Why Liberalism is Unchristian, Part III

Not only do Democrats have a habit of being generous with other people’s money, turns out they are also more stingy with their own. In fact, repeated studies have found that both Republicans and Conservatives are more generous than Democrats and Liberals respectively in donations of time or money to charitable causes. This makes sense because Christians tend to give away a lot of money--their own money--and a wide majority of Christians are Conservatives. Apparently Liberals are largely content to allow the government to provide their share of giving.

In other words, this notion that there is anything remotely Christian or generous about being a Democrat is a myth.

Add into all that 50 million murdered babies, the assault on traditional marriage, the depravity masquerading as our entertainment industry, their declaring God off limits in political discourse, and now their lack of actual generosity, and one begins to see the reality of the Democrat party. As one Internet writer put it: “The Republican party may not be the party of God, but the Democrat party is definitely the party of Satan.”

Why Liberalism is Unchristian, Part II

We have pointed out that when Jesus commanded his followers to take care of the poor, the sick, and the needy, he never said, “Take what your neighbor has by force, and give that to the poor,” which is what government welfare does. Nowhere in the Bible is it suggested that we should take from our neighbors to help the poor. That’s not an oversight. If the malady is selfishness, it can’t be cured by force. Forced “charity” only increases interclass resentment and a sense of entitlement. Consider some other consequences of the voluntary vs. forced approaches:

	Jesus’s Way – Voluntary Giving	Liberals’ Way – Taxation
Virtue	Loving Others, Obeying God	None
Motivation of the Donor	Help Those in Need	Avoid Fines, Penalties, Prosecution, and Jail
Attitude of Donor	Concern for recipients	Resentment of bullying government and those receiving entitlements
Instigated by	God	Man
Cause	Choice	Force
Locus of Choice	Internal; Lies with the owner of the money	External; Lies with the holder of political power
Monitored by	The donor or church	Wasteful bureaucracy, if there is any monitoring at all
Additional Benefits	Since aid is given out of a sense of concern, additional help may be given in the form of mentoring, housing, babysitting, and other intangibles	No additional benefits
Use of Resources	Responsible; very efficient	Irresponsible; inefficient
Effectiveness	Very high	Low
Attitude of Recipient	Encourages gratitude because specific donor can be known	Encourages a sense of entitlement because bureaucracy has no face, identity, and rarely any real expectations
Result	Growth and progress in both donor and recipient	Progress is unlikely
Result	Spiritually and socially rewarding; donor more likely to give to the poor; recipient more likely to help others when able	No spiritual reward. Donor less likely to give voluntarily in future and recipient less likely to give when able because “it’s the government’s job”
Result	Decrease in the public’s burden	Increase in public’s burden; Another government entitlement to grow out of control
Result	Relationship	Increased dependence; increased racism; increased classism

This is why the Church, families, and individuals have the God-assigned job of taking care of “the widow and the orphan.” It should not be the government’s job because the government can’t do it well. This is why many people on government aid have no plans to get off of government aid. Anonymous government aid can’t solve the actual problem, which, in our nation, is usually the behavior of the person in need.

Why Liberalism is Unchristian, Part I

This one is for the 38% of Democrats who describe themselves as born-again Christians.

Liberals go to great lengths to make it seem that voting Democrat is something other than a spectacular moral failure. There is a feeling among some Christians that, although the Democrat party promotes child murder and homosexuality, those evils are offset by the belief that Democrats do a better job obeying Christ’s command to help the less fortunate.

According to Matthew 25, Jesus told his followers, "Then the King will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.' Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?' The King will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.'” (NIV)

It is very clear that Jesus is saying you take care of them—YOU do it.

But that’s not what Democrats do.

In order for Democrats to have it right, Jesus would have to have said, “Take what your neighbor has by force, and give that to the poor, the sick, etc.”—for that is what Democrats try to do: taxing other people and throwing what the government doesn’t waste to the needy. But Jesus didn’t say that; he didn’t intend to because it doesn’t work nearly as well as what he did say.

