To Whom Much Is Given...

President Obama spoke recently at the National Prayer Breakfast, quoting several Bible verses instructing us to take care of the poor. They were good verses, and something that I'm going to try to internalize to a greater degree.

But he also said that these verses are why he believes in raising taxes, so the government can take care of everybody, because "From to whom much is given, much will be required." In coming to this conclusion, he's missed a couple of subtle but crucial points, ones I find nearly all Christians unable to articulate. Instead, I hear Christians verbally floundering around, quoting irrelevant verses--contradictory or otherwise--as if the act of demonstrating they know as much about the Bible as the advocates of big government will invalidate the original verses. I cringe when they do that.

So here are the right answers:

First, when Jesus said, "much will be required," he wasn't talking about Barack Obama or the US Federal government. In that statement, it is clear that GOD is doing the requiring, not other people, because he said "will," not "is," indicating the requiring will take place at a future event: death.

Second, Jesus commanded us to give what we have to the poor. He did not command us to "Take what your neighbor has BY FORCE, and give that to the poor." He didn't intend to say this, because it doesn't work very well.

For the recipient, gifts from a faceless government increase irresponsibility and a sense of entitlement. Huge amounts are wasted by government inefficiency (trust me, I've been a government employee.) The transaction also increases class resentment among the people from whom the money is forcefully taken.

As a Christian, I have an obligation to take care of the poor and to love my neighbor. I do not have an obligation to make sure you take care of the poor and love your neighbor.

There's no virtue in forced charity.

In Acts, the Christians lived together and shared all they had, but the sharing was clearly voluntary.

Though God did not instruct us to forcefully redistribute, He did command us "Thou shalt not steal."

So, by all means, let's try to persuade the rich (and everyone else) to give. Let's have TV commercials, public opinion campaigns, and a fund for voluntary contributions to the poor. But the choice to give must remain with the giver, or we'll end up with ... well, what we've got, and worse.

Why War is Morally Superior to Legal Abortion

There are people in the world who need to be killed in order to protect the innocent. None of those people are preborn children.

I have a friend who says that she is against starving children to death and that child starvation is caused in huge numbers in refugee camps, which are caused by wars. Her further hatred of Republicans has apparently driven her to believe that Republicans exist to start wars. She has forgotten that Democrats and Republicans both voted to approve our ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

She is not aware, or doesn’t care, that the number of abortions in the U.S. increased 1500% after Roe v. Wade.

It is possible to wage a noble war: the end of Hitler, Mussolini, and Hirohito, the liberation of Iraqis and Afghanis from murderous dictators, the driving of Iraq out of Kuwait, the protection of our citizens, the defending of the people in Viet Nam and Korea from invading aggressors, the protection of innocents around the world.

It is not possible to nobly dismember a living infant.

Abortions are performed by people who cut up human children for money.

U.S. wars are waged by people who risk their lives for the protection of others. For some reason, there are people who believe that first group is more likely to tell them the truth than the second group.

Half of most wars are to defend the innocent.

One-hundred percent of every abortion is intended to kill the innocent.

The goal of war, whether offensive or defensive, is geopolitical change. The goal of war is rarely the killing of particular individuals or groups of people. The goal of war is never to kill children, and the United States regularly does everything humanly possible to ensure that children and civilians are spared, including providing aid to people in refugee camps that might result from any war anywhere.

The goal of abortion is the death of a child—always. It’s still a war even if the military action doesn’t result in anyone’s death. It is not an abortion if a child doesn’t die.

No one puts “Starting wars” in their party platform.

Protecting and promoting the legal killing of children throughout the world is a specifically stated goal of the Democrat party, included in their party platform election after election.

We do not ordinarily wage war against our own citizens.

Abortion in the U.S. is aimed directly at children—our own children. Though they have been ruled non-citizens by the Supreme Court (just like slaves in Dred Scott), U.S. abortions are nearly always performed against the children of this nation.

It is not morally wrong to kill someone who is shooting at you or actively trying to kill your children.

Abortion is morally wrong. Don’t believe me? Look at the photos of the dead children that result and get back to me.

Wars are usually forced upon us.

Abortion in the U.S. is most often forced on no one but the child. Pregnancy is caused by the consensual behavior of the parents 98% of the time. The only victim is the child.

The goal of an abortion is to kill a child, not an enemy combatant, not a convicted criminal, not a bloodthirsty dictator, not a terrorist who would enthusiastically give his life to blow your children to hamburger—a child. The goal of every abortion is the death of a child.

Democrats, through legal abortion, have murdered—get this—53 million human children as of 2011. Further, they have achieved this shocking atrocity in a mere 37 years, and in only a single country. There have not been 53 million children, refugees or otherwise, killed by all the wars in all of history in all the world, combined.

National Unity 9/12/11

Remember 10 years ago when the response to the 9/11 attacks resulted in tremendous national unity? Suddenly everyone was proud to be American. There were flags everywhere, even on the lapels of liberal politicians. Our national leaders gathered to sing patriotic and religious songs on the steps of the U.S. Capitol building. I’m told they even prayed together. George Bush’s approval rating was at 90%. We were committed to tracking down—and killing—those who had hurt us so badly. Military action was approved by both parties. There was a swelling in church attendance and military enlistment across the nation. It became socially acceptable to use the word “God” as something other than profanity. James Carvel cancelled his coordinated news media attack on the Bush presidency, and the “blame America first” crowd went into hiding.

In short, everyone was suddenly behaving like … Republicans.
Why is that? Why did this single horrific event change so dramatically the behavior of liberals?

