Preaching to Psychologists

By Allen Yeh
Scriptorium Daily

A few weeks ago I was asked to be the speaker for the chapel of Biola’s Rosemead School of Psychology. Talk about being out of my element! The most I know about this field is my one Pastoral Counseling class I took in seminary. However, if there’s one thing that psychologists understand, and all Christians understand as well, it’s suffering. Suffering is at the heart of our faith—it is right there in the cross. When we talk about Christ’s “passion,” that word “passion” means suffering. So I chose a great text that talks about suffering, from James 1:2-12.

This is a summary of what I preached:

I want to address you from James 1. James is one of my favorite books of the Bible, and I think that as I grow older, its applicability continually increases. I think while it can be read by young Christians, it is really meant for those who are maturing. It takes on tough topics like the tension between faith and works (“faith without works is dead”), taming the tongue (“the tongue can be used for praising and cursing”), and true religion (which involves both social justice and personal holiness). All of these involve nuance and discernment to properly understand them. They are “both/and” rather than “either/or,” they are that tough middle way rather than the easy trite black-and-white Sunday School answers that we like to give. Let’s take a look at our text, then:

(2) Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, (3) because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. (4) Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. (5) If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him. (6) But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. (7) That man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord; (8) he is a double-minded man, unstable in all he does. (9) The brother in humble circumstances ought to take pride in his high position. (10) But the one who is rich should take pride in his low position, because he will pass away like a wild flower. (11) For the sun rises with scorching heat and withers the plant; its blossom falls and its beauty is destroyed. In the same way, the rich man will fade away even while he goes about his business. (12) Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial, because when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him.

1) Trials can turn you toward holiness or bitterness

I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase, “If it doesn’t kill you, it only makes you stronger.” Well, when I was growing up, I hated that phrase because the cynic in me always thought, “Unless it maims you for life!” Suffering doesn’t always produce good fruit in people—it can often bring out the worst in you.

What does James mean, then, that trials should bring “pure joy”? Are we just masochists?

I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase, “There are no atheists in foxholes.” I think this is another way to restate James 1:2-4. In the middle of war, when the bombs are exploding all around you and you’re in the trenches, then your wealth, your intelligence, what you own, none of that matters whatsoever. You pray, because at that point, God is all you have. And I think that’s somewhat of an unfortunate reality—I often pray the most when I am going through the most trials. And that’s horrible—I should pray in all circumstances, shouldn’t I? But I think that James understands human nature. I often find that the more that God gives me good blessings, the less I tend to focus on him. It’s only when he takes those things away from me that I tend to turn to him for help.

Maybe that’s why Jesus preached the Upside-Down Kingdom. My former pastor, Ken Fong (of Evergreen Baptist Church of L.A.) said: “I have long believed that a huge part of Christ’s redemptive work is to have the powerless teach the powerful.” I think you see that all throughout the Bible, for example the following statements (taken from Jesus and Paul):
-The first shall be last, and the last shall be first.
-Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.
-Blessed are the poor, the meek, and those who mourn.
-Whoever wants to be great would have to be a servant.
-God uses the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, the weak things of the world to shame the strong.
-Jesus was rich, yet for our sake he became poor, so that through his poverty we would become rich.
-Jesus was equal to God, and then he emptied himself and made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, which is why he is worthy to be exalted as Lord.

I think part of the reason for the Upside-Down Kingdom is that gifts often take our focus off of the Giver. The reason that trials help us to grow is because it helps us to focus on the Giver. It helps us to rely on God instead of the things of this world. And it is only in God that we find “pure joy.”

James 1:9-12 is essentially the Upside-Down Kingdom expressed in James’s own words—“The brother in humble circumstances ought to take pride in his high position. But the one who is rich should take pride in his low position, because he will pass away like a wild flower.”

2) Trials only turn you toward holiness if they are taken with faith

As I hope I made clear above, suffering can definitely turn you toward holiness, but it can also turn you toward bitterness. I definitely know of people who have been broken, and they wallow in their misery.

I think James recognizes both types. He gives a case study in two different types of people, both of whom suffer trials—the one with faith and the one with doubts:
One with faith: steadfast (v. 4)
One with doubts: unstable (v. 8 )
One with faith: perfect and complete (v. 4)
One with doubts: double-minded (v. 8 )

So here you have two types of people, both of whom suffer trials, but they have drastically different results.

I once heard the Christian singer Ginny Owens say, “It’s not trials that make you stronger, it’s what you do with those trials—whether you choose to give them up to God or not.” Trials can lead you to either holiness or bitterness, but it depends what you do with them. I think that’s the key here to James. God wants us to participate with him when we’re going through sufferings. In vv. 5 and 6, James encourages us to “ask.” Ask for wisdom, ask in faith, and it will be given to you. We don’t just sit there and take the sufferings, we must do something with it.

So what’s the difference between the one with faith and the one who doubts in James? It’s not suffering vs. no suffering, because both suffer. It’s not even asking vs. not asking, because both ask. It’s asking in faith vs. asking with doubt. That’s the difference between being steadfast and complete, vs. unstable and double-minded.

The latter will not receive anything from the Lord. When life gives you lemons, do you just scrunch up your face and eat the sour lemon, or do you make lemonade? James tells us that the way that Christians make lemonade of our trials is to ask God in faith.

3) What to do if life is good on an individual level

We’ve been talking about suffering, and most people in this world suffer. Some would even say that all of life is suffering. However, I have a dangerous confession to make: right now I don’t have many trials in my life. Why is this “dangerous”? Because when all is good, I think there’s always a part of us that gets a little nervous. Like, “I just know that something huge is going to hit me like a Mack truck at any moment now!” When we say that all of life is well, everyone around us runs and ducks for cover because they expect lightning to strike at any moment.

Now, let me qualify that statement: I have had many trials before this. Perhaps it’s not quite on the level of the Apostle Paul’s sufferings in 2 Cor. 11:23-29 where he recounts being beaten and stoned and shipwrecked. But I’ve definitely had my share of hardships. I’ve been physically assaulted while ministering in an inner-city neighborhood. I know what it’s like to have no money in my bank account. My parents went through a messy divorce. And of course, as human beings, we are all subject to sin. I am no stranger to pain.

