Political Quizzes May Not Be Accurate

South Dakota Politics posted a link to a political ideology quiz this morning. I've taken one or two of these in the past, so I thought I'd take it for a spin.

First off, I was a bit frustrated by some of the questions, especially on the first page. It had a lot of "well, not really any of these apply." They were the kind of question where the bias/slant of the questioner was pretty clear, and to answer one way placed you in their camp, but to answer the other way was to place you in a camp that you didn't really agree with either. In other words, the questions were loaded with extremely biased suppositions, or at least that had to be assumed, given the politically correct nature of our society these days.

Example: Our race has many superior qualities, compared with other races. Well, no, not based on race alone. But Western civilization (which is primarily white) is superior to all others. To answer yes paints you as a racist, plus it's incorrect, because no "race" is superior because of their race. But to say no is to ignore the achievements of Western civilization, and like it or not, typically Western civilization is (rightly or wrongly) tied to the white race.

Another example: No one chooses his or her country of birth, so it's foolish to be proud of it. Being able to choose the country of your birth has nothing to do with whether you should be proud of it. Being proud of your country has to do with the merits of your country. I've often said that if there was something better going out there, I'd leave the U.S. in a New York minute--but there isn't. I wasn't born in South Dakota, but I'm proud to live here and to call myself a South Dakotan. Why? Because, though I wasn't born here, I like it MUCH better than the state in which I was born.

Another example: The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Often, but not always. And sometimes only in certain situations and for a short duration. Example: Iraq. We helped Iraq in their war against Iran because we saw Iran as the greater threat (especially since they had taken over our embassy and held our people hostage). But they were never truly our "friends."

Page 2 was better, but...

It's a sad reflection on our society that something as basic as drinking water is now a bottled, branded consumer product. It's neither sad nor glad. It's merely the meeting of an economic demand. If there was no demand, do you think companies would waste their time bottling water?

Those with the ability to pay should have the right to higher standards of medical care . They shouldn't have the "right" to it. But there's nothing wrong with them having access to a higher standard of medical care. A "right" is a politically charged word, because though a "right" originally meant something that was inherent to all human beings and unaffected by external forces, it now means that if you determine someone has a "right" to something, then all of society must bend to ensure that every individual has access to this manufactured "right."

Results:

I don't consider this to be completely accurate (perhaps due to it's impossible-to-answer-accurately answers) because I came down significantly to the Left of Margaret Thatcher (actually coming in somewhere around Jacques Chirac), which I doubt since she's one of my most admired leaders (right up there with Reagan) and Chirac I mildly loath.

Why We Left the Episcopal Church

I read an interesting piece at Virtue Online yesterday (an Anglican publication). It was written by Rev. John Yates and Os Guinness, two men who belong to a church in Virginia (one of several churches) that left the Episcopal denomination over the leadership's devotion to liberalism over the Bible.

They get right to the heart of why many churches are leaving the Episcopal denomination, and while some may be surprised, the ordination of a homosexual bishop isn't really at the heart of it:

It is not a "leftward" drift in the church. It is not even primarily ethical -- though the ordination of a practicing homosexual as bishop was the flash point that showed how far the repudiation of Christian orthodoxy had gone. The core issue for us is theological: the intellectual integrity of faith in the modern world. It is thus a matter of faithfulness to the lordship of Jesus, whom we worship and follow.

This really gets to the heart of the issue: a failure to remain true to their faith. If they had, then they would have never embraced a position that says homosexuality is normal, natural and health...and that God approves of it. The Bible is as clear as it can be that this is a practice God finds abhorrent--it radically violates His design for human sexuality.

The authors of this piece have an interesting term to describe the plague infecting many denominations, churches, and Christian individuals today:

Episcopal revisionism negates the authority of faith. The "sola scriptura" ("by the scriptures alone") doctrine of the Reformation church has been abandoned for the "sola cultura" (by the culture alone) way of the modern church. No longer under authority, the Episcopal Church today is either its own authority or finds its authority in the shifting winds of intellectual and social fashion -- which is to say it has no authority.

