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Clueless!

December 20, 2011 by Steve Matthews

This morning I was driving to work on the interstate, minding my own business, and sipping a nice, hot, oversize mug of coffee. It was a pretty typical morning commute. Nothing particularly noteworthy or interesting. At least not until a Volkswagen Jetta passed me on the left. The Jetta itself wasn’t remarkable. It was like hundreds of others I’d seen before. But something about it caught my eye and caused me to do a double take. Much to my surprise, the car had a gas pump nozzle still inserted in the gas tank sticking out the side of the car. Even better, the six feet of hose still attached to the nozzle was dragging on the road surface well behind the rear tire. I couldn’t help but laugh. “Clueless!,” I thought to myself, “How could anyone be that oblivious to what’s going on around him?”

Of course, we can all be clueless at times. When I was in grade school, I used to fill up the lost and found with gloves and hats and coats. I could have outfitted half the third grade with all the stuff I misplaced.

And to tell you the truth, I’m still that way. Those who know me are well aware of my bad habit of putting things in odd places and completely forgetting about them. I recently lost my eyeglasses for a week and had no idea what I might have done with them. I finally figured out they were in the pocket of my new hoodie, but not after overturning the house and making special trips to two restaurants, thinking that I had left my glasses at the table.

Some people think that my writing is clueless too. I hope that’s not the case, but maybe they have a point. No doubt I have several cords worth of wood in my eye. A man should never judge his own case. Whatever.
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Atheist Bullies

December 17, 2011 by Steve Matthews

Christopher Hitchens now believes in God. I can say this with certainty, because the noted journalist and outspoken atheist died this week. News of his passing prompted me to skim through an anthology he put together a few years ago called The
Portable Atheist. And even though I haven’t made it very far, I have a few thoughts on what he wrote.

Hitchens isn’t the first writer of the “new atheist” school whom I have read. A number of years ago I read a book by Richard Dawkins called The Blind Watchmaker, in which Dawkins claimed to have overthrown the Biblical doctrine of creation, or at least intelligent design (they’re not the same thing, but that’s another article). As a Christian, I approached the book with a bit of fear and trembling, concerned that the Oxford scholar would offer some brilliant, irrefutable argument in favor of evolution that would utterly devastate my faith the Bible.

I read and read. I waited and waited.

Nothing.
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Droning On

December 17, 2011 by Steve Matthews

Why were we flying a drone over Iran? – Rep. Ron Paul

 

Much has been made of the lost American surveillance drone recently captured by the Iranians. The Pentagon has lied about it, John Stewart has made fun of it, and Obama has asked for it. But what is important in all this is the question, what was it doing there in the first place? As usual it took the temerity of Ron Paul to ask this important and – as far as our masters of the universe in the government and media are concerned – impertinent question.

Many Americans take it for granted that the US has the right and the duty to bomb, occupy and spy on the rest of the world. They take it as a matter of course that the US ought to engage in these activities and become angry should anyone suggest otherwise.

But God never commanded Israel to spy on its neighbors as a regular practice. Yes, spies were sued on occasion, but this occurred only during times of war. John Robbins made this point quite well in his essay The Sine Qua Non of Enduring Freedom. He wrote,

A related foreign policy question is the matter of spies, for perhaps the predominant function of embassies today (and perhaps whenever they have been used) is espionage. Ancient Israel used spies, but only during war and for short periods of time. Just as there was no standing army, so there were no standing armies of spies and diplomats. God commanded Moses to ‘Send men to spy out the land of Canaan,’ one from each tribe…

Some of this spying was commended by God, and perhaps all of it was, but we are not told that all of it was done at God’s express command. But spying was used exclusively during wartime. Spying on other nations was not a normal, peacetime practice of either the Hebrew republic or the monarchy. It seems clear that spying on one’s neighboring governments during peacetime, even more than maintaining embassies that harbor spies, is a form of prohibited foreign intervention. It can hardly be argued that God’s command to Moses justifies the regular use of spies, for the command was very specific: Spy out the land of Canaan. Espionage, except during wartime, is not a proper function of government..

The absence of both resident ambassadors and spies is the norm.”

The Bible commands individuals and governments to mind their own business (1 Thess. 4:11), but peacetime spying is anything but that. If anyone objects that droning Iran is not an example of peacetime espionage because we are at war with Iran, I would ask him to show me where the Congress has declared it.

And if anyone supposes that regular espionage is fine because it is done only to bad men from bad nations who deserve it but has no implications for the civil rights of American citizens, I would point out that the airport porno scanners, warrantless wiretaps and vanishing financial privacy we have come to enjoy in the post 911 world all suggest that what the feds do over there doesn’t stay over there, but rather that both the foreign and domestic surveillance apparatuses are in reality two sides of the same lawless federal coin.