But for right now, in this stage of my life, I’m good. I’ve got a stable job and thus a steady income, a great church, good friends, I have a couple of books coming out next year, and God is good. Probably the only thing that is “lacking” in my life right now is a wife. But hey, rather than complain, I should count my blessings! How ungrateful would I be to say, “God you’ve given me a million good things and all I can think of is that which you haven’t given me.” It makes me think of Veruca Salt, the spoiled girl in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Ugh.

Then I start getting some crazy ideas, like, “Maybe I need to seek out suffering before God puts it into my life!” But then my rationality gets the better of me. I remember King David and his sinful census in 2 Sam 24, and David said it’s actually better to be in God’s hands rather than the hands of men, right? God gave David a choice of punishments, and David says, “Let us fall into the hands of the LORD, for his mercy is great; but do not let me fall into the hands of men.”

But how do we “fall into the hands of the LORD?” A friend of mine told me that he sometimes prays, “God, break me.” And I think, “Are you nuts? I’ve learned not to pray that prayer! There’s enough suffering in life without bringing it voluntarily on yourself!” I think a better model of prayer is when Jesus is in the Garden of Gethsemane—“Lord, take this cup from me—yet not what I will, but what you will.” No one ought to deliberately seek suffering, even Jesus preferred not to let it happen. But Jesus let subsumed His will under the will of the Father. That is the right way to go about it.

4) What to do if life is good on a corporate level

Can we extrapolate this to a corporate principle? The word “you” used all throughout the book of James is the plural “you” in Greek. Though I think it’s rare when you, in your individual life, don’t have trials, but sometimes I feel like corporately, we’re good—as Americans, and as Christians.

First let me speak to the faculty here—as professors, we have our degrees, our status, and students look up to us as authority figures not only in terms of grading but in terms of knowledge. But strip us of our degrees, our status, put us in a position of discomfort, and see how we respond. Or for those of you who are in training to be in positions of leadership, as counselors and teachers—the same principle applies.

As Christians, we’re also good. I mean, we don’t suffer for our faith, unlike many places in the world where people are thrown in jail or tortured. We live in a country where the President of the United States must confess a Christian faith otherwise he won’t be elected. I think this is hardly a position of persecution. But that’s a dangerous place to be in.

John Stott in Christianity Today (Oct 2006, p. 96) said: “When I was ordained in the Church of England, evangelicals were a despised and rejected minority…Over the intervening 60 years, I’ve seen the evangelical movement in England grow in size, in maturity, certainly in scholarship, and therefore I think in influence and impact. We went from a ghetto to being on the ascendancy, which is a very dangerous place to be. Pride is the ever-present danger that faces all of us. In many ways, it is good for us to be despised and rejected. I think of Jesus’ words, ‘Woe unto you when all men speak well of you.’”

What do we do as American evangelical Christians who enjoy the fat of the land, we who are the largest religion in the most powerful country in the world? I think we ought to be humble instead of arrogant, because “how hard it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven!” I don’t think that verse is only talking about material wealth.

Conclusion

This is why, when we suffer trials, we should “count it all joy.” But that can only come from taking the trials in an appropriate way—to ask in faith. Here’s a caveat: I’m not advocating works righteousness here. Because sometimes evangelicals can make faith into a work, ironically! I’m not saying that if you have faith, everything will be made right. But what I am saying is, if you don’t have faith, surely everything will not be all right. To abandon God in the midst of trials is foolhardy at best. Let us hold fast to the One who is our “soul anchor” and count it all joy whenever we face trials of many kinds! In the end we will become more Christlike and that is God’s will for us.

Myths about Christmas

By Allen Yeh
Scriptorium Daily

OK, you might think that I’m being a Grinch for posting this blog, but I hope that we as Evangelicals are being biblical at all times, especially when it comes to something as important as the birth of our Savior! So here are some common myths I’d like to bust regarding Christmas:

-Silent night, holy night, all is calm, all is bright. On the night of Jesus’ birth, it was not a silent night — and probably not calm! Jesus was fully human; he almost certainly cried (unlike “Away in a Manger” would have us believe—“But little Lord Jesus no crying he makes!”). It is no sin to cry, it is how babies communicate since they can’t talk. Not only did Baby Jesus probably cry, the animals made noise. Cows, sheep, and donkeys are noisy animals. The Silent Night myth probably comes from us wanting hushed reverence and awe, but I think that noise can be just as meaningful if it is celebratory and social! Those shepherds and angels, if nothing else, were making noise out there!

-Hark the herald angels sing … and angels we have heard on high sweetly singing o’er the plains. Unfortunately, angels do not sing! Though a couple of times in the NIV it does say that angels “sing” (e.g. Rev. 5:12), in the Greek the word is always “say.” Angels seem to always speak; only humans are shown to sing in the Bible. So when you sing your Christmas carols, sing it with gusto — perhaps this is a privilege that God only affords humans!

-The Magi presented gifts at Jesus’ birth. The Magi (Wise Men) from the East did not come when Jesus was born! The dirty stinky shepherds were there (Luke 2:15-16) but not the Magi. Jesus was actually two years old when the Magi arrived, as Herod tried to kill all the boys under two years old in accordance with the time the Magi had said (Matt. 2:7,16). So I’m afraid all those Nativity scenes showing the wise men with the gifts at the manger are a couple of years too early. (Note that “The First Noel” got it wrong: “And by the light of that same star / Three wise men came from country far; / This star drew nigh…Right over the place where Jesus lay. / Then entered in those wise men three / Full reverently upon their knee, / and offered there in his presence / Their gold, and myrrh, and frankincense.”)

-Christmas trees are Christian. Nope — they are pagan (see Jeremiah 10:1-5). That being said, I don’t think they are wrong to have, unless they are seen as biblical or taking the place of Christ (I think the song “O Christmas Tree” comes dangerously close to crossing the line). The injunction in Jeremiah is against pagan idolatry, but I think it’s fine to “baptize” pagan things as Christian (after all, we Christians did that when we changed the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday, when we changed the pagan fertility goddess cult of Ishtar into our Easter, when we turned the Roman pagan holiday of Yule into Christmas, and when we use words like “God” and “church” which are pagan words which have been Christianized — even the Greek words theos and ekklesia are pagan in origin).

