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Killing babies - 26 June 2010
A recent report by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists claim that unborn children cannot feel pain before the 24th week of pregnancy. They are “undeveloped and sedated,” in “a state of induced sleep, like unconsciousness.” Consequently, say the RCOG, there is no reason to reduce the current 24-week abortion limit.
There’s a lot of things one would like to say to the pro-abortion lobby, but let’s try to focus narrowly (for now) on the matter in hand.
The logic of the RCOG’s report is alarming. Just look at the reasoning: such young children can’t feel pain (being “unconscious and sedated”), therefore there’s no reason to stop killing them (I understand “terminate the pregnancy” is the preferred phrase, but let barbarous things have barbarous names). Even if this research were accurate (and it’s disputed by other doctors), perhaps the RCOG would be kind enough to explain why the inability to feel pain should have become a criterion for allowing a child to be killed. After all, “a state of induced sleep” can easily be induced artificially. Would the RCOG apply the same logic in those cases? If not, why apply it here?
Tick the box - 23 April 2010
The Christian Institute has produced a helpful-looking guide to the policies of the major political parties ahead of the forthcoming election. Download your copy free here, or take a look at the introductory video.
The day of reckoning - 20 April 2010
When it comes to deciding how to vote in the General Election, past performance is a pretty good guide to the future. With this in mind, the Christian Institute have produced a useful guide to the voting records of all current MPs. It highlight the issues they (the Christian Institute, that is) regard as ethically significant, and simplifies matters immensely by giving a big green tick for what they regard as a “morally right” vote and a chunky red cross for a “morally wrong” one.
For the convenience of people living in or around Emmanuel (Southgate, North London), the data for MP’s in this (Enfield Southgate) and the surrounding constituencies can be accessed via the links below. All these MPs are standing for re-election in May.
And here’s a national map of Parliamentary constituencies.
But first, some caveats: Obviously anyone who decides how to vote solely on the basis of this information needs their head examined. Maybe the Christian Institute’s data should have covered other issues. Maybe their assessment of “morally right” or “morally wrong” is mistaken. There are dozens of other relevant factors. And, for the avoidance of all doubt, let me emphasise that all this data is in the public domain. There’s nothing here that you couldn’t find out some other way.
Having said all that, here goes:
David Burrowes (Con), Enfield Southgate
Theresa Villiers (Con), Chipping Barnet
Lynne Featherstone (Lib Dem), Hornsey and Wood Green
Joan Ryan (Lab), Enfield North
James Clappison (Con), Hertsmere
A brief reprieve from the lunacy - 7 April 2010
The Christian Institute reports today that the government has “withdrawn its highly controversial home education and sex education plans for England.” These plans would have made Whitehall-controlled sex education “a statutory part of the national curriculum” and given government officials the right to interview home-educated children without their parents being present. The abandonment of this proposed legislation is most definitely a good thing.
Here’s one interpretation of today’s events: The government was forced into a “humiliating U-turn” during negotiations with opposition parties, and abandoned this part of the Children, Schools and Families Bill in order to force the rest of it through in the “wash-up” – that’s the period just before the dissolution of Parliament when (sadly) some (though fortunately not all) politicians seem tempted to abandon the job they’re supposed to be doing (carefully and thoughtfully scrutinising proposed legislation, for example) and concentrate instead on getting re-elected.
That’s one way of looking at it, and it’s true enough as far as it goes.
Here’s another way:
The God who taught his people not to put their trust in princes has answered their prayers and spared them (and the rest of the country) for the time being from one small piece of oppressive lunacy flying in the direction of godly mums and dads who are just trying to bring up their kids in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.
The God who taught his people to pray “Your kingdom come” has extended his gracious rule an inch or so further into an area of British public life where the devil was about to get his own way (temporarily) by enlisting the support of the powers that be in pursuit of his (doomed) project to overthrow the rule of the risen and exalted Lord Jesus Christ.
The God who commands all the earth to pay homage to his exalted Son and worship him with all their heart and soul and mind and strength has mercifully delivered us from being yet more deeply mired in slavery to the idolatrous and self-destructive statism that will one day ruin this nation if her people don’t repent in a big way.
The God whose people are too often tempted to doubt that the hearts of kings are in his hands has gently reminded us that the Most High is sovereign over the kingdoms of men and gives them to anyone he wishes.