Sola Cultura. A very apt term for what is going on. Christians who should look to the Scriptures as the determiner of what is right and wrong, instead looking to culture for the answers.

How upside down can these mixed-up people be??? The church is supposed to guide and enlighten culture, not the other way around. Remember the term about the blind leading the blind? That's what you have now, and these morally bankrupt people who call themselves Christians have no idea that they're being led around by the nose by the very people they should be helping to find the truth.

When denominations, churches or individuals turn away from the Bible and look to anything else for truth--especially the fickle, shallow culture--they're going to end up with the sad state of moral anarchy that is looming over our culture today. A state of anarchy that will certainly destroy everything that makes Western civilization the stable, successful thing it has been.

All Sex Outside of Marriage is "Unprotected"

Mona Charen had an informative column on TownHall.com a couple of days ago dealing with "the sexual free-for-all that prevails on American campuses and throughout American life." The column quotes from the work of Dr. Miriam Grossman in her new book "Unprotected."

She describes a 19-year-old, "Heather," who is depressed. She has a "friend with benefits," but only with the help of psychotherapy is she able to acknowledge that the relationship is causing her pain. She'd like to do things with him, like see movies or go out for dinner, but he is interested only in sex.

Here is another example:

Another student, "Olivia," is devastated after her first serious boyfriend breaks up with her. Her grades suffer, she weeps constantly and suffers a relapse of an eating disorder, making herself vomit up to six times a day. "'Why, doctor,' she asked, why do they tell you how to protect your body -- from herpes and pregnancy -- but they don't tell you what it does to your heart?'"

And another:

"Stacey" is paying a heavy price. An athlete and vegetarian who avoided preservatives, sodas and nicotine, and prided herself on discipline and a low body mass index, Stacey showed up at the health service after repeatedly cutting
her forearms.

And of course the dangers of promiscuity (or even limited sex outside of marriage) carry the risk of STDs:

Stacey, it seems, had been diagnosed with HPV, a sexually transmitted disease. And while college health brochures and women's magazines suggest that the virus is no big deal, that's rubbish. In some cases it can lead to cancer. In every case it requires time-consuming and emotionally draining tests. And 43 percent of college women get it. Stacey's strain can lead to cancer, so she must be tested every six months for the rest of her life. Chlamydia, which is difficult to detect and cure, can cause infertility. Each year, 3 million women are treated for it. An unknown number never get treatment.

This kind of sexual behavior takes a toll not only on women, but men, too. Although admittedly it hits women harder because despite the assertions of feminists to the contrary, women are far more "hard wired" by their Creator to seek emotional attachment through sex.

The "free love" that began to be touted in the 60's, and still lauded by sexual anarchists, isn't "free" at all. It may look like it's coming at no cost, with no strings attached, but sooner or later, the physical, emotional and spiritual cost becomes evident. And it's a pretty high price.

Parents and society should be sending the message of sexual responsibility (i.e. waiting until marriage and keeping it within marriage) instead of parents who are too "enlightened" to teach values to their children, or a society that can't even have a 5-minute run of commercials without allusions to sex.

Evolution and the Bible are Incompatible

It may come as a surprise to some, but up until eight or nine years ago, I was a theistic evolutionist.

While I based my faith on the Bible, I believed in the plausibility of evolution and that God might have used evolution as a mechanism for biological development and change.

I also believed that you couldn't take the Genesis creation account of six 24-hour days literally; I believed those were probably vast, unspecified ages that involved millions or billions of years.

In short, I was trying to reconcile my faith in science (or the interpretation of facts being presented by the scientific community) to my faith in God. I thought the reconciliation was going quite nicely...until I set foot in the middle of a huge creation science conference being presented by Answers in Genesis or the Institute for Creation Research (I can't remember which).

Within an hour or two of being exposed to scientific and Biblical information I had no idea existed, I quickly realized my fence-sitting days were over.

