You have no enemies, you say?

You have no enemies, you say?

Alas, my friend, the boast is poor;

He who has mingled in the fray

Of duty, that the brave endure,

Must have made foes! If you have none,

Small is the work that you have done.

You've hit no traitor on the hip,

You've dashed no cup from perjured lip,

You've never turned the wrong to right,

You've been a coward in the fight.

-- Charles MacKay (1814-1889)

Surfing the Sites: Theology on the Web

By Fred Sanders
Catalyst Online

As far as theology is concerned, “www” might stand for “wild, wild west.” Whatever law may hold sway in the civilized territories of academic theology, it is unenforceable out on the range. I am tempted to divide the following survey into categories like “freebooters, homesteaders, border raiders, natives, and gunslingers,” but I will let the metaphor rest with the observation that internet theology, unlike other academic disciplines, has not been guided or normalized by the presence of any established institutional presence. With a few exceptions, the most useful internet theology websites are the work of fans and amateurs, students and private citizens who do what they do out of love for the subject. No major school has taken the step of putting its imprint on internet theology by committing capital to produce a definitive or unavoidable website. This situation is quite different from fields like philosophy or biblical studies, where prestigious schools and sought-after scholars have established a presence that provides a norm and standard against which all the non-professional material can be evaluated. (more)

Saint John’s Day: The Third Day of Christmas

By John Mark Reynolds
Middlebrow

Love is not the end, but the force that drives humanity to God. It is as if the entire culture has confused the engine with the destination, but there is still hope. God is the source of all the love in the cosmos and even twisted love reflects His image. Love has become an idol, but like all idols it is a servant of the Most High that we worship. When the Sacred Scriptures say that God is love, they testify to the “three-dimensional” nature of goodness, truth, and beauty for a Christian. This divine romance does not end in a book, but a person. This person is known by love and loves in return.

Propositions about God are important, so that humanity can be sure to direct its love correctly. If I love, then I desire to know all that can be known about the beloved. Someone who claimed to love me, but could not be bothered to learn my eye color is a liar. Love desires knowledge, but love is not knowledge. God is a person and ultimately can only be known through love. Theology is the best guide humans have found to describe that person and to keep human love, so easily turned to idolatry, on track. If we love God, then we will love theology for the sake of knowing Him. Propositional theology is another reality-describing science. (more)

St. Stephen’s Day (Boxing Day): Second Day of Christmas

By John Mark Reynolds
Middlebrow

It wasn’t always this way. Until the nineteenth century, almost all people in Western culture believed that poetry, music, art, and religion could teach something. Physical reality was best known by “natural philosophy” which is now called science, but physical reality was just one part of a greater whole. (more)

Psalm 98 for Christmas

By Fred Sanders
Middlebrow

A series of 3 articles on Psalm 98 for Christmas.

Psalm 98 for Christmas
New Song for God's Victory (Psalm 98)
When is Psalm 98 True?

God Rest Ye Merry

By Wilfred M. McClay
Touchstone

The merriness being urged upon the gentlemen (one should always remember that, in the lyrics, there is a comma between “merry” and “gentlemen”—they are not “merry gentlemen” being encouraged to “rest”) comes amid a great darkness, a darkness that never disappears, that beckons and threatens, a darkness whose presence is subtly conveyed by the minor key with which the song begins and ends. The black ship with black sails lingers on the far horizon, silent and waiting. (more)

Of Freedom and Self Control

Who's in Charge Here?
by Daniel Akst
The Wilson Quarterly

In a sense, the crux of the self-control problem is the future and how much regard we have for it. Today the future looks scary, in part because we are so lax—about warming the planet with fossil fuels, increasing national debt, and countless other issues. But if we can do better, we should also remember that things could be much worse. That technology helped get us into this mess means that it may well have the power to get us out. Can the time be far off when pills permit us to eat almost anything without gaining weight? What about when we’re finally able to manipulate the genes of our offspring? Will we engineer superhuman self-control? And will the law punish those who don’t possess it?

Meanwhile, let’s look on the bright side. That self-control may be the most significant challenge faced by many of the world’s people in the 21st century is a blessing in not much of a disguise. Self-regulation is a challenge, but one not nearly so daunting as the poverty and tyranny that are its most effective substitutes. (more)


Take Two Servings of Paternalism
by David White
American.com

In the fight against fatty foods, the battle has already surpassed the dire warnings of R.J. Reynolds. Rather than impose a Twinkie tax—which was first popularized by Yale University’s Kelly Brownell in a 1994 New York Times op-ed—local governments have outright banned unhealthy foods. California, Connecticut, and several local districts have banned soda sales in their schools. Fearing lawsuits, the country’s top three soft-drink companies will start removing sweetened drinks like Coke and iced teas from school cafeterias and vending machines this fall. (more)

Introducing 'Good News From the Front'

By Larry Kelley
Human Events

...the West was nearly conquered twice by militant Islam. Yet our European ancestors prevailed. And they did so with far fewer resources and military assets at their command than did their Islamic attackers. By the early 8th century, after 150 years of nearly uninterrupted brutal conquests, Islam had conquered two-thirds of Western Christendom. The Iberian Peninsula had fallen and the Islamic general, Rahman was razing coastal villages and taking slaves in Southern France while pressing northward toward the Loir River. Yet in 732, Charles Martel’s hastily assembled Gallo-Roman and German warriors crushed the larger army of “Saracens,” killed its general and drove them back over the Pyrenees. Fortunately for Western Civilization, Martel and his allies did not consider multilateral negotiations were not an option. (more)

