The other day I read of a 19 year old woman in Saudi Arabia who had been sentenced by a court there to 90 lashes. Her crime - being alone with a man who is not a relative. Now, that in itself is an obvious injustice. What personal freedom is there in this case? However, the real injustice is the rest of the story. She had apparently been dating a man without her parents' knowledge, a no-no, and he decided to blackmail her. So, when she went to meet with him, he and six other men kidnapped and raped her! Some of her assailants have been punished, but not all. It is as if the courts there, which are governed by a strict adherence to Islamic law found in the Koran called Sharia (sorry to any who actually speak Arabic for my Western spelling), are trying to send the message that a woman who leaves the protection of her family for being in public with another man deserves to be treated like this!
This system is broke, and people all over the world should say so. However, we Westerners have mostly bought into the ambiguities of moral pluralism to the extent that we can't even call evil by its true name.
Thursday, March 08, 2007
School Vouchers - An Issue of Church-State
I just today finished a paper related to how Baptists (past, present, and ideally) view the separation of church and state within the realm of benevolence and education activities done by Baptists. This has become an important issue because of President Bush's aim to fund faith-based programs with public dollars. Another push, which I've witnessed up close in Texas, is for a school voucher system, allowing parents to send their kids to whichever school they desire, even religious schools.
Since I was, and am still licensed as, a teacher, I would like to address this voucher idea. I am opposed to it. I am opposed for several reasons: it would result in the privatization of all education, it would necessarily promote a greater disparity between the "haves" and "have nots" in our society, and it would create a terrible breach of the separation of church and state, which would drive religious schools to bend completely to the will of the state or get out of the education business (ministry?) altogether.
As to the privatization of education, this is something of a tricky thing to say. Technically, a public education is now free to all children of the appropriate ages in the USA. This is technical because it is paid for by society through property taxes primarily, as well as other state and federal monies, so that parents who are property owners are paying for their children to be educated. Under this new system, once vouchers are distributed (never mind the massive bureaucratic headache that would be!) they would become a form of money, which could then be exchanged for an education or part of one. I say "part of one" because there are plenty of schools, even some public schools, that spend more per year on a student than the voucher would be for. Also, and this bleeds over to my second objection, there will certainly be private schools that increase their tuition so that they can control who applies and is admitted to their schools. While I am generally in favor of privatization, this is not true in fields so important as education. The majority of children are at the mercy of whatever system is in place, usually simply because their parents don't care one way or another. With a system like this, parents would necessarily have a greater role to play. This would be wonderful for those parents who are responsible, but would be a tragedy for the rest.
As to this plan encouraging a widening of the gap between those who are wealthy and those who are not, it seems obvious to me. Imagine a private academy in Manhattan and a public school in the Bronx less than 2 miles away. Also, assume for the point of argument that both schools cost the same amount, which would correspond to the amount of the voucher given to parents at each. It is obvious that the private school cannot accommodate all the students from both schools. It is also obvious that at least some of the parents sending their kids to the private school do so because they do not want their kids to be influenced by what can be found at the public school, included the people there. Is it not but a simple thing for the private academy to raise their rates, maybe even double them, in order to hold attendance there out of reach of the public schoolers? The result would not hurt the private school families, who were already paying that amount out of their pockets and would promote greed on the part of the private academy. The result is really a continuance of the status quo that would, I think, result in an even weaker public school.
The most important reason to reject this idea is the commingling between the church and state that would occur in any religious schools that accepted these vouchers, which they would almost have to do to stay competitive. This is true for a couple of reasons, two of which I will look at more closely. First, any education institution accepting the vouchers would have government oversight of the people it admitted and rejected for attendance. Of course, I'm not against anti-discrimination rules in general, but should a religious school be forced to accept applications from homosexual teachers or students who have shown in their previous schooling to be incorrigible? I think not. However, the government funds would tie the hands of the schools, no matter how loudly government agencies claim now that this would not occur. A second problem, also dealing with oversight, comes in the form of educational accountability. I have extremely mixed feelings about this concept, having seen it abusing teachers and students in public schools. However, it would only be a matter of time before schools accepting government funds are forced to submit their students to standardized exams that would prove, one way or another, that they had learned what the government has decided is the bare minimum for a graduating senior to know. This amounts to control, and I mean a death-grip, over the curriculum of schools. If you don't think so, just ask any public school teacher in Texas! Would there be room in a religious school for Bible class? Would the government test allow for the fair hearing that creationism is receiving in such a school? What about sex education? The questions just go on and on! Such a blurring of the lines between the state's realm and that of the church is intolerable.
