Lux Lucet

Ted Cruz and Carly Fiorina.

This is the first of what, Lord willing, I hope will be a regular feature on this blog. Posts that deal in brief with multiple topics. For lack of a better name, I’ll stick with calling it This ‘n That for now.

Peddling Fiction

In his January State of the Union speech, President Barak Obama shot back at critics of his economic policies, saying they were “peddling fiction.” Since that time, the stock market has staged a recovery and now sits at all time highs, despite the steady stream of bad economic news.

But while the stock market continues to levitate, the incomes of ordinary Americans stagnate. As trends forecaster Gerald Celente tells it, “A report by the University of Michigan illustrates the Gilded Age wealth inequality that now prevails. The median American household was 19.6 times poorer than an average household in the 95th percentile in 2003. By 2013, the average household in the 95th percentile (top 5 percent) was 24.2 times richer than the median household and 426.5 times richer than the average household in the 25th percentile.”

Constitutional capitalism, the economic and political system of the Bible, is what lifted the people of Western Europe and North America out of poverty in the wake of the Reformation. It is the application of the implications of the Gospel created the broad-based prosperity of the middle class that those of us blessed to live in the West have come to enjoy and even take for granted.

But as the heirs of the Reformation have rejected the Gospel of Jesus Christ for the chimera of humanism and socialism and big government, prosperity has been destroyed, freedom has shrunk, and the inevitable result has followed: the re-enserfment of the once-prosperous and free middle classes of these nations.

Your Mother Wears Combat Boots

When I was growing up, it was common for kids to insult one another by saying, “Yeah? Well your mother wears combat boots!” Nobody took it seriously. Only now, what was once an insult has become a reality.

In December, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter opened all combat jobs to women, adding, “there will be no exceptions,” during the news conference where he made the announcement.

And to show you how quickly things are moving on this front, an article on Military.com reports that, “The House Armed Services Committee on Wednesday approved by a narrow margin an amendment to a defense bill to require women to register for the draft.”

Worth noting is that this atrocity of an amendment to the selective service legislation was introduced by a Republican, Duncan Hunter of California. He lamely defended his motion on the grounds that, “right now the draft is sexist. Right now the draft only drafts young men. Women are excluded.”

What shall we say to this? In the first place, as my mother often reminded me, two wrongs don’t make a right. The draft is a form of involuntary servitude. In other words, it is a type of slavery. It is stealing. And it has no place in a free society.

In the second place, putting women in combat roles is among the most appalling and dehumanizing ideas ever encountered by this author.

The Bible knows no role for women in combat and everywhere excludes them, either by implication (Deuteronomy 20:7) or explicit statement (Deuteronomy 22:5). It was considered shameful for a man to be killed by a woman (Judges 9:54), and terrified nations were said to be “like women” (Isaiah 19:6; Jeremiah 50:37).

But what God considers shameful, the enlightened of this age call “progressive.”

It would be hard to imagine a more dehumanizing, more vile philosophy than feminism. It destroys the God-given femininity of women, emasculates men and sows confusion in society.

We don’t even know what bathroom to use anymore, or the definition of marriage.

If can’t get the basic things in life right, why would anyone be hopeful for the future of this nation?

Of Ted Cruz and Female VPs

I have tried and failed to warm up to Ted Cruz. Not that he doesn’t say some good things about cutting taxes and regulations. He’s even had some good things to say about cultural issues. Take, for example, his support for North Carolina’s “bathroom law.”

He claims to be a Christian. And perhaps he is. But the bottom line is that I just don’t trust Ted.

For a long time I had difficulty articulating why I had reservations about Cruz. But as I’ve watched him, more and more I find reasons not to support him.

To put it bluntly, he comes off as a egregious and over the top opportunist who will say what he thinks will win him votes with various interest groups, while in good lawyerly fashion going about it in such a way as to allow him to take contradictory positions in a political acceptable way. This may be good politics, but it’s a poor Christian witness.

For example, Senator Cruz has consistently presented himself as a champion of Evangelicals. But when the pope visited the US in September 2015, Cruz gushed about Francis I in an article published in the Federalist, in which he attempts to convince his readers that the current holder of the office of Antichrist actually proclaims, “the inherent truth and goodness of life, marriage, and religious liberty.” when he does nothing but promote the soul destroying lies of the Roman Catholic Church-State.

Another example would be Cruz’ recent announcement of Carly Fiorina as his running mate. Forget for a moment the absurd spectacle of a candidate who was just mathematically eliminated from winning the Republican nomination naming a running mate. What I find interesting is that Cruz went out of his way to tap Fiorina, a woman and self-proclaimed feminist, as his running mate.

Forty years ago or so, even atheist Ayn Rand understood that the idea of a woman commander in chief was “unspeakable.” But today, Evangelical presidential candidates, against all the testimony of Scripture, fall all over themselves to promote the “monstrous regiment of women” in America.

And as if promoting Romanism and feminism weren’t bad enough, the Cruz campaign has gotten itself a bad reputation for dirty tricks.  Ben Carson was livid with the Cruz campaign for suggesting to voters in Iowa that Carson had dropped out of the race.   Cruz operatives apparently were behind and attempt to oust Phyllis Schlafly from the Eagle Forum, an organization that she herself started over forty years ago.  And just this week,  tensions mounted between the Cruz campaign and that of Ohio governor John Kasich over the nature of their agreement to work together to attempt to put a roadblock in Donald Trump’s path to electoral victory.

A single incident could be dismissed.  But as the examples of dirty tricks pile up, an unflattering  mosaic of the Cruz campaign is taking shape.  One that does not reflect well on the Senator from Texas.

With friends like Cruz, Evangelicals certainly don’t need any more enemies.