One or two civil rulers who apparently do not realise that they, like the rest of us, are required to submit to the authority of Jesus Christ in every area of their lives, and who have therefore apparently forgotten that their job is to enact the laws that God commands, not to make up their own, have received a less-than-gentle reminder that there is no authority except that which God has established, and that the Lord gives and the Lord takes away, and that anyone who thinks he is standing firm needs to take care that he doesn’t fall, and that the Lord drowned Pharoah and his host in the Red Sea, and that with an overflowing flood he will make an end of all his adversaries.
Pass the band-aids, I’ve got gangrene - 16 March 2010
Stanislav Mishin makes some pretty pessimistic observations about the current and likely future condition of England.
I haven’t checked the facts, but I’m suspicious about the claim that “one in 8 stores has closed down.” And it’s not true that the government has “forcably nationalized all major banks on the island.” Just some bits of some of them. So far. But that aside, the prediction of short-term national decline is probably fairly accurate.
But he’s dead wrong about the solution. Our hope does not lie “in small parties … like the English Defense League.” Pass the band-aids, I’ve got gangrene.
Bizarrely, Mishin is simultaneously too pessimistic and too optimistic. Too pessimistic if he thinks that the present decline is terminal, and too optimistic if he thinks that mere politics can do anything to halt the slide.
The only hope for this nation – like any other nation – is the gospel of Christ. Any nation that refuses to worship the LORD of Hosts will, sooner or later, be brought down to the dust by the God who said, “Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and you perish in the way, for his wrath is quickly kindled. Blessed are all who take refuge in him” (Psalm 2:12).
So hear the word of the LORD:
3 Put not your trust in princes, in a son of man, in whom there is no salvation. 4 When his breath departs he returns to the earth; on that very day his plans perish. 5 Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the LORD his God. (Psalm 146:3-5)
And:
Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people. (Proverbs 14:34)
A real test of character - 22 February 2010
The time is coming – indeed, in some quarters it has already come – when evangelicals, especially evangelical leaders, will need to take a stand against unbiblical attitudes in the public square. This will require courage, since proclaiming the gospel to people who don’t want to hear it seldom results in increased popularity, and no one enjoys being despised.
At the same time, we should remember that the true test of Christian integrity comes not when we need to stand against those who hate us, but when we need to challenge our friends. It’s one thing to confront the unbelieving world, whose opinion of us we have rightly learned to disregard. It’s another matter to expose deceit and ungodliness among those close to us, whose good opinion we may be tempted to covet just a little too much.
After all, generations of wicked Israelites managed to summon up contempt for the Pagan nations of the world. But Phinehas received a covenant of eternal priesthood when he slayed the fornicator within the camp (Numbers 25), and the Levites were set apart for Temple service because they put to death their idolatrous brothers (Exodus 32).
The true test of character for an evangelical leader is not public, but private. Frankly, if doesn’t take much to stand up to the predictable and yawn-inducing hostility of the mainstream press, since at this point his Christian friends (his real audience?) can be relied upon to cheer from the sidelines. But will he have the courage to expose the hidden deceit of behind-the-scenes church politics, when to do so may cost him friends (and preferment) he really values?
Children are being nationalised - 2 February 2010
Gerald Warner has some sharp observations about the decision of the US authorities to grant political asylum to a German family who were (to quote Judge Lawrence O. Burman, who made the decision) facing ‘a well-founded fear of persecution’ because of their decision to homeschool their children.
This is something we in the UK should be worried about, says Warner. For ‘our rulers subscribe to the same tyrannical statist philosophy’ that underlies state opposition to homeschooling in Germany. Whether or not we happen to be homeschoolers – or for that matter, whether or not we even have children – all of us ought to be share the Americans’ concern about ‘the creeping totalitarianism that has engulfed Europe.’
‘Children are being nationalised,’ claims Warner. The British government’s most recent attempt came in the shape of the Badman Report. After that, they might try just about anything.
If this blog had a category called ‘Shameless Appeals,’ I might just think to mention this…
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One and a half cheers - 2 February 2010
Pope Benedict has drawn howls of protest from the secularists again, this time by attacking the UK government’s proposed Equality Bill. The Pope said that the UK ‘is well-known for its firm commitment to equality of opportunity for all members of society,’ yet warns that ‘the effect of some of the legislation designed to achieve this goal has been to impose unjust limitations on the freedom of religious communities to act in accordance with their beliefs.’
Well, one and a half cheers.
The problem with the Pope’s statement is the reasoning on which it is based. In his view, the bill is bad because it violates ‘natural law’ and therefore compromises the freedoms of ‘religious communities.’ But the real problem with the the bill is that it violates the word of God and compromises the right of Jesus Christ to be proclaimed as the King of the whole earth.