I often hear the communal arrangement of the early Christians in Acts cited as proof that government wealth redistribution is Biblical. But again, the giving there was voluntary and not forced through confiscatory taxation. This is made clear when Ananias and Sapphira were about to die for lying to the Holy Spirit, and Peter said in Acts 5:4, “Didn't [the land] belong to you before it was sold? And after it was sold, wasn't the money at your disposal?” (NIV)

Forced charity is obviously not charity at all; it is theft with social appeal. Virtue is always voluntary. This is a subtle distinction, but one that makes all the difference.

The Biggest Problem with Liberalism

It doesn’t work.

It should always be stated so clearly: the problem with Liberalism is that it doesn’t work. It is inadequate to help us because it misdiagnoses the human condition, calling people inherently good when we lean instead toward secrecy, sin, and selfishness.

The Primary Difference Between Liberals and Conservatives, Part II

So who’s correct? Which view of humanity best describes the way we actually are? Most of you won’t believe it at first, but for the most part the reality is that people are basically evil (but exceedingly valuable). This is why Liberalism doesn’t work. It relies on an erroneous foundation that believes people are intrinsically good (but not very valuable). As a result, it gets wrong nearly all resulting responses.

Don’t believe people are evil? Consider the natural state of children. They don’t need to be taught to be dishonest, selfish, disobedient, or to hit other children. Those things come naturally to children.

What about adults? No one trains us to be lazy, lustful, gluttonous, angry, proud, power hungry, irresponsible or ungrateful—and yet we are all of those things. These things need to be trained out of both young and old, and closely guarded against if they are to be avoided at all. And, when we are caught in some transgression, is our first response to stand up, take responsibility and make amends for our act? Generally not. Our first impulse is to lie, cover up, and try to weasel a way out of it.

And it doesn’t work to claim that people are basically good, but that we are corrupted by “society.” How could society be a bad influence if it is nothing more than a collection of people, all of whom are intrinsically good?

We do have a few basic impulses that are good, like the love of parents and children for each other. But the majority of good values and behaviors come from outside ourselves, eventually tracing back to God’s commandments.

Put simply, badness is the human condition. The Bible puts it like this: “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? (Jeremiah 17:9)”

We have a natural gravity toward depravity. The function of government must therefore be to restrain our natural appetites, not facilitate them. The answer to crime isn’t to just legalize everything. The purpose of government must be to restrain evil—our evil. To diagnose our condition otherwise is to condemn our resulting actions to failure.

If People Are Evil

Now imagine a world where people are depraved from birth, where badness is an embedded desire in each of us. People would have to be trained to be honest, generous, and not to harm each other. Goodness, if it is known at all, would have to be handed down from outside of humanity. When mobs gathered, they would riot and loot, killing each other over things as trivial as soccer games. Our charities would have to work overtime to bring in donations. Heroes would be exceptional. And there would be other traits:

Big government would be bad because power would be likely to corrupt our leaders, and we would want them to have as little power over us as possible when that happened. Our leaders would have to be monitored through a system of checks and balances.

Our leaders should be chosen by their wisdom and how well they have overcome their own bad impulses, but they still may not get elected because the voters are foolish.

Wealth should not be redistributed without the consent of the donors. The recipients would have to be closely monitored to ensure they didn’t spend the money foolishly.

The military would be crucial for keeping the population safe from foreign aggression, which could come at any time, for no particular reason.

The police would be necessary. The more densely populated an area became, the more it would need police.

Whatever people want to do should be measured against standards of right and wrong, and prevented when wrong.

Government programs would need to be strictly measured by their stated goals. To fail to do so would invite abuse.

Children would need lengthy training in standards of right and wrong.

Christianity would be good because such people would need a savior.

Sounds like one of our major political parties, doesn’t it?

If all of the above were true, the full half of the population who disagree with those positions would be easily explained, because people are naturally foolish and wrong. People believing in these positions would have a difficult time persuading others because no one likes to think of humanity as basically evil.

Of course, if people are not inherently evil, then none of the above would be true, and such positions would be indefensible either logically or empirically, so their adherents would have to resort to one-line sound bites and name calling, instead of analyzing issues for hours on talk radio.