Where do most of these myths come from? Unfortunately, often from our beloved Christmas carols and from Christmas cards. We want our picture-perfect Nativity scene, but a lot of that is not biblically correct. However, Jesus was not born into perfection but into a broken world. And it is precisely this world He came to save. So let’s not paint an inaccurate picture of Christmas — it was a messy, noisy night, with a lot of chaos and crying and animal sounds. There were no angelic choirs, though angels did make a heavenly pronouncement. Those shepherds probably stank as they’d been out all day with the sheep. The Magi didn’t come until two years later, and they were not Jews. (But it is interesting that these three “unclean” Gentiles recognized the Messiah before most of the “pure” Jewish people did. This isn’t even the book of Acts yet, and Gentiles are already coming to worship the Christ!). And Jesus quickly became a political refugee, fleeing to Egypt because a death mark was placed upon his head by a lunatic king who massacred all other boys of Jesus’ age.

Why all this imperfection at the original Christmas? Because Jesus is the only one who is perfect. I think it provides a stark contrast, which is this: Even while Creation is groaning, only in Jesus is light and goodness and salvation.

Oh yeah, and while we’re at it … there is no Santa Claus.
Just in case this one slipped through the cracks.

Women of Advent and Christmas V: Eve, She Made It Necessary

By John Mark Reynolds
Scriptorium Daily

The one thing most moderns know about Eve is that she was naked. They have some notion that there was a talking snake, a tree, and some problem, but nobody is quite sure what the problem was.

Evidently God got really mad because Eve ate an apple . . . or something.

What does Eve have to do with Christmas?

God wanted to have fellowship with humankind, creatures made in His image. He loved us and wanted to elevate us to become as much like Him as a being can be. How would God have done this if we had obeyed Him?

We cannot know for sure, but we know He would have done it. There would have been a great Deed, but no great cost. Women and men would have become like God without God having to suffer the indignities of the cross and of our hatred of justice and love.

Instead of doing well, Eve chose . . . badly . . . and so God created Christmas, but Christmas in the shadow of the cross.

In the beginning God created human beings. A free God gave a gift that nature could never give, because nature does not have it. He gave Eve a free will. She was allowed to choose to follow God or not follow Him.

Eve was a given a life so good that it must have been hard for her to know if she was really free. If she wanted something, it was at hand. In the Garden, all was good and her will was free and unstained by selfishness.

Eve was loved and could love in return. So she could know her own freedom, she was given a chance to deny her immediate desires. Eve could demonstrate her love for God by trusting Him. God had earned her trust and love by giving her a perfect life and by being His good, true, and beautiful Self.

God wanted Adam and Eve to walk with Him and grow. He placed before them a choice to learn good and evil through resisting evil or through choosing evil. If they trusted and loved God, they would learn good and evil by choosing good. If Eve and her husband chose to disobey, then they would learn good and evil by choosing to do evil.

Taking what is not yours, just because you desire it, makes you a slave to your passions. Once that slavery begins no woman or man can escape it without help.

Eve stood before a tree and said “no” to God. She would do what seemed desirable and not what was rational or good. She followed her gut and denied her mind and heart and so all of us inherited a doomed nature.

We are psychologically broken and cannot live in the world as it is.

God still wanted unity with us and so He did not just start over and wipe humankind out. Eve made a bad choice, but God allowed that choice and all the implications of it. His work was difficult and required that He sacrifice Himself.

God became man so that man could become like God.

Eve chose badly, but later a second Eve, a young Jewish girl from Nazareth, would choose well. She would say “yes” to God and so generations would honor her decision. She acted against her immediate desires and did what was right. She learned goodness through the humility of obedience to sweet Reason and divine Love.

Eve made Mary a mother.

Mary gave Eve hope.

Mary would stand before a second tree after her choice, but the voice she heard was that of her Son and not that of serpent. Mary was not, fundamentally, blessed because she was Jesus mother, but because she heard His word and obeyed it.

Eve heard the word of God and chose to obey the word of a snake.

Mary lived in the snake’s Empire and chose to obey the word of God.

If Eve is your mother, you have inherited a cruel burden. You long for goodness, truth, and beauty, but you never see them really manifested and have no hope of ever seeing them. If Jesus becomes your brother, then you get a new family and there is the sure promise of seeing the Good, the Truth, and Beauty.

This is the hope and message of Advent and Christmas. Eve made it necessary, Mary made it possible, Jesus is it.

Climate Change Is Natural: 100 Reasons Why

Daily Express

HERE are the 100 reasons, released in a dossier issued by the European Foundation, why climate change is natural and not man-made:

1) There is “no real scientific proof” that the current warming is caused by the rise of greenhouse gases from man’s activity.

2) Man-made carbon dioxide emissions throughout human history constitute less than 0.00022 percent of the total naturally emitted from the mantle of the earth during geological history.

3) Warmer periods of the Earth’s history came around 800 years before rises in CO2 levels.

4) After World War II, there was a huge surge in recorded CO2 emissions but global temperatures fell for four decades after 1940.

5) Throughout the Earth’s history, temperatures have often been warmer than now and CO2 levels have often been higher – more than ten times as high.

6) Significant changes in climate have continually occurred throughout geologic time.

7) The 0.7C increase in the average global temperature over the last hundred years is entirely consistent with well-established, long-term, natural climate trends.

8) The IPCC theory is driven by just 60 scientists and favourable reviewers not the 4,000 usually cited.

9) Leaked e-mails from British climate scientists – in a scandal known as “Climate-gate” - suggest that that has been manipulated to exaggerate global warming

10) A large body of scientific research suggests that the sun is responsible for the greater share of climate change during the past hundred years.

11) Politicians and activiists claim rising sea levels are a direct cause of global warming but sea levels rates have been increasing steadily since the last ice age 10,000 ago

12) Philip Stott, Emeritus Professor of Biogeography at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London says climate change is too complicated to be caused by just one factor, whether CO2 or clouds

13) Peter Lilley MP said last month that “fewer people in Britain than in any other country believe in the importance of global warming. That is despite the fact that our Government and our political class—predominantly—are more committed to it than their counterparts in any other country in the world”.