 

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The Coming Debt Disaster

December 13, 2011 by Steve Matthews

Assuredly I say to you, you will by no means get out of there till you have paid the last penny. (Matt. 5:26)

Debt. The entire western world is drowning in it. The current US is about $15 trillion, and that’s not counting the unfunded liabilities such as Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, etc. Depending on whom you talk to, when those programs future liabilities are added in, the national debt balloons to many tens of trillions of dollars. Europe is a mess. Greece is bankrupt, as are Italy, Portugal, Spain and Ireland, the so-called PIIGS. Japan has a debt to GDP (Gross Domestic Product) ratio of over 200%.

So what do western governments do when they’ve maxed out their credit cards? Not what you and I would do. We’d be forced to cut back on our spending and payoff our debts. But not the folks in Washington, Brussels and Tokyo. No sir. When governments are facing bankruptcy, they simply create a new line a credit for themselves through the magic – fraud would be a better term – of quantitative easing. For the uninitiated, this is central banker speak for inflation, or to put it another way, money printing.

There once was a time when this country was on the gold standard. A dollar was defined as a certain weight of gold or silver. Today, no one knows what a dollar is. The term is meaningless. It’s definition, whatever. This is bad for you and me, but good for the parasite class in Washington and the phony, crony capitalists on Wall Street.
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Clark on Colossians

December 12, 2011 by Steve Matthews

Wives, submit to your own husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives and do not be bitter toward them. (Col.3:19)

The Biblical doctrine of marriage is among the most hated teachings of Scripture. It is under constant assault both within and without the walls of the visible church. One of the reasons for this overt hostility, perhaps the main reason, is what the Bible has to say about the relationship between husband and wife. For the Bible does not support the sexual egalitarianism demanded in marriage by feminist theory, but rather Scripture teaches the marital relationship is one of headship and submission.

Of course, some feminists are more radical than others. Emma Goldman, a prominent anarchist from the early 20th century, thought of marriage as a bad insurance policy and longed to see the institution ended altogether. She wrote,
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The Bible and Immigration: A Few Preliminaries

December 7, 2011 by Steve Matthews

Your people shall be my people, and your God, my God. (Ruth 1:16)

 

Immigration. Mention the word in conversation and you’ll likely find few people lacking an opinion on the topic. It’s a hot button issue and one badly in need of a Scripturalist analysis. In the past I have made abortive attempts to write on immigration, but found the results unsatisfactory and thought it best to lay off the topic until I had the chance to do further study.

As if my ignorance weren’t enough of a hindrance, my plans to write on immigration have been further hindered by the bane of many an amateur scholar and blogger: a lack of study time. Work and school combined to play havoc with my schedule, but even so, I have had some opportunity to read and reflect on the subject. In light of this, it seemed best to at least get a few thoughts down in writing, if only as a starting point for further development.

One thing that has impressed me in my admittedly brief survey of Christian literature on the immigration: the lack of sound scholarship on the subject. This is disappointing. The world is in search of answers on the question of immigration, but Christians, who of all people should be able to provide the needed answers, are largely absent from the discussion. And what work they have done is, for the most part, not of high quality. For instance, in June 2011 the Southern Baptist Convention issued a resolution titled Immigration and the Bible, which the SBC leadership intends to serve as a framework for solving the immigration problem. Unfortunately, while I am sure the framers of the resolution meant well, their efforts miss the mark. For while this resolution is put forth as the answer to the nation’s immigration problem, in reality it addresses only the problem of undocumented workers already in the US, while failing completely address what caused that problem in the first place: a broken immigration system badly in need of reform. In other words, they have offered the American people a band aid when it needs radical surgery. For example, the resolution states,
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Who You Callin’ An Isolationist?

December 6, 2011 by Steve Matthews

George Will is a smart guy and widely recognized as such. He’s also to a large degree intellectually enslaved to establishment ideas about how the world works, or at least how it ought to work.

In a recent column analyzing various Republican presidential candidates, Will was quite good in his analysis of Newt Gingrich, saying that he, “was the least conservative candidate,” in the field and did a good job supporting this claim. According to Will, a vote for Gingrich is a vote for the status quo.

In general, Will was pretty good in his analysis of the other candidates as well, with one exception: his analysis of Ron Paul. Paul, in Will’s thinking, is an isolationist.
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Confessions of an Inadvertent Thomist

December 5, 2011 by Steve Matthews

Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ. (Col 2:8)

Before I came to the Scripturalism of Gordon Clark and John Robbins, my attitude toward philosophy was a mix of indifference, fear. Indifference, because I the little bit that I had been exposed to had left me baffled, fear, because I thought that I would be easy prey for deceptive teaching. So as is the case with many Christians, I labored hard to avoid the subject altogether, and Colossians 2:8 seemed make this avoidance easy to justify. “After all,” I thought to myself, “it tells us right there in Scripture not to be cheated by philosophy. So to ensure that I’m not cheated by it, I won’t study it at all.”