If People Are Good

Try to imagine a world where people actually are good from the cradle, where badness had to be learned from a source outside of humanity. Imagine a world where people would have to be trained to fight, abuse, and cheat each other, where the prisons were empty and the churches were unneeded. When mobs gathered, they would suddenly burst into acts of goodness, cleaning up neighborhoods and caring for the poor and the orphan. Heroes would not be celebrated because it would be normal and expected for people to achieve great goodness. And there would be other advantages:

The government could grow to any size—even to socialistic proportions—because power would not corrupt and our leaders could be trusted to do what’s right.

Our leaders would not be chosen by their virtue or character, but by their I.Q. We would want the smartest people in charge so they could solve the hard problems for the rest of us.

Wealth could be redistributed and not meticulously tracked afterward because the recipients could be trusted to use it responsibly. The “donors,” of course, should not mind this because they would all be onboard with helping those less fortunate.

The military would be viewed unfavorably because it crosses into other nations and kills the inherently good people living there without their consent. In fact, the entire military would be largely unnecessary because other nations could be trusted to do the right thing.

We would barely need the police.

Whatever people want to do should be allowed and facilitated by the rest of us because whatever makes us feel good would actually be good.

Government programs would be measured not by their actual success at meeting any stated goals, but by the degree to which they give people what they want.

Children could decide how to raise themselves. In fact, since children are virtuous from the womb, the less parental involvement the better. In fact, we’d better just get those really smart people from the government to raise the kids.

Christianity would be bad because it puts restraints on people.

Science would be something of a savior because it appears to marginalize God and free people from any external moral code. It also increases our power as we make scientific progress.

Sounds like one of our major political parties, doesn’t it?

But if all of the above were true, there would be no way to explain the full half of the population who disagree with those positions. Maybe they’re all aberrant.

Of course, if people are not inherently good, then none of the above would be true, and such positions would be indefensible either logically or empirically, so their adherents would have to resort to one-line sound bites and name calling.

The Primary Difference Between Liberals and Conservatives, Part I

The first, greatest factor determining whether one is a Liberal or a Conservative is what one believes about the nature of humanity. Liberals view human beings as inherently good, but not particularly valuable. Conservatives take the opposite view; seeing people as inherently evil, but enormously valuable.

These two positions are in complete opposition to each other. At most, only one can be correct. Before deciding which that is, let’s look at the results each position has on one’s worldview.

If people are inherently good—if their first impulse is to do good—then the government’s role is one of facilitator. It exists to aid people in overcoming whatever might be preventing them from achieving success. If people are good, they should be allowed to do whatever they want to do. If they do evil, it is because they have been influenced or corrupted by some outside force, like society or religion.

If people are also not very valuable, then it doesn’t matter if their actions are destructive. Abortion, homosexuality, teen sex, pornography, the destruction of the traditional family, fatherless children, assisted suicide, euthanasia, drug use, crime, and political scandals are no big deal. In such a world, the way one feels trumps actual wellbeing, even the wellbeing of others. To those who do not value others much, Conservatives seem way too uptight.

If people are inherently evil—if their first impulse is to do wrong—then the government’s role is to restrain evil. If people’s hearts are evil, they should often be kept from doing what they want to do. To the extent that they do good—or even know about good—it is because of the influence of an outside force, i.e., God.

However, if we are also enormously valuable (because we are made in God’s image), then government should pass laws to protect us from each other. Abortion, homosexuality, teen sex, pornography, etc., are not matters of personal choice, but are activities damaging to the common good, and need to be legislated against. Individual wellbeing (as defined by God) trumps feelings or desires. To people who hold this view, Liberals seem dangerous.

So which position best describes the way we really are? Come back next time for an answer.

P.S. If you disagree with the above, or you find parts of yourself in both positions, odds are you regularly vote against your own most treasured values.

Telling Ourselves the Truth

But first we must tell ourselves the truth.

