Roger Kimball with some hope

I suppose it is possible that Donald Trump — the man who supports single-payer health care (Obamacare on steroids), who didn’t know about the nuclear triad until a few weeks ago, who once proposed a 14.25% wealth tax on “the rich,” and until 15 minutes ago was an enthusiastic proponent of abortion on demand, even that form of infanticide euphemistically described as “partial birth abortion” by its partisans — I suppose it is possible that Donald Trump will get the country to rally around him and hand him the Republican nomination.

As of Sunday, February 21, 2016, I doubt it. There was a moment, just a few weeks back, when I thought the choice would be between Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. I have now privately reverted — well, I suppose it’s not all that private — to my earlier hypothesis that the GOP race will come down to Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio.

I say this notwithstanding Donald Trump’s lead in the polls. For one thing, the polls do not really make allowance for Trump’s astronomical, off-the-charts negatives, which have yet to be adequately factored into the psephologist’s handicaps.

I hope he’s right.

One way I express that hope: I’ve yet to create a “Donald Trump” tag for these blog posts. Hopefully I won’t need one in a few months. Time will tell.

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Given over

Donald Trump won his second straight primary tonight and I am baffled but no longer surprised. I don’t normally go for apocalyptic thinking when it comes to politics, but I do believe that God will give you over to your desires and permit you to take the consequences, and as a country we’ve grown ever more voracious in our desire for ungodly things. So . . . maybe we’re being given over.

On the bright side, if Trump wins I will be, for the first time in my adult life, a man without a party. Well, good. I’ve always strongly identified with the conservative side of the house, but I started realizing over the past six years or so that there is no “fix” for what ails us in our political process. Good leaders can

, of course, make things somewhat better but I think our system becomes more unwieldy each cycle and I’m not sure that any of the required incentives for good government exist anymore. So this election cycle is just confirming what I’ve been slowly learning and hopefully will get me focused more on the One who really is going to fix everything.

Nominating a man like Donald Trump (if that happens) and electing him to the Presidency (an event I once would have thought completely impossible but now I think there’s an even shot) will be the dumbest thing we as a country have done for quite some time. We keep falling for the megalomaniacs and narcissists who tell us what they think we want to hear. Trump’s supporters are convinced that he is going to take care of our Biggest Problem™: illegal immigration.

Who says that’s our biggest problem? Here’s a list of what I believe are some of our biggest problems, just to name a few, each of which dwarfs the illegal immigration problem:

  1. The absolute destruction of the African American family unit, largely due to idiotic government policies and perverse incentives. Seriously, the societal problems that spring from the dissolution of the family (regardless of your color, but the African American community has been the hardest hit) are akin to taking a bazooka round to the abdomen compared to the pinprick of illegal immigration. According to the CDC (referenced in this article among many others), the out-of-wedlock birthrate among African American women is 72%, with not as high but still very high rates among other groups.
     
  2. The breakdown in our system of separation of powers. Seriously, the President these days can do almost anything he or she chooses, or at least can attempt to do anything he or she chooses and force the opposition to mount an expensive and time consuming legal challenge to stop it. Between executive orders, presidential memoranda, and the all but unstoppable and almost completely unaccountable regulatory regime of the executive branch, the President wields more power than ever. By the way, Trump supporters, your man doesn’t even act like he’s ever read the Constitution and I have zero confidence that he will roll back the current trends toward Executive hegemony. He’ll do the opposite, I believe. But, hey, you wanted a strong man who “gets things done” so enjoy the ride.
     
  3. We don’t know how to reason or think anymore, or how to have a congenial and good-faith debate with those who differ from us. Tolerance, that vaunted character trait everyone has always at least pretended to value, is almost nowhere to be found in our public discourse. We’ve become one big, ongoing, never-ending food fight.
     
  4. As a country we owe 19 trillion dollars to creditors.
     

None of these issues are going to be seriously addressed by the next President if current trends hold.

Sorry for the doom and gloom. Hopefully I’m wrong.

Pure in heart

“Blessed are the pure in heart

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, for they shall see God.” – Matthew 5:8 ESV

We were discussing this verse, along with the other Beatitudes, last night in College lifegroup. One of the people in our group mentioned that this verse is hard – that he struggles with being pure in heart.

It dawned on me that I’m not  exactly sure what “pure in heart” means. I realized that I haven’t thought about it much, to my discredit. Then a definition of pure in heart presented itself to me; here it is:

“You’ll know that you’re pure in heart when you would be comfortable with other people being able to hear the innermost thoughts of your heart.”

I realized right then that I have so far to go. I think all sorts of horrible things. I entertain bitterness, envy, anger, selfish dreams, and all manner of other bad things in my heart and it would horrify me if other people could hear my thoughts.

