Archive for the ‘Citizen’ Category
Friday, October 3rd, 2008
First, true good works, those that God considers good works, can only done by Christians. But wait, don’t unbelievers do good things like give to charity, lend a helping hand, etc., etc? Of course they do, but those are civil good works (good in the sight of man). Good works in God’s eyes are those works that are 100% out of love for Him. So, the unbeliever who is doing his civil good work because it will raise his standing in the community, or gain favor with someone, or even out of his own sense of compassion is not doing a good work.
Hey, don’t we have to do good works to please God? Whoa, that is the worst kind of “good work” because it imperils the soul. We don’t do anything to please God. Christ has done this for us by His perfect life, death, and resurrection. If we try to please God, we’re essential trying to buy our salvation, and that is not love, that is self-interest.
So how does anyone do good works? Even as a Christian, when I do things that look like good works like giving to charity or volunteering, if I am motivated in any way, and I am, by a tax deduction or perceived status, then I have not done this work out of 100% love of God. However, because I am a Christian, this sin is covered by Christ and God accepts it as a good work just like He accepts me, a sinner, because of Christ.
Posted in Christian, Citizen, Father, Husband | No Comments »
Wednesday, October 1st, 2008
As usual, I feel pretty much out of step with many of those in the tech. industry. Google announced that they are against California Proposition No. 8. The proposition would prevent same-sex marriages. Google’s position is that this would infringe on people’s personal lives and eliminate the fundamental right of anyone to marry the person they love.
First off, marriage is not a private act. Even if you don’t believe that it was instituted by God, it is at least a governmental institution. I’m really at a loss to understand how something that requires a government issued license is a private act.
Next, nobody has the fundamental right to marry the person they love. What if the person you love doesn’t love you, is already married, is related to you, or a child? Do you still have a right to marry the person you love?
When you don’t understand what marriage is you sound silly, even if you are as smart as the people at Google.
Posted in Christian, Citizen, Geek | 8 Comments »
Friday, September 26th, 2008
When Sarah Palin was announced as the Vice-Presidential running mate for John McCain, I heard some news outlets say that she wouldn’t get support from Southern Baptists because they don’t even allow women pastors. I also read that Evangelical Christians in general would have a problem with her because they believe women should be at home with the children. These are both supposed to be examples of the backwards thinking of Christians and in some ways a hook into pointing out the hypocrisy of Christians if they do support a woman for Vice-President.
Lutherans have very similar positions on both women pastors and women staying at home with children. And while I don’t know why Southern Baptists and Evangelicals hold the positions they do, I do know why Lutherans believe the way we do. Our understanding doesn’t put the notion of women Vice-Presidents vs. Pastors in conflict. It also provides for women working outside of the home.
So why can a woman be a Vice-President and not a pastor? Simply put, the United States does not prohibit women from become Vice-President and God prohibits women from being pastors in His church. There’s not much more to say except that if you take God’s word seriously the case is open and shut. If you want to play around with God’s word women pastors will be the least of your problems .
But aren’t women supposed to be home barefoot and pregnant? God did create men and women differently. Woman are naturally more suited to rearing children. That is not to say men don’t have a role in raising their children, it’s just a different role. The issue is really about the children, not the parents. The parents were given their children by God so that the parents would love are raise them in the fear and love of the Lord. How are the children best served? Most likely by having their mother available to nurture them full-time. However, a mother may also have a calling to serve her neighbors as a government official. This calling will conflict with her calling as a mother, and in this fallen world, she will have to compromise and ask for forgiveness in either case.
What I’m trying to point out is that we have an understanding of the roles of women, vocations, that allows for this seeming contradiction. God rules both the church and the state. In one He allows women to govern in the other he does not. In addition, He places women where they can serve their neighbors. In some cases the needs of various neighbors conflict. They must use the reason God has given them to best serve the neighbors and ask for forgiveness for the rest.
Posted in Christian, Citizen | 3 Comments »
Friday, June 6th, 2008
After watching part of the news with my wife last night, I’ve decided it brings out too much of the “Old Adam” in me and I will avoid watching the news if at all possible. What sets me off is emotionalism and lack of intellectual depth in both the coverage and the people being covered.