Francis Schaffer said most people would rather defend their prejudices than seek what is really true. Many of us don’t have self-concept enough to give the other side an even shake. People with a small or damaged self-concept are more likely to define themselves by their political party, and less likely to consider the possibility that the other side might be right. As Stephen Covey put it, “They don’t own enough of themselves.” We fear being proved wrong. We no longer discuss issues; we no longer debate policy. Now we conduct verbal combat as though our lives depend on it, slashing our opponents as they slash at us, neither one even hearing what the other is saying. Being proved wrong would damage our fragile psyches like a physical wound. So we block out the possibility that we could be wrong. And we hate our opponents. As Glenn Beck has said, “We’re eating each other.” We’ve become a nation of political cannibals, blaming the other party for every problem from the national debt to peanut allergies.

Our success or failure as a nation will be a reflection of how closely our decisions and behaviors are aligned with reality. We will not accurately discern reality if we are knotted up in our own biases and prejudgments. We must figure out what reality actually is, what we’re up against, what facts we must accommodate, what rules we must heed and operate inside of. Then we must admit the truth about what we find, no matter what that truth turns out to be.

“You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.” — Jesus

One Nation, Under God

All right, so God exists. Most people believe in God anyway. So what’s the point of going through all of that in the previous posts?

The point is exactly this: there are reliable, rational reasons to believe in God—not just a religious-feeling heavenly idea of God, but an objectively real and relevant God with real and relevant rules. And if we do not include God in our attempts at self government, we will fail.

Human beings do not naturally lean toward God’s instructions; this is why nearly all people who have ever lived have spent their lives under the heels of tyrants and murderers. Indeed, we often go so far as to ban from government and public discourse anything that even appears to spring from God. Citing separation of church and state, we actively choose public policies that are the opposite of God’s commandments. We give condoms to children, dismember babies in their mother's wombs, and legalize same sex “marriage.” We have so thoroughly accommodated the imagined rights of the depraved that we have all but destroyed the culture necessary to raise noble, wise, and happy children.

With the exception of slavery and the resulting Civil War—both glaring departures from God’s instruction—the nation flourished for 200 years while following God’s commands in the Bible. In the 1960s, the effort to ban God and His instructions from government began to gain traction. Since then we have seen an explosion in violent crime, our children have come to behave like self-absorbed animals, and our national debt has grown so enormous that it will almost certainly crush us. Beyond those, our social ills are legion; the list is as lengthy and frightening as our list of sins.

The solution to many of these problems is as easy as sending our children to Sunday School. We know that God’s instructions work because there was a time when we more frequently obeyed His rules and did not suffer from these same social malignancies. God has told us how to live, and it works remarkably well. We ignore Him at our imminent peril. He has warned us that He won’t remain silent forever.

Will the Real Reality Please Stand Up?

Postmodern philosophy became popular a few years ago. Postmodernism is basically a denial that objective reality exists or can be known. It teaches that each of us has our own reality, because we cannot know objective reality through our senses. This is merely an excuse for people to behave as they wish, and is foolish in the extreme.

Objective reality really exists. This is why science works. If we each defined our own reality, then we could not find out how things work through experimentation. A given experiment would turn out differently for different people, depending on the “reality” of each. But this isn’t the case. The sun rises and sets for everyone, nuclear bombs really can destroy entire cities, and you really do exist. These things, like the science that has given us our unprecedented technology, are objectively true. I prove objective reality every time I push the play button on my DVD player; it works no matter what the button-pusher happens to believe about the machine.

Here’s the point: Our success or failure depends on how closely our values, decisions, and actions are aligned with reality. If we fail to correctly discern and identify objective reality, we will also fail to reach our goals.

The Necessity of God, Part IV

Okay, so we’ve talked a lot about the requirement that Supernature exist for us to be as we believe we are.

But what about God, where does He fit in? In previous posts, we pretty well covered our capacities for uncaused events and self-awareness. These mean that we can access realms and abilities that extend beyond what is possible in a merely physical universe. In these ways we are similar to the traditional concept of God. (Let us create them in our image.) But we cannot be God, for some conditions exist that demand the existence of a Greater Power.

First, who made the universe? I don’t remember doing it. Do you? The intricacy and apparent design of our physical environment shouts of an intellect, skill, and power that are infinitely greater than our own. Besides, I wouldn’t be much of a Supreme Being if I had created the universe and couldn’t even remember it.

