Tag Archives: Christian

Commentary

Christian homeschooling mom recommends teaching kids to think through policies

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Here is a neat post from Lydia McGrew, Ph.D, a homeschooling mom.

Excerpt:

As we Protestant conservatives view with great dismay what seems to us the hair-tearing foolishness of a new generation of young, “emergent” evangelicals spouting the platitudes of the left and getting their priorities all messed up, either abandoning or downplaying the pro-life movement, voting Democrat, and embracing left-wing economics, we need to think of something that cannot be said too often: What the left wants is not what is best for the poor, the weak, the little guy. In fact, we can sometimes even go farther: The left does not want what is best for the poor and the weak. Viz. the Obama administration’s willingness to shut down Catholic hospitals, Catholic charities, and anyone else who won’t toe the line on his HHS mandate. Viz. the Obama administration’s cutting off the Catholic bishops’ funding for anti-trafficking, because they wouldn’t refer for abortions. Viz. the left’s shut-down of adoption agencies that won’t place children with homosexual couples. The list goes on and on.

And there is more: The actual economic policies advocated by the left mean fewer jobs, higher prices, and small businesses pushed out by high regulatory costs, all of which is very bad for the people who need jobs the most. We’re seeing this right now with the economic burden of Obamacare, but that’s only one example. The actual environmental policies advocated by the left are radically anti-human and will result in grave economic harm both to our own country and, even more, to developing countries. I have just been reading a book I hope to write more about later, Merchants of Despair by Robert Zubrin. In it he chronicles case after case after case of leftist policies that have harmed the poorest of the poor in Third-World countries, from coercive population control to crackdowns forcing Third-World countries to eschew the advantages of more nutritious modified grains.

When our young people are growing up we Christians and conservatives often teach them biblical principles, and that is very good. But we also need to teach them economic principles. We need to teach them that there is no free lunch. We need to have them read books like Zubrin’s and like Thomas Sowell’s The Vision of the Anointed. We need to talk through with them the ways that policies that sound oh-so-kind to “make things free” or “force employers to pay more” or “give health insurance to everyone” actually harm the people they are meant to help. We need to expose to them the viciously anti-human underside of the environmental movement, as well as its empirical fecklessness.

This one is a must-read! Please click through and read the whole thing, especially if you have Christian children.

Lydia’s group blog “What’s Wrong With the World?” is also good reading.

Videos

Jay Richards: what should Christians think about global warming?

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Here’s a lecture Jay Richards did for the Acton Institue.

And here is a related article from Boundless.

Excerpt:

The big environmental issue nowadays is global warming. Anyone who watches or reads the news even occasionally has been told that humans are causing global warming through all the fossil fuels we’re burning. They’ve also been told that this warming process eventually will prove catastrophic if we don’t reverse course as soon as possible.

As thinking Christians and good stewards, how should we respond?

The short answer is, we should respond thoughtfully. Thoughtless stewards are rarely good stewards.

Notice that my brief summary of the global warming controversy bundled together several distinct claims. To think clearly about this issue, we have to tease apart this bundle of claims and consider each one. For each claim, there is a corresponding question we need to answer. And it’s only after answering these questions that we can be in a position to determine what, if anything, we ought to do about global warming.

Here are the four central questions:

  1. Is the earth warming?
  2. If the earth is warming, is human activity (like carbon dioxide emissions) causing it?
  3. If the earth is warming, and we’re causing it, is that bad overall?
  4. If the earth is warming, we’re causing it, and that’s bad, would any of the proposed “solutions” (e.g., the Kyoto Protocol, legislative restrictions on carbon dioxide emissions) make any difference?

It’s important for us to think carefully about how best to achieve the goals set out by the Bible. And that means undertaking a close study of how the world works and how best to affect change for the good.

News

UK judge rules that Christians can be forced to work on Sundays

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Dina sent me this article by Christina Odone from the UK Telegraph.

Excerpt:

I’m scared that was the last Christmas we celebrated with a church service. The High Court ruled last week that Sunday is not a core part of a Christian’s belief; next, they’ll decide that Christmas is not, either. Mr Justice Langstaff has decided that a Baptist who works in a care home can be forced by her employers to work through Sunday too. This, even though her colleagues were happy to take Celestina Mba’s Sunday shift so she could do what all devout Christians do on a Sunday – go to church.

It didn’t matter that no one was complaining about Celestina Mba’s Sunday observance; her employers, Labour-led Merton Council, wanted her to drop her religious obligations. They’d decide what she was to do on the Sabbath day – not some dusty Bible. God? Who’s He? The Fourth Commandment? What’s that?

Christians like Celestina Mba had better take note: they live in an environment so hostile to Christians that any show of allegiance to this religion will get them into trouble. Don’t wear crucifixes, don’t pray for a patient, don’t try to foster a child: practising Christians are now barred from any of these activities. This, even though the majority of Britons still count themselves as Christians.

The clash of Christians and a newly strident secular establishment has become an everyday story: a cultural civil war that constantly claims Christian victims. Lawyers, and judges like Mr Justice Langstaff, have shown themselves, again and again, to stand on the side of the secularists. I still smart at the memory of the Law Society refusing to host a conference on the virtues of heterosexual marriage. Incredibly, this kind of censorship is allowed to go on under a Tory PM who himself claims allegiance to the majority Church.

In the UK, it seems like a common practice to use “lawfare” in order to coerce behavior. They use the nuclear option against individual Christians and conservatives in order to send a message to all. The message is that the government has a right to silence anyone who makes the secular left feel “offended”. The state is telling Christians and conservatives that it’s easier to go along with secularism and socialism just to get by. Even if you win your case, you will have to pay and pay legal costs to win it. Don’t try to be a hero, because if you do, we will get you.

You can even see this being done when law-abiding citizens defend themselves and get prosecuted for it. The message then is similar – don’t scare or offend criminals by deterring them with weapons.

Who would live in such a society?