The lead story was about a man who was near death after police shot him in the course of pursuing him after he was part of a drug deal. The coverage showed an angry relative and witnesses decrying the police for firing too many shots at an unarmed man. Thomas Sowell covers these exact same arguments in an article entitled “Bullet Counters”. What Sowell argues is that the man was not “unarmed” he was, as the report glossed over, armed with a car that he was using to try to injure or kill the police officers. Sowell then talks about the notion of firing “too many shots.” The number of shots fired was studied in these types of incidents and it found that just over half the shots missed ever at 6 feet. When lives are at stake, the police don’t have the luxury to shoot single shots and then look around to see if it hit. I’m not for police brutality but I give the benefit of the doubt to the police. This story gives the benefit of the doubt to the emotional relative and sensationalism of police shooting an “unarmed” man.
Another story was on the budget cuts in the city of Alameda that might cause it to reduce the use of some of it’s fire vehicles. The reduction in emergency services is a real issue, but it has to reasonably addressed, I mean wouldn’t it be safest for everyone if there were police and fire stations on every block? But that’s not economically feasible so you decide on an appropriate level of service and set the funding level based on that, but that doesn’t work in the political world because you have unions and politicians with multiple agendas. What broke me on this story was the proposed solution of raising sales taxes to cover the shortfall. It never ceases to amaze me how little politicians understand economics. Thinking that raising local sales taxes will save them is nonsense. Just imagine they raise the sales tax in Alameda by 1- 2% wouldn’t residents just stop off in Oakland on the way home from work to do their shopping thus lowering the city’s revenue.
Those are some of my beefs with the news. I know the news casts aren’t changing anytime soon, so I’ll just avoid them.
Posted in Citizen | No Comments »
Monday, October 15th, 2007
Today seems to be Blog Action Day. Which is the blogosphere’s attempt to put everyone’s focus on the environment. I will first state that I am a 2 times as crazy as your average geek. I believe in God and I’m a doubter of man-made global warming. From the faulty data, to the reliance on computer models which can’t model tomorrows weather, to the fact that the Earth has gone through climatic cycles without our influence, I just can’t buy into it especially when I look into the agenda of this movement’s proponents and their proposed solutions which force change on everyone else but exempt themselves.
I believe this crisis is another manifestation of the Theology of Glory which places its emphasis on mans’ abilities and reason for salvation. What these people believe is that they can somehow “fix” the Earth and make it a utopia. They want to stomp out poverty, end wars, etc. These are noble goals, but will never come to pass this side of the second coming of Christ. I’m not saying that we should wantonly waste resources, go to war, or ignore poverty. What I’m saying is that we can do our best in all these areas but this corrupt and fallen world will always have its problems and doing the most good for the most people isn’t always the same as doing what makes you feels good.
Posted in Citizen | 3 Comments »
Friday, February 2nd, 2007
With the release of the latest IPCC paper on climate change, there is increased focus on global warming (not that there was ever any slack). On the news this morning, some S.F. Bay Area public policy official was pointing out that rising sea levels will be problematic he said bay waters had risen 7 inches in the last 100 years. Did you catch that, 7 inches in 100 years. I thought my car was the cause of global warming. If sea levels started rising 100 years ago, then it wasn’t global warming that started the rise. If global warming is causing the sea levels to rise, people aren’t causing global warming. Global warming isn’t science, it’s a political agenda.
The next time someone starts in on global warming, ask them to answer these questions:
• Has the Earth ever gone through warming and cooling periods? If so, what caused them?
• Where does the Earth get its warmth (Sun)? Does that source ever fluctuate?
Posted in Citizen | No Comments »
Sunday, July 23rd, 2006
I’m listening to an interview with Tony Campolo who is stumping for the Left as an alternative for Christians. He may be a wonderful speaker and a smart guy, but he’s just as wrong and uses the same deceptive tactics as your run of the mill non-Christian Liberal. Take for example his stance on abortion. Did you know that the low minimum wage causes more abortions? Yes, according to Mr. Campolo, you can’t fight abortion unless you raise the minimum wage. If the minimum wage was $100K a year, I guess that would stamp out abortion. He says that the abortion rate for those over 30 is the same as it was in the 1950’s. Wait, wasn’t the minimum wage lower then. Shouldn’t there be fewer? The deceptive tactics that he uses are simple, spout statistics that are factual and sound authoritative, but are irrelevant in the context of his argument or make strong statements without evidence. His over 30 statistic is irrelevant because that age group is a minority of those having abortions. His comments on raising the minimum wage to stop abortions sound strong, but he give no evidence that there is any link, he says it, it sounds good, it must be right. I think the biggest problem the religious Left has is that their compassion is leading people away from the Lord. It’s a perfect example of the law of unintended consequences. By trying to solve these problems through government programs the religious Left has people looking to the government as the answer instead of Jesus Christ.
