of mathematics. Take notice as the liberal and socialist agitators and pundits shake their collectivized fists at the sky and curse the gods without any noticeable change. The facts on the ground will do what they will, despite rhetoric or political pontifications coming from any quarter.
One of the first organs to fail is the socialized health care program. No matter its stated merits, a serious and impactful socialized medicine program is simply too expensive for any state to long sustain.
For months prior to the passing of ObamaCare, we were told — repeatedly — how it would “bend the cost curve downward” and open up better health care for millions of Americans…all at the same time!
The problem is that the pundits on the left at the time and still today don’t even believe their own rhetoric. In fact, they are either living in a fantasy land that never existed or simply lying.
Back in May 2010, bluegrasspundit made mention of the total hypocrisy of the left with regard to ObamaCare.
After shilling for ObamaCare for months, the New York Times is now telling Greece getting out of the health care marketplace would allow health care costs to come down. The hypocrisy of the left is simple astounding.
The NY Times also made mention of the total impossibility of it all.
Another reform high on the list is removing the state from the marketplace in crucial sectors like health care, transportation and energy and allowing private investment.
What is also important to make note of is that these socialized countries do not have the traditional bogeyman that leftists point their finger at: a revenue-hungry military. The Greek military is small to the point of insignificance. The same is true with Spain, Italy, and most others on the continent. Their defensive needs were being functionally met and subsidized by the United States.
A recent article by the NY Times makes for overwhelming evidence of the disruption and pain this transformation causes to the innocent and the disadvantaged. While the article is slanted politically, it is worth reading in its entirety; the reader must realize that this will happen in other European nations, and eventually here in the U.S. should we be so foolish as to follow their example.
At public hospitals, doctors report shortages of all kinds of supplies, from toilet paper to catheters to syringes. Computerized equipment has gone unrepaired and is no longer in use. Nurses are handling four times the patients they should, and wait times for operations — even cancer surgeries — have grown longer.
Access to drugs has also been affected, as some drug manufacturers, owed tens of millions of dollars, are no longer willing to supply Greek hospitals. At the same time pharmacists, afraid that the government might not reimburse them, are asking for cash payments, even from those with insurance.
Brick by brick, the edifice of socialized medicine is ruthlessly and forcefully being taken apart.
The lesson here is for our nation to rid ourselves of ObamaCare entirely before it becomes embedded into the fabric of society, because it too will be rooted out by the forces of economics. It is easier to throw out the seed than uproot the plant, so the sooner this is done, the better. Anything less is a form a gross medical malpractice.
“There are two places only where socialism will work; In Heaven, where it is not needed, and in Hell, where they already have it.” -Winston Churchill
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What is your first thought when you see something offensive? It’s probably not to get together with a few dozen of your closest friends and burn stuff. As has been the case in similar incidents, the ease of the transition to violence here all but suggests a rampage waiting for…
You might think Islam in the Silicon Valley would be extra progressive and tolerant. In this prominent case of “one of the largest Muslim communities in the US,” you’d think wrong. Remember how often our comment-box apologists tell us they’ve never heard of the books discussed below, or that we’re…
I’ve never seen anyone else attempt to count down the top theology stories from the last calendar year. After doing this several years now, I know why. It’s subjective, presumptuous, and guaranteed to infuriate roughly half my readers. So why do I continue this dubious tradition? Before we flip the calendar to the new year, it’s sometimes encouraging and always telling to take stock of the last 12 months.
We can see God at work. We can see our sins on full display. And when we look back in the archives of human history (see my lists from 2008, 2009, and 2010), we’re sobered to realize that our priorities and concerns often diverge from God’s.
The internet tempts us to live in the moment, but “with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day” (2 Peter 3:8).
So consider my list an admittedly foolhardy attempt—written from the vantage point of an American who subscribes to The Gospel Coalition’s confessional statement—to discern the most important theology stories 0f 2011. Consider it a challenge for you to generate your own list and pray that God might bless his church with the faith and vision to see the world as he does.
10.) Marriages need help.
This story could have appeared in my 2010 list, and it might warrant an encore in 2012. Same-sex “marriage,” legalized by New York state in 2011, continues to grab the headlines. But here’s the bigger story: a growing number of Westerners have abandoned the institution altogether. The Pew Research Center recently revealed that a record low number of Americans—51 percent—are married. The rate dropped 5 percent in just one year, between 2009 and 2010. Christian appeals to the beauty of covenant faithfulness appear laughable when high-profile spokesmen approve gospel-emptying cruelty.
Probably no one sees this deteriorating situation more clearly than pastors. It’s no coincidence, then, that ministers such as Tim Keller and Mark Driscoll have devoted theological attention to marriage. Reader statistics reveal that you are looking for this help, and The Gospel Coalition sought to provide it in 2011 by hosting video discussions and addressing a generation of young men who display little motivation to marry.
9.) ‘Celebrity’ pastors face backlash.