Ironically, the Pope’s reasoning places him squarely in the camp of the liberals he is attempting to oppose. When he says that the proposed legislation ‘violates the natural law upon which the equality of all human beings is grounded,’ he sounds indistinguishable from the Government Equalities Office spokesman who declared, ‘everyone should have a fair chance in life and not be discriminated against.’
So at first glance the Pope looks like he’s standing against the government by defending the gospel; while in fact he’s standing alongside them by defending ‘equality’, and merely claiming that he’s got a better idea of how to achieve it. This was spotted by a sharp-eyed British official, who pointed out that ‘the Pope acknowledges our country’s firm commitment to equality for all members of society.’ So there we are – we all agree really, and the Pope should just be reasonable and stop complaining.
To defend the gospel on the ground that it secures other values (such as ‘equality’ defined in terms upon which we’re all supposed to be able to agree) in effect turns those values into our gospel, transforming the Lordship of Jesus Christ into a means designed to secure some other end. We should defend the gospel on the grounds that it is true (since Jesus is, in fact, Lord), not because a consistent liberal ought to like it.
A doomed experiment - 10 December 2009
Is it too cynical to believe that the western world, with its increasingly hostile attitude to all things distinctively Christian, really is headed for a whole lot of trouble?
T. S. Eliot thought not:
The World is trying to experiment with attempting to form a civilised but non-Christian mentality. The experiment will fail; but we must be very patient in awaiting its collapse; meanwhile redeeming the time: so that the Faith may be preserved alive through the dark ages before us; to renew and rebuild civilisation, and save the world from suicide. (Quoted in P. J. Leithart, The Kingdom and the Power, p. 217)
Breeding licenses - 6 December 2009
The government has recently been getting excited about the Badman Report (yup – that’s the author’s real name) on Elective Home Education. That’s a fancy name for the decision some families make to educate their kids at home. You can read the full (84-page) report here, and see the responses from the Christian Institute here.
Despite the government’s recent reassurances, I’m still troubled – and for several reasons. Here are just a couple of them.
First, the Badman proposals represent an inversion of the proper relationship between parents and the state. At present, parents have the right to bring up their children in accordance with their own religious and ideological convictions. Parents can, if they choose, delegate some aspects of this (formal education, for example) to the state, but the state has no a priori rights in this area. The state only becomes involved if the parents give them the authority to do so. The Badman proposals imply a reversal of this: parents would need the state’s approval to educate their own children, not vice versa.
Second, the Badman proposals will, if adopted, establish principles that will extend to every other area of family life, not just formal education. All the arguments by which Badman seeks to justify his proposals in the area of education (the ‘welfare’ argument; the ‘quality’ argument; and so on) would apply no less to the less formal aspects of childrearing. In other words, it’s not just home-educating families that should be worried.
I’m not in the habit of making predictions, but on this occasion I’ll make an exception. I predict that if Badman’s proposals are adopted then within 10 years someone will propose that all families should be subject to ’safeguards’ similar to those that are currently being proposed only in respect of home-educating families. After all, children who attend state school are in danger of ‘poor quality parenting’ in the evenings, right? And shouldn’t the government ‘protect’ all children?
Maybe the Right Hon. James Hacker spoke better than he knew… beginning at about 6 minutes, 4 seconds.
Cheating - 1 December 2009
OK, I cheated. I just mocked the British Humanist Association.
Sorry.
Let me just tidy up the loose ends. Shouldn’t take a moment. Here goes.
The fact that the BHA accidentally picked two Christian kids to front their latest advertising campaign does not, strictly speaking, undermine the logical coherence of the BHA’s stance. To address that question, you’d have to point out a bunch of other obvious things. Like this:
1. Atheism is plainly a religious position, since it makes substantive claims about facts materially significant for religious people, such as the affirmation, ‘There is (probably?) no God’.
2. As a religious commitment, therefore, atheism falls by its own attempted critique of religious one-sidedness, since atheism, no less that Christianity, is one-sided on the question of religion.
3. Another way of saying the same thing: there is no such thing as ‘legitimate neutrality’ on any morally significant question. If you don’t believe me, imagine what might happen to a historian who claimed to be ‘neutral’ on the question of whether the Holocaust took place. People (and, amazingly, there have been some) who attempt such ludicrous equivocation soon discover that this is one knife-edge on which it’s pretty hard to remain balanced.
Perfectly happy - 1 December 2009
The British Humanist Association has been proclaiming its gospel in a series of adverts on the side of buses. One poster boldly assures us, ‘There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.’