This doesn't even begin to address the difficulties such a program would have with special needs students.
I am all for both public education, free for all, and private education that is paid for by families. I would love to see Christian groups, possibly associations of churches, provide a better, and financially viable education option that is available to more and more people. However, I reject the temptation to grasp the funds of the state for the use of the church.
Since I was, and am still licensed as, a teacher, I would like to address this voucher idea. I am opposed to it. I am opposed for several reasons: it would result in the privatization of all education, it would necessarily promote a greater disparity between the "haves" and "have nots" in our society, and it would create a terrible breach of the separation of church and state, which would drive religious schools to bend completely to the will of the state or get out of the education business (ministry?) altogether.
As to the privatization of education, this is something of a tricky thing to say. Technically, a public education is now free to all children of the appropriate ages in the USA. This is technical because it is paid for by society through property taxes primarily, as well as other state and federal monies, so that parents who are property owners are paying for their children to be educated. Under this new system, once vouchers are distributed (never mind the massive bureaucratic headache that would be!) they would become a form of money, which could then be exchanged for an education or part of one. I say "part of one" because there are plenty of schools, even some public schools, that spend more per year on a student than the voucher would be for. Also, and this bleeds over to my second objection, there will certainly be private schools that increase their tuition so that they can control who applies and is admitted to their schools. While I am generally in favor of privatization, this is not true in fields so important as education. The majority of children are at the mercy of whatever system is in place, usually simply because their parents don't care one way or another. With a system like this, parents would necessarily have a greater role to play. This would be wonderful for those parents who are responsible, but would be a tragedy for the rest.
As to this plan encouraging a widening of the gap between those who are wealthy and those who are not, it seems obvious to me. Imagine a private academy in Manhattan and a public school in the Bronx less than 2 miles away. Also, assume for the point of argument that both schools cost the same amount, which would correspond to the amount of the voucher given to parents at each. It is obvious that the private school cannot accommodate all the students from both schools. It is also obvious that at least some of the parents sending their kids to the private school do so because they do not want their kids to be influenced by what can be found at the public school, included the people there. Is it not but a simple thing for the private academy to raise their rates, maybe even double them, in order to hold attendance there out of reach of the public schoolers? The result would not hurt the private school families, who were already paying that amount out of their pockets and would promote greed on the part of the private academy. The result is really a continuance of the status quo that would, I think, result in an even weaker public school.
The most important reason to reject this idea is the commingling between the church and state that would occur in any religious schools that accepted these vouchers, which they would almost have to do to stay competitive. This is true for a couple of reasons, two of which I will look at more closely. First, any education institution accepting the vouchers would have government oversight of the people it admitted and rejected for attendance. Of course, I'm not against anti-discrimination rules in general, but should a religious school be forced to accept applications from homosexual teachers or students who have shown in their previous schooling to be incorrigible? I think not. However, the government funds would tie the hands of the schools, no matter how loudly government agencies claim now that this would not occur. A second problem, also dealing with oversight, comes in the form of educational accountability. I have extremely mixed feelings about this concept, having seen it abusing teachers and students in public schools. However, it would only be a matter of time before schools accepting government funds are forced to submit their students to standardized exams that would prove, one way or another, that they had learned what the government has decided is the bare minimum for a graduating senior to know. This amounts to control, and I mean a death-grip, over the curriculum of schools. If you don't think so, just ask any public school teacher in Texas! Would there be room in a religious school for Bible class? Would the government test allow for the fair hearing that creationism is receiving in such a school? What about sex education? The questions just go on and on! Such a blurring of the lines between the state's realm and that of the church is intolerable.
This doesn't even begin to address the difficulties such a program would have with special needs students.
I am all for both public education, free for all, and private education that is paid for by families. I would love to see Christian groups, possibly associations of churches, provide a better, and financially viable education option that is available to more and more people. However, I reject the temptation to grasp the funds of the state for the use of the church.
Friday, February 09, 2007
What Are You Praying For? How 'bout Revival?
I've been taking a wonderful class this semester all about revivals and awakenings that have occurred in the past, especially the role of students (teenagers and college students) in them. This has been easily the most exciting class I've had in seminary, with philosophy of religion taking a close second, believe it or not.
