How should we then live? (9)

How should we then live? (8)

How should we then live? (7)

How should we then live? (6)

How Should We Then Live?: The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture - Francis Schaeffer

How should we then live (5)

How should we then live (4)

How Should We Then Live?: The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture

How should we then live? (3)

How should we then live? (2)

How Should We Then Live?: The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture

How should we then live? (1)

How Should We Then Live?: The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture - Francis Schaeffer

defeatists are already beaten

Evangelical defeatism in matters of public theology is a failure of biblical and historical perspective. Lacking that perspective, British evangelical defeatists are riddled with white and Christian guilt and are marked by parochial and pessimistic self-loathing and suspicion. They offer their hands to the humanists' handcuffs and their children to their indoctrination centres, making loud assurances that the last thing they would want to do would be 'to impose their morality' on others. 
Evangelical defeatists begin to twitch if someone mentions too loudly in public that the Bible is God's infallible and sufficient Word, that Blair and Brown and Cameron and the rest of them are idolatrous high priests of the greatest false god of modern times, the state, and will one day be on their knees before King Jesus, and that the task the Lord Jesus Christ has given the church is to subdue the earth an fill it, that is, disciple the nations. 

(A Higher throne: Evangelicals and Public Theology p86-87)

Ig nobel

An amusing and astute piece by Iain Martin: 

Giving the EU a peace prize is at best premature, like knighting Sir Fred Goodwin in the middle of the mad boom. We have no idea how the experiment to create an anti-democratic federation will end. Hopefully the answer is very peacefully, but when Greek protesters are wearing Nazi uniforms, and Spanish youth unemployment is running at 50 per cent, a look at history suggests there is always the possibility of a bumpy landing.

Authority and Minority

So the Reformation's preaching of the Gospel brought forth two things which were secondary to the central message of the Gospel but nonetheless were important: an interest in culture and a true basis for form and freedom in society and government. The latter carries with it an important corollary, namely, that 51 percent of the vote never becomes the final source of right and wrong in government because the absolutes of the Bible are available to judge a society. The 'little man,' the private citizen, can at any time stand up and, on the basis of biblical teaching, say that the majority is wrong. so, to the extent to which the biblical teaching is practiced, one can control the despotism of the majority vote or the despotism of one person or group. 

(p 110 How Should We Then Live?: The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture - Francis Schaeffer)

Goo or Genesis

An excellent little article on why the debate about marriage is at heart a theological one (for those on both sides of the isle) and why Christians must begin with Genesis and NOT with 'traditional' values. Here are some nuggets:

Marriage is a political act, and not an individual choice. How you marry is a way of testifying to what city you belong to. Who defines marriage? The difficulty we are having in our generation in answering this question shows how theology shapes and drives everything.

If God created the world, and put one man and one woman in it, married them to each other, and established that as a pattern for the rest of human history, then marriage should be defined in accordance with that reality. If He did nothing of the kind, and we actually evolved out of the primordial goo, then we get to shape and define it however we would like it to go.

One other item of Christian theology has to be taken into account, and that is the reality of the fall into sin. The Christian approach to marriage in the context of mere Christendom deals with both of these realities -- the creational given of male and female, and the sinful propensity we have to hump the world. Creational sexuality and sinful sexuality are both factors.

Our laws about marriage must therefore do two things, not just one. They must honor what God has established in the first place, and they must restrain (by not honoring with the recognition of marriage) any of the other forms of sexual congress that sinful men have come up with... 

... The marriage debates are a prime illustration of why governmental neutrality on basic religious issues is an impossibility. He who says A must eventually say B, and now that we are getting to the end of this seamy chain of syllogisms, we are confronted with the demand to allow homosexuals to marry. But this is not the end of it, and shows why it is so important to get down to first principles.
The secularists want to say that in addition to straights, we have a range of options with the fetching label of GLBTQ. Anybody who thinks that list of letters won't grow just isn't paying attention. Pederasty, bestiality, hetero-polygamy, hetero-polyandry, and bisexual-polyoptions are all waiting in the wings.
The reason why homosexual marriage won't end the debates (and the hate crimes of those who take up the wrong side of the debate) is that these marriage "reforms" clearly have not solved the problems of the bisexuals. With our arbitrary limitation of marital status to two and only two people, we are plainly telling the bisexual that he must choose between a heterosexual marriage or a homosexual marriage, but that he can't do both. "But I am both!" he wails . . . suppose this poor little buster wants to express all of his sexual yearnings within the holy bonds of matrimony, and the clerk down at the county courthouse, just seething with hate, won't give him a license with a place on it for three signatures. And then the Muslim guy, next in line, wants one with a place for four signatures... 

... Christians can't fight this on the basis of "traditional values." The sexual traditions of humanity, considered apart from God's Word, have contained way too many child brides, harems, serial polygamists, and concubines to provide us with the appropriate guidance here. 

God and Bob

The Problem with God is that He thinks He's Bob Geldoff
A provocative title for a very good (and quite provocative) article about foreign aid. 
Here is it's pithy summary: 

Trade, good. Free markets, good. Aid, bad. Tax, bad.

But don't settle for that. Read the whole thing! 

Is there a cure for Foreign AIDS?

Demos or Bureaus?

We seem to be very concerned to let democracy have its 'Saviour' like way in all kinds of Arab countries at the moment. 

Yet well might others around the world look at us as in need of liberating from an undemocratic tyranny sucking the life from us!

EUggghhhh!

why most sins should be legal