Our friends from around the world often observe that American Christians demonstrate a peculiar affinity for celebrities. Global demand to hear from well-known American pastors and professors suggests this is not a uniquely Yankee phenomenon. Sinful people everywhere elevate men to a place of privilege that belongs only to God.
Several events in 2011 contributed to a backlash against the so-called celebrity pastors. Multisite churches, already the subject of great ecclesiological debate, now cross state and even regional boundaries. Should teaching ability trump local context? The Elephant Room raised questions about accountability: Do we the people bear responsibility to correct if a pastor outside our local church associates with a teacher whose orthodoxy we suspect?
Publishing, social media, megachurches, and many other factors continue to raise the issue of high-profile ministry, which requires sustained theological reflection and critique. Expect this story to move up the charts in 2012.
8.) Presbyterian Church in America warns against Muslim-idiom translations.
The PCA took action not long after Christianity Today published a cover story that assessed the recent history of exegetical and missiological debates over Bible translations published for Muslims. But the PCA response—which calls on churches to investigate missionaries and agencies they support—had been in the works for months before the controversy involving Wycliffe/SIL and many others expanded. The antagonists have yet to resolve their disagreement over whether Muslim objections obligate Christians to alter familial terms such as “Son of God.”
While pastors and translators seek clarity and charity, Christians struggle with the overarching issue of how best to reach and relate to the Muslim world. Yale theologian Miroslav Volf suggested in a new book that we can blaze a trail forward by confessing that we worship the same God as Muslims. But the response to his response suggests this prospect does not excite conservative evangelicals who believe we can trust God to reveal the gospel to Muslims as we love earnestly and testify faithfully to his revealed Word.
7.) Harold Camping fails, again and again.
Christians would prefer to forget that Camping deceived so many and raised so much money to promote a prophecy that Jesus explicitly condemned (Mark 13:32). No, Jesus did not return on May 21. Nor did he return on October 21. Camping embarrassed Christians with his false teaching and wasted millions of dollars. But we can at least share Camping’s evident (and biblical) desire that Jesus would return (Rev. 22:20). He certainly could at any time (Mark 13:35-36).
If church history teaches us anything, another Camping will emerge soon enough. We can’t resist the temptation. But don’t let the charlatans discourage you from teaching eschatology. Ignorance about the end times creates a vacuum filled by deceivers. Come, Lord Jesus!
6.) Christians in Afghanistan and Iran stare down death sentences for apostasy.
Thanks to new media, Afghanistan and Iran might as well be our backyard. When Christians face hanging, we often hear about it in the West. And our connected planet makes it easier to bring popular and political pressure to bear on authorities. Neither widely discussed case in 2011—Sayed Musa in Afghanistan and Yousef Nadarkhani in Iran—has thus far ended in execution.
Theologically, this story appears straightforward: Jesus warned us to anticipate persecution (John 15:20). And we can give thanks to God that communication technology provides us a voice we can raise in solidarity with our brothers and sisters in need around the world. But we must not expect American economic, military, and economic might to always ensure deliverance. As we pity fellow Christians besieged for their devotion to God, let us examine our own faith to see if we live in such a way that could ever invite or sustain persecution.
5.) Tim Tebow comes back.
It seems silly to concern ourselves with American football scores in a list of theology stories that includes the risk of martyrdom. But you can’t argue with the interest generated by the outspoken Denver Broncos quarterback Christians love to cheer. Tebow’s failure in training camp to earn the starting job provoked reflection about blasphemy and faith when success seems elusive.
But his eventual on-field success, marked by shocking come-from-behind victories, led to a torrent of questions about public prayer, Sabbath keeping, gospel witness, vocation, and the sovereignty of God. Even sportscaster Bob Costas talked about theology during the halftime of Sunday Night Football. Pray for Tebow, possibly the most closely scrutinized athlete today, that he might maintain his remarkably consistent testimony to our savior Jesus Christ in word and deed.
4.) John Stott dies.
Eulogies sometimes tell us more about the author than the subject. Following Stott’s death we learned that evangelicals appreciate leaders of conviction, charity, and global ambition. Stott stood in for the attributes we wished other evangelicals embodied.
Some wished other evangelicals could be so convicted about expositional preaching and the importance of theology, particularly substitutionary atonement. Others wished evangelicals could be so kind, open to changing with the times, and committed to social justice. Stott domesticated the dichotomies we find so difficult to tame. We dearly miss this pivotal leader in the post-war growth of global evangelicalism.
We should not despair, though, that God hasn’t yet raised up another Stott. Contemporaries probably lamented that God hadn’t raised up another Charles Simeon, one of Stott’s heroes. Stott’s tenure included vigorous theological disputes with Martyn Lloyd-Jones, J. I. Packer, Billy Graham, and others. They debated when to abandon liberalizing denominations, what to teach about the fate of unbelievers, and how to balance social justice and evangelism. In other words, the debates that occupied Stott continue today.
3.) Arab Spring leads to winter of reckoning for Christians in the Middle East.