14) In pursuit of the global warming rhetoric, wind farms will do very little to nothing to reduce CO2 emissions

15) Professor Plimer, Professor of Geology and Earth Sciences at the University of Adelaide, stated that the idea of taking a single trace gas in the atmosphere, accusing it and finding it guilty of total responsibility for climate change, is an “absurdity”

16) A Harvard University astrophysicist and geophysicist, Willie Soon, said he is “embarrassed and puzzled” by the shallow science in papers that support the proposition that the earth faces a climate crisis caused by global warming.

17) The science of what determines the earth’s temperature is in fact far from settled or understood.

18) Despite activist concerns over CO2 levels, CO2 is a minor greenhouse gas, unlike water vapour which is tied to climate concerns, and which we can’t even pretend to control

19) A petition by scientists trying to tell the world that the political and media portrayal of global warming is false was put forward in the Heidelberg Appeal in 1992. Today, more than 4,000 signatories, including 72 Nobel Prize winners, from 106 countries have signed it.

20) It is claimed the average global temperature increased at a dangerously fast rate in the 20th century but the recent rate of average global temperature rise has been between 1 and 2 degrees C per century - within natural rates

21) Professor Zbigniew Jaworowski, Chairman of the Scientific Council of the Central Laboratory for Radiological Protection in Warsaw, Poland says the earth’s temperature has more to do with cloud cover and water vapor than CO2 concentration in the atmosphere.

22) There is strong evidence from solar studies which suggests that the Earth’s current temperature stasis will be followed by climatic cooling over the next few decades

23) It is myth that receding glaciers are proof of global warming as glaciers have been receding and growing cyclically for many centuries

24) It is a falsehood that the earth’s poles are warming because that is natural variation and while the western Arctic may be getting somewhat warmer we also see that the Eastern Arctic and Greenland are getting colder

25) The IPCC claims climate driven “impacts on biodiversity are significant and of key relevance” but those claims are simply not supported by scientific research

26) The IPCC threat of climate change to the world’s species does not make sense as wild species are at least one million years old, which means they have all been through hundreds of climate cycles

27) Research goes strongly against claims that CO2-induced global warming would cause catastrophic disintegration of the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets.

28) Despite activist concerns over CO2 levels, rising CO2 levels are our best hope of raising crop yields to feed an ever-growing population

29) The biggest climate change ever experienced on earth took place around 700 million years ago

30) The slight increase in temperature which has been observed since 1900 is entirely consistent with well-established, long-term natural climate cycles

31) Despite activist concerns over CO2 levels, rising CO2 levels of some so-called “greenhouse gases” may be contributing to higher oxygen levels and global cooling, not warming

32) Accurate satellite, balloon and mountain top observations made over the last three decades have not shown any significant change in the long term rate of increase in global temperatures

33) Today’s CO2 concentration of around 385 ppm is very low compared to most of the earth’s history – we actually live in a carbon-deficient atmosphere

34) It is a myth that CO2 is the most common greenhouse gas because greenhouse gases form about 3% of the atmosphere by volume, and CO2 constitutes about 0.037% of the atmosphere

35) It is a myth that computer models verify that CO2 increases will cause significant global warming because computer models can be made to “verify” anything

36) There is no scientific or statistical evidence whatsoever that global warming will cause more storms and other weather extremes

37) One statement deleted from a UN report in 1996 stated that “none of the studies cited above has shown clear evidence that we can attribute the observed climate changes to increases in greenhouse gases”

38) The world “warmed” by 0.07 +/- 0.07 degrees C from 1999 to 2008, not the 0.20 degrees C expected by the IPCC

39) The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says “it is likely that future tropical cyclones (typhoons and hurricanes) will become more intense” but there has been no increase in the intensity or frequency of tropical cyclones globally

40) Rising CO2 levels in the atmosphere can be shown not only to have a negligible effect on the Earth’s many ecosystems, but in some cases to be a positive help to many organisms

41) Researchers who compare and contrast climate change impact on civilizations found warm periods are beneficial to mankind and cold periods harmful

42) The Met Office asserts we are in the hottest decade since records began but this is precisely what the world should expect if the climate is cyclical

43) Rising CO2 levels increase plant growth and make plants more resistant to drought and pests

44) The historical increase in the air’s CO2 content has improved human nutrition by raising crop yields during the past 150 years

45) The increase of the air’s CO2 content has probably helped lengthen human lifespans since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution

46) The IPCC alleges that “climate change currently contributes to the global burden of disease and premature deaths” but the evidence shows that higher temperatures and rising CO2 levels has helped global populations

47) In May of 2004, the Russian Academy of Sciences published a report concluding that the Kyoto Protocol has no scientific grounding at all.

48) The “Climate-gate” scandal pointed to a expensive public campaign of disinformation and the denigration of scientists who opposed the belief that CO2 emissions were causing climate change

49) The head of Britain’s climate change watchdog has predicted households will need to spend up to £15,000 on a full energy efficiency makeover if the Government is to meet its ambitious targets for cutting carbon emissions.

50) Wind power is unlikely to be the answer to our energy needs. The wind power industry argues that there are “no direct subsidies” but it involves a total subsidy of as much as £60 per MWh which falls directly on electricity consumers. This burden will grow in line with attempts to achieve Wind power targets, according to a recent OFGEM report.

51) Wind farms are not an efficient way to produce energy. The British Wind Energy Association (BWEA) accepts a figure of 75 per cent back-up power is required.

52) Global temperatures are below the low end of IPCC predictions not at “at the top end of IPCC estimates”

53) Climate alarmists have raised the concern over acidification of the oceans but Tom Segalstad from Oslo University in Norway , and others, have noted that the composition of ocean water – including CO2, calcium, and water – can act as a buffering agent in the acidification of the oceans.

54) The UN’s IPCC computer models of human-caused global warming predict the emergence of a “hotspot” in the upper troposphere over the tropics. Former researcher in the Australian Department of Climate Change, David Evans, said there is no evidence of such a hotspot

55) The argument that climate change is a of result of global warming caused by human activity is the argument of flat Earthers.

