News

Tea party voters are pleased with John Boehner’s deal

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Boehner's deal pleases the Tea Party
Boehner's deal pleases the Tea Party

From the liberal Washington Post.

Excerpt:

A majority of Republicans who agree with the tea party movement give House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) positive reviews for his role in debt negotiations in a new Washington Post-Pew Research Center poll. The speaker’s high marks represent a crucial link between the highly energized political movement and the Republican establishment as attention pivots back to the 2012 election cycle.

[…]After Republicans cut a deal on Sunday reducing the deficit with spending cuts alone – a key GOP and tea party priority – there is little doubt that the tea party movement has emerged as a powerful and sustained force in national politics.

[…]Tea party Republicans are significantly more tuned in than others to the 2012 presidential contest, according to another survey. Overall, more than eight in 10 are closely following the campaign, said the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll. Some 42 percent of Republicans who strongly support the tea party said they’re following it “very closely,” roughly twice the number of Democrats (17 percent), independents (19 percent) and Republicans overall (21 percent) who say so.

Tea party Republicans make up nearly one-quarter of registered voters in swing states. While tea party Republicans make up 17 percent of registered voters in states that favored Obama by 10 points or more according to June and July Post-ABC polls, they make up 23 percent of voters in states decided by single digit margins. That’s identical to the 23 percent of voters in heavily McCain states who identify as tea party Republicans.

Elections matter. Make sure you start engaging your friends now.

Commentary

Does loving your neighbor require that you agree with them?

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From apologist Jonathan Morrow.

Excerpt:

We live in an interesting, ever-changing, and challenging day. As Christians, learning to navigate such a reality can be very confusing and intimidating. In one of Jesus’ central teachings, he commands us to love our neighbor (cf. Mark 12:31). And while we can and should often do this by meeting physical needs, there is another vital, but often overlooked, application of this passage. We need to stand up for the possibility of truth. We need to protect the endangered species of honest disagreement concerning the nature of reality. Today a not so subtle battle is raging from newspapers columns to college classrooms concerning the nature of tolerance. There are 2 competing definitions:

  • False Tolerance: We can make no judgments at all about the truth of others’ beliefs.
  • True Tolerance: We allow others the freedom to hold beliefs which we judge to be false.

If we cannot tell our neighbors or ourselves the truth about reality, then we cannot really love them. Because love involves seeking another’s highest good, and goodness is anchored in reality (after all, the truth sets us free). We must fight the false tolerance that seeks to intellectually bully our culture into agreeing that every viewpoint (especially when it comes to religion and morality) is equally valid. We must speak up in love for the possibility of truth. Loving our neighbor requires this.

Loving someone doesn’t mean telling them lies to make them feel good so that they will like you and you will feel good. That’s not love, that’s selfishness.

Commentary

Clay Jones: why does God allow suffering?

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From apologist Clay Jones. (H/T Apologetics 315)

Excerpt:

Since I teach on why God allows evil, I often talk about Job. I have learned that many Christians have missed a major lesson of that book, if not the major lesson. Although many rightly conclude from Job that we should be humble when it comes to why God allows this or that suffering, there is something else amazing found in the book’s beginning.

In the first chapter we learn that Job is the wealthiest man in the world, renowned, and that he worships God.

But then we are told of a great contest in Heaven.

One day the angels presented themselves before the Lord and Satan came along with them and the Lord asked Satan:

“Have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil?” Then Satan answered the LORD and said, “Does Job fear God for no reason? Have you not put a hedge around him and his house and all that he has, on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land. But stretch out your hand and touch all that he has, and he will curse you to your face.” (Job 1:8-11)

Here Satan contends that Job only serves God because God has given Job everything Job wants and that If God didn’t give Job what he wanted then Job would rebel.

Well, the Lord tells Satan that Satan can destroy all the things Job enjoys. Soon disaster kills his family, marauders steal his possessions, Satan afflicts him with boils, and Job’s wife tells him to “curse God and die.”

And here’s the question I ask my students: “what was the only thing that Job had to do to humiliate Satan in front of God and all God’s servants?”

Read the whole thing to get the answer.