When I believed the Bible and theistic evolution were compatible, I was unaware of two critical issues regarding theistic evolution and vast ages:

(1) the theological contradictions of such a position—in other words, if it were true, then foundational teachings of the Bible were false

(2) there were not only theories which could explain the scientific evidence we observe on earth and in our universe--and do so in harmony with what the Bible tell us--but the evidence fits those theories better than it does evolution and vast ages

Since then, I have devoured most everything I could get my hands on regarding this subject. The more I learn, the more convinced I am that a believe in evolution and vast ages is not only theologically untenable, it's downright anti-intellectual.

Let me say this for the record: I have no interest in being wrong. I'd rather abandon a wrong idea and embrace a correct one than try to perpetuate a bad idea because I'm unwilling to admit I was wrong. Yeah, there's a little embarrassment in admitting you were wrong, but there's even more in clinging to a bad idea like a raft that's full of holes.

What brought this to mind (and this blog) was a post I read this morning from Answers in Genesis (they'll be doing a weekend presentation in Rapid City March 30-31) that I believe was in their December newsletter.

The post I read makes some salient points worth reiterating here.

The age of the earth is a vital doctrine. It’s important because acceptance of millions of years:

-contradicts Genesis’ clear teaching about the age of the earth. (The days of creation were literal days because Genesis 1 defines them as such in verses 5 and 14, Genesis 1 numbers them and associates them with “evening and morning;” Genesis 5 and 11 teach that those days were only about 2,000 years before Abraham, who lived 2,000 BC);

-undermines the Bible’s teaching that Adam’s sin brought death to the human race (and animals) with God’s curse on the whole creation;

-undermines the gospel message that Christ came to die to solve the problem of sin and redeem the whole creation from the Curse;

-assaults the character of God (the God described in the Bible could not use a creation process that involved millions of years of death, disease, and extinction of animals for no moral reason ... and which He then called “very good”);

-involves the acceptance of anti-biblical philosophical/religious assumptions that are at the root of this millions-of-years idea.

Now if you're an atheist, little of this probably matters to you.

But if you call yourself a Christian, this should matter to you quite a bit, because none of those issues listed can be taken lightly. Because if that little book you sometimes tote under your arm to church is worth believing (and one would think you believe that, since in calling yourself a Christian, you have put your faith in some of its claims), then you should be aware that the Bible upon which you base your faith is incompatible with the doctrine of evolution and vast ages.

When I say "incompatible," let me be clear as to what I mean: one or the other can be true, but not both. Just like 2+2 has one definitive answer, there can be only one right answer here.

Chad, if you're reading this, I'm sure you're thrilled to have fresh meat with which to mock me, but that's alright. Rather than indulge the satisfaction of mocking you for being obtuse and close-minded, I'll wait patiently in the hopes you might eventually approach the issue objectively and examine the facts based on their merits, rather than what some intellectual in a white coat has told you the merits are.

I encourage you, CCK, and anyone else reading this, to try and make your way to Rapid City on March 30-31 and check out the AIG presentation. If it's unconvincing to you, then you have fresh, first-hand material with which to ridicule creationists. But maybe, just maybe, if it makes some sense to you, you might get an opening glimpse at a truth and a reality which will blow your mind.

If you're more interested in learning the truth than in clinging to a politically-correct scientific myth, read some of the material at www.answersingenesis.org, and come to the conference in March.

Otherwise, I guess we can assume your head is warm and comfortable there in the sand...

Happy New Year 2007

Wishing everyone a happy and blessed 2007.

And if you're a fighter for family and faith, here's to encouraging you to hang in there and fight the good fight. Despite some of the setbacks of 2006 (or perhaps because of them), your efforts will be all the more important and needed in 2007.

If you're interested, you can read my latest musings, meanderings, and attempts at self-encouragement on the Dakota Voice website here.

Keep Christ in your life, and you will have the Life indeed!