56) The manner in which US President Barack Obama sidestepped Congress to order emission cuts shows how undemocratic and irrational the entire international decision-making process has become with regards to emission-target setting.

57) William Kininmonth, a former head of the National Climate Centre and a consultant to the World Meteorological Organisation, wrote “the likely extent of global temperature rise from a doubling of CO2 is less than 1C. Such warming is well within the envelope of variation experienced during the past 10,000 years and insignificant in the context of glacial cycles during the past million years, when Earth has been predominantly very cold and covered by extensive ice sheets.”

58) Canada has shown the world targets derived from the existing Kyoto commitments were always unrealistic and did not work for the country.

59) In the lead up to the Copenhagen summit, David Davis MP said of previous climate summits, at Rio de Janeiro in 1992 and Kyoto in 1997 that many had promised greater cuts, but “neither happened”, but we are continuing along the same lines.

60) The UK ’s environmental policy has a long-term price tag of about £55 billion, before taking into account the impact on its economic growth.

61) The UN’s panel on climate change warned that Himalayan glaciers could melt to a fifth of current levels by 2035. J. Graham Cogley a professor at Ontario Trent University, claims this inaccurate stating the UN authors got the date from an earlier report wrong by more than 300 years.

62) Under existing Kyoto obligations the EU has attempted to claim success, while actually increasing emissions by 13 per cent, according to Lord Lawson. In addition the EU has pursued this scheme by purchasing “offsets” from countries such as China paying them billions of dollars to destroy atmospheric pollutants, such as CFC-23, which were manufactured purely in order to be destroyed.

63) It is claimed that the average global temperature was relatively unchanging in pre-industrial times but sky-rocketed since 1900, and will increase by several degrees more over the next 100 years according to Penn State University researcher Michael Mann. There is no convincing empirical evidence that past climate was unchanging, nor that 20th century changes in average global temperature were unusual or unnatural.

64) Michael Mann of Penn State University has actually shown that the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age did in fact exist, which contrasts with his earlier work which produced the “hockey stick graph” which showed a constant temperature over the past thousand years or so followed by a recent dramatic upturn.

65) The globe’s current approach to climate change in which major industrialised countries agree to nonsensical targets for their CO2 emissions by a given date, as it has been under the Kyoto system, is very expensive.

66) The “Climate-gate” scandal revealed that a scientific team had emailed one another about using a “trick” for the sake of concealing a “decline” in temperatures when looking at the history of the Earth’s temperature.

67) Global temperatures have not risen in any statistically-significant sense for 15 years and have actually been falling for nine years. The “Climate-gate” scandal revealed a scientific team had expressed dismay at the fact global warming was contrary to their predictions and admitted their inability to explain it was “a travesty”.

68) The IPCC predicts that a warmer planet will lead to more extreme weather, including drought, flooding, storms, snow, and wildfires. But over the last century, during which the IPCC claims the world experienced more rapid warming than any time in the past two millennia, the world did not experience significantly greater trends in any of these extreme weather events.

69) In explaining the average temperature standstill we are currently experiencing, the Met Office Hadley Centre ran a series of computer climate predictions and found in many of the computer runs there were decade-long standstills but none for 15 years – so it expects global warming to resume swiftly.

70) Richard Lindzen, Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, wrote: “The notion of a static, unchanging climate is foreign to the history of the Earth or any other planet with a fluid envelope. Such hysteria (over global warming) simply represents the scientific illiteracy of much of the public, the susceptibility of the public to the substitution of repetition for truth.”

71) Despite the 1997 Kyoto Protocol’s status as the flagship of the fight against climate change it has been a failure.

72) The first phase of the EU’s Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), which ran from 2005 to 2007 was a failure. Huge over-allocation of permits to pollute led to a collapse in the price of carbon from €33 to just €0.20 per tonne meaning the system did not reduce emissions at all.

73) The EU trading scheme, to manage carbon emissions has completely failed and actually allows European businesses to duck out of making their emissions reductions at home by offsetting, which means paying for cuts to be made overseas instead.

74) To date “cap and trade” carbon markets have done almost nothing to reduce emissions.

75) In the United States , the cap-and-trade is an approach designed to control carbon emissions and will impose huge costs upon American citizens via a carbon tax on all goods and services produced in the United States. The average family of four can expect to pay an additional $1700, or £1,043, more each year. It is predicted that the United States will lose more than 2 million jobs as the result of cap-and-trade schemes.

76) Dr Roy Spencer, a principal research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, has indicated that out of the 21 climate models tracked by the IPCC the differences in warming exhibited by those models is mostly the result of different strengths of positive cloud feedback – and that increasing CO2 is insufficient to explain global-average warming in the last 50 to 100 years.

77) Why should politicians devote our scarce resources in a globally competitive world to a false and ill-defined problem, while ignoring the real problems the entire planet faces, such as: poverty, hunger, disease or terrorism.

78) A proper analysis of ice core records from the past 650,000 years demonstrates that temperature increases have come before, and not resulted from, increases in CO2 by hundreds of years.

79) Since the cause of global warming is mostly natural, then there is in actual fact very little we can do about it. (We are still not able to control the sun).

80) A substantial number of the panel of 2,500 climate scientists on the United Nation’s International Panel on Climate Change, which created a statement on scientific unanimity on climate change and man-made global warming, were found to have serious concerns.

81) The UK’s Met Office has been forced this year to re-examine 160 years of temperature data after admitting that public confidence in the science on man-made global warming has been shattered by revelations about the data.

82) Politicians and activists push for renewable energy sources such as wind turbines under the rhetoric of climate change, but it is essentially about money – under the system of Renewable Obligations. Much of the money is paid for by consumers in electricity bills. It amounts to £1 billion a year.

83) The “Climate-gate” scandal revealed that a scientific team had tampered with their own data so as to conceal inconsistencies and errors.

84) The “Climate-gate” scandal revealed that a scientific team had campaigned for the removal of a learned journal’s editor, solely because he did not share their willingness to debase science for political purposes.