I’m not kidding – this scares me. I need heart surgery.

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart
be acceptable in your sight,
O LORD, my rock and my redeemer. – Psalm 19:14 ESV

“It is safe to tell the pure in heart that they shall see God, for only the pure in heart want to.” ― C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

Turning the tide

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen. – Galatians 1:3-5 ESV

“To deliver us from the present evil age.” There’s something there, tangible, that I often miss.

Through his death and resurrection, the Lord Jesus delivered us from death and hell, and has given us eternal life. It’s easy to think of that deliverance only in the future tense. But if you’re paying attention you’ll notice that the New Testament resonates brightly with a sense of the Now.

Salvation in Jesus is forever, of course. But forever started that moment that he took you into himself. These days have enough trouble of their own; deliverance from these days, these evil days, is happening now.

Deliverance from, not teleportation out of.

The Lord is with us – that’s his forever promise – and he is turning us each day into immortal beings like himself who are becoming immune to the evil of our times, and indeed are daily more and more a part of his heavenly host, turning the tide.

Your kingdom come

, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.  – Matthew 6:10 ESV

Thanking the universe

More and more I read people on social media “thanking the universe” for their new job or their new relationship, and also sometimes expressing hope that the universe will come through for them – sort of smooth their path to whatever it is they want. I’ve seen this expression way more than I’d like to in the posts and tweets of the formerly churched – and as a former student lay-minister I know a lot of formerly churched people, unfortunately.

I’m not exactly sure what’s with this, but I think it has something to do with that stubborn Imago Dei in each one of us. Reverence and loving fidelity to the God of the Bible (the giver of all good gifts) and in his only begotten Son is anathema in many of our subcultures, but that stubborn

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, programmed-in desire persists for something outside ourselves to worship provide help and salvation. This spiritual habit of the formerly churched doesn’t pass away easily, evidently, so perhaps re-branding its object is the path of least resistance.

I have an idealistic and at times even poetic mindset and even I know that “the universe” is for the most part a howling void that not only doesn’t care about me, it doesn’t have the ability to care about me. It is a created thing, in fact the sum of all created material; marvelous and awe-inspiring and glory-declaring but in no way, shape or form is it sentient.

One who wants to believe that there’s something in the universe to be worshiped or supplicated is obviously not a materialist but is more like a pantheist – here in the midst of our supposedly sophisticated and advanced post-modern times.

I can’t help thinking: how much more rational it is to worship and call out to the Maker of the universe rather than to what he has made?

. . .because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen. – Romans 1:25 ESV

I’d like a boring president

“The President of the United States is our employee. The services he and his legislative cohorts contract for us are not gifts or benefices, We have to pay for every one of them, sometimes with our money, sometimes with our skins.

If we can remember this, we’ll get a good, dull Cincinnatus like Eisenhower or Coolidge. Our governance will be managed with quiet and economy.” – P.J. O’Rourke, Give War a Chance

Yes. Here we are in 2016, raving at each other and ourselves about which strong-man/strong-woman will destroy the things (and people) we hate and “make great” the things we claim to love. All the while hardly considering how any one of the current front-runners can serve up, in reality, the red-meat they are feeding us rhetorically while working in good faith within our constitutional framework. Many of the supporters of the front-runners – at the moment Sanders

, Clinton and Trump – almost seem to think running roughshod over the separation of powers and ruling via executive fiat and “deals” is a feature, not a bug.

I’d like someone who is boring, humble, competent, respectful of his/her place in the constitutional order and our nation’s place in the world order, and who understands that cults of personality and savior-complexes, while fun for the moment, are ultimately destructive.

I don’t expect to be satisfied on any of these wants this time around, and perhaps never.

“Bae”

This (kind of) goes along with something I wrote recently.

I was reminded also of our brilliant human choosing mechanisms by some good friends today arguing on Facebook about the fitness of one of the presidential candidates solely on the basis of “not liking his face”.

Abraham Lincoln would not have gotten far in 2016.

We’re doomed.

Work towards holiness

Bethany gives her thoughts on Christian behavior. I rather like this:

It’s not okay to just go around talking about how “totally depraved” we are and do nothing about it. Yes

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, we’re sinful and evil. Fix that. Work towards holiness. And that doesn’t mean that we need to be more judmental and righteous and make sure everyone lives to our standards. No, to be more holy means to be merciful and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love. That is God describing himself in Exodus 6. Wanna be more like God? Be that. He says himself to leave the vindication and judgement to him. That’s the part he doesn’t want us to be like.

There are ways that I could be more unashamed of God and the gospel, but I will never apologize for trying to be a better person and caring about this world or this life. Don’t be a jerk. Be a light of the gospel to a dying world. Be kind. Be loving. Help someone out physically, not just spiritually.

Emphasis mine.