Second, who made you and me? I do not remember always having existed. I seem to have had a beginning. Since it is nonsensical to say a thing created itself, there must have been a Beginner, a Creator.

Third, who made the rules? There seem to be objective rules of right and wrong governing our existence, rules like fairness, honesty, and the “Thou Shalt Nots” of the Ten Commandments. These are universal—or nearly so—throughout the human race. They transcend our physical laws. I still believe in these rules even when I don’t obey them, even when my initial impulse is to do their opposite. They do not appear to be an extension of myself, so where do they come from? It is rational to expect that, if there was a Creator, any non-physical laws—any morality—would extend from intrinsic characteristics or values of that Creator.

And that Creator we call “God.”

The Necessity of God, Part III

Do you exist? How do you know? Is it because you experience tactile sensations? Because you can move? Because you can process information inside your head? I submit that you would still be certain of your own existence if you were completely paralyzed, in a sensory deprivation tank, or even if you weren’t thinking in the traditional sense of the word. You know that you exist because you have self awareness.

Computers are interesting in this regard. A computer can be programmed to simulate self awareness. All you need do is tell the machine that it exists, and it will answer in the affirmative every time. But how will it respond if we tell it that it doesn’t exist?

Suppose we build a computer with a body of flesh and bone and program it to perfectly simulate the behavior of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Would the computer then have self awareness? Despite what science fiction would have you believe, the answer is still “No.” No matter how complex its nervous system may be, it has no actual self to become aware of. In its essence, the machine is still a machine: a swirl of electrical/chemical/mechanical activity. Any statement the machine makes about itself will always be determined by the arrangement of those electrical/chemical/mechanical parts. It can report on the condition of its internals, but it can never know that it knows something. We can change its report simply by changing the condition of its parts. In other words, it can store and report data, but it can never know anything. This is because its every response will always be caused by its own arrangement and any stimulus it receives. As C.S. Lewis put it, any statement from such a machine will contain no more knowledge than the statement “I itch.”

But you and I are not like a machine. You would still know you that exist, even if told otherwise by people you respect. There is a “ghost in the machines” of you and me. This is why a belief in evolution can never replace the necessity of God: because self awareness can never spring up in an entirely caused universe, no matter how complex the organism or how long the time. This is because self-awareness is at least partly an uncaused event, the first uncaused event that humans perform. It is the first act of a new mind: conscious self awareness, the realization of the certainty that I am.

Descartes had it wrong. It is not “I think, therefore I am,” for an argument can be made that computers think. It is rather, “I know that I am, therefore I am.” In other words, I have self awareness. There is a “me” inside here; I have a mind to be aware of; I exist. This is not something we can be told, for what if we were told the opposite? We cannot learn it through our senses, for our senses could lie. This knowledge of oneself cannot be achieved by any physical cause or it is not really known, but only a statement of the condition of the electrons in one’s cortex.

I am.

Interesting that God, in the Old Testament when Moses asked His name, replied, “I am that I am.” God, representing Himself in his simplest form, meets completely the first requirement of all conscious beings.

The Necessity of God, Part II

Have you ever made a decision? Could you have decided to do something other than read this sentence right now? If all events are 100% caused, then the answer to both questions is “No.” You don’t have a choice. You have been destined to read this sentence at this moment since the dawn of time; there is nothing else you could be doing. Your action is caused, just as my writing of this sentence was caused and there was therefore nothing else I could have done. In a universe with 100% causation, everything is predetermined to occur exactly when and the way it does. All of history is like the ultimate computer program, with all events causing all subsequent events until the end of the world. Run it through again with the same origin of the universe, and all of history will play out exactly the same once again. Your every action is completely devoid of significance because you could choose no other way. You are entirely caused and all of your actions, thoughts, and emotions are caused by previous concrete physical events. In short, apart from uncaused events, there is no you. That central part of yourself that believes you are in control is only an illusion. But, we might ask, who is the illusion fooling? (I once read a review in a major national magazine of a book that claimed this wholly caused universe was a reality. The author was daring in his proclamation that “There is no you.” But this brings an immediate problem: “If no one exists, why did he write the book? Who is he trying to persuade?”)