85) Ice-core data clearly show that temperatures change centuries before concentrations of atmospheric CO2 change. Thus, there appears to be little evidence for insisting that changes in concentrations of CO2 are the cause of past temperature and climate change.

86) There are no experimentally verified processes explaining how CO2 concentrations can fall in a few centuries without falling temperatures – in fact it is changing temperatures which cause changes in CO2 concentrations, which is consistent with experiments that show CO2 is the atmospheric gas most readily absorbed by water.

87) The Government’s Renewable Energy Strategy contains a massive increase in electricity generation by wind power costing around £4 billion a year over the next twenty years. The benefits will be only £4 to £5 billion overall (not per annum). So costs will outnumber benefits by a range of between eleven and seventeen times.

88) Whilst CO2 levels have indeed changed for various reasons, human and otherwise, just as they have throughout history, the CO2 content of the atmosphere has increased since the beginning of the industrial revolution, and the growth rate has now been constant for the past 25 years.

89) It is a myth that CO2 is a pollutant, because nitrogen forms 80% of our atmosphere and human beings could not live in 100% nitrogen either: CO2 is no more a pollutant than nitrogen is and CO2 is essential to life.

90) Politicians and climate activists make claims to rising sea levels but certain members in the IPCC chose an area to measure in Hong Kong that is subsiding. They used the record reading of 2.3 mm per year rise of sea level.

91) The accepted global average temperature statistics used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change show that no ground-based warming has occurred since 1998.

92) If one factors in non-greenhouse influences such as El Nino events and large volcanic eruptions, lower atmosphere satellite-based temperature measurements show little, if any, global warming since 1979, a period over which atmospheric CO2 has increased by 55 ppm (17 per cent).

93) US President Barack Obama pledged to cut emissions by 2050 to equal those of 1910 when there were 92 million Americans. In 2050, there will be 420 million Americans, so Obama’s promise means that emissions per head will be approximately what they were in 1875. It simply will not happen.

94) The European Union has already agreed to cut emissions by 20 percent to 2020, compared with 1990 levels, and is willing to increase the target to 30 percent. However, these are unachievable and the EU has already massively failed with its Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), as EU emissions actually rose by 0.8 percent from 2005 to 2006 and are known to be well above the Kyoto goal.

95) Australia has stated it wants to slash greenhouse emissions by up to 25 percent below 2000 levels by 2020, but the pledges were so unpopular that the country’s Senate has voted against the carbon trading Bill, and the Opposition’s Party leader has now been ousted by a climate change sceptic.

96) Canada plans to reduce emissions by 20 percent compared with 2006 levels by 2020, representing approximately a 3 percent cut from 1990 levels but it simultaneously defends its Alberta tar sands emissions and its record as one of the world’s highest per-capita emissions setters.

97) India plans to reduce the ratio of emissions to production by 20-25 percent compared with 2005 levels by 2020, but all Government officials insist that since India has to grow for its development and poverty alleviation, it has to emit, because the economy is driven by carbon.

98) The Leipzig Declaration in 1996, was signed by 110 scientists who said: “We – along with many of our fellow citizens – are apprehensive about the climate treaty conference scheduled for Kyoto, Japan, in December 1997” and “based on all the evidence available to us, we cannot subscribe to the politically inspired world view that envisages climate catastrophes and calls for hasty actions.”

99) A US Oregon Petition Project stated “We urge the United States government to reject the global warming agreement that was written in Kyoto, Japan in December, 1997, and any other similar proposals. The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind. There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of CO2, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate.”

100) A report by the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change concluded “We find no support for the IPCC’s claim that climate observations during the twentieth century are either unprecedented or provide evidence of an anthropogenic effect on climate.”

R.W. Dale on the Trinity

By Fred Sanders
Scriptorium Daily

Today (December 1) is the birthday of R. W. Dale (1829 – 1895), a British Congregationalist pastor and writer. Dale is best remembered for his conservatizing essay on the atonement, and for his commitment to social work in applying what he called “the civic gospel” to Birmingham, England.

Dale also wrote a brief systematic theology, entitled Christian Doctrine: A Series of Discourses (1894), and it includes a very helpful account of the doctrine of the Trinity. Dale approached the doctrine almost apologetically, for though he was committed to it, he hoped to win over some of the nonconformist clergy who had become all too comfortable with unitarian views. So he presented the doctrine of the Trinity with great candor, and commended it warmly, even taking the high-risk strategy of emphasizing the biblical and experiential truths that trinitarians and unitarians have in common.

“These great truths do not rest merely on authority, but have been confirmed in the experience of Christian men in all countries and all ages,” he argued. The doctrine of the Trinity is about facts:

In its substance it is not a merely speculative docrine; it is a brief summary of those great facts which through eighteen hundred years have revealed their power and glory in the moral and spiritual life of the Christian Church. It is a declaration that in the Lord Jesus Christ, heaven and earth have been brought together; that, in Him a divine Person became man; that having found Christ, we have found God; that ‘He is the same yesterday, and to-day, yea, and for ever,’ Son of God, Son of man, the Lord, the Saviour, the Brother of our race. It is a declaration that the great ‘Advocate,’ who now sustains the life of the Chruch, leads it into all the truth, directs its activity, and consoles its sorrows, is a divine Person whose ‘coming’ has brought with it such transcendent grace as more than to compensate for the withdrawal from the world of our Lord’s visible presence and His return to the Father.

Dale immediately goes on to admit that although the true interpretation of what happened in Christ is that an eternally triune God revealed himself, nevertheless other interpretations of the events are possible:

It may, indeed, be contended that one and the same Person has manifested Himself as Father, Son, and Spirit; and that, therefore, it is possible to believe in the divine glory of our Lord and in the personal solicitude of the divine Spirit for the life and perfection of the Church without believing in the Trinity. I rejoice to acknowledge that the substance of some great truths is recevied by many who find insuperable difficulties in the traditional definitions of them. If you love and obey and trust and worship the Lord Jesus Christ as a divine Person; if you shrink from sin lest you should ‘grieve’ the Holy Spirit, if His care for you and His patience with you fill your heart with courage and gratitude; and if you believe, at the same time, that the Son and the Spirit are one with the Eternal Father, your life is rooted in the facts which the doctrine of the Trinity is intended to express, although you may be unable to accept the Trinitarian creed.