The answer is that for the first time in a long time, the liberal belief system had been penetrated by … reality. They had experienced a head-on collision with the way things actually are, with the unbridled evil of which people are capable, and it was so terrible and so dramatic that even those who rationalize cutting up babies and who promote sodomy to schoolchildren couldn’t deny the reality of it. And in a single day, it turned them into Republicans. It would obviously not last, for America’s TV generations have lost the capacity to remember anything for very long, but I had hoped it would last longer than it did. Eventually liberals were able to push 9/11 from their minds and return to spewing venom and hatred at the people—like George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Don Rumsfeld, and the entire U.S. Military—who sacrifice and die to keep them safe.

There’s been a lot of talk about national unity in the past week, as if it evaporated while we weren’t looking and no one can figure out where it went. But the reality is this: Republicans haven’t changed. America became unified when Democrats, for a time, gave up the rage, lying, and name calling that are the only tactics available to people who cannot win arguments based on facts and results. We returned to division when liberals forgot their unpleasant encounter with reality and went back to a belief system that is invincibly grounded on the way things aren’t.

The Killers of Children

I know some Democrats who believe abortion is murder. It is truly a bizarre belief to hold that a group could be wrong in their ferocious support and promotion of ripping living human children limb from limb in their mothers’ wombs, and yet morally right about everything else. It is equally bizarre to hold that there is somehow a virtue in that ferocious support and promotion of child murder, even when they resort to lying to do it. Republicans tend to shoot at people who are trying to kill children—-their own or others’. Democrats shoot at the people who are trying to prevent them from killing children-—their own and others’. And, they even make it a major, specific plank in their party platform election after election. No one has ever made “protecting and preserving war and exporting it to as many other countries as possible” a plank in their party platform. I have a friend who, in rationalizing her hatred of Republicans, told me she is against child starvation, which is often caused by war (the implication being that Republicans cause wars). Democrats are responsible for protecting and promoting the unrestrained murder of 53 million human children. There have not been that many children killed in total in every war that has ever been waged in the history of the world, refugees included. And the Democrats have managed this breathtaking atrocity in a single country in a mere 38 years. If you are a liberal/progressive, you have begun with a faulty assumption: that people who actively and deliberately engage in child murder could ever be the good guys. As I have said before, self deception is the hallmark of the liberal/progressive.

The Conservative Problem

Liberals/Progressives believe conservatives are the problem in our nation. Naturally. I mean who could fail to see the link between traditional family values and the explosions of teen sex, forcible rape, pornography, STDs, unwanted pregnancy, and abortions? Who could possibly deny the obvious causation between “thou shalt not lie, steal, lust, murder, and envy” and the tripling of the violent crime rate in the past 50 years? And who among us would dispute the fact that Sunday school attendance in Bible-believing churches obviously causes depression, isolation, anger, suicide, bullying, drug use, alcohol abuse, school shootings, and every other kind of anti-social behavior among our youth?

Of course I’m being facetious. But it requires these kinds of bizarre mental contortions to imagine that paying women to have children out of wedlock isn’t going to increase the percentage of children born out of wedlock, or that removing the most serious consequence for teen sex (by killing the resulting child) isn’t going to encourage our children to behave like animals in heat and result in a mountain of dead babies. It requires this kind of denial to imagine that any policy that is 180 degrees opposed to God’s instruction in the Bible is going to be anything other than a staggering failure—because what’s in the Bible works. And heaven forbid we would ever implement a program of following up on such policies to see what the results actually are. That might mean having to cancel all of these government programs, and then we couldn’t feel good about wanting so desperately to deliver the less fortunate from their basic human responsibilities.

Ultimately it comes down to this: which side is trying to obey God’s instruction, and which side is trying to get rid of God’s instruction? Which side has the greater percentage of healthy kids and strong marriages? Which side has all the STDs? Which side is successful? Which side continues to fail?

Excuses, Excuses....

I was in a personnel seminar a few years ago where the moderator, who was black, suggested that we should all stand up and go to the corners of the room, then return to the middle. She said this was because white people hold more social power than blacks, and that this movement was to symbolize that we whites were "giving up" our power so we could all be equal. I refused to do it, explaining, "One of my sons is black. We got him when he was taken from his mother by Child Protective Services. She was a mess--drug addict, never employed, sometimes homeless--but she was never without excuses for her condition." Later the moderator asked me how I intended to keep my son from suffering from racism throughout his life. I said, "Well, first and foremost I'm going to make darned sure he's never put into a group where the moderator tells him someone else must give up something before he can succeed."

"If I admit I am responsible, I may have to admit that I have been irresponsible." -- Stephen Covey

The Congressman's Mistake

I recently heard a couple of guys on the radio discussing whether or not a known terrorist should be allowed to speak at a university. One guy, a former congressman, said he should be allowed to speak because we have freedom of speech in this country. The other said the terrorist should be prevented from speaking to the impressionable young minds.

This disagreement arises from a common misconception in the United States: that we are great because of our freedom. I submit that this is not the case. The United States grew to greatness because of our virtue, not our freedom. Freedom without virtue is anarchy, and will eventually bring about oppression from those who yield to the basic human desire to control one's neighbors. Virtue without freedom, however, will eventually bring freedom for all.

This is why we, with maximum freedoms, have murdered 50 million babies, why we find our teens behaving like animals, why we have an infinite amount of graphic pornography on the Internet, and why our entertainment industry is dedicated to the corruption of our children. It is also why we are beginning to see a clamping down on some of our freedoms. Expect that trend to continue as long as we deny God.

"I sought for the greatness and genius of America in her commodious harbors and her ample rivers - and it was not there . . . in her fertile fields and boundless forests and it was not there . . . in her rich mines and her vast world commerce - and it was not there . . . in her democratic Congress and her matchless Constitution - and it was not there. Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits flame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because she is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, she will cease to be great." – Unknown (formerly attributed to Alexis de Tocqueville).

I fear America has ceased to be good.

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.