Defending Life’s Work With Words of a Tyrant

Tags

apple, computers, death, steve jobs, tyranny

SAN FRANCISCO — The first time Steve Jobs ever bullied anyone was in the third grade. He and some pals “basically destroyed” the teacher, he once said.

For the next half-century, Mr. Jobs never let up. He chewed out subordinates and partners who failed to deliver, trashed competitors who did not measure up and told know-it-all pundits to take a hike. He had a vision of greatness that he wielded to reshape the computer, telephone and entertainment industries, and he would brook no compromise.

Maybe it is only the despair people feel about the stagnating American economy, but the announcement of the death of the Apple cofounder Wednesday seemed to mark the end of something: in an era of limits, Mr. Jobs was the last great tyrant.

Even in Silicon Valley, where corporate chieftains are frequently larger than life, and soul-enhancing technology is promised with the morning e-mail, there was no one quite like him. He used his powers to make devices that are beloved by their owners in a way that very few American products manage to achieve, especially these days.

“Amidst the oceans of enforced mediocrity in the bland, deflavorized culture of managed-by-committee corporate behemoths,” the entrepreneur Perry Metzger posted on his Google+ page, Mr. Jobs “showed that the real path to excellence was excellence — that you could do great things by, who would have imagined, being smart and having excellent taste and not ever settling for second best.”

After his death became public, there was a waterfall of emotion on Twitter and blogs. Fans gathered outside Mr. Jobs’s house in Palo Alto, Calif., and they placed candles and flowers in front of Apple stores everywhere. His house is in the center of town, easy to find and rather modest for a guy worth about $6.5 billion. He was planning another house, but even that seemed like it would be relatively restrained for a lord of Silicon Valley.

Where he was unrestrained was in his work. Stories of him forcefully telling Apple employees that a product was not good enough are legion. (“You’ve baked a really lovely cake,” he told one engineer, adding that the hapless fellow had used dog feces for frosting). Make it smaller and better, he commanded. No element of design was too minor to escape his notice. (On a Mac interface: “We made the buttons on the screen look so good you’ll want to lick them.”)

[read the full article here]

The Grand Miracle

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creation, cs lewis, freedom, god, miracles

The sin, both of men and of angels, was rendered possible by the fact that God gave them free will: thus surrendering a portion of His omnipotence…because He saw that from a world of free creatures, even though they fell, He could work out…a deeper happiness and a fuller splendour than any world of automata would admit.

C.S. Lewis, Miracles pp. 196-197

If these are the creatures…

Tags

christianity, creation, francis of assisi, god, richard rohr, stars

           Nature was a mirror of the soul for St. Francis of Assisi—a mirror for himself and a mirror for God. All this mirroring effected a complete change of consciousness, a shift in how he saw reality.
          When Francis was a young man, he loved to party. One night he left the party and looked up at the stars above Assisi. He stood there for a long time, in awe of what he saw. He said, “If these are the creatures, what must the Creator be like?”
– Richard Rohr, “Nature as Mirror”

Jobs Act Usurps Liberty, Christian Charity

Tags

acton institute, congress, jobs act, obama, politics

President Obama wants his American Jobs Act passed immediately. You know this already—he made sure he delivered that message in his speech: “Pass this jobs plan right away” was his refrain. President Obama has definitely not read the Federalist Papers in a while. If he had, he would not be encouraging Congress to pass half-a-trillion dollars of new spending at a moment’s notice.

Congress is not a quick-strike team, and the Senate especially is not designed to be a rapidly responsive body. James Madison explained in Federalist #62 that it is to be slow and deliberative, because “mutable government” is ineffective and dangerous.

What indeed are all the repealing, explaining, and amending laws, which fill and disgrace our voluminous codes [under the Articles of Confederation], but so many monuments of deficient wisdom; so many impeachments exhibited by each succeeding against each preceding session; so many admonitions to the people, of the value of those aids which may be expected from a well-constituted senate?…

To trace the mischievous effects of a mutable government would fill a volume…. It poisons the blessing of liberty.

