About ten years ago I heard Ben Patterson, campus pastor of Westmont College, say something that I will never forget. Ben told the story of a retired pastor who began noticing that his former congregation was sliding away from orthodoxy. The pastor saw this as his fault, noting the one thing he thought he did most poorly as a pastor. The pastor stated, in two sentences, his great failure as a pastor:
I always told people what to believe. My great mistake is that I never told my people what NOT to believe.
It’s possible to be so “biblical” that we’re unbiblical.
I’m referring to pastors, churches, and individual Christians who say, “we’re sticking to the Bible, and we don’t ever need to study anything but the Bible.” The great men and women of the Bible didn’t say that. They didn’t just preach in support of God’s truth. They knew the lies that were current in their cultures, they named those lies—with very contemporary examples—and they exposed what was false about them. When Isaiah ripped apart idol worship so sarcastically in Isaiah 44:9-20, he knew what he was talking about. So those who only study the Bible are failing to follow its example!
I think the reason for this is because the church is so focused on providing a happy music show every week, so that people can feel happy and affirmed, that they would never want to be negative and exclusive. That might make the people in the audience feel offended or excluded. That’s why pastors never set up Christianity as being true in distinction to other views that are false. And pastors surely would not appeal to external evidence from science and history – that might make people who don’t know any science and history feel bad, and spoil their happy feelings. It seems to me that pastors need to get back into the habit of connecting the Christian to real life. False ideas are harmful, and the pastor’s job is to stand up to wolves that might harm his flock – not to ignore the wolves. A very good place to start would be in the area of capitalism and taxation, or maybe in the area of sexual ethics and marriage.
LARA CARTER has slept with 20 strangers in the past year – in a desperate and reckless bid to get pregnant.
[…]Lara, an assistant office manager, says: “This is absolutely the right time for me to have a baby and nothing is going to stand in my way.
“All my friends have babies and I desperately want to be a mum.
“I don’t have a steady boyfriend and feel my time to have a baby is running out. I only need a man to provide his sperm – I would have no interest in seeing him again. That is why I’m a sperm hunter.”
Her obsession with getting pregnant started a year ago, when she attended the birth of a friend’s baby.
She says: “The moment I saw my friend hold her newborn child, I had a huge desire to feel that love too.
[…]She says: “First, I check if I’m ovulating… I meet some friends at a bar and instantly start looking for potential sperm donors.
“When I find a potential sperm donor, I get their first name and ask if they have any STDs. If they haven’t and we end up spending the night together, I’ll sneak out in the morning.
“When I don’t want to spend the whole night with a man, I’ll get the deed over and done with before I go home. I’ve had sex in some unusual places, including a car and even nightclub toilets.
“Obviously, I encourage them to have unprotected sex, but some men want to use a condom.
“If they do, I always have one that I have pre-pricked in my handbag. That way the sex isn’t a waste of time.”
[…]Most people are very honest when asked if they have an STD. I trust my instincts.”
Lara has already spent hundreds of pounds on baby clothes.
She says: “Whenever I see a lovely baby outfit, I have to buy it for my future child.
“I’ve also chosen the names my children will have. They will be Tilly and James or Matthew. I also take pregnancy vitamins, even though they are expensive.
Lara admits her yearning for a baby is made worse by her circle of 20 close female friends – 17 of them have had children.
She says: “I look at my friends with envy and know I would make such a good mum. They know about my quest to be a mother and support what I’m doing.
“However, I haven’t told my family, and am worried about their reaction. I’m happy to be a single mother and I wouldn’t want anything to do with the father.
“My parents are still together, so I didn’t grow up in a single-parent family, but plenty of people do it these days. I have plenty of savings to give a baby a loving, well-rounded home and lots of friends close by who can babysit. I have it all planned out.”
She adds: “When I do get pregnant after a one-night stand, I won’t contact the father… I want a baby, not a man.
Single mother Tracey Turner, 26… currently receives £136.50 a week in benefits, which includes £42.50 income support and £94 child tax credit.
On top of this, her local council pays all of her £161-a-week rent and gives her a hefty discount on local rates.
A British pound is worth about $1.60 USD. 300 pounds a week x 52 weeks = 15500 pounds = about $25000 USD per year in benefits, not including the “hefty discount on local rates”. Local rates = local tax rates.