No one knows how this story will turn out. Political upheaval that began with such hopeful promise has already devolved into power struggles between popular movements and military authority in Egypt. Historic Christian communities in this ancient land rightly worry what a government dominated by Islamists might mean for their future. And that’s where this story becomes a theological one. Practically speaking the decision to leave might appear obvious, when the alternative means risking your family’s safety. Tens of thousands of Christians have already fled the Middle East during the violence of the last decade, and who can blame them?
But what could make you stay? Hope in the power of the gospel might compel Egyptians and other Christians still living in this troubled region to endure any hardship. So might commitment to the land of their forerunners in the faith and ours. Can a place bear theological significance? This is no merely academic debate for vulnerable Christians treated like dangerous foreigners in their homeland. They’ve survived Islamic encroachment for more than a millennium but need renewed courage and hope to persevere.
2.) Osama bin Laden killed by U.S. military.
After President Obama delivered the stunning news on a Sunday evening, college campuses and Times Square filled with jubilant Americans. The terrorist behind 9/11 had met his just demise!
Only there seemed to be something disconcerting about these spontaneous celebrations. As far as we know Osama bin Laden resides in hell where he suffers righteous judgment for rejecting Christ and doing evil. Is this cause for rejoicing? There might be grave, public sinners and ordinary, private sinners, but we’re sinners all the same.
Some have been saved but not by their own doing—only the sovereign intervention of God spares us a fiery fate. Verses mount to support different views: some caution us against rejoicing it the death of the wicked (Prov. 24:17-18), while others remind us God is righteous in all his ways (Psalm 145:17), including judgment. Though we may weep for bin Laden and especially his many victims, we find ample theological grounds for thanking God this murderer can no longer carry out his evil designs.
1.) Rob Bell wins.
By nearly every publishing standard Rob Bell’s Love Wins has succeeded beyond the wildest hopes. Controversy sells, and controversy abounded, aided in no small part by this website. Neither Bell nor his publisher, HarperOne, could have reasonably hoped for anything better. CNN, The New York Times, USA Today, and many other outlets looked in on the largely blog-based debate. Bell parlayed this phenomenal response into a television series. Probably only Rick Warren can now match Bell’s star power among Protestant teachers. So according to this standard, Love Wins has been grave disappointment to anyone who holds a traditional evangelical view on conscious, eternal punishment. Bell won. No amount of blogging, speaking, reviewing, and refuting can change that now.
Yet this is not the only standard for evaluating these remarkable events. The breadth and volume of critical responses to Bell reveal surprisingly powerful resilience in the evangelical coalition, facing the powerful headwinds of pluralism. And it’s about time we confronted our problem with hell and universalism. Surveys reveal that whatever their teachers might say, many evangelicals believe salvation can be found outside Jesus Christ. Last decade we saw during The Da Vinci Code kerfuffle that few Christians knew the history of the early church and formation of the canon. Pastors and scholars responded by shoring up this weakness. We’ve already seen the same this year in response to Bell, a more worrisome example than Dan Brown because of his evangelical pedigree.
Looking back on this distressing debate, we find both comfort and also concern in God’s promise to hold teachers to a higher standard (James 3:1). If we really worry that Bell has betrayed Jesus and the revealed Word, then we can be sure God will hold him accountable. Indeed, none of us will be exempted from this all-knowing evaluation.
The Obama administration has assured Israel privately that the US would strike Iran if its nuclear program cross certain “red lines,” The Daily Beast reported Wednesday, adding that at the same time Washington was trying to convince Israel not to attack Tehran unilaterally.
According to the report, the “Israelis went ballistic” after US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said earlier this month that an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities could “consume the Middle East in a confrontation and a conflict that we would regret.”
Israeli Ambassador to Washington Michael Oren lodged a formal diplomatic protest, prompting the White House to reassure Jerusalem that the administration had its own “red lines” that would trigger a strike on Iran and that there is no need for Israel to operate unilaterally, the American news website reported.
The Daily Beast said three senior US military officials have confirmed that analysts in the Pentagon were trying to predict which developments in Iran could lead to a preemptive Israeli strike on the Islamic Republic’s nuclear facilities.
The report said that despite repeated requests going back to 2009, Netanyahu’s government has not agreed to ask the US for permission or give significant advanced warning of any pending strike.
Shortly after the Israeli ambassador lodged a complaint over Panetta’s remarks, the American defense secretary told CBS’s “60 Minutes” that should Iran proceed with developing a nuclear weapon “then we will take whatever steps necessary to stop it.”
According to The Daily Beast, Matthew Kroenig, who served as special adviser on Iran to the Office of the Secretary of Defense between July 2010 and July 2011, offered some of the possible “red lines” for a military strike on Iran. In a recent Foreign Affairs article he argued that the US should strike Iran’s facilities “if Iran expels international nuclear weapons inspectors, begins enriching its stockpiles of uranium to weapons-grade levels of 90%, or installs advanced centrifuges at its main uranium-enrichment facility in Qom.”
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