The president’s urgency is understandable—he wants desperately to help the economy, and it could use help. It was announced today that the poverty rate is higher than it has been in 28 years, that the median household income has fallen, and that the number of people with health insurance has fallen. In his jobs speech, the president asked Congress to put political games aside, saying,

The next election is 14 months away. And the people who sent us here—the people who hired us to work for them—they don’t have the luxury of waiting 14 months. Some of them are living week to week, paycheck to paycheck, even day to day. They need help, and they need it now.

The irony may be painful, but President Obama was begging assistance from a body designed to fail him. And if Congress does pass something, the rich will be much more able to take advantage of the unintended consequences of the bill—as Madison put it:

Another effect of public instability is the unreasonable advantage it gives to the sagacious, the enterprising, and the moneyed few over the industrious and uniformed mass of the people.

[read the full article here]

Working for the Kingdom of God: A Defense

Tags

christianity, god's politics, julie clawson, separation of church and state, sojourners

Deep down I don’t believe in the separation of church and state. Oh, I am against the idea of a state church or giving political preference to one religious sect or another, but it’s the idea that somehow people can divorce their religious identity from their political identity that I just can’t accept. That either our religion or our politics mean so little to us that we could restrict them to compartmentalized spheres in our lives seems absurd to me. I know people attempt to do it all the time, believing in the modern myth that an individual can assume an objective stance in this world, but reality is a lot more complex than that.

We are creatures shaped by our world. Our culture, our community, our environment, our faith all have contributed to hewing out our present form. We can always grow and learn, interrogating our culture as we expand and diversify the influences in our lives, but we can never undo the fact that we have been shaped. Whether or not we accept or reject a God, or gods, or spiritual force that choice becomes a part of us. To pretend otherwise for the sake of maintaining a functional albeit shallow pluralism is to live in denial of who we are as people. Religion (in both its broad and specific senses) cannot be separated from politics because it is people, whole people not fragmented forcefully compartmentalized people, who are the ones doing politics.

So in not believing in the separation of church and state, I mean that I think the very idea is impossible. Church and state are not abstract entities, but are functioning communities of people who cannot help but bring their whole selves into those particular relational spheres.

That said, there are of course drastically different ways of how this gets lived out. On the extremes are those that choose to reject either religion or politics. There are the religious people who, while admitting to our identity as religious people, feel that religion is too offensive to ever force upon others even in the form of dialogue, and so they advocate for remaining silent on anything having to do with religion. I understand the desire to care for the sensibilities of others, but if I didn’t believe in my faith enough to think that it should make a difference in the world then why bother with believing at all? At the opposite extreme are the religious folks who think culture and politics are too corrupt for religious people to participate in, and so they advocate for complete withdraw from such things. They desire all people to be religious like they are religious, but cannot be bothered to work for the transformation of the world because then they might become tainted with the ways of this world. Like Jonah they just want to condemn the world never expecting that there is any real chance that the world can ever change.

But I’m not a fan of the extremes. I think God is at work in the world at all levels in all places. I cannot hide behind or withdraw into my localized tribe if I truly believe that God loves the world enough to reconcile all things to Godself. My beliefs shape my identity and therefore how I exist in the world — including how I am involved in culture and politics. But in doing such things the big question becomes whether I am letting my faith shape me and my actions or if I am using my faith to advance my selfish ends. When I involve myself wholly in politics and culture is my goal to let God use me to transform the world or to fight to control the things I personally care about. In other words, am I imposing my faith on others to gain power and prestige for myself at the expense of others, or am I accepting my place in the body of Christ and humbly loving and respecting the other members in the body.

[read the full article here]

Why Fundamentalism is Better than Liberalism

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christianity, fundamentalism, john frame, liberalism, mark noll, saet

Matthew sent me this quote today, taken from the postscript of John Frame’s, Doctrine of the Word of God.