“Your life is rooted in the facts,” he says to those who believe less than he does, “although you may be unable to accept the Trinitarian creed.”

Dale then presses some biblical evidence: Jesus prayed to the Father, and this makes it very difficult to interpret his life as the revelation of a unipersonal God. If God is one person, who was the incarnate Son talking to? “It is clear that He Himself was not the Father but Another… The relations between Father, Son, and Spirit are analoguous to those which exist between different persons; they are not analogous to the relations which exist between different forms of the activity of the same person.”

“The immediate question with which we have to deal,” he says, is “whether in the Incarnation of our Lord and in the ‘coming’ of the Spirit and His permanent activity in the Church and in the world there is a revelation of the inner and eternal life of God.”

Have we the right to assume that the historic manifestation of God to our race discloses anything of God’s own eternal being? But this is really to ask whether the revelation of God really reveals God –shows us what God is– manifests His ‘eternal life.’ It is to ask whether when we have seen Christ, and seen Him in His relations to the Father, we have seen the ‘Truth.’ To those who have been filled with wonder by the glory of Christ, and have known the power of His redemption, the answer to this question cannot be uncertain. Wherever else we may be surrounded by illusions, we are in contact with eternal realities when we are in the presence of Christ. We are sure that in Him God is relly revealed, and that the relations between Him and the Father have their ground in the life of the Eternal. The mystery of that life remains impenetrable; but the Incarnation reveals the truth that the eternal life of God has not been an awful loneliness; that in some wonderful sense the Father has always been the Father, and the Son the Son. And the revealed relations of the Spirit to both Father and Son have also their eternal ground in the Godhead; they did not originate in order that God’s mercy might achieve our redemption; they are revealed in the great acts by which redemption is achieved; that they are revealed implies that they already existed.

Dale has a firm grasp of the way redemption and revelation belong together in the doctrine of the Trinity. God saved us in a way that revealed who he is: Eternal Father, Eternal Son, and Eternal Spirit.

Muslim Fighters

By John Mark Reynolds
Scriptorium Daily

In the late twentieth-century certain secularists had to be banned from service in the armed forces. These men and women had committed themselves to communism and their loyalty was incompatible with the oath they swore to defend the United States.

The problem with these secularists was not that they put their individual conscience above loyalty to the state. It is an American tradition to limit the amount of loyalty we owe the government. We love our nation, but not more than anything. Our pledge of allegiance was even given a disqualifier during the Cold War to make this clear. We are one nation, under God.

During the Cold War, a secularist willing to go along with the general rules of the republic was fit to serve even with views most Americans found wrong-headed. Secularism, like any sensible religious or philosophical point of view, limited their loyalty to the state to the demands of reason, but secularism was a disqualifier if the individual secularist had already decided to side with the declared enemies of the United States.

One can marvel at the boldness, though not admire the morality or wisdom, of an American who sides with the Soviet Union, but need not give that man a commission in the Armed Forces of the United States.

In the same way, Christians serve Christ before they bow the knee to Caesar. It is God and then country, but there is nothing new in that. One reason, in fact, that American Christians traditionally have favored small government is that it minimizes the chances of moral conflict.

If there was a group of Christians who hated our republic and decided to undermine the Constitution, then these Christians could not serve. They are citizens still, protected by their freedom of religion and of speech, but they should not be armed by the state. Fortunately, such people have been very rare in more than two hundred years of American history.

All religious and non-religious groups can and must be treated the same way. It would be frightening to have citizen soldiers who placed the fatherland uber alles, but we must not have soldiers who have already decided our present mission is intolerable and who have sided with our foes.

It is not, therefore, un-American or disturbing that our fellow Muslim citizens place loyalty to God before loyalty to the state. In fact, it is a very American thing to do!

The same sensible guidelines must apply, however, to Islamic soldiers as apply to secularists and Christians. The armed forces of the United States should make every effort to accommodate religious or cultural practices when they are compatible with the mission. Failure to do so denies our most basic ideals. It is why the armed forces has chaplains of all faiths and of no faith and should continue this wise practice.

We know the bad results produced by failure to accommodate difference or reacting out of fear and not reason. Sadly, during the Second World War, Americans of Japanese ancestry were treated in a shameful way. Though some were allowed to serve in the armed forces and fought bravely, citizens were also denied civil rights and sent to relocation camps. This wicked overreaction was based on fears of a tiny minority of Japanese-Americans who might have been more loyal to Japanese ideals than to America.

In our present situation it is not irrational to believe that some Muslim-Americans may be hostile to the United States, but we must not overreact. Simultaneously, we must not refuse to deal with clear and present danger out of some over-developed sensitivity. The Fort Hood traitor appears to be an example of a man allowed to serve who should have been expelled.

It is stupid to pretend that there are not millions of Islamic people, including a few in the United States, who have embraced a twisted form of Islam utterly incompatible with the values of our republic. If one believes that Islamic courts, for example, should be imposed on this nation, then his views make him unfit to serve. If he sides with our enemies, the terrorists, in the war in which we are engaged, his views make him unfit to serve.

He may remain a citizen with all the rights to freedom of speech, but it is foolish to give him training in and use of a gun. Of course, even traitors remain human beings and so they must be treated with the dignity that God has given to each man. They cannot be tortured and they must be given a fair trial.

Muslim citizens have been and are loyal members of this nation. They have served capably in the past and will do so in the future. Sadly, just as was the case with secularists during the Cold War, they will have to endure increased scrutiny since a substantial minority of their fellows has turned against American values.

This time will pass, and if the United States has dealt justly with her Islamic citizens we will be able to look back on this period with pride.

Tu Quoque: On Islam and the Crusades

By Ibn Warraq
City Journal

Often, when I am criticizing crimes inspired by Islamic extremism, I am interrupted by the remark that Christianity was once culpable of similar abuses. That Christianity may have been intolerant in the past, however, does not make criticisms of Islam’s present-day intolerance any less valid. Also, Islamic intolerance is an immediate danger, whereas Christian intolerance is generally a historical phenomenon and no longer a threat to civilization. And Christendom’s crimes were recorded by Christians themselves—a stark contrast to our politically correct climate, in which many, especially Muslims, are reluctant to criticize Islam.