I think what is the most interesting is analyzing the parts of the first article that I have bolded. It tells a story about what is causing this woman to act this way, and what she thinks about herself, her relationships with others, and about the purpose of her life. Keep in mind that this is not unusual – the out-of-wedlock birth rate in the United States is 40%.
One of the things that makes it tough to figure out how much has to be charged for insurance is that people behave differently when they are insured from the way they behave when they are not insured.
In other words, if one person out of 10,000 has his car set on fire, and it costs an average of $10,000 to restore the car to its previous condition, then it might seem as if charging one dollar to all 10,000 people would be enough to cover the cost of paying $10,000 to the one person whose car that will need to be repaired. But the joker in this deal is that people whose cars are insured may not be as cautious as other people are about what kinds of neighborhoods they park their car in.
[…]Although “moral hazard” is an insurance term, it applies to other government policies besides insurance. International studies show that people in countries with more generous and long-lasting unemployment compensation spend less time looking for jobs. In the United States, where unemployment compensation is less generous than in Western Europe, unemployed Americans spend more hours looking for work than do unemployed Europeans in countries with more generous unemployment compensation.
People change their behavior in other ways when the government pays with the taxpayers’ money. After welfare became more readily available in the 1960s, unwed motherhood skyrocketed. The country is still paying the price for that– of which the money is the least of it. Children raised by single mothers on welfare have far higher rates of crime, welfare and other social pathology.
San Francisco has been one of the most generous cities in the country when it comes to subsidizing the homeless. Should we be surprised that homelessness is a big problem in San Francisco?
[…]We also hear a lot of talk about “the uninsured,” for whose benefit we are to drastically change the whole medical-care system. But income data show that many of those uninsured people have incomes from which they could easily afford insurance. But they can live it up instead, because the government has mandated that hospital emergency rooms treat everyone.
Much has been made of the fact that families making less than $250,000 a year will not see their taxes raised. Of course they won’t see it, because what they see could affect how they vote.
But when huge tax increases are put on electric utility companies, the public will see their electricity bills go up. When huge taxes are put on other businesses as well, they will see the prices of the things those businesses sell go up.
If you are not in that “rich” category, you will not see your own taxes go up. But you will be paying someone else’s higher taxes, unless of course you can do without electricity and other products of heavily taxed businesses. If you don’t see this, so much the better for the Obama administration politically.
This country has been changed in a more profound way by corrupting its fundamental values. The Obama administration has begun bribing people with the promise of getting their medical care and other benefits paid for by other people, so long as those other people can be called “the rich.” Incidentally, most of those who are called “the rich” are nowhere close to being rich.
[…]There was a time when most Americans would have resented the suggestion that they wanted someone else to pay their bills. But now, envy and resentment have been cultivated to the point where even people who contribute nothing to society feel that they have a right to a “fair share” of what others have produced.
The most dangerous corruption is a corruption of a nation’s soul. That is what this administration is doing.
Republicans prefer private voluntary charity as the best way to provide a safety net. Just because people on the left give less to charity than people on the right, it doesn’t mean that no one one gives to charity. Europe has the highest taxes, and they give the least in charity. Why not LOWER taxes for people who want to give MORE in charity? When government hands out money, it encourages people to be more dependent. But when a person in trouble has to go to a neighbor or a charity in their own community, it sends the right message – “this should be temporary – don’t let this become a habit”. It’s not GOOD for someone to depend on the government. People need to work in order to be happy.
Having the government take over the role of provider in the home is an insult to men. It’s not government’s job to replace men. They ought to stay right out of it. Leave money in the pockets of the working man so he can save for a rainy day himself. If you subsidize a behavior, you get more of it. If you tax a behavior, you get less of it. It makes no sense to subsidize irresponsible lifestyle choices and tax productive and moral lifestyle choices. You don’t want to make the rescue from bad decisions an anonymous and automatic affair. You want people to worry, so that they won’t want to make risky and irresponsible choices. Everybody goes through though times, but we shouldn’t make it normal. People ought to know that it’s not normal.
You may want to read about how government dependence makes people less happy than having a job. Don’t make people depend on government by taxing businesses and investment. We need more companies hiring – not less. And that means letting the profit motive provide an incentive for entrepreneurs to engage in more risk-taking and enterprise.
WINTERY KNIGHT 