If I lost some of my conservative friends through my progressive ideas, I will now probably lose some progressive ones on the publication of this book. It may be called fundamentalist. If so, fine. I realize that fundamentalist is a term of derision, and for many reasons I would rather not be called by it. But I know through experience that name-calling is a staple of theological debate, and I have a thick skin. For all their frequent literalism, dispensationalism, and anti-intellectualism, the fundamentalists were stalwart in defending Scripture as God’s Word, in the face of attacks on all sides. Many of them will be closer to Jesus in heaven than many of us who seek to be more respectable.

I completely sympathize with Frame here. The quote reminds me of an important point Noll makes in his book, Scandal of the Evangelical Mind. Noll takes fundamentalists to the woodshed, but for as much as he blames fundamentalists for the insular, backwater, anti-intellectual posture of North American evangelicals, he nonetheless rightly observes that it was fundamentalists, not liberals, who retained and passed on the core of the gospel. While the mainline churches were gradually denying the inspiration and authority of the Scriptures, the virgin birth, the bodily resurrection, etc., fundamentalists still believed in a God who regenerated hearts, worked miracles, and who spoke through the Bible. And history has proven them right for doing so. The liberal churches are in decline, while fundamentalism was able to give birth to evangelicalism — the fastest growing Christian movement in North America.

In his book, Noll is not unsympathetic to the difficulty facing Christians at the turn of the twentieth-century. The world was shifting in remarkable ways–epistemology, authority, science, higher criticism — everything was up for grabs. We can’t be too hard on those Christians who, while not having the intellectual resources to deal with a brave new world of unbelief, at least knew enough to circle the wagons and hold on to what they did know to be true — the reality of the resurrection of God’s Son.

[read the full article here]

Billboards, Hope, and God’s Highway

Tags

acton institute, atheists, billboard, ray nothstine, religion, skeptics

Yesterday I was interviewed by WoodTV8 on a story about a controversial billboard near downtown Grand Rapids that reads, “You don’t need God – to hope, to care, to love, to live.” The billboard is sponsored by the Center for Inquiry. My reaction is that the billboard can be a positive because it serves as a conversation starter about a relationship with the Lord and what the meaning of true love and true hope is all about.

When I was an undergraduate student at Ole Miss, I had a religion professor who seemed to be a strong proponent of Buddhism. I believe she was a fair professor and was not trying to indoctrinate anybody into converting, but the class and the studying of other religions called me to study and think deeply about my own faith. The class prompted me to read the Gospels and Scripture closely, which was ultimately a first step into a calling to seminary. Likewise, the billboard may give Christian families and believers a chance to ask the deep questions of what they believe and why they believe. Furthermore, a bland nominal Christianity is no preparation for the difficulties and trials of this world and it is essential to move beyond that.

I’d also like to expand beyond the edited comments from the news report and offer a fuller response about hope and faith. One thing that is apparent today about many skeptics and atheists is that they are very evangelistic. Unlike the past, they are very aggressive about gaining converts and are often reactionary to any faith or religion expressed in culture. In many cases this brand of atheism mirrors a sort of reactionary Christian fundamentalism when it comes to responding to culture.

In a 2007 Weekly Standard piece, Harvard professor Harvey Mansfield summed up the the new aggressive atheist tactic this way,

Atheism isn’t what it was in the eighteenth century. Now, the focus of the attack is not the Church, which is no longer dominant, but religion itself. The disdain one used to hear for “organized religion” extends now to the individual believer’s faith. Despite the change, politics is still the thrust of the attack. It’s just that the delusion of religion is now allowed to be the responsibility of the believer, not of some group that is deluding him. A more direct approach is required.

For the Christian, when it comes to hope, care, living, and love, the believer knows that ultimately all those attributes are grounded in Christ. In contrast, the hope of the unbeliever is a hope in the things of themselves and of this world. The believer on the other hand knows that the hope of this world is ultimately a vain, withering, and disappointing hope. But the hope provided by the life, death, and resurrection of Christ is an anticipation that does not only not disappoint (Romans 1:5) but is triumphant. The resurrection of Christ is so essential to our future hope that Augustine declared, “In Christ’s death, death died. The fulness of of life swallowed up death; death was absorbed in the body of Christ.” John Calvin added about Christ, “Such is the nature of his rule, that he shares with us all that he has received from the Father. Now he arms and equips us with his power, and adorns us with his beauty and magnificence, and enriches us with his wealth.”