Capital Punishment -- Another Argument for It

By Dennis Prager
Human Events

Regarding murder, it is not only those of us who support capital punishment who support a policy that can lead to the killing of innocents. So do almost all those opposed to capital punishment. Nearly all opponents of capital punishment (and many supporters of capital punishment) believe that if the police obtained evidence illegally, the conviction of a murderer should be overturned. (more)

Environmentalists: It's humanity's fault either way

UN downgrades man's impact on the climate
Cow 'emissions' more damaging to planet than CO2 from cars

Unable to blame humanity for full complicity for global warming due to lack of evidence (and unwillingness to admit to be part of the problem and thereby coming to the only possible solution of ceasing its own existence), the environmentalists turn to humanity's consumption for its destructive existence: livestock. But isn't this just a tricky and indirect way of blaming humanity and its inconsiderate consumption of other living things that upsets the balance created and sustained by Mother Earth because of the unfair advantage of technological superiority on its side? How dare we subject our will upon the innocent livestock and consequently the balance of nature? Isn't this the logical conclusion to such proposition?

The greed of humanity drives itself to consume more meat. To fulfill the demands created by greedy humanity, it needs to produce more cattle. Its consumption is generating destructive methane gases. In doing so, humanity destroys the world by bringing global warming upon itself.

How absurd!

Right up until this upside down, crazy post-modern times we live in today, the ability to have livestock for ownership and consumption was considered a blessing, a sign of prosperity and fortune. Not so in our time. Indeed it's a curse according to these environmentalists to have such an ability. Livestock is no bounty. It should be left strictly to Mother Earth to care and nurture -- so should mankind, oops, humankind. Humankind is better off living alongside animals it isn't allowed to consume. In their enlightened minds, it is unfair for humanity to use its superiority to dominate "lesser" beings. In fact, it is only because most people are unenlightened that we consider other non-human beings as lesser due to the unwanted curse of humanity's creative minds. Oh, the curse of having unfair advantage! How dare we evolve to such a state?!

But wait a minute! Is it me who's twisted in my thinking? Is it me who's seen this whole thing all wrong? Is it me who's unenlightened? Is it me who is the selfish one? Or is it the environmentalists for all of the above? The last time I checked, the greenies were the ones trying militantly to stop the rest of us by fiat from choosing to consume God's livestock. The last time I checked with the God who owns the cattle on a thousand hills, I'm not the one who has it wrong.

What will they do next if they succeeded in convincing people of this absurd proposition? Will livestock be the only thing off limits for human consumption? If there is any logic to their thinking, then the answer is clearly no. To the environmentalists, it is humanity that is the problem, not the fact that it consumes livestock. Humanity by its nature has generated advances which put the rest at a disadvantage thereby endangering the balance of nature. The only possible solution is the elimination of humanity with the exception of the committed few who will relegate itself to a primitive state in order to safeguard the balance by a sort of self-assured guarantee of non intervention of nature's balance.

How corrupt and degenerate is this worldview? This is what happens when sin darkens man's soul and clouds his judgment. This is the upside down reality that results.

Thank you, Lord for giving us such a bounty that allows us to thrive. Help us to enjoy your blessing and share it with others. Thank you for giving us meat that strengthens us to do the work to expand your kingdom. May your name be glorified forever and ever. Amen.

UN Report: Poor Own Less Than Rich

By Mac Johnson

...a more complete statement might be “if all the world’s wealth was distributed evenly, each person would have $20,500 of assets to use—destroying the economy and causing a huge spike in sales of useless consumer items. Six months later, the world’s richest 2% would again own 50% of the world’s wealth and the bottom 50% would again be victims of ‘inequality.’”

That’s because the greatest determinate of wealth is culture and behavior—a fact that is usually ignored in reporting the disproportionate and unfair inequality suffered by the underprivileged. Many reporters seem very fond of the term “distribution” when discussing inequality, as in “income distribution” or “the distribution of wealth.” Although the term has a statistical meaning, I don’t think that’s why it is so beloved. If “wealth is distributed so unevenly across the world,” then obviously it needs to be “redistributed.” It’s just not fair that the wealth fairy distributed so much to so few. (more)

Media Far From Objective on Climate Change

By Dan Gainor

In more than 100 years, the major media have warned us of at least four separate climate cataclysms—an ice age, warming, another ice age and another bout of warming. If you count the current catch-all term of “climate change,” that would be five separate media predictions. Even by their count, they’re 0-3. (more)

The Credibility Question

By Dr. Albert Mohler

From the beginning, liberal theology has been a series of rescue attempts on the part of theologians who have sought to rescue the church from its credibility crisis in the eyes of the modern academy and culture. That project is a denial of the faith and a route to disaster. If you sincerely believe that Christianity must change its position on homosexuality, you will hardly be able to stop there.

The credibility crisis on the issue on homosexuality that really matters is the loss of credibility suffered by the church when it fails to tell the truth with love, recoils from homosexuals instead of reaching out with God's love, and buries its head in the sand. This is the credibility crisis we must quickly address and where the Gospel is truly at stake. (more)