My professor is a man of God who prays hard and has a heart for God's work in students' lives, and he has shared with his classes that he feels that revival is soon to come to the church in America. There are all sorts of reasons to think this, too. For example, one thing that has preceded every single revival is moral/spiritual decline. You need only look briefly at a news website, such as foxnews.com, to see that this is increasingly true of our culture. Just tonight I see on that site's main page stories about the following: Anna Nicole Smith's death and the controversy over her daughter's paternity, Elie Wiesel's being attacked by a holocaust-denier, a man who kept the body of his homosexual partner frozen so that he could keep receiving pension checks, a Disney employee who acts as the Beast from Beauty and the Beast and has been arrested on child pornography charges, and a pastor in New York who committed suicide after being caught by the local television station engaging in a homosexual relationship and entering an "adult bookstore." Our culture is literally coming apart at the seems. Each institution is failing, from our schools to our families. We are certainly in decline.
However, this decline is not what I'm really after here. What I want to communicate is what my professor has said several times now to me. One other thing that has been common with every revival is that it was preceded by prayer, sometimes the prayer of a few and sometimes by more. This is not to say that God is in a box and does things the same way every time, but the fact that He has chosen to bring a refreshing of His Spirit when His people have earnestly asked Him for it should open our eyes. Can we expect that He will revive us now without our earnest prayer? I think the answer is obvious.
So, this brings me to the question: are you asking God on a daily basis to come refresh us with His awesome Presence? Are you crying out to Him to show mercy on our nation and people? I have been incredibly convicted that my prayer is too often inward and lacking the sort of direction that God would have for me. Would you join with me in beginning to daily lay our desire, our need, for His Spirit to come powerfully upon us, our churches, and our nation? It is time we shed the tears of brokenness before our God!
My professor is a man of God who prays hard and has a heart for God's work in students' lives, and he has shared with his classes that he feels that revival is soon to come to the church in America. There are all sorts of reasons to think this, too. For example, one thing that has preceded every single revival is moral/spiritual decline. You need only look briefly at a news website, such as foxnews.com, to see that this is increasingly true of our culture. Just tonight I see on that site's main page stories about the following: Anna Nicole Smith's death and the controversy over her daughter's paternity, Elie Wiesel's being attacked by a holocaust-denier, a man who kept the body of his homosexual partner frozen so that he could keep receiving pension checks, a Disney employee who acts as the Beast from Beauty and the Beast and has been arrested on child pornography charges, and a pastor in New York who committed suicide after being caught by the local television station engaging in a homosexual relationship and entering an "adult bookstore." Our culture is literally coming apart at the seems. Each institution is failing, from our schools to our families. We are certainly in decline.
However, this decline is not what I'm really after here. What I want to communicate is what my professor has said several times now to me. One other thing that has been common with every revival is that it was preceded by prayer, sometimes the prayer of a few and sometimes by more. This is not to say that God is in a box and does things the same way every time, but the fact that He has chosen to bring a refreshing of His Spirit when His people have earnestly asked Him for it should open our eyes. Can we expect that He will revive us now without our earnest prayer? I think the answer is obvious.
So, this brings me to the question: are you asking God on a daily basis to come refresh us with His awesome Presence? Are you crying out to Him to show mercy on our nation and people? I have been incredibly convicted that my prayer is too often inward and lacking the sort of direction that God would have for me. Would you join with me in beginning to daily lay our desire, our need, for His Spirit to come powerfully upon us, our churches, and our nation? It is time we shed the tears of brokenness before our God!
Wild at Heart - A Short Review
Let me start out by saying that this book by John Eldredge has literally been life-changing for me. I had heard good things about it before I read it, but I was blown away by the insight into manhood that was contained between the covers. I often felt like the author was writing about me, personally, and this is not limited to me. Several other men I've discussed the book with have expressed similar feelings. It addresses some of the core issues that Christian men face.
I learned quite a few things about myself and my standing with God through reading this book, but I'll save you all from a long post and just talk about the thing that has affected me the most.
For quite some time I've dealt with a sense of impossibility about my Christian walk, my spiritual life. That is, I felt that I never could measure up to God's requirements for me because there was something fundamentally wrong with me, as if at my core there still lay sin. Now, I'm nowhere near perfect, but I've been learning through this book what it means to have become a new creation in Christ Jesus. Part of what that means is that no longer is a Christian fundamentally broken because of sin at his or her core. Rather, a Christian is now fundamentally good. All that remains of the old self is what Eldredge calls the Traitor within who lies and cajoles to get us back into old habits of sin, and this is only a dying part, no longer what defines the Christian. God has made us good, righteous, and holy in Christ, and that is something to rejoice about! I find myself overcome even now as I type!