Free will—the making of a decision which is not entirely caused—requires an event that is at least partially uncaused. Without free will, there is no significance. Significance is the possibility of influencing eternity. Without free will and significance, the TV is on but no one is home; the universe is a sitcom that no one made, no one is starring in, and no one is watching.

It should be noted here that, although uncaused events are required for significance, totally random or spontaneous events won’t get us there, either. A truly random event, if such a thing exists, would have no more significance than a totally caused event, because there is no reason or rationality—and therefore no meaning—behind it. What is needed is an event that is neither caused nor random—a requirement that cannot be met in a purely physical universe.

We live in a universe that appears to be purely mechanical. For us to be as we believe ourselves to be, we need causation that is not a physical cause—an uncause, if you will. We need an event that can either occur or not based on a free will or rational impetus—an impetus unavailable in our physical universe. When you make a decision—when you exercise your free will—you are performing an action that is outside the capacity of a purely natural universe. It is an unnatural event, a supernatural event. In short, you perform what might accurately be called a miracle. We are supernatural, non-physical beings, residents of a realm outside of the physical universe who are injected into physical space cocooned in a physical body—a kind of avatar. This is why we distinguish between body—the impossibly complex but purely physical machine with which we interact with our physical environment—and soul.

What other uncaused events might we be capable of? Tune in next time to find out.

The Necessity of God, Part I

I might as well confess from the start that I can’t prove logically that God exists. He seems to have deliberately designed things that way. The best I can do is show that if God doesn't exist, then we are not the beings we believe ourselves to be. Truth, knowledge, right, wrong, good, bad, morality, logic, reason thought, significance, consciousness, motivation, free will, and even our very selves cannot exist without Him. We may each hold a different opinion about God, but we all—even “atheists”—behave as if He exists.

How to start? Imagine that the universe is a closed system inside of which every event is caused by some other physical event, and no events occur that are not caused by another event. Everything inside this universe we can call “Nature” and everything outside of the universe would therefore be “Supernature,” as in “above or beyond Nature.” Now, any entry into the system by forces outside of the system would bring about apparently uncaused events because there would be no way to determine the cause of the event from inside the system. It would appear as magic or, more appropriately, a miracle.

Godless Evolutionists or Atheists claim that nothing exists beyond Nature, that there is no Supernature. The first problem with this proposition is that we clearly observe events happening around us, and those events appear to have causes. In fact, we are so accustomed to this cause and effect sequence that we assume any observable physical occurrence has at least one physical cause. This is why science works, computers can be programmed, and cars can be repaired. Events have causes. And our observations tell us those events are always finite, that is they have a beginning and an end. So, when faced with a universe filled with finite caused events ricocheting off of each other, a thoughtful person might project the whole soup back in time and ask the obvious question: “What was the first event, and what caused it?” But that question makes no sense, for if it had a cause it would not be the first event. What we need is an uncaused event, and we have to leave the universe to find it. (The Big Bang does not adequately serve as the first cause or the first event because the question still arises: “What caused the Big Bang?” Instead of giving us a satisfactory answer, the Big Bang merely obscures the problem behind a veil that atheist cosmologists can declare to be invincibly impermeable, thereby diverting attention from the “permanently unanswerable” question. But the question remains, for it cannot be answered with any cause from within the physical universe.)

Bertrand Russell said that the need for this first cause moved him from being an atheist to a deist. But then someone suggested to him that having God supply the first cause then raised the question, “Who made God?” which moved him back to being an atheist. That’s a stupid question, really. He apparently never considered the possibility—the requirement—that the Creator of the Universe exists outside of and separate from the universe He created, and would therefore not be subject to its laws. After all, He could not be a native of the universe and its Creator, for a thing cannot create itself. And in that realm outside of the universe, in Supernature, uncaused events and eternal beings might be commonplace. And in fact, they seem to be.