However, their most recent campaign has committed something of an own-goal. It’s one that just goes to show (to the eyes of faith) that the Lord is both (a) utterly sovereign; and (b) blessed (if that’s the right word) with a great sense of humour.
The poster in question pictures two happy, bouncy kids, and declares, ‘Please don’t label me. Let me grow up and choose for myself.’ Presumably this is intended as a blow against the tendency of Christian parents to bring their kids up to worship the one living and true God rather than to bow before the idolatrous false deity of humanism.
Unfortunately (for the BHA), the two (happy, bouncy, smiling) kids they picked ‘just happened’ to be the children of Brad Mason, a Christian who plays drums for the well-known Christian rock musician Noel Richards.
Oops.
It’s like this: Ruth ‘just happened’ to find herself in Boaz’s field (Ruth 2:3); David ‘just happened’ to see a woman bathing (1 Samuel 11:2); an arrow fired at random ‘just happened’ to find the chink in the armour of the King of Israel (1 Kings 22:34); and the two kids chosen by the BHA to demonstrate how happy we can all be without God ‘just happened’ to be perfectly happy with him.
U-turn - 2 June 2009
The San Diego County authorities have backed down – well, a bit. Having initially threatened to require a Pastor and his wife to apply for an expensive permit to allow them to hold Bible studies in their home, they’ve now apparently decided to hold fire until they can ‘[find] a solution to the matter’.
Was I being a bit harsh on San Diego County? After all, even if the State has no right to interfere in this case, there are of course some actions that Caesar ought to prohibit. And, moreover, merely attaching the slogan ‘religious’ to an action is not enough the establish that the State should keep its nose out. The ritual killings of young children that have been uncovered sporadically in the UK in recent years are murder, pure and simple; invoking ‘religion’ as an excuse, and then insisting that the State should not regulate religious expression, doesn’t get the murderers off the hook.
But this exposes the crucial underlying issue. At some point we have to decide what behaviours the State does have the right (and therefore the responsibility and authority) to prohibit, and what behaviours it does not. This in turn requires them to outline and justify the basis for the decision so made.
For more on that, you could do far worse than to look here.
Caesar just overstepped the mark - 31 May 2009
An American couple have been ordered to stop holding Bible studies at home without a permit.
Isn’t there a song about this somewhere? Land of the free and home of the brave, or something?
This one could run and run. Some initial thoughts:
Tyrany of this kind is inevitable as soon as the State starts thinking that freedom of religion is something that it needs to establish rather than something that is simply beyond its remit. For once the State takes it into its head proactively to ‘establish’ religious freedoms (rather than to simply keep its nose out), it always needs to place definitional boundaries around the freedoms so established (after all, we don’t want people to just do anything, right?). You can do this, but you can’t do that. This in turn means that we citizens now have to pass ‘tests’ or apply for ‘permission’ to obtain freedoms we once took from granted.
Furthermore, since administering this kind of system obviously takes time and costs money, these ‘freedoms’ tend to be given in the form of ‘licences’ for which citizens must pay. As in the above case, where San Diego County (yup, you heard right) want to charge this couple tens of thousands of dollars for a ‘Major Use Permit’ so that they can read the Bible with some friends in the comfort of their own home.
By objecting to this kind of nonsense, we’re not undermining the biblical insistence that certain acts of religious worship are right and others wrong. But the mistake of many modern States is to assume that (a) they, and not someone else, get to set the rules; and (b) they have the right to administer sanctions for disobedience. God will impose sanctions for misuse of religious freedom on the Last Day. Perhaps the church should do so ahead of time. But whatever gave Caesar the idea that the church needs his permission to worship her Head?
Stop trying to save the world - 28 April 2009
Someone asked me the other day what ‘political’ stuff like this is doing on a blog by a Christian Minister.
Good question.
There’s a lot that could be said (and, indeed, has been written) on this subject. See for example John Owen, Sermons to the Nation (Works, vol. 8). But here’s one (brief, cursory, incomplete) way of looking at it.
The Bible teaches that God delegates authority to certain categories of people (civil rulers, fathers, husbands, ministers) which is to be exercised prayerfully, in love and in accordance with his word over other groups of people (citizens, children, wives, believers).
Sadly, most of the time this authority is exercised in a manner contrary to the word of God. Either responsibility is abrogated, which leads to anarchy; or it is over-extended, exercised in areas beyond the remit God has given, which is tyranny.
Examples of the former would include a father failing to teach his children about Christ from the Scriptures, a husband too lazy to work to provide for his wife, and a minister too preoccupied with golf and cream teas to devote himself to the ministry of the word and prayer.