Posted in Christian, Citizen | No Comments »
Thursday, June 29th, 2006
I’ve always assumed that liberals were elitists. Based everything I’ve seen and read, I’ve come to that conclusion. Today, I got to experience it. A Republican colleague (don’t know if he is a conservative) answered the question about what best motivates a person with the very rational, “your own self interest.” The liberal response? “What people think is in their own self interest, really isn’t.” Wow! I don’t know what’s reeeally in my own self interest. I guess I should ask the liberal what is best for me. Sorry, I think I’ll stick with asking God.
Posted in Citizen | No Comments »
Friday, October 28th, 2005
Well, that’s the latest wisdom spouted by the Left and those in the Valley. I’m not at all sure how people as logical as software engineers can make this leap but they do so with ease. Lewis Libby, the Vice-President’s chief-of-staff, is charged with lying to a grand jury during the investigation into who leaked the name of a CIA agent. Did he leak the name? I don’t know and if anyone says he did ask them how they know because the indictment was for lying and obstruction not leaking the name of a covert CIA agent.
Does this prove Bush lied about WMDs? Hardly. It may prove that the Bush administration was trying to discredit someone who was trying to discredit them. Which is a standard part of politics. I guess the left will say that it shows a pattern of lying within the administration. Ask them if their child has ever lied and if that proves that they are liars. The argument I got was that this was the last link in a chain of lies. Yes, if the last step in a process is flawed, the whole process is flawed. An extreme view but, hey, I don’t expect anything less anymore?
I’m not very good at debating this stuff in a conversational situations. My logic doesn’t keep up with the emotional arguments. Although I would assume that people think they are making a logic argument, saying that Bush lied because Libby lied fails that test with me.
In the course of a discussion with a person, we got into the whole WMD argument. Since we know that they were in Iraq I asked where they were. The person had an interesting observation that they may have all deteriorated. A very good point. I didn’t bother pressing, but this logic ignores the fact that Iraq had the capability to make WMD and assumes that they wouldn’t want to do so again. This person then went on to say that the U.S. has a history of overestimating enemy strengths. And started talking about how we over-hyped Sovietmilitary capabilities and when we investigated we found old, worn-out equipment nothing like we were led to believe. Hey, I don’t know anything about this subject, but I’m skeptical. I mean if they had no nuclear weapons then I’d say we overestimated them. Otherwise, I’d rather overestimate an enemies capabilities than underestimate it. The scarier thing is I couldn’t honesty say that this person considered the USSR an enemy during the Cold War. I got the impression this person believed that we over-hyped their military just so we could continue to have an enemy. To what ends? I’m not sure. I guess the evil Right-wing needs to demonize someone to remain in power.
Posted in Citizen | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, October 25th, 2005
Robert C. Martin, an author and software engineering guru, has kicked a hornet’s nest with his posting entitled Terrorist Trap. In the posting, he posits that the war in Iraq is a trap to attract terroists away from the U.S. and to eliminate them. One of the many rebutals is that this has actually created more terrorists citing an article by a PhD. at Stanford about the situation molding a man.
I don’t know if the war in Iraq was meant as a trap for terrorist, but I do believe that Sadam Hussein sponsored terrorist and was creating or seeking to create Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) which he would have used on his neighbors and/or sold to terrorist groups. I hear the Left screaming, “The 911 commission said Hussein wasn’t involved!” True, it also said that he was involved in other terrorist activities. Officials in his government met with leaders of Al Qaeda. He gave money to Palestinian homicide bombers. Also the 911 commission is another beauracratic farce. They didn’t call a group to testify that identified the 9/11 leader a year before the incident. Then the Left screams, “But there were no WMDs!” Well, he did gas Kurds in 1989. And artillery was found with nerve gas. Was Iraq an “eminent threat?” Yes! Eminent means outstanding or high ranking, not immediate as many on the Left seem to define it.
As for the notion that by going to Iraq the U.S. has created terrorists, I wouldn’t doubt that there are a few people who became terrorists because of U.S. actions but that’s hardly a justification for not going. Those few people who turn into threats are outweighed by an entire nation that is becoming a democracy in a region sorely in need of an example of what prosperity a democracy can bring. Further, saying that fighting terrorsim breeds terrorism so we shouldn’t do it is like saying police shouldn’t fight crime because average people will get mad at the police and become criminals.
Posted in Citizen, Uncategorized | No Comments »
Subscribe via RSS