If you haven't read this book, please do. You don't have to be a man, either. Women would gain a huge understanding of men, as well as of thier relationships with men from this.
I learned quite a few things about myself and my standing with God through reading this book, but I'll save you all from a long post and just talk about the thing that has affected me the most.
For quite some time I've dealt with a sense of impossibility about my Christian walk, my spiritual life. That is, I felt that I never could measure up to God's requirements for me because there was something fundamentally wrong with me, as if at my core there still lay sin. Now, I'm nowhere near perfect, but I've been learning through this book what it means to have become a new creation in Christ Jesus. Part of what that means is that no longer is a Christian fundamentally broken because of sin at his or her core. Rather, a Christian is now fundamentally good. All that remains of the old self is what Eldredge calls the Traitor within who lies and cajoles to get us back into old habits of sin, and this is only a dying part, no longer what defines the Christian. God has made us good, righteous, and holy in Christ, and that is something to rejoice about! I find myself overcome even now as I type!
If you haven't read this book, please do. You don't have to be a man, either. Women would gain a huge understanding of men, as well as of thier relationships with men from this.
Friday, December 15, 2006
Time Travel and Ethics...Weird Question
OK, so today I was eating lunch with two guys that I regularly meet with to pray and study the Bible. We weren't very spiritual today, owing to the fact that we're between books of study and also enjoying the nice lull of life right after our semesters have finished. So, we were discussing the intricacies of time travel, especially logical problems with it and the interesting possibilities it could offer.
My friend brought up a very interesting question: what would you do if you could go back to the time prior to Hitler's rise to power and, knowing all that he would do in his life, had the chance to kill him before any of it could happen? Would you do it or leave things as they historically happened?
There are all sorts of things that a person might say here, but I think I'll leave it up to you from here. So, please share your opinion.
My friend brought up a very interesting question: what would you do if you could go back to the time prior to Hitler's rise to power and, knowing all that he would do in his life, had the chance to kill him before any of it could happen? Would you do it or leave things as they historically happened?
There are all sorts of things that a person might say here, but I think I'll leave it up to you from here. So, please share your opinion.
Wednesday, December 13, 2006
We Need to Check Spending
As I was changing into my uniform for work today, someone had a radio station playing over the PA system in the locker room at work. As I was listening, there was an ad for some credit company, promoting their "product" with an offer for a zero-percent interest loan right at the beginning of someone's use of their service. This was framed as a quick way to get some Christmas money, and it was also called several times "free money." That bothers me to no end, and I think it should be illegal to call something free which clearly isn't. Anyone using this service definitely has to pay that money back.
Now, I see something similar every time I get a credit card bill. (We don't actually use our credit cards, except for emergencies, which we haven't yet had, and for expense items that will be repaid by work - even so they still send the dang bills.) I don't know about you, but every credit card bill I've ever received had a "check" attached, made out to me for several hundred dollars. I've been raised to distrust, even abhor, borrowing money, so this has never caught me. However, I wonder how many people cash that check, whether they know that they will have to pay it back or not.
I just think that credit card companies are just barely legal and should be required to be much more forthcoming in their information disclosures. I would hope that this would lead to lower levels of indebtedness. However, I realize that the real reason we Americans owe so much in consumer debt is that we simply want more "stuff" than we can afford. Our hearts are never content, always seeking more only to find that more doesn't satisfy either.
Some people might point out that lower levels of consumer debt would cause an economic slow-down because people aren't buying as much. This would lead to a loss of jobs. However, I think that would only be temporary. When people are no longer saddled by such debt, they will have much more income to spend on things because they won't be paying the interest. The key is having the patience to wait, which most just don't have.
Now, I see something similar every time I get a credit card bill. (We don't actually use our credit cards, except for emergencies, which we haven't yet had, and for expense items that will be repaid by work - even so they still send the dang bills.) I don't know about you, but every credit card bill I've ever received had a "check" attached, made out to me for several hundred dollars. I've been raised to distrust, even abhor, borrowing money, so this has never caught me. However, I wonder how many people cash that check, whether they know that they will have to pay it back or not.
I just think that credit card companies are just barely legal and should be required to be much more forthcoming in their information disclosures. I would hope that this would lead to lower levels of indebtedness. However, I realize that the real reason we Americans owe so much in consumer debt is that we simply want more "stuff" than we can afford. Our hearts are never content, always seeking more only to find that more doesn't satisfy either.