Examples of the latter would include a father demanding that his children get up at 4am to clean the house while he lounges around in bed until midday, a husband beating his wife for burning his toast, and a minister threatening to excommunicate church members who failed to attend church every day of the week.
The latter failure (i.e. tyranny) is also exhibited when a government places on its citizens requirements which the Bible gives it no right to impose. That, I’m afraid, is where most modern governments go wrong. They try to do too much – for example, creating a database of all citizens’ emails and phone calls.
Now, here’s the key thing (for our present purposes, at least). Since God has not authorised governments to do this (and lots of other things they try to do as well), he will not equip them to it competently. The inefficiencies and failures of many modern government projects are thus signs from God that they’re trying to do stuff they have neither the right nor (therefore) the ability to pull off. They should concentrate on doing what the Bible tells them to do (see for example Romans 13) and leave saving the world to The Expert.
‘Before me no god was formed, nor shall there be any after me. I, I am the LORD, and besides me there is no saviour,’ … declares the LORD. (Isaiah 43:10-12)
Big brother - 27 April 2009
Yesterday we were greeted with the news that a ‘drugs liaison officer lost a computer memory stick said to contain a list of undercover agents’ names and details of more than five years of intelligence work.’ Apparently ‘the MI6-trained agent left her handbag [containing the memory stick] on a transit coach at El Dorado airport in Bogota, Colombia.’ Consequently, ‘Intelligence chiefs were forced to wind up operations and relocate dozens of agents and informants amid fears the device could fall into the hands of drugs barons.’
Then, this morning, we were woken with an update on the proposed ‘Big Brother database’. The plan was announced last year, and is still being pushed forward. The government proposes to hold ‘details of every phone call, e-mail and time spent on the internet by the public’ as part of the fight against terrorism. The content of these communications are not to be recorded, we are told; just their length, number and so on.
Here’s my prediction:
The plan probably won’t go ahead at all – at least, not for a while. Let’s face it, the Home Office, which would apparently have final responsibility for the scheme, has suffered a few dents to its credibility in recent weeks. The Home Secretary has a few other things to be concerned about right now.
But if it does get the green light, here’s how it’ll pan out:
1. The plan will cost far more then the original estimates. (Just to remind you, the cost of GCHQ’s proposal to move its computer systems from one building to another escalated from an original estimate of £20M to a final cost of around £300M.)
2. The promise not to record the content of the communications will be broken within a decade – if not by this government then by one of its successors.
3. Within the same period of time there will be a serious breach of security, resulting in a vast stash of data being left in a brown envelope in a London Gentlemen’s Club. Or something.
A bit like this.
That’s where the government does WHAT? - 2 March 2009
Deputy Prime Minister Harriet Harman has upped the stakes in the ongoing Fred Goodwin pension saga. Sir Fred is apparently entitled to a whopping £600,000+ p/a pension after retiring from RBS, where he spearheaded the Bank’s disastrous takeover of ABN Amro, leaving the British taxpayer (who now owns around 70% of RBS – congratulations) to clear up the mess.
Commentators left and right have been queueing up to gripe at Freddie’s ‘greed’, and Harriet has jumped onto the bandwagon with both feet and an almighty great thump.
Here’s what our Dep MP says:
The Prime Minister has said it is not acceptable and therefore it will not be accepted. It might be enforceable in a court of law, this contract, but it’s not enforceable in the court of public opinion and that’s where the Government steps in.
Check out the logic here: Irrespective of whether Goodwin is legally entitled to keep his pension, this state of affairs ‘will not be accepted’ on the grounds that ‘the Prime Minister has said it is not acceptable’. This, we are told, is ‘where the government steps in’ – not to enforce the law, but to break it (or at least bend it) at the whim of the PM.
Feeling uncomfortable yet?
On an unrelated note, Gordon Brown is out of the country this week, addressing the US Congress. Guess who steps in as acting PM in his absence?
Anyway, back to (deputy PM) Harriet Harman – let’s have a little biblical light on the subject:
You shall not be partial in judgment. You shall hear the small and the great alike. (Deuteronomy 1:17)
You shall not fall in with the many to do evil, nor shall you bear witness in a lawsuit, siding with the many, so as to pervert justice, nor shall you be partial to a poor man in his lawsuit. (Exodus 23:2)
You shall not fall in with the many to do evil, nor shall you bear witness in a lawsuit, siding with the many, so as to pervert justice (Exodus 23:2)
You shall do no injustice in court. You shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great, but in righteousness shall you judge your neighbour. (Leviticus 19:15)
Huh.
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