“But,” you say, “wouldn’t it be simpler to take Carl Sagan’s route and skip the extra God step, assuming instead that the physical universe is self-existent—that it has always been and will always be here? If God can be self-existent, then why can't the same be true of the universe?” The answer: because the universe is confined to the realm of caused events and God is not.

“But isn’t it a stretch to attribute the universe to a miracle? I mean, we just don’t observe uncaused events taking place around us every day.”

Ah, but we do.

We just don’t recognize them for what they are because uncaused events are so commonplace that we seldom even notice them. We rarely consider them as evidence of Supernature. What are these uncaused events? You’ll have to wait until the next installment to find out.

The Most Important Thing

1. If God exists, He is the most important thing in the Universe. He is the Reason for our Existence, the Meaning of Life. To fail to grasp this one most-important fact is to miss life’s purpose. Understanding God’s proper place as the Author of Reality is the difference between a life lived in purpose and goodness, and one utterly wasted in futility and noise.

2. God must exist. More on this later.

Defining Terms

We have forgotten the definitions of some of our most useful combative words. The result is that we say something different from what we mean, and then wonder why it doesn’t have the intended effect on our adversaries. This is true for the young political zealot all the way up to the radio talk show host (old political zealot).

In this blog, the following definitions shall apply:

Intelligent, Smart — How well one thinks. An evaluation of the efficiency and effectiveness of one’s powers of thought and observation. It is a statement about the workings of the physical brain, not the amount of knowledge in the brain. Intelligence tends to not change much over time. One who lacks intelligence is an idiot or moron.

The opposite of intelligent and smart are stupid and dumb.

Wisdom — How well one makes choices. Wisdom is skill at making correct decisions and resolving conflict. It is common sense or sensitivity. It is knowing the right thing to do. One need not be smart to become wise, though intelligence helps in the accumulation of wisdom over time. Wisdom can be gained by learning, particularly through personal experience, or by good advice, which is learning through the experiences of others. Wisdom can increase over time if we pay attention and are masochistically honest with ourselves. Wisdom can also decrease, particularly if we attempt to rationalize prejudices or faulty conclusions that are based on incorrect beliefs. Wisdom is the most important word on this page.

The opposite of wise is foolish. These are both words we badly need to put back into our common vocabulary.

Knowledge, Education — How much one knows. The learning one has retained. One’s education is not a direct indicator of one’s intelligence, though a higher intelligence will speed up one’s learning. Education/knowledge can help with acquiring wisdom because the principles of wisdom can be learned. But, regrettably, so can the principles of foolishness. And we find a ready supply of willing teachers.

The opposite of knowledge is ignorance.

We have a tendency to write off those who disagree with us by saying something like “He’s an idiot.” This is usually ineffective because our opponents can simply say, “No, he isn’t,” and they win because it is obvious to all that the individual in question is clearly not someone with an abysmal I.Q. Though one cannot be both smart and stupid at the same time, it is quite possible to be a brilliant or educated fool. In fact, the more impressed one is with his own brilliance or education, the more foolish he is likely to be. This is one reason we find many universities littered with scientists and scholars who routinely say and do spectacularly foolish things.

The Stuff Underneath

It has been said (by some undoubtedly conceited soul) that “small minds talk about people, medium minds talk about events, and big minds talk about ideas.” There are more than enough blogs commenting on current events. In this blog, I’m after something a bit deeper. This is an effort to get at the stuff underneath; not the who, what, and where, but the why? This is the place for those ideas, or, more precisely, those transcendent principles that structure our existence—whether we notice, acknowledge, and live by them or not.

Steven Covey gave us Seven Habits of Highly Effective People—a proposition that there is such a thing as right living, and that right living pays off with happiness, satisfaction, joy, fulfillment, and ultimately, success. But success on a personal level isn’t the end of the positive effects of principled living. There are also principles of effective cultures, nations, and governments. There are such things as real success and failure on national and even global scales, and they are brought about by adherence to, or defiance of, transcendent principles and beliefs. As has been said, “You cannot break the Law. You can only break yourself upon the Law.” What we believe as a nation does matter, for nearly all of the people on this planet live and die, in freedom or in bondage, at the whim of the politically strong.