Some people might point out that lower levels of consumer debt would cause an economic slow-down because people aren't buying as much. This would lead to a loss of jobs. However, I think that would only be temporary. When people are no longer saddled by such debt, they will have much more income to spend on things because they won't be paying the interest. The key is having the patience to wait, which most just don't have.
Thursday, December 07, 2006
Grey's Anatomy - Where It Goes Wrong
Well, my lovely wife and I have been watching a few shows via DVD for the past couple months. Actually, there have only been 2 shows that we've seen this way - Grey's Anatomy and The Office. ( As an aside, I think this is a far superior way to view TV - no commercials, you get to watch them on your own schedule, it frees you from the addiction to TV to an extent, and, if you have the will to do so, you can censor them yourself.) However, after watching the first 2 seasons on Grey's Anatomy, I've had some mixed feelings about the show, and I think I will be much more careful about watching it in the future, if I do at all.
First of all, the show, which is about a group of surgical interns learning how to cut people open and fix them up and all their other life experiences, lacks any understanding that actions have consequences. The interns are constantly breaking the rules and cutting corners, and this in a business where life and death occur daily. Now, I realize that this is just entertainment, but entertainment often teaches us far more than books or classrooms. One intern even stops a man's life-sustaining heart treatment in order to make him worse so he could move up the donor list, only to have him die of some freak complication a day after he gets the new heart. While that intern, I've heard, gets booted out initially in the current season, I've also heard that she gets to come back. In addition, this sort of 2+2 does NOT equal 4 logic extends to their personal lives, where they are all sexually promiscuous and drunks.
The lack of integrity is bad, but the thing that Grey's Anatomy does that is so horrible is that it, through good storytelling and cool characters, makes the viewer start to want the things that the characters want, most of which are immoral things. This was pointed out to me by my wife, who said that the show makes her wish certain things would happen to/for the characters that she would never wish for a real person.
The best way I can illustrate this is with the following contrasting example - Grey's Anatomy, in the TV world, causes me to wish that Meredith and Derek, who is married to someone else, would become a couple, but in real life, I would never wish a marriage to end so a man could start an illicit relationship with a girlfriend. In fact, I would strongly counsel those people to stay apart and for the marriage to seek help, and I would pray for them and witness to them. The show so muddles things that the idea that there really is a right way to live life is gone.
So, I realize that there are probably some people here who do watch this show. I'm not saying you have to stop to be a Christian, but I am warning you to think about how you feel and think while watching any show. If the feelings and thoughts that are evoked are contrary to the truth of God, as revealed in the Bible, then you might need to stop watching. Sometimes, I wonder where the line is between being a person who will watch these sorts of things on TV for entertainment and being a person who would do them himself.
First of all, the show, which is about a group of surgical interns learning how to cut people open and fix them up and all their other life experiences, lacks any understanding that actions have consequences. The interns are constantly breaking the rules and cutting corners, and this in a business where life and death occur daily. Now, I realize that this is just entertainment, but entertainment often teaches us far more than books or classrooms. One intern even stops a man's life-sustaining heart treatment in order to make him worse so he could move up the donor list, only to have him die of some freak complication a day after he gets the new heart. While that intern, I've heard, gets booted out initially in the current season, I've also heard that she gets to come back. In addition, this sort of 2+2 does NOT equal 4 logic extends to their personal lives, where they are all sexually promiscuous and drunks.
The lack of integrity is bad, but the thing that Grey's Anatomy does that is so horrible is that it, through good storytelling and cool characters, makes the viewer start to want the things that the characters want, most of which are immoral things. This was pointed out to me by my wife, who said that the show makes her wish certain things would happen to/for the characters that she would never wish for a real person.
The best way I can illustrate this is with the following contrasting example - Grey's Anatomy, in the TV world, causes me to wish that Meredith and Derek, who is married to someone else, would become a couple, but in real life, I would never wish a marriage to end so a man could start an illicit relationship with a girlfriend. In fact, I would strongly counsel those people to stay apart and for the marriage to seek help, and I would pray for them and witness to them. The show so muddles things that the idea that there really is a right way to live life is gone.
So, I realize that there are probably some people here who do watch this show. I'm not saying you have to stop to be a Christian, but I am warning you to think about how you feel and think while watching any show. If the feelings and thoughts that are evoked are contrary to the truth of God, as revealed in the Bible, then you might need to stop watching. Sometimes, I wonder where the line is between being a person who will watch these sorts of things on TV for entertainment and being a person who would do them himself.
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