As we travel life’s highway, the believer can be assured that God is still on his throne and that those that are hid in Christ are heirs to his glory. If vain and confusing props on the side of the road can help remind us to think and converse in a deeper manner about all that we are promised and will receive by his marvelous grace, then ultimately it is beneficial. When one studies the Gospel story and is rooted in what the Apostle Paul calls “the fulness of Christ,” there is an assurance and confidence the world cannot steal from you.

[read the original article here]

Bachmann creates firestorm for joking hurricane is God’s message

Tags

evangelical, god, hurricane irene, judgment, lutheran, michelle bachmann, politics, wrath

Hurricane Irene and the recent East coast earthquake were directed at America’s politicians, according to a statement from Michele Bachmann.

The Minnesota congresswoman and presidential candidate told an audience gathered at a Shriner’s temple in Sarasota, Fla., Sunday that God was trying to communicate a message about fiscal responsibility via the two recent natural disasters. From the St. Petersburg Times:

I don’t know how much God has to do to get the attention of the politicians. We’ve had an earthquake; we’ve had a hurricane. He said, ‘Are you going to start listening to me here?’ Listen to the American people because the American people are roaring right now. They know government is on a morbid obesity diet and we’ve got to rein in the spending.

Bachmann’s comments immediately stoked a firestorm of media attention. In a follow-up statement, Bachmann’s campaign said Monday the candidate’s observations were merely a joke, according to Talking Points Memo.

“Obviously she was saying it in jest,” spokeswoman Alice Stewart told TPM in a statement.

Stewart did not immediately respond Monday to The Ticket’s request for comment.

A clip circulated Monday of Bachmann’s comments shows the lawmaker clearly smiling and nearly laughing as she delivers a similar message about “God’s wrath” during that speech.

Bachmann is an evangelical Lutheran who has long stressed her personal relationship with God in public forums. She previously revealed that while serving as a state senator, she asked God for guidance “and just through prayer I knew that I was to introduce the marriage amendment in Minnesota” that defined marriage as between one man and one woman. She also has said that God gave her and her husband visions of marrying one another prior to their first meeting, and that God called her to run for Congress.

[read the full article here]

Is Drug Testing Welfare Applicants Unconstitutional?

Tags

bias, constitution, drug testing, economy, laws, state rights, welfare

Under a new Florida law, people applying for welfare have to take a drug test at their own expense. If they pass, they are eligible for benefits and the state reimburses them for the test. If they fail, they are denied welfare for a year, until they take another test.

Mandatory drug testing for welfare applicants is becoming a popular idea across the U.S. Many states – including Alabama, Kentucky, Oklahoma and Louisiana – are considering adopting laws like Florida’s. At the federal level, Senator David Vitter, a Louisiana Republican, has introduced the Drug Free Families Act of 2011, which would require all 50 states to drug-test welfare applicants.

And the focus isn’t even limited to welfare. In July, Indiana adopted drug tests for participants in a state job-training program. An Ohio state senator, Tim Grendell, recently said he plans to introduce a bill to require the unemployed to take a drug test before they receive unemployment benefits.

Drug-testing the needy has an undeniable populist appeal. It taps into deeply held beliefs about the deserving and undeserving poor. As Alabama state representative Kerry Rich put it, “I don’t think the taxpayers should have to help fund somebody’s drug habit.”

But as government policy, drug testing is being oversold. These laws do not do what their supporters claim. And more importantly: they are likely to be unconstitutional.

[read the full article here]

Christianity is a lifestyle

Tags

disciple, jesus, lifestyle, richard rohr, worship

We just keep worshiping Jesus and arguing over the right way to do it. The amazing thing is that Jesus never once says “worship me!” He says, “follow me” (e.g., Matthew 4:19). Christianity is a lifestyle—a way of being in the world that is simple, non-violent, shared, and loving. – Richard Rohr, Compassionate Action