Still, one might point out Christianity’s historical shortcomings in order to avoid demonizing Islam alone. But this principle should work both ways: we should also avoid demonizing Christianity and be prepared to point out Islam’s shortcomings. In December 2008, Boris Johnson, mayor of London, presented a biased BBC program on the Crusades that laid the blame for them entirely on Christians. The program pointed out that after expelling the Moors from Spain, Christians converted a mosque into a church—an act of “vandalism.” However, it failed to note that the Crusades were a reaction against over 300 years of jihad and persecution of Eastern Christians, during which Muslims destroyed hundreds of churches and converted many others into mosques, including the magnificent Byzantine church Hagia Sophia.

Consider the situation in the Holy Land 100 years before Pope Urban II’s call in 1095 for a crusade to liberate it. It was part of the territory ruled by the Fatimid Caliph al-Hakim, whose cruelties Christian and Muslim historians alike recorded. Fourteenth-century historian Ibn al-Dawadari tells us that al-Hakim destroyed the Church of Saint Mark in al-Fustat, Egypt (on the outskirts of modern-day Cairo), which Christians had built in defiance of a law forbidding new church construction. The al-Rashida mosque arose not only over the ruins of Saint Mark’s but also over Jewish and Christian cemeteries, surely an act of vandalism. But the height of al-Hakim’s cruelties was the destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which, according to Muslim sources, began in September 1007. Also known as the Church of the Resurrection, this was possibly the most revered shrine in Christendom—considered not only Golgotha (or Calvary), where the New Testament says that Jesus was crucified, but also the place where he was buried and hence the site of the Resurrection. According to historian Moshe Gil, al-Hakim ordered that the Church of the Resurrection be torn down “to its very foundations, apart from what could not be destroyed or pulled up, and they also destroyed the Golgotha and the Church of Saint Constantine and all that they contained, as well as all the sacred gravestones. They even tried to dig up the graves and wipe out all traces of their existence.”

A new generation of Western medieval scholars has tried to rectify misconceptions about the Crusades. Historian Jonathan Riley-Smith has pointed out that “modern Western public opinion, Arab nationalism, and Pan-Islamism all share perceptions of crusading that have more to do with nineteenth-century European imperialism than with actuality.” Muslims, in particular, have developed what Riley-Smith calls “mythistories” concerning the putative injuries that they received at the crusaders’ hands. This is not to deny, of course, that the crusaders were responsible for outrages, including what is sometimes called the First Holocaust—the massacres of Jews that began in Worms on May 18, 1096, and continued into Mainz, where the Jewish community, one of the largest in Europe, was decimated. It is rather to say that the Crusades are misunderstood on multiple levels.

For one thing, they were not exclusively concerned with combating Islam. Pagan Wends, Balts, and Lithuanians; shamanist Mongols; Orthodox Russians and Greeks; Cathar and Hussite heretics; and those Catholics whom the Church perceived as its enemies—all were targets of the broader mission to extirpate heresy.

Nor were the Crusades “thoughtless explosions of barbarism,” as Riley-Smith accurately characterizes their reputation today. They had a sophisticated underlying rationale, elaborated theologically by Christian nations threatened by Muslim invaders who had managed to reach into the heart of Europe—from central France in the eighth century to Vienna in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. They were a response to the desecration of Christian shrines in the Holy Land, the destruction of churches there, and the general persecution of Christians in the Near East. A Crusade had to fulfill strict criteria for the Church to consider it legitimate and just. It had to be waged for purposes of repelling violence or injury, with the goal of imposing justice on wrongdoers. A Crusade was not to be a war of conversion but rather a rightful attempt to recover unjustly seized Christian territory. And only a recognized church authority like the pope could call for one.

Most crusaders would have laughed at the prospect of material gain. In fact, crusading became a financial burden as the costs of warfare increased. The Crusades were far more concerned with saving not only Christendom from Islam, but also the souls of the crusaders themselves. Many believed that, by taking part, they would redeem their sinfulness.

It’s commonly believed today that modern Muslims have inherited from their medieval ancestors memories of crusader violence and destruction. But nothing could be further from the truth. By the fourteenth century in the Islamic world, the Crusades had almost passed out of mind. Muslims had lost interest, and, in any case, they saw themselves as the victors. The Muslim world did not renew its interest in the Crusades until the 1890s, but now it saw them through a Western prism. Western imperialist rhetoric, infused with a tendentious reading of crusader history, gave Muslims the false idea of a continuing Western assault, while the novels of Sir Walter Scott encouraged the myth of the culturally inferior crusaders confronting civilized, liberal, and modern-thinking Muslims. Many Arab nationalists believed “their struggle for independence to be a predominantly Arab riposte to a crusade that was being waged against them,” as Riley-Smith notes. “Since the 1970s, however, they have been challenged by a renewed and militant Pan-Islamism, the adherents of which have globalized the Nationalist interpretation of crusade history.”

Thus the spectacle of modern Islamists invoking the Crusades. As Osama bin Laden wrote: “For the first time, the crusaders have managed to achieve their historic ambitions and dreams against our Islamic umma, gaining control over the Islamic holy places and the Holy Sanctuaries, and hegemony over the wealth and riches of our umma.” The battle, according to bin Laden, is between the people of Islam and the global crusaders.

In trying to make sense of their humiliation under Western imperialist powers, aggrieved Muslims have come upon an ingenious but false interpretation of history that sees their nineteenth- and twentieth-century exploitation as a continuation of the medieval Crusades. Such a reworking of history enables them to cast contemporary events, such as the war in Afghanistan and the American presence in Iraq, in an anti-Western light, making the West and the Crusades a convenient scapegoat for the shame and dishonor that Muslims have experienced for decades. Their distorted reading of history gives Islamists both a cause for grievance and a justification for their sense of superiority—since Muslims did, after all, succeed in expelling the infidels from Islamic lands.

Ibn Warraq is a senior fellow at the Center for Inquiry Transnational and the author of five books on Islam and Koranic criticism, including Why I Am Not a Muslim.