Of course, the verse says nothing about not studying philosophy, it simply enjoins Christians not to be cheated by it, which is a very different thing, so my conclusion really didn’t follow from the verse. But being ignorant of logic, it’s not surprising that I would fall into this common logical blunder.

Years later when I began to study Reformed theology, I met a Presbyterian fellow who intended to study for the ministry. He was in college at the time and studying, of all things, philosophy. This struck me as rather odd, since I had long considered philosophy the province of screaming atheist lunatics, not Christians. But while I was surprised at his major, I was intrigued by the fact that he believed training in philosophy would be helpful to him in his ministry. Not long after that, I was introduced to Gordon Clark’s work.
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Posted in Scripturalism, Theology, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

Do Not Love the World

November 28, 2011 by Steve Matthews

Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the father is not in him.

  • 1 John 2:15

As Christians we know that the world is not our home and our call is to love God with all our heart, soul strength and mind. That is easy to say; it is not always so easy to do. The desire for the good things in this life and the wish to avoid pain can easily choke out the love of righteousness, even in those who are saved by faith in Christ. When this happens, as it did to some of the greatest saints in the Bible – think of David in his lust for Bathsheba or Peter’s fear of confessing Christ to a servant girl – our ability to be salt and light to a dying world is significantly impaired.

In the year A. D. 410 Aurelius Augustine had a problem. In fact, the whole Roman world did: a Visigoth name Alaric. Alaric, you see, had become the first man to successfully sack Rome in over 700 years, and for the Romans this was an end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it moment. The pagan Romans, what you might call the conservative coalition of the day, blamed the Christians for the disaster. It was the Christians, they charged, who were responsible for causing Rome to abandon her gods and bring about Rome’s defeat at the hands of the barbarians. Augustine, who at the time was bishop of Hippo in North Africa, heard these charges coming from Romans who had fled Italy to escape the Visigoth armies. Moved to defend Christianity against the pagan’s charges, Augustine set about writing his greatest work, The City of God.

Early on in The city of God Augustine set about to refute one of the charges flung at Christians by the pagans: Why, if your God is so powerful, does he allow Christians to suffer along with everyone else? In part, answered Augustine, it was the Christians’ love of the world and their resulting ineffective witness that helped bring God’s judgment. He wrote,

“We tend culpably to evade our responsibility when we ought to instruct and admonish them, sometimes even with strong reproof and censure, either because the task is irksome, or because we are afraid of giving offense; or it may be that we shrink from incurring their enmity, for fear that they may hinder and harm us in worldly matters, in respect either of what we eagerly seek to attain, or what we weakly dread to lose…Good and bad are chastised together, not because both alike live evil lives, but because both alike, though not in the same degree, love this temporal life.”

When the events of life turn against us, some Christians become angry with God and demand, “why me, Lord?” The present author knows of at least one such individual. The answer just may be that God in his mercy takes from us those things for which we have grown too fond, so that he may give us himself, whom we have held too lightly.

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CNN Republican Debate

November 24, 2011 by Steve Matthews

It was interesting to hear all the foreign policy talk last night at the Republican debate. If nothinig else, it confirmed my opinion that none of the cadidates save Ron Paul has any business going niear the Oval Office.

For the most part, the Republican position on foreign policy seems to be no-fly-zones, sanctions, dronings  and threatened invasions, war, more war,  and a good righteous tongue lashings against countries without nukes.  On the other hand if you, like Pakistan, have a nuke, you’re our best buddy well deserving of foreign aid so long as you don’t do anything really stupid like not fully cooperate with the US war on terror.

Now you tell me, why wouldn’t the Iranian mullahs want a nuke? It’s the only way a nation gets any respect from the US foreign policy establishment.  In today’s world, not having a nuke is like brining a knife to a gun fight.

Further, what’s the deal with foreign aid? There is no consititional or moral ground for the US federal government to take money from American taxpayers and give it to foreign governments. All such funding is theft, and the day it stops will be a huge step forward for American foreign policy.

The war on terror is a joke.  Terrorism, as has been pointed out by others much better qualifed than I, is a tactic.  War is declared against nations, not tactics.  There has been no declaration of war on terror by congress and there never will be.  If congress ever tried to do this, the logical absurdity of such an act would be apparent even to an average Republican presidential candidate.

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